by Meg Muldoon
I was going to be sick. I was going to lose it. I was going to—
“I didn’t mean for you to find out this way,” he said, squeezing my hand. “I really, really didn’t, Loretta. And it kills me that this is how it’s happened.”
It killed him?!
I swallowed hard as my hands inadvertently gripped the wool blanket and squeezed.
“She wasn’t just a girl with a broke-down car, was she?” I said, my voice trembling.
He closed his eyes and lowered his head.
“No, she wasn’t.”
“Fletcher, how could y—”
“Hear me out first, Loretta.”
“No,” I said, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. “No I’m not gonna hear you out.”
“But you don’t underst—”
“I can’t do this right now,” I said, grabbing my throbbing temples. “You have to leave. Right now. I can’t hear this.”
“Loretta, it’s not what it see—”
“Get out, Fletcher,” I said. “Please, just get out.”
I couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t do anything but sit there and hold my aching head.
I thought my heart was gonna collapse in my chest.
Fletcher was quiet. I sensed he wanted to say more, but he kept from doing it.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” I whispered.
“You have to understand, I didn’t ask for any of this. I just wanted to protect you. You think I wanted her here, showing up at your house the way she did?”
Every word just made the hurt worse.
I stood up, feeling light-headed and wobbly. But I pushed past it. I ripped down a pair of jeans and a t-shirt from my closet, slamming the bathroom door behind me.
“Loretta?” he said through the closed door. “I didn’t cheat on you. I love you, Loretta. I’d never do anything to hurt you. You have to know that by now.”
I scoffed, shaking my head as I pulled on my clothes. I threw my hair up into a high pony tail and quickly dabbed some make-up on.
Then I opened the door.
I stood face to face with him. So close so that I could see the amber flecks in his stormy blue eyes.
“And I suppose that was just your long-lost sister who showed up on my porch last night,” I said, venom dripping from each word.
He stared down at me, a pained expression on his face.
“No,” he said.
“Then who is she?” I said, stepping closer to him. “Tell me now.”
He rubbed the back of his neck and had trouble meeting my eyes.
He took in a deep breath.
Then he looked at me.
There was fear in his eyes.
My heart hung on every word.
“She’s a girl from my past,” he said.
He let out a ragged breath.
“She’s the girl from my past.”
I pressed a hand up to my gaping mouth.
My heart crumbled like a stale cookie.
Chapter 44
I sat on the hood of my car in the cold winter sun, watching the treacherous waters of The Crooked River sluggishly break past the sections of frozen water, and continue their journey far away from here.
I wished I was like that river. That I could just meander down the road. That I could just pick up and leave and not give a moment’s thought as to where I’d been or where I was going.
I wished that I wasn’t here on the bank, helplessly watching it roll by instead.
But at least I wasn’t alone at the moment.
Dwight was playing from the speakers, Hank lay beside me. And I had a flask of Jack to keep me warm.
It’d been a while since I’d been here, at my thinking spot. Once upon a time, I’d come here on a regular basis, drowning my sorrows and letting the pretty landscape take away some of the pain in my heart. The pain over Jacob leaving me.
But I wasn’t out here on Jacob’s account today.
I buried my hands in my pockets, leaned my head back, and looked up at the icy winter sky above me.
I couldn’t believe Fletcher had done this to me.
I couldn’t believe he’d let this woman back into his life.
This woman, who had nearly killed him and everything he was. This woman who had ripped his heart out and fed it to the wolves. This woman who had taken away his one real love in the world – music.
This woman was here, in Broken Hearts Junction.
And Fletcher wasn’t doing a thing about it.
He said he hadn’t cheated on me with her. And I might have believed him. But just her being here and him not telling me right away was enough of a betrayal to me to constitute cheating in one form or another.
I was sure there was a story to go along with her showing up in Broken Hearts Junction. But I hadn’t had the stability to stomach it when he’d attempted to explain.
All I wanted was to get the hell away from him and out into the fresh, clean air of the high desert.
I shook my head, feeling my hands ball up into fists at my sides, responding to the angry thoughts swirling around in my head.
I could have killed that woman for the things she’d done to him.
I let out a deep breath and threw back another taste of whiskey. It burned slow and steady as it traveled down my throat.
Back when Fletcher lived in Tennessee, he’d fallen for this girl at one of his concerts. And he’d fallen for her hard. One of those loves that combusts and destroys everything in its path.
As his current girlfriend, that fact alone was enough to make me dislike her.
But there was much, much more to hate Christina for.
Because she didn’t really love him. She’d only been with him to make her boyfriend jealous. Her boyfriend, who was a drug dealer and an all-around good-for-nothing type that, if, given the choice, you’d never want to cross.
The boyfriend found out what Christina was doing behind his back, and he had some guys bust Fletcher up real bad for being with her. They broke his nose, shattered his hand, and nearly killed him.
All because of this stupid, selfish, heartless woman.
Fletcher had only started being able to play guitar again recently. And for someone who had been as incredibly talented and skillful with the guitar as Fletcher Hart, that had been no small thing to lose.
That had been no small thing at all.
She’d taken his livelihood from him.
I was suddenly possessed by the urge to throw something.
If I’d known that was her, if I’d known it had been that black hole-hearted woman last night on my doorstep, I would have probably—
“I don’t mean to intrude, Loretta, but you look like you could use a friend.”
Hank lifted his head lazily, and started barking in the direction that the voice had come from, up toward the hill where a mostly-forgotten hiking trail wound.
I turned around, surprised by what I saw.
Pastor Cash Phillips stood there, decked out in full-on snow gear, goggles, ski poles, and snowshoes.
He slowly descended the hill, sucking in wind like he’d just run a 6-minute mile.
I screwed the top back on the flask, and jammed it into my pocket. I was sure he’d already seen it, but I did it anyway. Something about drinking in front of a man who had known me as a church-going youth felt wrong to me. Despite the fact that I’d seen him knock back his share of booze at Beth Lynn’s wedding reception at The Cupid the other night.
He came up to me, his face redder than a cherry tomato. He lifted up his goggles. The pastor looked as though he’d just gone for a swim, the sweat was so profuse.
“I’ve been trying to get in better shape,” he said, patting his rotund gut. “New Year’s resolution. After 35 years of making and breaking them, I think this one’s finally gonna stick.”
He smiled. I smiled back.
“Beautiful day to be outside, isn’t it?” he said, looking past me out at the river, sparkling in the sun.
“It sure is,” I said, making sure I enunciated each word perfectly, so as to not give him reason to think I was out here doing just what I was out here doing: drinking.
“A little cold though, I’d think, just to be sitting on a car.”
“Well, fresh air never hurt anybody,” I said. “‘Sides, the sun’s out. What more could you ask for in the dead of February?”
He nodded, leaning forward on his ski poles.
His chest had stopped heaving as he’d finally caught his breath.
“Listen, Loretta. I know you stopped attending church services long ago. I’m sure you have your reasons for that. But as long as I’ve run into you, I want you to know my door is always open should you ever need to talk about something. I don’t hold it against you that you no longer worship.”
I nodded slowly.
My relationship with religion had gone a little sour since I’d started getting my matchmaking visions. People in service started looking at me funny when, as a girl, I told Mindy Callahan that she wasn’t supposed to be with the man who’d she’d been married to for the past four years. I flat out told her, in that kind of childhood, no-inhibitions kind of way, that her real soulmate was a man named Arthur who didn’t even attend church and who worked down at the local grocery store.
As you can imagine, none of that went over very well with the congregation. Despite the fact that Mindy did indeed end up divorcing her husband for Arthur several years later. But by then, I’d already stopped attending church, despite my mother’s protests.
I just felt as though given my abilities, there wasn’t any room for me there.
But I never held that against the pastor. He’d been nothing but nice to me over the years.
“Well, that’s kind of you,” I said, smiling. “I appreciate the offer. I really do.”
“I’m sorry about what happened to that fellow at The Cupid the other night,” he said. “That’s a terrible thing. But perhaps it will be a means for him to reassess his life and follow God’s path.”
“Maybe,” I said, letting my skepticism show a little too much in my tone.
“But that’s not really why you’re out here, dear, is it?” he said.
I sighed, scanning the face of the pudgy, middle-aged man.
When I was 9 years old, I used to have a small crush on Pastor Cash Phillips. He’d of course been better-looking back then. Thinner, with a beard and chiseled features. But what I always liked most about him was that he was a good listener. And rather than making you feel bad about the things you’d done, he had a way of making you feel like you had unlimited potential and that it was simply a matter of doing a little better.
I swallowed hard.
I didn’t like talking about my personal problems to relative strangers.
But then again, the pastor wasn’t exactly a stranger.
I took in a deep breath.
“I just found out something about someone that’s really upset me,” I said, the words coming out just above a whisper. “And… I feel betrayed. And hurt. And angry. And I feel alone.”
The pastor nodded, knowingly.
“I’m sorry for your pain, Loretta,” he said in that kind, pleasant way.
I nodded, looking down.
“Have you really spoken to him, though? Have you tried to understand where he’s coming from?”
I half-smiled.
Pastor Phillips had listened to enough stories in his time to know that I wasn’t talking about just a friend.
“No,” I said, sighing. “I haven’t really heard his side of the story. But I’m not sure if I want to. I’m afraid of getting hurt more.”
“You know, before the cancer took her, you know what my wife said to me?”
Pastor Phillips’ wife had died at a young age from breast cancer, not too long after the couple arrived in Broken Hearts Junction. He had remarried a decade later, but he often talked about the pain of losing his first wife in his sermons.
“She said to me, ‘Honey, forgiveness is all there is in this world. That’s the will of God. Doesn’t matter what you’ve done. It’s through forgiveness that we’ll all be saved. Forgiveness, and love.”
He inhaled, wiping his nose against the back of his track suit sleeve.
“Those words have stuck with me all these years, Loretta. And the longer I live, the more I see that there ain’t nothing in this world that can’t be solved through a little love and forgiveness. There ain’t no hurt so deep. No pain so encompassing. No hole so big that can’t be filled with some compassion of the spirit.”
I bit my lower lip.
I appreciated what the pastor was trying to do for me. I really did.
But the answer just felt too simplistic for me. Forgiveness was just a word. And here I was, dealing with hurt and betrayal and a man that I would throw myself into a volcano cinder for, but who had kept secrets and lied to me.
Forgiveness didn’t feel like anything more than a three-syllable word.
The pastor was only trying to help. But I had trouble buying into what he was saying.
He seemed to notice me wrestling with the idea.
“Just give it a thought, Loretta,” he said. “The way I hear it, that’s a nice fellow you’ve got. And I’m sure he’d be quite devastated to lose someone as special as you.”
I nodded and forced a half-smile.
“Thank you, pastor,” I said.
He shrugged.
“Well, I try to be helpful,” he said. “That is, when I’m not a snowshoeing Olympic gold medalist.”
I smiled.
“Loretta, I know you don’t feel like there’s room for you at the church anymore,” he said. “But just know, that if you ever change your mind, I’ll save you a seat on Sunday.”
Good ol’ Pastor Phillips.
“Well, that’s mighty nice of you,” I said. “But I’ve seen the church parking lot on Sunday. I don’t think you could save me a seat if you tried.”
He chuckled, then smiled back sadly.
He must have known that the chances of seeing me back at the Broken Hearts New Hope Chapel were almost nil. And like the good man that he was, he didn’t try to force the issue anymore.
“You take care, Loretta.”
“You too, Pastor.”
I watched as he slowly made his way back up the hill, each step sluggish as he huffed and puffed.
I turned my attention back toward the river again, reaching for the flask of whiskey in my jacket pocket.
But then I stopped myself.
I sighed.
Maybe I didn’t completely buy into the pastor’s preaching on forgiveness.
But he’d been right about one thing.
I hadn’t let Fletcher tell me his side of the story.
I hadn’t given him the chance to.
And after all we’d been through, after all I felt for him, after all the stock I’d put in our relationship and him being my one and only true love, I owed him the chance to defend himself.
Maybe I had every reason to sit here all afternoon and drink my pain away.
But maybe I didn’t have the right to.
Not yet anyway. Not until I knew the whole truth.
I bit my lip, and felt for my phone in the pocket of my jeans.
I had four new messages. All from Fletcher.
I didn’t know about forgiveness.
But giving him a chance to talk… that I could do.
Chapter 45
The Cupid smelled musty, the air hanging thick all around us like all the old bar’s ghosts had come back and reclaimed the vacant space.
The yellow tape was still up. Blood was still on the floor. And everything was just as it was the night Clay got shot.
I didn’t much like seeing it like this. The Cupid was a place that belonged to the living. It was a place that needed to be busy and crowded. A place that deserved to be filled with laughter and the sound of good country music. Not the haunted place it felt like now.
I went over to the stereo and put some Drive-by Truckers on low in the background, just so the place didn’t feel quite so empty.
I hoisted myself up on the far end of the pine bar, the part that wasn’t ensconced in yellow police tape. I eyed the whiskey bottles behind me, contemplating whether I should continue what I started earlier.
But then I thought better of it.
These kinds of talks were best to be had with a clear mind.
Fletcher took off his flannel coat, hanging it over one of the bar stools. He dug his hands into his pockets, and looked squarely at me with a kind of unwavering intensity that kind of took my breath away for a second.
Just like any couple, Fletcher and I had had our share of disagreements.
But nothing had ever been this severe. This drastic. This important.
He seemed to understand that too.
My heart beat hard, sensing just how fragile our relationship was right now. Feeling that any wrong word, any wrong move, any wrong step, could cause the ground to give way under our feet.
I didn’t doubt that Fletcher Hart was my soulmate.
But that didn’t mean he was perfect. And it didn’t mean that just because he was my soulmate, I was going to make the same mistake with him that I’d made with Jacob. Blindly forgiving someone because I thought we belonged together.
Forgiveness is all there is…
The words of the pastor’s passed-on wife echoed in my ears.
I did my best to hold onto that loving sentiment, even though forgiveness was the farthest thing from my mind right now.
“Loretta,” Fletcher said, taking in a deep breath. “I’d never do anything to hurt you. You’ve got to know that. I know what you must be thinking right now. The terrible thoughts you must be having after what happened last night. But you’ve got to understand…”
He paused, stepping closer to me.
“You’ve got to understand that you, Loretta, you… mean everything to me. Everything.”
I bit my lower lip.
“And she…” he cleared his throat. “Christina’s just…”
He shook his head.
“I would have been happy if I never saw her again so long as I lived,” he said. “And after what she did last night, I almost lost all control. When I saw her standing over you like that, I just about…”