by Melissa Tagg
Beckett had picked Seth’s restaurant for their first tutoring session in the hope that it’d make Webster comfortable. Well, and because he’d been home for more than three weeks and still hadn’t had a chance to stop by The Red Door.
Seth had just opened the restaurant last summer—renovated a historic bank building, basically gutting the inside to turn it into a diner that felt at once both laidback and trendy. From the amber lighting and exposed beams to the hardwood floors and a custom counter made from salvaged Main Avenue cobblestone, the place was a feat of architecture and craftsmanship.
Man, between Colton and Seth, he was surrounded by guys who’d turned dreams into realities. Intimidating and inspiring, all at once. What would it feel like to know you were living the life you were meant to? To have confidence in your purpose?
He’d have that once he was commissioned in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General Corps, right? When he was providing legal assistance to soldiers and advising commanders. When he wore the JAG insignia—a gold pen crossed above a gold sword over a laurel wreath. Life would feel different then, wouldn’t it? Significant. Important.
Finally, Webster plunked his palms to the tabletop. “So are we going to do this or what?”
Beckett lifted his brows. “You got somewhere else to be?”
The kid only shrugged.
“All right, what classes are you taking this semester? What’s the most challenging?”
“Algebra, Literature, and U.S. History.”
He stifled a groan at the first two. Thanks a lot, Colt. But history he could do. “Got a textbook?”
The next hour and a half passed in a series of starts and stops as he muddled his way through the informal tutoring session. He had no idea whether he was doing any good at all, but at least Webster had begun to lighten up.
They’d long since pushed their plates to the far edge of the table when a waiter stopped by to refill their drinks for a second time. Outside the lanky windows that fronted the restaurant, steady sheets of rain fell over the town center. Faint lamplight shone over the street and the green of the square even though the sun hadn’t yet set.
“So it’s just the beginning of World War I we still need to go over,” Beckett said as the waiter moved away. “But I think your ride’s going to be here soon.”
Webster glanced at his watch. “Yeah, probably.”
“You should totally do the music thing I was telling you about. Pick out eight or ten of your favorite songs and reread these chapters while you listen to them. Make yourself focus. And if it works for you like it did me, something will connect in your brain—like your creative and analytical side working together.”
Webster nodded.
“Same time next week?”
Another nod. A hesitant look toward Beckett. And then he shoved his textbook into his backpack.
“Webster?”
The teen slurped a final drink from his red glass.
“Is there anything besides school giving you trouble?” He didn’t know what made him ask the question. Just a feeling. But even if there was something else, wouldn’t Webster talk to Colton or his adoptive parents eons before someone he hardly knew? Beckett could barely pass for a tutor, let alone some kind of wise mentor.
Webster only shook his head, glanced toward headlights streaming past the window. “That’s my ride.” He slung his backpack over his shoulder. “Thanks for the help.”
He started to move away, track pants dragging on the floor, before pausing. “It’s a girl I used to know.”
Beckett set down his glass as Webster twisted around and returned to the table.
“We were with the same foster family together years ago. She was like a sister. She’s a couple years older than me. She used to sorta watch out for me, and when I got a little older I started watching out for her, too. But then she got placed somewhere else. I tried to keep in touch with her, but she stopped returning my texts, and then when I called my old social worker to ask, she acted like I was some creep and used all this legal jargon—”
Webster broke off as if suddenly deciding it was futile to bring up. But Beckett heard the rest of his unspoken words. “You’re a lawyer. Is there anything you can do?”
“Look, I’m not sure . . .” He wiped his palms on his jeans, unable to bring himself to so quickly deny Webster. “Colton said your spring semester and summer school were a struggle. This have anything to do with it?”
“I just want to know she’s okay.” There was something so desperate in his voice, in the way his fingers tightened over the strap of his backpack. “Her name’s Amanda Britt.”
He should tell Webster there was nothing he could do. That he didn’t know a thing about child custody laws and foster care. That what he did know was that confidentiality would likely make getting any kind of lead on his friend next to impossible. He should disappoint Webster now before he got his hopes up.
He should. He couldn’t. “Text me your social worker’s name and contact info. I’ll see what I can do.”
Webster offered the closest thing to a smile as Beckett had seen so far. Then he nodded and spun so swiftly he knocked his backpack into a woman at another table. He tossed an apology and was out the door before Beckett could tack on any kind of caution to temper his expectations. The thought of disappointing him . . .
“What’d you say to make him so happy?” Seth stood by the table, watching Webster rush down the sidewalk. His cousin looked enough like both Beckett and Logan, they’d often been mistaken as brothers.
“Something I shouldn’t have.”
Seth plunked into Webster’s abandoned seat. “So what do you think of my restaurant?”
“It’s fantastic, Seth. Honestly. Sorry it took me so long to get here.”
Seth waved off the apology. “Eh, I was on my honeymoon for two weeks anyway. But I’m glad you’re here now, and I’m glad you like it. ’Course, it’s not exactly the same without the live music. Bear used to play on Fridays, and I’m telling you, every girl in town showed up on those nights.”
“Bear?”
Seth’s jaw dropped. “You don’t know about Bear?”
“As in grizzly, polar, black?”
“As in Bear McKinley. As in the dude who I think might’ve kinda broken your sister’s heart or something.”
Beckett slapped his napkin onto the table. “Which one?”
“Raegan. Man, where’ve you been? I thought the whole town knew about Raegan and Bear. He moves to town, she latches on, he announces he’s moving to South America to build a church or something. He only just left in June.”
And Raegan hadn’t said a word to him? She’d always talked to him.
“You. Walker.”
The voice jutting in instantly cut off his thoughts as pounding footsteps shook the table until Sam Ross loomed over him. Great. He’d had a feeling after this morning, he might be seeing Sam again. Just how much of that scene in the orchard store had Sam witnessed? And why had he been there in the first place?
“Look, Ross, I’m not sure what your deal is or—”
“What my deal is?” Sam’s tone was a growl.
“But this probably isn’t the place.”
“It’s a good enough place for me. For what I have to say.”
“Which is what?” Foolish question. Foolish decision to stand—slowly—as if facing off.
“You should’ve just stayed away. You don’t belong here anymore. Haven’t you messed up enough lives already?”
Now Seth stood. “Listen, this is a restaurant, not a corner bar. So maybe you could just move this whole thing outside?”
Sam ignored him. “It’s bad enough you have to come back to town at all, but to rub my face in it—”
“Rub your face in what?”
He knew exactly what. Laughing with Kit after she’d fallen through the stairs. The teasing. Him rushing to her side and her looking at him with a sort of wonder in her rich cobalt eyes. Had Sam seen that? He’d been trying to
shake off the potent effect of those seconds ever since.
When he’d thought she might be hurt . . .
“You know what.”
“Sam, you’re the one who had the great idea to arrest me and drag me to court. I’m stuck here in town because of you.” Stop. Stop. Stop. “I’m working at the orchard with Kit because of—”
Sam had him by the collar before he could choke out the last word. He felt his back hit the wood beam behind him, a chair tip beside him.
“Guys—”
Seth was cut off by Sam’s bellow and Beckett’s grunt as he broke loose, the last of his self-control disintegrating as he shoved Sam into an empty table.
Kit heard Beckett before she saw him. The thwack of his hammer over slate tile pitched into the hilly landscape that surrounded the Maple Valley Scenic Railroad & Museum.
“Well, Kit Danby, I wondered if you’d ever make it out here.” Case Walker emerged from the depot onto the wood boardwalk. Sunset doused the side of the museum in color. The rain she’d predicted earlier today had come in sheets and gone in a flash. A choir of cicadas hummed.
“I stopped by your house first. Raegan said I could find Beck here.”
It’d been pure instinct, coming to find him after she’d heard what happened at The Red Door. She’d been at Klassen’s Hardware, looking for a part for the apple cider press Beckett had found this morning right before she’d fallen through the stairs. Couple aisles over, someone had recounted the whole thing to Sunny Klassen.
Kit had left the store without paying for the part. Which, great, made her a shoplifter.
Metal track ribboned past the depot building and into the trees. Beyond the station, a rolling hill where she used to sled dipped away from the tracks, lightning bugs dancing in the air. She’d taken the fourteen-mile ride on the heritage railway countless times as a kid. Ticketless, usually, thanks to her in with the man who ran the tri-county tourist spot.
The man now stepping off the boardwalk and opening his arms for a hug. She stepped into the embrace without a second thought. “Good to see you, Case.” She’d always adored Beckett’s dad, even as his patient, studying ways at times unnerved her. Maybe it was his military background that made him seem so intuitive, so knowing—as if he could read her every thought.
Sometimes she was convinced he’d passed the trait on to Beckett.
Case stepped back. “I keep thinking one of these days you’ll take me up on the offer to join us for breakfast. You always used to.”
He looked exactly like she remembered—perhaps a few extra lines in his face and a bit of added fatigue, too. But the depot’s busy season began right around the same time as the orchard’s. Which meant he was likely working just as hard as she to prepare for autumn.
“I will sometime, I promise. I remember how good your quiches are. And Kate’s French toast. And Logan’s omelets.” And Beckett’s pancakes, though she’d always refused to admit it—he was cocky enough about them. But even as a teenager, he could whip up such fluffy pancakes they put all others to shame. The Walkers loved their breakfasts.
If Beckett heard their chatter from his post on the depot roof, he didn’t let on. Just kept pounding away.
Case followed her upward gaze. “You heard?”
“Someone said they broke a couple tables. Is he hurt?”
“Not that much. Not where you can see, anyway.”
She didn’t miss the flicker of concern in his eyes. “Sort of feel like it’s my fault.”
Case turned to her, expression settling into something of a smile. “Kit, my son was getting into scrapes long before you moved to town. He’d get a wild idea about building his own tree house, and next thing we knew he was falling off a branch and breaking his arm. He talked Raegan into letting him cut her hair one time—because he can basically talk anyone into anything.”
Didn’t she know it.
“She ended up with a mullet. And mind you, this was decades past when it was fashionable.”
How had Kit never heard that particular story?
“And it’d take more fingers than I’ve got to count how many times he came home from school with a black eye or a bloody nose. I couldn’t ever even get mad at him for fighting because, more often than not, he was either trying to break up someone else’s fight or defend another kid from a bully.”
Sounded like Beckett. Hadn’t he done the same for her? No, he hadn’t fended off a bully, but he’d gotten her through her first day at a new school. He’d helped her un-jam her locker, steered her to her first class, waited with her at the bus stop after school.
And he’d never stopped. Once, when she’d been in tenth grade and terrified of giving her first speech, he’d spent hours practicing with her. And then, on the day of, he’d skipped his own class, managed to slip into the back of Mrs. Horton’s classroom. He hadn’t just watched her give the speech, he’d mouthed the entire thing along with her.
“Flora and I used to call him our wild child,” Case was saying now. “But one thing about Beckett—there’s almost always something well-intentioned behind his actions, even if they result in a black eye here or broken bone there.”
Or sudden kisses out on a gravel road?
The unbidden thought careened through her, landing with a thud in her stomach. And oh, please tell her Case Walker couldn’t read that thought. She’d never told anyone—anyone—about that. How she’d cried in Beckett’s shirt the night of her wedding and then . . .
How he’d kissed her.
Or, well, tried to. In her shock, she’d pushed him away and perhaps for the first time in her life, expressed every exasperated word in her head in a stream of arguments that seemed to astound him as much as his kiss had astounded her.
“I just walked away from a wedding, Beckett . . . my wedding. And you choose now to impulsively kiss me? Could you possibly have worse timing? Isn’t it reckless enough that we’re out in the middle of nowhere with a car we basically stole? Are you serious?”
She’d gone on. And on. And on.
Like the pounding of Beckett’s hammer and nails now.
Case cleared his throat, his gaze more penetrating than probing. He might not know the specifics of the memory charging through her now. But he sensed enough. He nudged his head toward the depot. “Go make him feel better.”
That was the thing, though. Once, Kit had been the one who could do that. Beckett could coax her into adventures, help her brave up enough to speak in front of her class—with as little as a smile, charm her into indulging his every whim.
But she’d been the one who could calm him after basketball losses, pacify him after arguments with his siblings. Soothe him as much as possible both times his mom’s cancer came back.
But anymore . . . ever since that night . . .
Case patted her shoulder. “There’s a ladder around back.”
Because it was as impossible to deny father as it was son, she angled around the depot and made her way up the metal ladder. With a cautious heft, she pulled herself onto the roof. Beckett had to have heard her clatter, and still he didn’t turn. Ropey muscle knotted in his arms and back underneath a plain black tee, his plaid shirt from earlier discarded on the other end of the roof.
“Beck?” Somewhere in the distance, a coyote’s woeful howl lifted into the sky and the crackle of tree branches signaled the scuttling of birds or maybe a squirrel.
Beckett finally looked over at her. So many hours outside had splotched the tops of his cheeks and the ridge of his nose with faint red. If he’d acquired any bruises in the scuffle at the restaurant, she couldn’t see them. Yet in the dim light of evening, his chestnut eyes were almost black.
He pulled a nail from the tool belt around his waist. “Don’t tell me word got out to the orchard already.”
“Actually, I was in town when I heard. So you might have a couple hours before the gossip passes city lines.” She crossed the roof in a crawl, its slant messing with her balance.
Three whacks
of his hammer and another nail disappeared into tile. “I’ve tried to stay out of the guy’s way. I really have. But there comes a point . . .” He moved off his knees to sit, working his jaw while his gaze reverted to the fiery horizon.
She sat beside him, close enough that their arms brushed. “It’s nice of you to help your dad.” Especially after working all day at the orchard.
“He’s been extra tired lately. Keeps getting these migraines.” Heat radiated off his skin—from exertion or emotion or most likely both. He ran one hand over the slate. “Tornado last year practically ripped the roof off this building. Colton helped patch it last year, but I don’t think he had any idea what he was doing ’cause it’s already leaking.”
“I heard about the tornado.”
“Logan and Kate came home right after.”
In other words, he hadn’t. “Beck—”
But he rose to his feet before she could finish a sentence whose path she couldn’t see anyway. Mindless of the height, he wandered over the rooftop, checking his work, dropping the hammer into the loop in his tool belt and draping his plaid shirt over his shoulder. Beckett turned back to her. “Coming?”
“You’re done with the roof?”
“No, but I had a feeling this was about to turn into a counseling session and I’d rather it not.”
Well, maybe it would’ve if she could’ve found the words to do as Case had asked—make Beckett feel better. To assure him just because one man held a grudge over something that wasn’t even Beckett’s fault, he wasn’t the consummate screw-up he seemed to think he was.
To let him know that, whatever else had happened after, she’d never stopped being grateful for the moment he said the words she couldn’t, rescued her from a wedding that would’ve been so very wrong and so very unfair to Sam.
“Let me help you finish up.” A dance of shadow and dusk colored the grassy hill behind the depot. She stood and shuffled to him. “I promise not to play counselor.”
He lifted one palm to the back of his head, rubbing his neck, considering. “Only got one hammer. But I guess you could hand me the tiles.”