Rebel in a Small Town

by Kristina Knight

“Does everyone know?” she asked, and her chest seemed to tighten. Which was silly. He was the father of her child, and people were going to find out. There was little either of them could do about that.

  “I haven’t heard any gossip, if that’s what you mean. But I’m not really on any of the phone trees in town.”

  “We, ah, aren’t really telling people. Not until we get it all figured out between the two of us, I mean.”

  “Sure. The last thing you want to do in Slippery Rock is tell anyone part of any story. Before you know it, the story will be finished and will end in the one way you definitely don’t want it to end.” Savannah stood. “I have an appointment with my mom and a jam recipe. See you around?”

  Mara nodded. “We should have lunch sometime while I’m still here.”

  “I’ll call you.”

  She walked away, leaving Mara alone on the bench across the street from the market. She watched the men working. James never looked in her direction, which she supposed was a good thing. It meant he was over whatever had been between them. He was over it; she’d already walked away from it. The sooner she got those facts through to her hormones, the better. And yet she remained on the bench, just watching.

  Mara clasped her hands in her lap. Crossed and uncrossed her legs. He was completely oblivious to her. It wasn’t fair.

  It was also hotter than Hades out here. She left the bench and crossed the street to Bud’s, where she ordered a large soda. At the end of the sandwich counter sat a huge cooler filled with fish bait, and Mara shivered. Why Bud made his sandwiches so close to fish bait remained a mystery to her. A gross mystery.

  Bud, his steel-gray hair in a familiar buzz cut, gave her the drink but didn’t stay to chat. He was distracted with a few fishermen at the other end of the counter, which was just as well. Mara didn’t feel much like small talk. Back in her SUV, she hit the button to close the moonroof, then rolled up the window, filling the hot car with cool air-conditioning.

  She drove out of the downtown area, past Mallard’s, and turned onto the highway that would lead her to the orchard. She’d come here to rebuild her relationship with her family, not with James. She wanted to help him build a relationship with Zeke, but that didn’t need to have anything to do with her.

  Slippery Rock was the home she wanted to love but had never quite been able to. The place where she’d taught herself code and spent much of her time with her head buried in a book. The place where she’d learned that practically nothing would cover words painted in John Deere green on a town water tower, and that the best friend she would ever have would be the one person she had treated absolutely worst.

  What she felt when he was around was simply residual attraction. She would get over it.

  She had to.

  * * *

  “YOU KNOW, IT doesn’t take two adults and a toddler to run this stand. Not on a ninety-eight-degree afternoon.” Amanda scraped her hair toward the top of her head, then twisted it into a bun. She held it there for a long minute, and Mara realized she must not have an elastic with her. She pulled one from Zeke’s bag and handed it to her. “Thanks,” Amanda grumbled. She secured the bun and crossed her arms over her chest.

  “You’re welcome. And you aren’t an adult.”

  “Yes, I am. I’m—”

  “Seventeen,” Mara said. She gathered her hair in her hand and flapped it, hoping the slight motion would cool her neck. It didn’t work.

  “I’m going to graduate high school by Christmas. That makes me an adult.”

  “No, that makes you a seventeen-year-old almost high school graduate. When you hit eighteen, we’ll talk about you being an adult.”

  Amanda grumbled something Mara couldn’t understand. The sniping, which had been going on since she’d returned to the orchard just after one o’clock, had to stop. If she was going to start a good relationship with her sister—and Mara truly wanted this—she had to be the adult.

  Zeke rolled his ball across the plywood floor of the stand. It bumped against Mara’s foot, and she rolled it back to him. Zeke seemed as thrilled as Amanda to be cooped up in the little stand. All of two cars had passed in the hour they’d been here, and neither had slowed.

  Mara stood. “Come on,” she said, motioning Amanda to join her. What her sister needed—what they both needed—was a little free time. They couldn’t get reacquainted if they were both so miserable they couldn’t have a decent conversation.

  “What now? Are we going to flag people down as they drive past?” Amanda asked, but she followed Mara outside.

  “What people? You’re right. Everyone is inside in the air-conditioning. Grab that side,” she said, pointing to the other side of the stand. When the stand was open, the plywood that covered the counter area was held up with a pulley system. It offered a bit more shade without blocking the breeze. When there was a breeze. Today the air was still. Amanda released the pulley from her side and Mara released hers, closing the covering.

  “What are you doing?” Amanda asked. “We’re supposed to be here until five. It’s barely two.”

  “We’re playing hooky.”

  Zeke had made his way to the open side door, and Mara held her hand out to him. Zeke put his hand in hers.

  “Grab the diaper bag, would you?” Mara called over her shoulder as she locked Zeke in the car seat Collin had installed in one of the orchard’s utility vehicles. Amanda got into the vehicle while Mara locked the side door of the stand and hung the Closed sign on the front.

  “Collin isn’t going to like this.”

  “What’s he going to do, fire us?”

  “We don’t even get paid.”

  “See what I mean? He can’t fire us if he doesn’t pay us.” Although Mara was one hundred percent certain that Collin would disagree with that statement. She would have to do some fancy explaining when he found out they’d ditched their post.

  “I don’t think Collin’s going to see it that way. He likes to tell me idle hands are the devil’s playthings.” Amanda rolled her eyes. “As if any of us ever had idle hands around here.”

  Mara put the vehicle in gear and started down the lane, but instead of driving past the house, she turned onto a narrow path that would lead to the lake. Just in case Collin was paying attention, she’d keep them out of his direct sight.

  “That was one of Granddad’s favorite sayings. He used it on us—well, on me—a lot.”

  “I remember. Kind of. I was little when you lived here before.” Amanda sighed. “Did he tell that to you as often as Collin uses it on me?”

  “I’m not sure. About how many times have you heard it in, say, the past month?”

  “At least fifteen.”

  “I’d say that’s about how often Granddad would say it to me.” Amanda heaved another sigh that seemed to come up all the way from her feet. Mara patted Amanda’s arm sympathetically. “You don’t like the comparison?”

  “I just don’t think it’s fair, is all. I’m practically on track to be Mother Theresa next to the things you did.”

  “The things I did?” She knew her childhood crimes—she couldn’t get away from them, not even as an adult. Still, it would be nice to know exactly how she measured up where her sister was concerned.

  “You wrote on water towers, messed up computer systems.”

  “You gave pointers to kids planning to tamper with the Memorial Day fireworks display. Pointers that wound up starting a fire.”

  “Because they didn’t properly follow my directions. You and the guys all brought dogs to school on the same day.”

  “You yarn-bombed an old man’s yard after the tornado. And have been painting the sidewalks downtown.”

  “I was only trying to hide those ugly weeds. And the yarn disintegrated with the first rainstorm.” Amanda shot her gaze toward Mara. “How do you kno
w all this?”

  “Who else would paint antilittering slogans on sidewalks and storm drains?” She paused. “Also, Collin was worried about you. He told me when I called after the tornado.”

  “Oh.” The thought of Collin worrying about her rather than just being annoyed with her seemed to stop Amanda for a moment. “Well, I worry about the environment. People should be more careful with their trash. Those drains empty out into the lake. It’s...it’s...unsanitary. And I used water-soluble and environmentally safe paint, so the next good storm will wash away the paintings.” Amanda folded her arms across her chest. “They say you destroyed a whole fleet of buses—”

  “Technically only two, the third bus’s tires didn’t completely deflate,” Mara clarified. She didn’t bother to tell Amanda the bus thing wasn’t her fault. It wouldn’t matter, and the whole truth could be bad for James.

  “You ran away rather than face up to what you did. You don’t care about anyone in this family. You’re a liar.”

  Mara winced. “Ouch.”

  “You didn’t even come home for Granddad’s funeral.”

  She’d been seven months pregnant when Granddad died. Seven months pregnant and in a remote area of Alaska. She hadn’t gotten Collin’s phone calls or emails until the day of the funeral, and the pain of not being there for her family was still strong.

  “No, I didn’t. I’ve been an awful person. To you and to Gran and to Collin. I’ve been especially horrible to James. None of you deserved any of the things I did or didn’t do because I was always gone.” She turned off the dirt track through the plum orchard and onto the gravel road leading to the lake. “I’m here now to fix the things I did wrong.”

  “Until you leave again.”

  “I have a job, Mand—”

  “Don’t call me that. Only my family calls me that.”

  Mara winced again. “Double ouch.” The terrain changed, and she navigated from the gravel road down to the swimming area they’d used as kids. “I want things to be different. I want things to be better, and I’m here to try to make them better. I’m not your mother. I’m not an aunt or even a trusted family friend. I’m the sister who ran away, who left you behind, and I’m sorry.”

  She parked the utility vehicle under a huge oak, set the emergency brake and unbuckled her seat belt.

  “Do you think we could maybe start from there?” she asked.

  Amanda stared straight ahead for so long that Mara turned away. She released Zeke’s safety harness and began to slather sunscreen over his exposed face, arms and legs. She put a floppy hat over his head, and the little boy kicked his legs in protest. He hated the floppy hat, but the sun was so brutal today that it was necessary. Mara grabbed a toddler-size life jacket from the bin in the cargo area and slid it over his torso. Then she rubbed sunscreen on her own face and arms.

  Amanda finally left the front seat. She held out a hand for sunscreen, and Mara dropped a dollop into her palm.

  “You’re going to get bored here and leave again,” Amanda said, the words flat.

  Mara capped the sunscreen and handed the bottle to her sister. “Kiddo, boredom had nothing to do with me leaving ten years ago, and so far life in Slippery Rock is promising to be anything but boring moving forward.”

  Boredom had never been the problem. Mara wanted to see things, to have experiences that she couldn’t have in Slippery Rock. There was very little call for a computer programmer in a town of fewer than ten thousand people. And with her reputation, the school wouldn’t have hired her as a janitor, much less as a computer tech for the district. Mara liked the black-and-white framework of the programming world, and she liked that even with those very strict rules, things still went buggy from time to time. Figuring out the bugs was like going on a little adventure right in her desk chair.

  “Did you even miss us?” Amanda asked.

  “All the time, kiddo. All the time.” Mara let Zeke down from his seat, and he walked toward the crisp blue water. Mara followed, and Amanda fell into step beside her. “I missed taking you for mani-pedis when you turned sixteen. I missed the craziness of Collin teaching you to drive—I’m assuming that was as awful as it was when he tried to teach me.”

  “He acted as if I was going to drive straight into the lake when we were still in the driveway.”

  “Sounds about right.” Mara put her arm around Amanda’s shoulders, and for the first time, her sister didn’t flinch away from the contact. That had to be progress, Mara thought. “I missed you starting high school, but I won’t miss your graduation. I’d do a lot of things differently if I could do it all over.”

  She would start by not disappearing soon after graduation, even if she’d disappeared for the right reasons. James made one mistake that night; one mistake shouldn’t derail his entire life. She had hoped that letting people assume she deflated the tires would somehow atone for the other things she’d done. Instead, running away made it easier to keep running, the way she’d run from her feelings for James in Nashville.

  “Will you miss us when you leave again?”

  Mara sat on the warm sand and dipped her toes into the cool water. Zeke picked up little stones and threw them into the lake, laughing as he splashed at the edge. Amanda sat beside her, stretching her legs farther out into the water.

  Would she miss Slippery Rock when she left again? So very much, and she had been back in town for only a handful of days. She couldn’t imagine her life, or Zeke’s, without Gran in the kitchen or Amanda sulking in the living room or Collin wandering around with that stupid I’m-in-love expression on his face. Mara had four more weeks here, at least. How much harder would it be to leave then?

  And then there was James. James, whom she’d fallen in love with somewhere between Jefferson City five years ago and Nashville two years ago. James, whose face she saw in her son’s every day. James, who was serious about everything in his life, but who had never been serious about her. She could fall for him again, and he could fall for their son, but would he ever feel about her the way she felt about him? And did she want him to?

  He had a bright future. Sheriff of Wall County. There had to be a thousand small-town women swooning over him, a thousand women who would want to stay at home and have kids and enter their baked goods in the county fair competitions.

  She had a set future as a traveling computer programmer and security expert. Never in the same city for more than a few months. She didn’t bake. She didn’t want to be a stay-at-home mom, despite loving every minute she was able to spend with Zeke. There were ways to make a home base work, despite her traveling schedule, but not in Slippery Rock.

  She had a reputation as a troublemaker.

  He had a job and responsibility to arrest troublemakers.

  It didn’t matter how she’d felt about him before; it didn’t even matter that she still had those feelings for him. Mara Tyler was not the right kind of woman for James Calhoun, despite the fact that she’d had his baby. There was nothing she could do about that.

  Well, there was one thing. She could keep her love for him to herself. Because if James knew she was in love with him, he would do the responsible thing. He would try to marry the mother of his child, because that’s what responsible people who had children did. They got married or stayed married for the sake of the children. Mara couldn’t think of anything worse than loving James and being married to him when the child they shared was his only reason for being in the relationship.

  She stared into the distance, at the sunlight glittering across the lake like a million diamonds. There was no way she could stay, no matter how badly she would like to, not when every touch from James made her insides do that flip-floppy thing.

  “I’m going to miss everyone,” she said after a long time. She bumped her shoulder against her sister’s. “More than any of you can know.”

  CHAPTE
R ELEVEN

  ADMIT IT, CALHOUN. You want her.

  The problem isn’t that I want her. It’s that I shouldn’t want her.

  And now he was arguing with himself. Great.

  This situation was so beyond messed up, he couldn’t find the right words to describe it. She’d walked out on him two years ago. She’d marched right back in a week ago with a baby, and he couldn’t be mad at her. He should have been furious. He should contact one of his father’s judge friends and swear out a warrant for kidnapping or parental interference or something. Instead, he’d kissed her. Kissed her and thought about her and gotten all tied up in knots because of her.

  James tossed a dart at the board on the wall, missing by at least five inches to the right. He’d been throwing for crap all evening, and it had nothing to do with the beer on the table behind him and everything to do with the woman no longer in his life. Except she was in his life. With his child. She just wasn’t in his life in the way he’d once secretly hoped she would be. The way he shouldn’t want her to be now, and yet he kept catching glimpses of what life could be with Mara fully in it. With Zeke. There would be more family dinners. There would be more kissing and touching. They’d always been good at the kissing and the touching parts of their relationship.

  He tossed another dart at the board, but it fell to the floor a few inches shy of the wall.

  God, how big an idiot did he have to be where Mara Tyler was concerned?

  At least he was throwing darts alone on this Monday night rather than with Collin and Levi; he needed to shore himself up for their regular Wednesday game because the two of them would never let up if they knew how much of his brain power was consumed with Mara. And if Adam joined in now that he was home from the hospital...

  Buck up, Calhoun, and stop obsessing about a woman who has never felt about you the way you feel about her.

  “Get ya another, honey?” Juanita asked as she passed by.

  “Just an ice water and the bill, thanks.” He crossed to the wall, pulled his darts out of the board and picked up the last one off the floor before setting them into their holders to the side of the target.