by Sophie Stern
“I know,” I say slowly. “Because people could have argued that someone was out shooting squirrels or goofing off with their dad’s gun. Nobody would have simply bought the fact that he’d been killed in cold blood.”
Even though that was what had happened.
“What do we do?” Finley asks quietly. She’s still holding the earring, and I take it from her and shove it in my pocket.
“Right now, we go.”
We head back to the car in total silence. We get inside and Finley drives us back to her place. I can’t be totally sure, but I think there’s a car following us.
“Don’t stop,” I say as we approach her house. Finley doesn’t even argue with me or backtalk or try to change my mind. She just keeps driving, and sure enough, the car keeps following us.
She turns down a main road and drives past the post office, the library, and one of the medical clinics.
Still, the car stays with us.
I don’t know who it is or what they want, but it can’t be anything good.
“There’s someone following us,” I finally say.
“I know,” she tells me. “It’s the sheriff.”
“Does he follow you often?”
“No, but he always drives that beat-up Saturn,” she shrugs.
“What’s wrong with Saturns?”
“Nothing, but his is a POS.”
“POS?”
“Piece of shit,” she says, and I hate the way a chuckle breaks from my lips. She shoots me a wry smile and looks at me sideways. “I guess you have a sense of humor after all.”
“Well, if it’s the sheriff, I suppose it doesn’t matter if he knows where you live,” I tell her.
“He obviously wants to know if you’re staying with me.”
I sigh.
She’s right.
And apparently, I’m already more trouble than I’m worth.
I hate knowing that this guy could come after her and start harassing her for letting me stay with her.
“You should drive by the motel,” I tell her.
“Why?”
Do I really need to explain this to her?
Does she really need it spelled out?
“You’re a smart girl, Finley.”
“Okay.”
Shit.
Okay, so I am going to have to spell it out.
Great.
“You don’t need me around your place.”
“Excuse me?”
“Seriously? Finley, just take me to the motel. I can get a room and stay there until I figure out what I’m going to do. The last thing you need is for the sheriff to know I’m staying with you.”
“Neil, I’m 23 years old. No offense, but who I choose to date is none of his concern.”
Date?
So we’re dating?
Is that what she thinks?
Shit.
The thought is surprising to me because I kind of thought we were just fooling around, but I don’t hate the idea. In fact, I’m actually a little overwhelmed with emotion at the idea that she thinks I’m good enough for her to date.
Being a villain is one thing.
Being with a beautiful girl like Finley is another.
Finley is sweetness and light: goodness and wonder. She’s all of the things that I’m not, and I don’t deserve her. I don’t even deserve to hang out with her.
“Judging by your silence, I can assume you’re freaking out over the fact that I used the word date. Please don’t be offended,” she says, and her tone is a little different now. She sounds…well, she sounds a little worried. “I just don’t really have the words to describe what this thing between us actually is,” she tells me.
“It’s okay.”
“Is it?” She raises an eyebrow. “You seem freaked out. Sorry. Let’s just…let’s just go home.”
She turns the car around in a parking lot and starts heading back to the house. The sheriff follows, and I wonder if he knows how conspicuous he is. When she finally reaches her house, she pulls into her driveway and puts the car in “park,” but she doesn’t shut it off or wait for me or anything else.
She hops out and runs into the damn street and waves her arms in front of the sheriff’s car.
“Hey!” She yells.
Of course, he’s not an idiot, and he slams on his breaks to avoid hitting her.
Like Finley, he doesn’t turn off the car. What the fuck? He just hops out and yells to her.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“I could ask you the same question,” she snaps.
Irritated and concerned, I reach over and kill the engine. Then I hop out of the car and pocket her keys. I move carefully toward them both. I don’t want to spook the sheriff. The last thing I want to do is get shot or end back in prison, although right now, I’m not sure which one would be worse.
“I’m driving,” the sheriff tells her.
“Following me.”
“I wanted to make sure you were safe.”
“No, you wanted to make sure I wasn’t bring home Neil.”
“Well, he is a criminal.”
“No, he’s not,” she shakes her head, hands on her hips, and something swells inside of me. Is it pride? Happiness? Contentment? She’s defending me, which is something no one has ever done for me before.
Well, aside from my Grandpa.
No one has ever utterly defended me to the ends of the Earth. At this point, it doesn’t even matter what anyone else thinks about me. I’m just so totally enamored to have her happy with me. Finley likes me, and she believes in me, and that’s really all I care about.
At the end of the day, she’s proud of everything I’ve done.
What else do I need?
“He didn’t do it,” she says.
“He did.”
“He didn’t, and even if he did, he served his time, Sheriff. You don’t need to harass him anymore, besides, we learned something tonight.”
Oh shit.
She should not tell him.
She just shouldn’t.
“Finley,” I say carefully.
“It’s all right, Neil,” she ignores me, and keep staring straight at the sheriff.
The fact that I don’t want her to tell him our suspicions seems to make him more keen on listening and hearing exactly what she has to say.
Maybe that’s part of his plan.
He definitely is curious.
“What is it?” He asks.
“Neil and I found something tonight.”
“What?”
We’re all standing in the middle of the street at this point, and the sheriff’s car is completely blocking the center of the road. His engine is still on, and a couple of neighbors are peeking outside.
“Not here,” she says. “Park in my driveway and come inside, Peterson. I’ll make tea.”
With that, she turns and marches toward the house.
“Neil, bring me my keys.”
Sheriff Peterson looks at me and then to Finley, and then back to me. He seems to silently be asking what I think he should do, and it’s really kind of a weird thing. Finally, I just shake my head and shrug.
“Well, you heard the woman,” I say.
I don’t really know what else to do.
I head toward the house and pray for my life. I hope the sheriff is actually willing to listen to what she has to say, and most of all, I hope he doesn’t shoot me in the back.
Chapter Eleven
Finley
I’m shaking as I pour the tea.
What the hell is wrong with me?
Have I really done this? Have I really invited the damn sheriff inside for mid-morning tea? What the hell is wrong with me? I fill my electric kettle with water and plug it into the wall, and then I stare at it for a second.
“Hey,” Neil comes up behind me, but he doesn’t reach for me or hug me. I miss his touch already, but I know why he’s not touching me. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen and he doesn’t want to
give the sheriff anything to use against us.
Right now, though, I don’t care.
I turn around, and I reach for him, pulling him close.
I meant what I said.
I meant it when I said I thought we were dating.
Oh, I know that we aren’t. Not really. I know this entire situation is messy and fucked up. I get it. Still, he’s the one guy I’ve always been drawn to and the one guy I’ve never been supposed to have.
Somehow, that just makes me want him even more.
“It’s going to be okay,” he says.
“I hope you’re right.”
“I’m right. Finley, before I came to you, I didn’t have a chance at finding answers. I never would have thought about the carts being moved. Now we actually have a real shot at finding Sammy’s true killer, and it’s all thanks to you.”
A knock at the door interrupts our embrace, and I pull away from Neil, kiss him quickly, and head to the front door.
Sheriff Peterson is there now. He looks uncomfortable and tired and honestly, he’s starting to look, well, old.
He’s always been considered to be a young, hip cop. Part of that is because he used to spend a lot of time with high schoolers, especially when Sammy was one. Now, things are different. His son isn’t around anymore and if I had to venture a guess, I’d say that the high schoolers just remind him of everything he’s lost.
“Please come in,” I force myself to say, and I step aside so he can enter my home. In the city, it might be weird to invite a cop into your house, especially one you’re only mildly acquainted with.
In Kurlin, things are different.
I guarantee every single person on my street knows exactly where Sheriff Peterson is right now, and the sheriff is fully aware of this fact. If he thinks entering someone’s house is dangerous, I’d venture a guess that he feels a little better knowing that there’s no way Neil or I could get away with harassing or hurting him.
Not here.
I gesture to my living room, and the sheriff reluctantly comes in.
“What’s this all about, Finley?” He says.
“Have a seat,” I say. “The kettle is warming.”
At first, I think he’s going to refuse, but finally, Sheriff Peterson sits down. He’s wearing jeans and a worn-out sweatshirt that hugs the curve of his belly. He’s been behind a desk for awhile now, and that doesn’t do anyone any favors. Still, he’s a handsome man despite the pain behind his eyes. He has sleek bone structure and I’m guessing that when he was a teenager, women were lined up around the block for him.
“Neil showed up at my house the other day,” I tell him. I leave out the part about Neil breaking in because even though I like Neil, that part of the story is honestly pretty weird.
“I can see that.”
“He was just released.”
Nail appears in the doorway, and the sheriff’s eyes dart to him and narrow, but Peterson doesn’t say anything else. Not yet.
“Neil didn’t kill Sammy,” I say, making my voice gentle. “I’m not saying that because I’m romantically interested in him or because I’m trying to save him. I’m saying that because it’s the truth. Neil owns the mill, and we went there today to look for any sort of insight into what happened that night.”
Now’s the hard part.
This is where I have to summon all of my inner-librarian training to ask the difficult questions.
“Sheriff Peterson, did you move the mine carts?”
The silence that falls in the room is deafening. His jaw drops just a little before he quickly closes it again, and he looks away.
Fuck.
Okay, so that’s not just a yes.
That’s a hell yes.
All of this time has passed, and no one else managed to figure that out.
“Tell me why,” I say.
“He shouldn’t have died,” the sheriff whispers.
“I completely agree.”
“We were all alone,” the sheriff says. “Just me and Sammy, and we were fighting, but that wasn’t anything new. Sammy was gay,” he looks up at us. “And he loved a young man. I didn’t approve. I’ve changed my way of thinking since then. I’d do anything to have my Sammy back. I wouldn’t try to change who he loved.”
The sheriff looks at his hands and in this moment, my entire heart feels like it’s cracking in half. The kettle starts to whistle and Neil kindly goes to shut it off. That’s probably for the best. The sheriff and I aren’t close, but I’m also not the person he thinks killed his kid.
“Sheriff, did you do it to get the case closed quickly?”
“Absolutely,” he says. “If anyone knew the carts were outside of the mine and that Sammy had been shot standing in the woods, it would have been a cold case faster ‘n you can blink. It was the only way to make them believe someone had done this on purpose.”
“Someone did do it on purpose,” Neil says, coming back into the room with the mugs of tea. He sets one down on the coffee table in front of the sheriff and one in front of me. He didn’t grab one for himself. Instead, he sits down in one of the chairs and looks at the sheriff. “It just wasn’t me. Someone did go after Sammy. I understand why you did it. He was your kid. You wanted justice. No one was going to believe Sammy was murdered standing outside of the mines. They’d say it was a stray bullet.”
“There were problems with kids shooting in the woods back then,” the sheriff says. He speaks as though it happened a million years ago, but the reality is that it was only five. It was only five years ago, but it seems like a complete lifetime ago.
Back then, we were all innocent.
Naïve.
Hell, we were all completely brave.
Not anymore.
“Lots of kids would sneak into the woods and fire their dad’s hunting rifles,” he shakes his head. “I couldn’t let them think that was what had happened.”
“So you let me go to jail instead.”
“Someone had to pay!” The sheriff looks up at Neil. “Someone had to!”
“I didn’t do it.”
“Then who was it?” The sheriff asks, and for the first time in the years I’ve known him, he looks like he genuinely wants to know.
“Sheriff, we went looking around where the mine carts were, and we found something strange.”
“What?”
I pull the earring out of my pocket and hand it to him. He holds it in his hands for a long minute and then looks up at me. I know from the recognition on his face that he knows perfectly well who this earring belongs to. He knows, and he never saw it coming.
Just like we didn’t.
“Fuck,” he says.
“We think she was hiding behind some trees,” Neil says carefully. “Waiting for the right moment.”
“Maybe she planned to kill Sammy and Neil. Maybe she wanted just Sammy to die. Either way, she took her shot.”
Neil has his hands resting on his knees. He looks innocent like this.
Harmless.
Gentle, almost.
“She might have been planning to shoot him before I arrived or maybe she wanted to get both of us. I don’t think she planned for you to be there, but she went for it, anyway.”
“She wanted Sammy out of the way,” the sheriff says, shaking his head. “I should have questioned her. I never even questioned her. Hell, I went to her damn wedding.”
Tears are in his eyes now, and I feel like complete shit for shattering this guy’s flimsy amount of closure. That’s what he thought he had. He thought he had closure after his kid’s death, but he never really did.
To my surprise, Neil looks up at the sheriff and speaks.
“There was no way for you to know,” he says. “Nobody could have predicted this.”
The sheriff shakes his head.
“I pushed so hard for it to be you.”
“You did, and I was convicted without anyone batting an eye. I get it. I was wandering around in the woods without an alibi. I hung out with Sammy
all of the time. The two of us did a lot together. It made sense that people would assume we had a lover’s quarrel or that I was jealous of him somehow.”
“We had it all wrong,” the sheriff says.
He doesn’t apologize, but I don’t really think Neil expects him to. If anything, Neil is probably just relieved that the sheriff hasn’t called for backup to try to have him arrested again.
“What do we do?” I ask. “I’m not an expert in investigating, but I have read a lot of detective novels in my line of work, and I don’t think an earring dropped at a murder site five years ago is enough to have someone arrested.”
“Maybe not,” the sheriff says. “But it’s enough to start asking questions again, and sometimes, asking questions is more than enough.”
He stares at the earring in his hand, and I wonder what’s going through his mind. He must have so much pain stirring around inside of him right now, and I wish I could stop it. I hate seeing anyone hurting.
“I wasn’t the primary on the case,” he finally says, standing up. “But I’m going to bring this to Alfred and see how he wants to handle it.” He turns to Neil and holds out his hand. “I’m sorry for my part in having you locked away. The justice system failed you, and I played a key role.”
Neil looks at the sheriff’s hand for a long time. I wonder what he’s going to do. What would I do, if it were me? Would I shake the hand of the man who pushed to have me locked up? Would I be willing to forgive him after so much time on the other side of bars?
But Neil is a bigger man than most people could ever imagine being. He stands up and he looks at the sheriff. He takes his hand and shakes it, but he doesn’t say anything.
He doesn’t say I forgive you.
He doesn’t say it’s okay.
It’s not okay, and he may never forgive anyone. I don’t know if I could. He is accepting this new way forward, though, and that’s a huge first step. No matter what happens next, Neil can rest assured that he was steadfast and strong. He was brave. He took a chance at moving forward and not being locked in the past. That’s more than a lot of people can say.