Falling For You (Dundee Idaho)

by Brenda Novak

  She averted her face, hoping Randy wouldn’t notice her as Booker said, “Federal drug charges. I got busted for selling crack when I was twenty. I was pretty messed up in those days.”

  “But you’ve changed.”

  “I don’t do drugs. I don’t hang out with other people who do them. I’m not angry anymore.”

  Rebecca stirred another packet of sugar into her coffee because it gave her a way to occupy her hands. “What was it like in prison?”

  “Bad enough that I don’t want to go back.”

  Rarely did Booker embellish his statements with any detail. Rebecca would have questioned him further, however, if she hadn’t heard Jeff say something to Judy and Rick, the late-night cook, that caught her attention. Something about a car fire.

  “That thing is toast, man. You should see it,” Randy said, sitting at the bar in front of the cooler that contained the pies the owner of the restaurant made daily.

  “No one’s going to be driving that charred heap,” Jeff concurred.

  “Does Josh know what happened?” Judy wanted to know.

  “He knows his Excursion’s destroyed. He doesn’t know how it happened, though.”

  “A vehicle doesn’t just burst into flames for no reason,” the cook said.

  “What vehicle?” Rebecca asked, forgetting that she didn’t want Randy to notice her.

  Her brother-in-law swiveled to face her. His expression turned to a glower when he saw Booker with her, but he answered. “Josh Hill’s Excursion just burned to cinders.”

  Rebecca felt a chill go down her spine. The same vehicle she’d been sitting in only a couple of hours earlier? The same vehicle she’d been smoking in?

  “How’d the fire get started?” she asked, scarcely able to breathe.

  Randy shrugged. “Don’t know. There was a gas can in back. Josh had just filled it for the Quad Runners and forgotten to take it out. We think that had something to do with it.”

  “So you’re saying the Excursion…what? Spontaneously combusted?” she asked, her voice sounding reedy, even to her own ears.

  “Not in this cool weather,” Jeff said, his voice as skeptical as his words. “It would’ve taken a spark of some kind.”

  Rebecca tried to recall what she’d done with the butt of her cigarette. She’d been sitting in the truck smoking, talking to Booker. They’d decided they were wasting their time, and she’d flicked her cigarette away. But it had fallen on the damp ground, hadn’t it? She couldn’t remember. She’d been so preoccupied with what Buddy had said, and what Josh had done to make Buddy say what he’d said, and what she was or wasn’t going to do in response, that she hadn’t been paying attention. Maybe she’d flicked the butt into his Excursion by accident. Or maybe she hadn’t done it by accident at all. Maybe her subconscious had wanted to destroy Josh’s fancy SUV….

  The “bad seed” stuff her father had mentioned echoed in Rebecca’s mind. It was too much of a coincidence that she’d been smoking in Josh’s truck the same night it burst into flame, wasn’t it? Had she provided the spark?

  Oh, God… She opened her mouth to ask if a cigarette butt could have started the fire, but Booker interrupted her by squeezing her hand.

  “We’re sorry to hear that,” he said to Randy and Jeff, taking over the conversation. “But Rebecca and I better get going. It’s late, and we’ve already been here for ages. Isn’t that right, Judy?”

  “Huh?” the middle-aged waitress said, her mind still obviously immersed in the shocking news about Josh’s Excursion.

  “We’re ready for the check,” Booker replied.

  “Oh, yeah.” She walked over and slapped their ticket on the table.

  Booker tossed a five on top of it before pulling Rebecca from the booth.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she murmured as they made their way to her car.

  “No,” Booker said. “I’m not.”

  But she knew he was. She knew it from the tenseness of his body, the soberness of his eyes.

  “What am I going to do?” she asked after he put her in the passenger side of her car and took the driver’s seat himself.

  “Nothing.”

  “I have to do something.”

  He started the engine. “No, you don’t. Considering the past, there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell anyone will believe what happened was an accident. How are you planning to explain what you were doing at his house? And I’m an ex-con. I can’t exactly lend you credibility. So we’re not going to say anything. Josh’s insurance will replace his ride, and that’ll be the end of it, okay?”

  “But what if it was my fault?”

  “If?” he said.

  And that was when Rebecca knew for sure: she’d burned Josh’s new Excursion to the ground.

  * * *

  REBECCA’S HEART ECHOED the thumping of her hand on Delaney’s door.

  “Laney, it’s me. Open up,” she called, shivering. When she and Booker had arrived at Granny Hatfield’s, she’d gone inside and tried to sleep. But she’d only tossed restlessly in her bed. When the emotions swirling inside her refused to settle down after an hour, she’d pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweater and headed out, hoping to speak to the one person who’d always been able to make sense of the world. Delaney.

  The porch light snapped on and Rebecca stepped back. Finally. Thank goodness. But she wasn’t very pleased when she saw Conner’s sleepy face through the crack in the door, instead of Delaney’s.

  “Rebecca?” he asked. “Are you okay?”

  Rebecca rubbed her palms on her jeans, suddenly resenting Conner as much as she resented all the other changes life had brought over the past year. Now that Delaney was married, she was mostly unavailable. Buddy had postponed their wedding—indefinitely, this time. Her next closest friend was an ex-con. And she was living with Hatty, for God’s sake. Could things get any worse?

  “Um…yeah,” she said. “Sorry to wake you, but…I really need to talk to Delaney.”

  “Rebecca?” Delaney gently pushed Conner out of the way and opened the door wider. “What’s going on?”

  Rebecca glanced uncomfortably at Conner. She shouldn’t have come. Conner was obviously disgruntled at the disturbance and, being so close to the end of her pregnancy, Delaney needed her sleep. “Never mind. I shouldn’t have bothered you. I’ll call you in the morning.”

  She turned to go, but Delaney grabbed her arm. “No, come in. I’m worried about you.”

  Rebecca let herself be dragged inside and breathed a little easier when Delaney insisted Conner go back to bed. “I can take care of this,” she said. “You get some sleep.”

  He shoved a hand through his rumpled hair, gazed with bleary eyes at his wife, then shuffled down the hall.

  “Sorry,” Rebecca said when he was gone.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Delaney replied. “Come on into the kitchen. I’ll make us a cup of herbal tea.”

  Rebecca followed her and slumped into a chair while Delaney put some water on to boil.

  “So what’s wrong?” she asked, sitting across from her.

  Rebecca poured salt on the kitchen table and began moving it around with one fingertip. When that didn’t ease the tension humming through her body, she sighed and said, “I’m in trouble, Laney.”

  Her best friend stiffened, as though bracing for the worst. “This doesn’t have anything to do with Booker, does it?”

  “Actually it does. But not in the way you think.”

  “Then what?” she said, her voice tentative.

  Meeting her gaze, Rebecca said, “I burned down Josh’s truck tonight.”

  Delaney stood, as quickly as she could in her condition, and pressed a hand to her chest. “You what?”

  “It was an accident. He called Buddy today and told him every terrible thing I’ve ever done. And Buddy said he wasn’t sure whether he even wanted to set a date for the wedding anymore. And…and I just felt so helpless and frustrated and angry. I shouldn’t have gone
out to Josh’s place. I know that. But I really didn’t mean to burn his Excursion.”

  “You want to explain how it happened?”

  Rebecca told her about how she’d dashed off to Josh’s, planning to confront him—and how pointless that had seemed by the time she’d reached his house. When she finished by describing the careless toss of her cigarette butt, Delaney didn’t respond. “Say something,” she finally prodded.

  “I’m trying to think,” Delaney replied. “I mean, Josh had no right to do what he did. I can’t believe he’d involve himself in your personal life. But I doubt the police will give you much sympathy.”

  “Josh might not have done anything illegal, but when he called Buddy, I’m sure he left out all the stuff he did to provoke me while we were growing up.”

  Delaney dropped her head in one palm. “You mean like breathing?” she muttered.

  Rebecca stared down at the salt granules on the table, feeling almost as minuscule. “Like…like…I don’t know,” she said. “Why did he have to call Buddy, anyway?”

  Delaney wiped the salt Rebecca had poured onto the table into her hand and went to toss it down the sink. “That’s what has me stumped,” she said, turning on the water. “You guys rarely see each other anymore. You were letting the past go. You were calling a truce. So why the sudden involvement?”

  Rebecca got up and began to pace. “I don’t know. I haven’t done anything bad to him for years.”

  “The last time was when we stole his truck and stranded him and Cindy at the old skinny-dipping spot, remember?” Delaney said.

  Rebecca easily recalled the warm, dark night they’d seen Josh at the movies with Cindy Westover. They’d chanced upon his pickup a few hours later, parked not far from Culver Creek with the keys dangling inside, and knew he and Cindy were probably taking a swim—or doing more than swimming. Either way, it had been too good an opportunity to pass up. “That was nine years ago.”

  “Maybe he’s still holding a grudge.”

  “He was the one who left his keys inside.”

  “Hormone-induced frenzies don’t lend themselves to cautious thinking,” Delaney pointed out.

  “Then it would’ve been a bigger mistake if they’d left their clothes in the truck, too.” Rebecca folded her arms as she paced; she felt so fidgety, she didn’t know what to do with her hands. “In any case, he and Cindy had to walk a few miles in the dark. So what? It wasn’t even cold out.”

  “They had to walk ten miles, at least,” Delaney corrected. “But forget I brought it up. This is different. You could be in big trouble here. You didn’t just borrow his truck this time—you destroyed it.”

  “Ten miles is no big deal,” Rebecca insisted, because she didn’t want to think about the repercussions of the here and now. “Josh and Cindy walked home and found Josh’s truck parked in his driveway, keys inside. No harm done. Surely he didn’t call Buddy to get me back for that.”

  “Who knows? He has a long list of grievances to choose from,” Delaney said.

  Most of which he’d enumerated quite nicely for Buddy, Rebecca thought, pivoting at the end of the kitchen and coming back.

  “That wasn’t exactly the last contact you had with him,” Delaney went on.

  Rebecca gave up crossing her arms, because she was too nervous to hold her arms so still, and began fiddling with the bottom of her sweater. “But I didn’t do anything unkind last summer. I was out of my mind for a little while and nearly tore off his clothes and begged him to take me. What would make a man angry about that?”

  “I can’t say,” Delaney said, leaning against the counter. “I only know you’ve been different since that night.”

  “How?”

  “Less volatile. More reflective. Certainly far less vocal about your dislike for Josh Hill. Why’d you ever leave the Honky Tonk with him?”

  “You already know. I was drunk.”

  “You seem to remember a lot about that night for being drunk.”

  Rebecca would’ve had to be deaf to miss the skepticism in Delaney’s voice. “Last summer has nothing to do with now,” she said, changing the subject as quickly as possible.

  “Who knows,” Delaney said.

  “I know.”

  “So?”

  “So what?”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “I don’t have a clue.”

  Delaney pulled her chair away from the table to make more room for her belly and sank down again. “You couldn’t simply have asked him why he called Buddy,” she said, tucking her long hair behind her ears. “You couldn’t have gone to the door and said, ‘Keep your nose out of my business.’ Instead, you had to toss a cigarette butt inside his SUV.”

  “Thanks for trying to cheer me up,” Rebecca said.

  “Sorry.”

  Rebecca gave up pacing to stand and stare out the kitchen window at the black night beyond. “I need another cigarette.”

  “Hang on. The desire will pass.”

  Maybe her craving for a cigarette would pass, but what she’d done to Josh’s truck had to be reckoned with. “It’s just a vehicle, right?” she said suddenly. “I’ll pay for it.”

  “You’ll what?” Delaney responded.

  “I’ll pay for it.”

  “Uh-huh. You’ll write him a check on your big, fat bank account. Or do you think Buddy should help pay for it once you two finally get married?”

  If they ever married, Rebecca thought Buddy probably should help pay for it. “Buddy has some responsibility in all this,” she said.

  Delaney turned to gape at her. “Why’s that?”

  “He believed what Josh told him.”

  “It was the truth!”

  “So what if it was? He could’ve defended me. He could’ve had a little faith. Instead, he’s seriously doubting I’ll make him a good wife.” Rebecca hated the way her voice cracked on that last statement, especially when Delaney’s sudden softening told her she’d heard it.

  “Oh, Beck,” she said. “Buddy will come around.”

  “Why’d Josh have to do it?” Despite herself, Rebecca couldn’t mask the pain behind her words. “Why shouldn’t I burn his Excursion, Laney? What difference does it make? I can’t have a fresh start. I’m damaged goods, even with Buddy. I’ve always been damaged goods.”

  “Don’t say that! You have too much to offer the world to let anyone’s opinion hem you in, even Buddy’s. I can’t imagine why Josh did what he did. But you can be anything you want to be, regardless of the past.”

  Rebecca curled her fingers into her palms as the reality of what she’d done sank even deeper. “No, I can’t. Because I just proved everybody right, didn’t I? These kinds of things don’t happen to good people. Only to bad seeds. I’m not marriage material. I’m not even ‘friend’ material. I dragged Booker over there with me, which means I could’ve gotten him in trouble, too. I deserve to do hair in Nowhere, Idaho, until I die of old age,” she said. And then, because she resented Delaney’s sympathy as much as she craved it, she left.

  * * *

  THE SMELL OF SMOKE HUNG thick in the air as Rebecca stood facing Josh’s house. The lights were out, and the place looked peaceful and sleepy. The fire was out, too, leaving the Ford Excursion looking like a soulless heap.

  She’d done that. She’d killed it in her anger, and now she had to pay the price.

  Resolute, Rebecca threw back her shoulders and made her feet carry her to the front door. She hated knowing she’d wake Josh at three o’clock in the morning, hated standing out in the cold, humiliated and alone. But she was afraid that if she waited, she’d lose her nerve and never say what had to be said.

  Swallowing hard, she fought a sudden mutinous onslaught of tears and raised her hand to knock.

  The light came on. Rebecca quickly stepped into the shadows as the door swung open.

  “Back to torch the house?” Josh asked, wearing nothing but a pair of jeans.

  Rebecca hunched into her wool coat, wishing
she were small enough to disappear. But she refused to let herself move any farther back. She had to own up to her mistakes, accept responsibility, apologize. And she had to say those things to Josh. There were insurance issues, which could easily become criminal issues. And there were moral issues, too. She knew no one would ever believe her, but it was the moral issues that had brought her traipsing across town in the middle of the night.

  “So—” She cleared her throat because it felt like someone was squeezing it and she wanted to ensure that her voice remained steady and true. If she was going to do this, she was going to do it with dignity. “So I guess you already know it was me.”

  He crossed his arms and leaned against the doorjamb. Rebecca knew he had to be freezing, standing there barefoot and without a shirt. But he didn’t invite her in or ask her to wait while he grabbed a jacket. “I know it was you. And it doesn’t surprise me a bit.”

  Of course it wouldn’t surprise him. She was the only one who’d ever done anything bad to him. All the other residents of Dundee turned themselves inside out to give Josh Hill whatever he wanted.

  “Right,” she said. “Well, I came to—” Suddenly it felt as though she couldn’t catch her breath. “To tell you I’ll pay for the damage.”

  “You will?” he said, not hiding his astonishment. Sticking his head out the door, he looked around as though expecting to be ambushed at any moment. “Are you trying to throw me off here? Are you setting me up for something else?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t have the money to pay the whole amount right now, which might put you in a bind as far as replacing it. But I can pay as much as—” She hesitated, knowing that what she could afford would sound paltry to him, then forced the words out of her mouth anyway, because it was the best she could do. “Three hundred dollars a month.” At least I won’t be smoking again. I won’t have the money for chewing gum, let alone cigarettes.

  He seemed unsure how to respond. “Let me get this straight,” he said. “You’re taking responsibility for destroying my SUV, and you’re going to pay me three hundred dollars a month to make up for it?”

  She jammed her hands in her pockets and nodded.