Beloved Father
Honored Public Servant
Sheriff Joseph Allen Ward
The date of his birth sat beside the early date of his death. Jo accepted Zoe’s arm as it snaked around her waist. She hadn’t heard her father’s laugh, seen her father’s smile, in seven years.
“He always thought I’d end up here before him,” Jo told them.
“You did give him hell.” Zoe was right, she had.
They were silent for a moment.
“Do you think he sees us here?”
“He damn well better.” Jo forced a laugh. “He put this badge on my chest, he better appreciate it.”
“I’m sure he does.”
Before Zoe and Mel could pull her anywhere close to tears again, she looked beyond the headstones. “Remember summer of our sophomore year?”
Both women followed her gaze and slow smiles started to spread. “Miss Gina’s lemonade and old Mrs. Greely’s grave. We got so drunk.”
Jo started to laugh. “I thought we were incredibly clever drinking in a cemetery.”
Zoe nudged her. “Until we swore we heard voices.”
“That was you, Zoe,” Mel reminded her.
“Running through the cemetery in the dark. Never a good idea.”
“Nearly busted my ankle,” Jo remembered.
“I ended up with poison oak,” Melanie said.
“I got away with a nasty hangover and nightmares for the summer.”
“Good times.” Jo smiled into the memory.
“Isn’t that the time your dad called you out for drinking?”
“He sure did. Said someone complained about a disturbance in the cemetery, came out the next day while I slept it off and found my school ID next to the leftover lemonade. He left my ID next to the mason jars we’d left behind on the kitchen counter. Signed me up for the summer cross-country team the next day.”
“That was awful. Five miles every day in the summer.”
“Smart bastard. I didn’t have time or energy to drink that summer.”
Zoe lifted her eyebrows. “Not much anyway.”
Jo knelt down and pulled a weed that didn’t need to be pulled. “I miss him,” she said in a low voice. “I swear I can feel him at the strangest times. Like he’s there looking over me.”
Mel knelt beside her. “Sounds like a normal thing. I know if there was a way to watch over Hope if something happened to me, I’d do it.”
Zoe walked along the back of the stone and paused. She lifted a single white lily from the ground and placed it on top. “Must have fallen off.”
Jo narrowed her brow, a memory tried to surface but didn’t make it. “That’s nice.”
Silence filled the space between them before Jo voiced something to her best friends she hadn’t shared with anyone else. “He was murdered.”
Zoe sucked in a breath.
“What? I thought it was an accident,” Mel said, dumfounded.
“I know what everyone thinks. I also know what I know.”
“But everyone said—”
“Accidental shooting. I know. That’s what I was told. No one was more careful with his firearms than my dad.”
“Jo?” Zoe held doubt in her tone.
“What are the chances of you placing your palm in a vat of hot oil, Zoe? Or you pushing Hope off a cliff?” she asked Melanie.
Both women held their breath and stared.
“I know what I know. I read the reports. I have little memories that come back to me every once in a while. They started surfacing after his death. I remember this time of year always being difficult for him.”
“Kids graduating, lots of parties.”
“The annual high school reunion followed by the Fourth of July and everything surrounding it. I know. But it was more than that,” Jo insisted.
“Are you sure?”
Jo nodded. “Yeah. I’m sure. One of the things I learned in the academy is that criminals often return to the scene of the crime.”
“And that’s why you’re still here. To find your dad’s killer.”
Jo met Zoe’s gaze and moved to Mel’s. “Yeah. I’ll find him. Eventually.”
She took in her father’s tombstone and offered her pledge in silence.
I’ll find him, Daddy.
“Did it shrink?”
“The gym?”
Melanie looked up into the eves of the high school gym and could have sworn the room had shrunk. “Wasn’t it bigger?”
“I don’t think so,” Zoe muttered.
“The whole town feels smaller than when we lived here.” It didn’t help that a few staple storefronts had closed down because of the poor economy.
“I hear ya. My old room feels like a shoe box.” Zoe had spent the first night at her mom’s and then decided to bunk up with Jo.
“I’m pretty sure none of us exploded . . . how is it possible everything feels smaller?”
Zoe led Melanie toward the purple and gold decorated registration table. The official reunion party wasn’t for another day, but today they were asked to help sort out the list of names of attendees who were coming to the event into the clubs and activities they knew the alumni had participated in.
“I think our minds expanded, making everything else feel smaller.”
Melanie could buy that. “You know what’s funny . . . the inn doesn’t feel smaller. Everything else . . . yeah. Even the gas station looks tiny. I know it hasn’t changed. It hasn’t, right?”
Zoe fell silent, her eyes locked across the room.
Melanie followed her friend’s gaze and sighed.
Luke stood talking to a couple of guys who looked familiar but she couldn’t place names to.
And Zoe stared.
Melanie stood beside her, silent with her own thoughts.
“Why does he have to look so damn good?” Zoe quietly asked.
“He always looked good.” But he only had eyes for Zoe. Once the two of them hooked up, the town instantly assumed there would be li’l Zoes and li’l Lukes following behind in no time.
The town had been wrong.
“Just the women I’ve been searching for.”
Melanie cringed.
“Margie.”
Full of her fake bubbly self, Margie approached them with a yearbook in one hand, a pom-pom in the other. “If it isn’t Zoe Brown, River Bend’s claim to fame.” The compliment brushed hands with sarcasm.
“Well if it isn’t Margie Taylor.” Zoe matched her sarcasm and added a smirk. “Still motivating the football team?” Zoe wiggled her fingers under the dangling plastic strings of their school colors.
“Once a cheerleader always a cheerleader.”
“Is that so?”
Margie kept her fake grin in place as she spoke. “How is that cooking thing you’re doing?”
Zoe’s jaw tightened and Melanie stood back.
In the past, Zoe would light into Melanie with a snarky zinger that put the other woman back for a week.
The tight jaw lasted two breaths and Zoe shook her head. “It’s doing very well, thank you. I’m happy to say my pastime in high school afforded me a living.” The words she didn’t say hung between them, but God help Margie, she didn’t hear them.
Margie’s pastime was hooking up with everyone else’s boyfriend.
“That’s wonderful for you.”
An awkward moment of silence followed before Margie glanced at her feet, and then the yearbook in her hands. “Oh, I almost forgot. There are a few people I was hoping the two of you could identify.”
The three of them moved to a table and peered at the yearbook.
Looking at the pictures of a decade past had Melanie wondering where her old yearbook ended up. She’d left it with her mom when she went off to college, bu
t then some of her belongings went with her dad to Texas.
The pages of the track team splayed out and some of the happier times in her life surfaced.
“I’m going to break out in a sweat just looking at these pictures,” Zoe said.
“Remember Coach Reynolds’s punishment for showing up late to practice?”
Zoe cringed. “Running Lob Hill . . . that sucked.”
Lob Hill sat beyond the track and football field on the far north of the school. There wasn’t a street or anything to it other than a forty percent incline that made running up it grueling. Whenever the team had shown out or arrived late, or simply pissed off the coach by not paying attention, Lob Hill was mentioned and they all took off running.
Reynolds held a stopwatch in his hand and if you didn’t return in fifteen minutes you were told to run the hill again.
Margie pointed to a face on the page. “Do you know who this is?”
The image didn’t strike any memories.
“I think he was only around the last year. Perry something . . . what was his last name?” Zoe squeezed her eyes as if activating her brain. “Anders . . . no, Anderson.”
“Oh, that’s right. Yeah, shy guy with great hair.” Melanie wondered if the kid had managed to keep it.
Margie pointed to a few more alumni before gathering what she needed and walking away.
“Just as annoying as an adult as she was a kid,” Zoe quietly said under her breath.
“People don’t change.”
“I did.”
Melanie narrowed her eyes. “No. You were always wicked smart and determined to be more than what this town thought you were. You may have changed your living conditions and lifestyle, but you’re still Zoe.” She pointed to the open yearbook. “You’re still this girl.”
Zoe shook her head, her eyes darkened. “That’s a prison man’s daughter who lives in a double-wide on the wrong side of town. I’m no longer her.”
The blood in Melanie’s face drained and her lips slacked open.
With a shake of her head, Zoe mumbled something about using the bathroom and scrambled off, leaving Melanie staring after her.
Where had that come from?
Melanie started after her when Luke cut Zoe off at the door to the gym. Even from a distance, she noticed Luke’s expression sharpen. It wasn’t long before he put his arm around Zoe’s shoulders and led her from the noisy gym. The sight of them reminded her of how much she envied their relationship in high school. How much she wanted a love like that. It wasn’t a surprise she’d fallen into Nathan’s hands so easily. It was as if without the wise guidance from her true friends, she’d been vulnerable for the taking.
She meandered out of the gym and onto the field. A few joggers were taking advantage of the fair weather and running the track. In the center of the field, the football team was running drills. Up in the stands were a gaggle of cackling girls staring at the small screens of their cell phones.
Not a lot had changed in ten years. The faces were different, the dynamics . . . not so much.
The pole vault pit sat in the southwest corner of the field. A tarp covered the mass of foam and cushion that kept the vaulters from hurting themselves when they landed after their jumps. The standards framed the pit but the poles and crossbars were put away in a locked shed.
Memories of her first jump, how uncoordinated she’d felt, surfaced. It took three months before she actually landed a decent vault. It had only been five feet, but God it felt good. She remembered the senior vaulters all cheering. Zoe had given a thumbs-up, and Jo told her to aim higher or join high jump.
She aimed higher.
“Can’t help yourself, can you?”
Melanie jumped and turned.
“You like sneaking up on people, Coach?”
Wyatt stood behind her with a smile. A sexy smile that warmed her.
“I didn’t sneak, you weren’t paying attention.”
Yeah, right . . . she sat on the pit and couldn’t help but bounce. The condition of the pit had deteriorated over the past decade. “Do you vault?” she asked him.
“I never got the hang of the turn. Luckily, coaching doesn’t require me to break anything. Did you vault in college?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t see the point. I wasn’t good enough for the Olympics and no one was offering me a full scholarship.”
“You cleared eleven two. That’s brag worthy.”
Melanie caught his eyes. “You looked up my record?”
He lifted both hands in the air. “Guilty.”
“Checking out a potential coach?”
He shrugged his shoulders and said, “No. Just checking you out.”
It took a second for his words to register and Melanie felt her cheeks warm.
He started to laugh. “You’re easy to fluster, Miss Bartlett.”
“I’m not flustered,” she denied and removed her butt from the pit. She offered him her back and put her cool hands to her cheeks.
I’m so flustered.
You’d think no one ever flirted with her.
Or maybe those who did held little interest for her.
Truth was, she may have aged ten years, but she was relatively clueless when it came to the world of men.
Instead of admitting anything, she moved over to the giant shipping container that held all the pole vault equipment. She slid her hand between two containers and fished her fingers in the dark. She was about to give up when she found the small magnetic box she searched for.
The hide-a-key had a faded image of Hello Kitty.
While Wyatt watched she popped open the small box and removed a senior secret.
The lock hadn’t changed.
“I wondered where they hid that thing,” Wyatt said as he stood back and watched.
“You didn’t learn it from me.” She placed the key back where she found it and stepped into the dusty container. The space in front of the poles had evidence of use, but the far reaches of the container, the place where it wasn’t uncommon for the team to hang out on a rainy day, had lost its luster. Cobwebs occupied the space and a forgotten, faded jersey and pair of shoes filled the corners. When Melanie had been in school, it wasn’t unusual that a summer evening took place here with a game of spin the bottle along with shots provided by Jo and her hidden stash of liquor.
Instead of simmering on the high school memories, Melanie removed a pole from the tube and sighed.
“You still have it.”
“They’re expensive. Until they break or crack, we don’t get rid of them.”
She wedged the pole against the bottom of the shed and leaned into it. Where she once bent the pole with ease, she could already tell she’d lost the upper body strength to use the thing.
“You wanna try?” Wyatt asked.
“Vaulting?”
“Since breaking and entering has been mastered . . .”
Melanie shook her head with a roll of her eyes. “I know the sheriff. And besides, she had the key made.”
Wyatt offered a dimpled smile. “I’m learning new things every day with you in town.” He moved away from the container and over to the pit. “They say it’s like riding a bike.”
“They do not!”
“They do.”
She planted the pole into the box and attempted to bend it again. “Who are they anyway?”
“Life’s cheerleaders.”
Melanie cringed. “Fake smiles and pom-poms . . . what do they know?”
“Don’t be hating.”
She took a few steps back and lifted the eleven-foot pole before letting the end come down with a bounce. “I’m not hating. Just not a fan.”
“Yet you were on the squad.”
She offered a glance over her shoulder, found his eyes snapping up from his gaze lingerin
g on her butt. “Checking me out again?”
It was his turn to be flustered.
“Yes . . . no . . . I mean. Your friend Margie told me you were on the squad.”
“Nice change of subject. And Margie is an old acquaintance, not a friend. Not to mention the reason I stopped cheer.”
“Oh?”
“It was high school. Boyfriends were passed around and feelings were hurt. I’m sure it hasn’t changed.” Her eyes drifted to the stands where she assumed the current cheerleading team sat watching their football-playing boyfriends.
“So she broke the girl code.”
Melanie leaned on the pole and smiled. “I ended up here and she had her heart stomped on. I won.”
“These reunions always drag up old drama. There is seldom a year that goes by that there isn’t some kind of fight.”
“Really?”
“Not a fistfight . . . well, I’ve seen one of those, but catfights are entertaining.”
“That’s stupid. We’re adults now.”
“I’m just reporting the facts as I’ve seen them. It seems River Bend has a few unsolved dramas that need to be worked out.”
Wyatt sat on the edge of the pit and leaned against his jean-clad thighs.
“What about you? Did you have any drama when you went to your reunion?”
“It isn’t until next year. I’ll let you know.”
She knew it, he was younger. “Are you going to go?”
“Haven’t decided. I might.” He nodded toward the pit. “Now, are you going to jump on the pole or just fondle it all day?”
She glanced at her hands gripping the tape.
Wyatt laughed.
“I’m not going to get flustered,” she muttered.
“Too late.”
Yeah, it was too late. She returned to the shed and lifted the pole back into its home. The fit was tight and she gave it a good shove. Wyatt had moved beside her and placed his hand next to hers to push it in. For a man living in Oregon, he sure had a nice tan. Well, what she could see of it in any event. “I understand if you’re too scared to try.”
“I’m not scared . . .”
“If you say so.”
She rolled her eyes and pushed past him to close the heavy doors. “You’re a bully,” she told him.
Doing It Over (A Most Likely to Novel Book 1) Page 8