by Brent, Cora
We gasped together in the aftermath and I carefully rolled off so I wouldn’t crush her.
“That was…” Her voice trailed off and her arm covered her face.
I propped myself up. “That was what?”
She uncovered her face and eyed me in the muted light shining in from the hallway. “I don’t have a word for that.”
“Just tell me the truth. That’s the best you ever had.”
She shoved me. “You’re conceited.”
“No.” I gathered her close. “I’m observant.” And because I hadn’t forgotten my commitment to make this a romantic occasion I kissed her with slow tenderness. “I don’t have a word for that either, sweetheart.”
“Ryan.” Her fingertips lightly brushed my face as her words came between kisses. “You never knew this but once upon a time you were everything I ever wanted.”
“Then stay here.” I took a break from kissing to lean on my elbows and stroke her temples with my thumbs. “Stay with me all night, Leah.”
She was happy to slip between my silky sheets and allow me to cover her with the thick comforter. We didn’t sleep, not right away. The hour wasn’t late enough. We enjoyed each other and the next time she rode me while we locked eyes the entire time. Then I tucked her into bed, switched on the television and told her to stay put and relax while I took a naked stroll to the kitchen to whip up a batch of crepes.
She clapped her hands when I returned with a full tray and I couldn’t recall the last time I’d felt as happy as I felt seeing her flush-faced and waiting for me in bed with a broad smile. We snacked on crepes, destroyed another bottle of wine and made love again before she began yawning.
When I finally switched the lights off so she could sleep the darkness taunted me.
How could I tell her?
I had to tell her.
Every hour I kept the sale of the Dirty Cactus a secret was the same as lying. It would have to be tomorrow. Tomorrow we’d be there at the bar alone. Tomorrow I’d have all my facts and figures and plans ready to show her.
This would work. We would work.
As for the reason I’d pursued her in the first place, I’d never been more ashamed of what my intentions had been. I’d been nursing a formidable grudge over a situation that was far from black and white. The more time I spent with Leah the less I was convinced she’d ever been capable of such treachery. And I shuddered to think what Luanne might have done to her to get her to talk in the first place. Considering Luanne’s penchant for cruelty I should never have taken a single word at face value.
Leah sighed in her sleep beside me. I curled my arms around her body as my chest squeezed in a new way that happened only when I was with Leah. I didn’t know what to call it. But I was starting to believe she didn’t belong anywhere else but in my arms.
Just like I was starting to believe this just might be how our heartbreaking, sometimes bitter and always complicated story was supposed to end.
With me and her.
Chapter Twenty
Leah
Happiness was intoxicating.
That’s what I kept thinking during my shower the morning after a staggeringly incredible night with Ryan. I’d left for home only because I didn’t want to scumbag it up any longer in yesterday’s clothes. Plus I needed a long shower coupled with some alone time to process how my mind had been completely blown by Ryan’s romantic side.
After a pancake breakfast he asked if he could come down to the bar later before it opened. I thought his request seemed nervous, which was adorable. Of course he could. I couldn’t get enough of him. I texted Cadence to call me on her lunch hour and I was already rehearsing all the finer points I needed to share with her.
I toweled off and decided to wear a blue sundress that was really better suited to spring and summer but paired with a black cardigan it would be all right. I was getting used to styling my short hair and even worked a little magic with the curling iron to duplicate the look Truly had given me. I took so long primping that I missed a few calls on my phone, which had been left on my bed.
I thought it was odd that Tristan called three times, then left me a voicemail telling me to call him back when I had a chance. Then again, Cadence’s birthday was coming up soon. Perhaps her boyfriend wanted some input on how to surprise her.
He answered immediately when I called him. “Leah. You okay? Where are you at?”
“Uh, I’m fine. I’m home. Why, what’s up?”
Tristan blew out a deep breath. “I took Pike out to breakfast this morning. You know how the guy kind of wanders around in a confused fog most of the time?”
“No, Tristan, that totally escaped my notice.”
“Hold on, I’m going somewhere with this. Every once in a while Pike has sort of a moment of enlightenment, when some memory he’d lost emerges out of nowhere.”
Tristan paused, waiting for me to react.
“I see,” I said although I wasn’t sure I did see. Then a strange feeling crept over me as I remembered a six year old conversation.
“They believe he confessed to someone.”
“To who?”
“To me.”
“Goddammit, Leah.”
I breathed, preparing for what Tristan would inevitably tell me.
“What kind of memory did Pike recover?”
Tristan took a long time about answering. When he did speak the words came slowly.
“Pike said someone ought to warn you. He said Jedson knows.”
I frowned. “Warn me about what?”
Tristan sighed once more. The fact that he was hesitating was alarming in itself because normally Tristan Mulligan had no problem whatsoever spitting out whatever was on his mind.
“This part doesn’t make sense,” Tristan said. “But Pike kept insisting it was true.”
“What’s true?”
“Pike says Ryan Jedson knows what you did. And he hates you for it.”
Tristan thought that made no sense.
Oh, but it might make sense.
It might make a terrible misunderstood kind of sense.
Tristan tried to protest when I cut him off and said I needed to go. I ended the call anyway and told him I’d catch up with him later.
A coldness bloomed within, somewhere deep and untouchable, and began to spread. I pulled my sweater closed across my chest as if that would help.
What exactly was it that Ryan thought I did?
Steven Pike had sworn he wouldn’t tell Ryan out of fear of what Ryan would do to me. Yet that whole whirlwind of an exchange had taken place when I was still reeling from the turn of events and I didn’t even get a chance to properly explain to Pike that no, I wasn’t the one who’d set things in motion. I wasn’t the one who’d gone to the police.
That left an important question about Ryan Jedson.
If he assumed the worst and hated me like Pike said then why would he have sought me out?
He wouldn’t have.
He would have cursed me and turned his back.
I’d been guilty of failing to level with Ryan about why the police looked at him when they were searching for Harry Beckett’s murderer. Maybe if I’d told him it would have made no difference at this point.
But if he’d known all along…
I turned on my heel and ran out of the room. My father wasn’t in the kitchen or the living room or his bedroom. I found him sitting in a gnarled old wicker chair on the back patio, his tablet propped up on the table that had once been part of an expensive picnic set while he stared in rapt attention at one of his stupid shows.
“Dad.” It was a whisper. I cleared my throat to strengthen my voice. “Dad, I need to talk to you.”
He looked up. Then he pressed a button on the tablet and sighed. “I figured you would.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. I tried to tell you about the sale. Just couldn’t find the words.”
Sale?
My blood stopped moving through my veins. “Find
them now please.”
He exhaled a few more times and shifted his feet around until I was tempted to grab him by the collar and make him choke the words out.
“I sold the Dirty Cactus, Leah.”
I shook my head. “You did not.”
“I did. I got an offer and it seemed like a good idea so I signed.”
He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. Without telling me?
“Wait, so yesterday morning when you started to say you were thinking of selling you were lying because you had actually already decided.”
He released a deep breath, this confession relieving him of a burden. “Yeah, I’d already decided. In fact I already signed. The deal is done.”
“And why in the fuck didn’t you just tell me that?”
He flinched at the anger in my voice. Then he decided to sulk. “I don’t need to ask your permission to sell my bar.”
He’d sold the Dirty Cactus. I’d stopped the course of my entire life to come home and take care of that bar for him and he’d sold it right out from underneath me without so much as a courtesy warning. Now he had the nerve to be irritated that I was questioning him.
I wasn’t about to let him off the hook. I’d been letting him off the hook for far too long.
“Let me explain something to you, Daddy. I have no life because I’ve been so busy managing your bar. And now you say you’ve sold it on a whim without even discussing it with me and you don’t believe I have a right to be upset?”
A flash of guilt rolled across his face and then disappeared. “I thought this would be the right thing. I can give you some money. You can go back to school. You don’t have to stay here in Emblem.”
“What about the people who work for us? What happens to them?”
He blinked a few times. The fate of the bar’s employees had not occurred to him.
“Are the new owners even planning to keep the bar running? Or are they going to demolish it and build something else?”
Eddie was thinking. These were obviously not questions he had asked. He’d just signed his name.
“And what do you mean that I don’t have to stay in Emblem now? It’s true that suddenly I don’t have a job anymore so there’s that to deal with. But am I supposed to leave you here alone, hiding in this Luanne shrine of a house?”
That angered him. “Watch your mouth, Leah. As for me being alone in the house, that’s nothing for you to worry about because Nancy’s moving in next week. I’ll have a lot of money from the sale of the bar. We’re going to get a summer place. We’ll live there half the year. Nancy has always wanted a house in Lake Tahoe.”
“Nancy?” I struggled to keep up.
He nodded.
“Mrs. Albertson, the kindhearted old neighbor who has been acting as your nurse?”
He nodded again.
My voice was rising. “So let me get this straight. You have sold the bar and you are buying a vacation home in Lake Tahoe with Nancy Albertson?”
The sensory overload was too much to cope with. So many new developments to process today. The guy I was falling for apparently despised me. My father had sold the Dirty Cactus. And now he was going to shack up in Lake Tahoe with sixty-year-old Nancy Albertson.
“And now you can go and return to school,” he announced again as if he should be praised for successfully solving a big problem, the problem of how to shove Leah out the door and shake himself free of an annoying daughter.
“Dad.” I swallowed. The act hurt. “I don’t really want to return to school. I’ve told you that.”
“Huh.” He frowned. “Well, maybe you can get another job.”
I bit the inside of my mouth in a bid to squash my tears. “Who is the buyer?” I asked. “Who bought the bar?”
I could hardly believe the Dirty Cactus was gone. What did it say about me that losing a run down bar stung as much as if I’d lost my best friend?
“Ryan Jedson,” he said.
“What about him?”
“Ryan Jedson bought it.”
I thought I’d heard him wrong. “Ryan Jedson bought the Dirty Cactus?”
“Yes.”
“What are you talking about? When in the hell did that happen?”
Eddie had the grace to appear vaguely uncomfortable now. “He stopped by last week.”
My heart pounded and I struggled to keep my voice even. “He stopped by and offered to buy the bar just like that?”
Then he forgot to mention a word of it despite all the time we’ve been spending together.
But what if he had a reason? What if he had a plan?
“Pike says Ryan Jedson knows what you did. And he hates you for it.”
My father was ready to explain. “He brought the paperwork with him. I asked Donald Brass, my estate attorney, to look it over and Don said everything looked good. The notary watched me sign and the money will be wired directly to my account today.”
This was wrong, wrong, everything about it so very wrong. I was feeling suffocated by all the layers of deceit. I had to set Ryan’s participation aside for a second and focus on my father. Weeks ago I’d mentioned Ryan’s return to Emblem and Eddie had simply shrugged. Six years earlier, after I’d returned from a forced vacation to an Idaho farm to visit distant relatives, I’d been ordered by Queen Luanne to never mention the name Ryan Jedson in her house again. Ryan was long gone and to my shock, Celeste was no longer living in the trailer. And nobody would tell me a thing. Once I’d cornered my father in his office at the bar and demanded answers but he only looked frightened, muttering some nonsense about how Ryan Jedson was a danger to us all. Then he gave me five dollars and told me to go buy a soda from the Emblem Mart before warning that I shouldn’t come down to the bar anymore because there were dangerous men lurking around.
I challenged my father with the severest of looks. “You sold the Dirty Cactus, the bar you love more than you love your children, to a man you assumed for a long time was a murderer.”
Eddie looked away. “He’s a lot of things. He’s not a murderer.”
“I always knew that. Luanne always knew that. When did you know that, Dad?”
A breeze rolled through the yard, stirring up small clouds of dust. Eddie continued to observe the ground, keeping his thoughts locked inside. Let him try. I was finished guarding the doors of the castle. The knock of the truth was deafening. It needed to come out.
“She threatened me, you know,” I said. “She made me tell her every word Ryan had said to me and then she twisted it around and used it against him. Do you know why, Dad?”
“Stop it, Leah.” The vague, befuddled expression he’d worn so often since Luanne’s death had vanished. “She was trying to protect you.”
“She was not! She was trying to get revenge. Because he pushed her away. Because he didn’t want her the way she wanted him.”
My father winced. If my own heart hadn’t been in the process of being ravaged I would have cared. But now I couldn’t make myself feel much pity for the man who’d failed me so many times.
“He needed to be out of our lives,” he whined. “So that we could remain a family. That’s why she told him.”
“Told who, Ryan? What did she tell him?”
I’d known Luanne tipped off the police with her bullshit story. She’d promised she would. But when Luanne gave me permission to return to Emblem I secretly went down to the station. I had a conversation with Mike Englewood, the detective assigned to Harry Beckett’s murder. Englewood’s cool blue eyes watched me stammer and falter while I tried to say that any claims my mother had made regarding Ryan Jedson were untrue. Englewood was unimpressed. He said there was evidence and the entire matter was not up to me. Then he circled around his desk with the ease of a natural hunter and backed me into a wall. He enjoyed my fear when he exhaled cigar breath in my face with a warning that if I ever said another word contradicting my mother he’d find a way to send me to juvenile detention. ‘And skinny, weak little girls like you, Leah, they don’t tend to come
back from there in one piece.’ I’d pushed my way free while he laughed. I sprinted out the door, understanding that Luanne had acquired an important ally. She’d worked overtime to make sure Ryan’s name was mud.
But there was something else that had never occurred to me. I’d never wondered if maybe before he skipped town Ryan had first confronted her himself.
“Daddy.” I used an old term of endearment, hoping to jar him enough to tell the truth. “Did you hear Mom say something to Ryan?”
“Ryan Jedson knows what you did.”
Pieces of a terrible puzzle clicked together in a horrifying way.
“I need to know. Did Mom tell Ryan Jedson that I’m the one who said he’d killed Harry Beckett, that I planned to tell the police that?”
He was breathing hard. “It doesn’t matter now.”
“It matters to me.”
Eddie’s eyes met mine and were full of defiance. “She gave him that impression, yes.”
“And he hates you for it.”
I inhaled sharply. My mind was in such turmoil I was completely unprepared for Eddie’s sudden outcry.
“We wanted to make sure he never touched you again, Leah!”
“What the hell are you talking about? Ryan wouldn’t have touched me. I was fifteen. I had a silly crush on him. It was not reciprocated.”
He acted like I hadn’t spoken. “We were very concerned. Both of us. Very concerned about what he’d do.”
“You were concerned? About me? Maybe you should have been more concerned back when your wife was preying on your teenage neighbor.”
He stood up and slapped me. My father had never hit me or, to my knowledge, anyone else. The blow was not hard. I hardly felt the sting but my hand covered my cheek and a tear squeezed out of my eye.
Eddie’s face was red. He sat down again and folded his hands in front of him, staring down at them as if he couldn’t believe one of them had behaved so badly.
“I didn’t mean that,” he whispered. “I apologize.”
I wanted to run in circles while shrieking at the top of my lungs but I needed to straighten something out first. “Did Mom accuse Ryan of… doing something to me?”