Where You Least Expect It

by Tori Carrington

  His brother took advantage of his momentary distracted state and rolled him over until Aidan’s back was against the wood and Davin was on top of him.

  “Ah, you always were so predictable, weren’t you, big brother. I knew messing with your woman would bring you out of the bushes.”

  This had all been some sort of ruse? Some dark plan designed to get him to tip his hand? Aidan’s head swam with the information.

  “You always did think you were the better one, Allen,” Davin said. “It’s time to prove once and for all who is the smarter brother.”

  Stars danced behind Aidan’s eyes as Davin’s fist connected with his brow. He struggled to push his brother off but only succeeded in further trapping himself. Suddenly, the weight on him disappeared. He blinked against a trickle of blood running from his brow into his eye, and found Davin standing over him, grinning in a malevolent way that made Aidan’s blood run cold.

  “It’s said that the meek inherit the earth,” Davin said, kicking his legs where he tried to get up. “I say the meek are eaten by the strong, and it’s the strong that inherit the earth.”

  Somewhere in the back of his mind he registered that Penelope hadn’t left. Instead she stood on the bridge, her face a model of horror, Max still tied to the support beam. He tried to tell her to leave, but a kick to his stomach left him without air.

  “You never did figure it out, did you,” Davin said, a spiteful grin making him look so different from Aidan that Aidan nearly didn’t recognize him. “That I was the one who set fire to our house.”

  Aidan thought he might be sick. Fire…house? Was he referring to the fire that had taken their parents’ lives?

  He closed his eyes and memories crashed back on him like a wave of blinding color. He remembered waking up in the middle of the night to the acrid smell of smoke. Panicked, he’d felt around their shared bedroom for his brother. Davin hadn’t been there. Coughing, he had crawled out into the hall to find flames licking up the side of the hall walls. He’d quickly backtracked into the bedroom and closed the door, using the wadded sheet he’d placed over his nose and mouth to block the smoke from getting in from the bottom of the door. Then he’d rushed for the window, all the time calling for his brother and his parents.

  He remembered being relieved when he found Davin outside on the lawn, staring up in horror at the sight of their family home burning down.

  Had it been horror? Or had it been sheer awe?

  Aidan rose onto his elbows with some effort, taking shallow breaths that seemed to dredge up the taste of smoke and trying to force deeper ones. “Why?”

  Davin shrugged as if they were discussing which college to attend or which restaurant to eat at, rather than the pointless loss of their parents.

  “Why do you think? Because they had never really been my parents. They had always been yours.” Davin drew a hand across his own mouth, coming away with blood. “Because they always chose you over me. For as long as I can remember, I thought about what it would be like to be an only child. But I knew that doing away with you, alone, wouldn’t have done the trick. They would have mourned you and forgotten about me. So I decided to do away with you all and start again from scratch. With a family that would love me, and only me. Never compare me to a brother that was always one step ahead.”

  It didn’t make any sense. Davin had killed their parents? It wasn’t possible. Aidan remembered his twin being broken up, almost destroyed by the news.

  Or had he been sorry that he, Allen, hadn’t died along with their parents as planned?

  The idea blindsided him. So much hate…

  He watched as Penelope crept up behind Davin, something long and hard in her hand. A branch. Aidan fought harder to get up as he watched Penelope swing. Davin easily warded off the blow, then grabbed Penelope’s silken black hair, filling his fist with the tresses.

  Davin chuckled, pleased with himself. “My only regret is that I didn’t kill beautiful Kathleen while you watched. But that’s easily remedied, isn’t it.”

  He pushed Penelope toward the opposite side of the bridge where large, jagged rocks broke the surface of the river.

  Where Penelope’s mother had taken her own life twenty years before.

  “No!” Aidan shouted, as Davin pushed her over the railing.

  One minute Penelope had been about to save Aidan by hitting Davin in the back of the head with a branch she’d scavenged from the other side of the bridge; the next she was sailing through the air, everything appearing to move in slow motion. She took in Davin’s manic expression of satisfaction as he faced his brother. Saw Aidan’s horror as he scrambled to his feet. Felt the cool air that hovered above the river seep in to saturate her very bones. A millisecond before her body would have made contact with the rocks that had taken her mother’s life so long ago, she reached out, wildly clawing for a handhold—something, anything, that would prevent her fall. She found it, latching with barely the tips of her fingers onto the wooden slats of the bridge, the sudden action nearly dislocating her right shoulder. But there she hung on for dear life.

  “What’s the execution method Ohio employs?” She heard Davin’s voice as she pulled herself up so that her forearms rested against the wood and she could see the two men. “Death by electrocution? Fortuitous, don’t you think, that you chose to come here. Rhode Island’s method of lethal injection is far too humane. I want you to fry. And I want it to happen knowing that you’re being punished not only for Kathleen’s death, but for Penelope Moon’s.”

  Penelope’s arms ached and pulled from where she hung on to the narrow ledge. She slipped slightly, and looked down at where the rocks waited for her. Her throat choked off all air as she remembered the pictures of her mother’s battered body that the local newspaper had run on the front page. Fate runs in a circle, she remembered her grandmother telling her once. Although she’d been ten at the time and heartbroken by the ruthless teasing she’d suffered at school that day, Penelope applied the saying to the here and now.

  Was this her fate? To die in the same way her mother had?

  She must have made a sound when she nearly lost her grip, because she looked up to find Davin grinning at her with evil intent. She heard a shout behind him.

  “No!”

  She watched as Davin lurched forward against the railing. Had Aidan hit him from behind? The sudden move shook the bridge enough to make her grip more precarious. She was fighting to get a better hold when one of Davin’s feet prodded at her fingers.

  Oh, God, she was going to fall.

  Then he was gone from sight.

  Penelope held on, but the muscles of her fingers and arms were under tremendous strain, and they felt on the verge of giving out. She heard a crack and peered through the railing slats to watch Aidan repeatedly punch his brother. Then Davin roared and pinned him against the opposite side of the bridge. On they battled, first one, then the other gaining the upper hand as Penelope fought to maintain her hold, seeking a foothold and finding nothing but cold, empty air.

  Max’s incessant barking drew her attention, and she found his eyes moving from the fighting men to her and back again, straining until his chain collar bit into his neck. Penelope’s eyes burned with tears at his futile attempt to help her.

  If only she had heeded his warnings. If only she had untied him. If only she had let Mrs. Noonan drive her all the way home instead of dropping her off at the bridge.

  She jerked her attention back to the two men, finding it amazingly easy to tell them apart, now that they were together. Davin’s face was drawn in sharp, pale lines, his jaw tight, his mouth a gash against his skin, his brow lowered and dark.

  And Aidan…

  Her heart surged into her throat as he took a blow to his already bleeding brow and sagged against the opposite railing. Then she watched Davin cross to pick up the branch that she had intended to use on him. The irony that Aidan would be hit with the branch she had chosen to try to save him with made her dizzy with the unfairness of
it all.

  “Aidan!” she cried, slipping another inch.

  His eyes snapped open and focused on her, then on the wood swinging for his head. He ducked and caught his brother around the waist, pushing him until he was against the other railing, mere feet from where Penelope hung on. The wood flew from Davin’s grip and sailed over the railing, wedging between the rocks like a deadly spear just under Penelope’s dangling feet.

  She slipped again and screamed.

  “Aidan, please!” she yelled, knowing even as she did so that it was unfair to ask him to save her when he was trying so hard to save himself.

  Her right hand slid completely off the ledge, leaving her left arm trembling with the strain it took to hold her weight.

  Then her fingers started to give way. She summoned every ounce of strength she had to maintain her grip, but couldn’t do it. She watched in terror as her fingers slid completely free…and she was airborne—

  Aidan’s hand clamped tightly around her wrist, stopping her descent. She looked up to find his face straining with the effort it took to keep her from falling. But more than that, she saw relief and love.

  She looked down to find Davin skewered by the tree branch, his unmoving body bobbing in the churning water around the rocks.

  Hours later Penelope huddled on the west bank of the river, wishing there was a way she could avoid ever going over the bridge again. The wool blanket the sheriff had draped over her shoulders was doing little to chase away the chill that permeated every cell of her body. Sheriff’s deputies milled around, the lights on the top of the squad cars filling the night with an eerie red and blue glow. A spotlight revealed the body lying on top of the rocks.

  Penelope shuddered and turned away—the man looked so much like Aidan…

  She noticed the sheriff grilling Aidan where he sat in the back of a squad car, his arms handcuffed behind his back. Even with the proof that Aidan had a twin, and with Penelope’s corroboration, the sheriff appeared reluctant to buy their story.

  Half of Old Orchard had come out to ogle from the other side of the yellow crime-scene tape stretched across the opposite end of the bridge. A collective gasp went up as the spotlight illuminated the body; then, after a heartbeat of silence, the chatter level rose as they all openly speculated about what happened.

  Penelope heard someone raise her voice, and the crowd reluctantly parted. Mavis popped out, Mrs. O’Malley on her heels. Relief rushed through Penelope, but her body seemed incapable of following her command to stand.

  “Let me through, you imbecile. That’s my granddaughter over there.” Mavis swatted at the arm of a young deputy who was trying to keep her from ducking under the tape.

  The deputy seemed taken aback by a particularly strong whack and let her under.

  “Me, um, too,” Mrs. O’Malley said, shadowing Mavis’s heels.

  “What happened?” Mavis asked, crouching down before Penelope and smoothing the hair from her face.

  Penelope hadn’t realized her teeth were chattering until that moment. She tried for a smile and said, “You remember that life you said we both needed to lead? Well, I’d say I’ve now officially had enough excitement to last for the next two incarnations.”

  “Oh, baby,” Mavis said, enveloping Penelope in her arms. Max nudged his nose between them, seemingly in need of some loving care himself.

  “What’s going on here?” Penelope heard Mrs. O’Malley say to someone. Penelope realized she was addressing the sheriff. She pointed her finger in a way that Penelope had seen her do countless times when she was a kid and Mrs. O’Malley was a high school teacher who could calm the rowdiest of classrooms.

  “You take those handcuffs off Aidan this instant, Mr. Parker. This instant, do you hear me?” She pointed to the side of the bridge. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Aidan is innocent. I always suspected you were a little on the slow side, boy. Don’t prove me right.”

  Penelope watched as Sheriff Parker pushed his hat back on his head. “It’s Sheriff now, Mrs. O. And you shouldn’t be here.”

  “I don’t care what you call yourself now, Mr. Parker. That man is innocent and you’re making yourself look like a fool.”

  Mavis raised a brow at Penelope. Penelope stared back at her, just now realizing she wore makeup. And her hair looked as if it had just come out of curlers. She glanced at Mrs. O’Malley and found the same thing.

  Strange…

  “I have to agree with Mrs. O’Malley, here,” Mayor Nelson said as he ducked under the crime tape, tugging on the lapels of his ever-present suit jacket and walking across the bridge. “Release that man at once, Sheriff Parker.”

  Of course, everyone knew the history between the two men. Mayor Nelson’s nephew Blakely “Bully” Wentworth had lost to Cole Parker in the last sheriff’s election.

  The sheriff hiked his pants up higher on his slender hips. “Can’t do that, Mayor. Not until I clear up everything.”

  “You can clear it up later,” Mrs. O’Malley said. “Aidan’s not going anywhere anytime soon. Are you, son?”

  Penelope looked hopefully at Aidan. He met her gaze, then quickly averted his eyes.

  “No, ma’am.”

  He was lying. Penelope wasn’t sure how she knew it, but he planned to leave Old Orchard—and her—behind.

  The sheriff faced Aidan and heaved a heavy sigh. “Fine. Get up so I can take the handcuffs off.”

  The crowd on the other side of the bridge cheered, but Penelope felt a leaden weight drop into the middle of her stomach.

  Despite everything that had happened, or maybe because of it, Aidan was going to leave.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The next morning Penelope started her day just as she started every day. Only, this morning her muscles ached and her heart thudded dully. Not even her grandmother’s having put the doors back on, having taken down all the pictures of her mother, or the fact that Mavis was out back mixing plaster following the directions on the back of a store-bought package, could make her feel any better.

  I’ve got to go, Penelope, Aidan had said to her last night after the sheriff let him walk her home.

  Mavis and Mrs. O’Malley had started to follow, but seemed to think better of it. Instead they had lingered with the townsfolk, presumably to give Penelope and Aidan some time alone.

  “But you told the sheriff…” Her voice had drifted off. “There’s no reason for you to leave, Aidan. Not anymore.”

  He’d smiled at her sadly and kissed her on the nose. “There’s a very good reason why I have to leave.”

  Then he’d kissed her until her knees gave out and walked into the night without a backward glance. place….

  His leaving didn’t make any sense—now that everything else seemed to be falling into place….

  “The mayor asked me out on a date,” the old woman said.

  Penelope absently spread low-cal cream cheese on a bagel, barely noticing that Max was licking it as she spread. She shooed him away, then stared at Mavis standing in the doorway with what looked like a metal spatula on steroids, filled with what she guessed was plaster. There was another smaller metal spatula in the other hand.

  “What?”

  “I said, the mayor asked me on a date.” She strode by Penelope and walked into the other room.

  Penelope fed Max her breakfast and followed her grandmother. She caught up with her in the dining room, where she’d already filled half the holes she’d made.

  Mavis shrugged. “Well, to be honest, it’s not a date date, but he did ask Edith and me to join him at his table at tomorrow’s festivities.”

  “That doesn’t qualify as a date, Gram.”

  Mavis focused her unsettling dark eyes on her. “At my age, a shared smile is a torrid affair, Popi.”

  Penelope shook her head and looked at her watch. “I’ve got to go. I’ll be at the shop for an hour or so. Then I’ll be joining everyone in the square to get ready for tomorrow and the Fourth of July celebration. Ar
e you still going to meet me there?”

  “Edith and I wouldn’t miss it.”

  Penelope made a face. It seemed every few words out of her grandmother’s mouth were “Edith and I” this and “Edith and I” that.

  “Fine.”

  She snapped on Max’s leash, wondering how she could get across the river without going over the bridge.

  The memory of the pain in Penelope’s dark eyes haunted Aidan throughout the night as he drove toward a destination he feared he would never reach. He didn’t know why he hadn’t been able to tell her where he was going, and why it was so important that he go there, immediately. Maybe it was because of his own uncertainty. Or the guilt.

  So much guilt…

  As he ran his hand over his face, the sunrise popped over the horizon in his rearview mirror and the highway sign before him read Sullivan, Missouri. He’d been on the road for eight hours straight, and aside from stopping for gas and to fill up on caffeine, he’d driven straight through. Past semi trucks out on their weekly runs. Past the kind of highway patrol cars that had inspired fear in him before last night. Pushing himself toward this one last door from his past that had been left ajar.

  Within a half hour he was parked on a quiet residential street not unlike the streets of Old Orchard. A couple of houses away a woman worked in her garden. Farther on, a boy was tossing papers onto porches from his bike. Aidan heard the distant whine of a lawn mower even this early on the day before the official holiday.

  His gaze fastened on the simple, one-story house whose address he had memorized but not written down for fear Davin would get his hands on the information. Inside was a distant cousin of Brody Tanner’s…and four-year-old Joshua.

  The front door to the house opened and a young blond woman wearing a pink satin robe picked up the paper, then went back inside. Aidan’s heartbeat thundered in his ears. He should have called Brody and had him contact his cousin’s family to let them know he was coming. He should have given them warning. But he hadn’t expected the need to see the boy to hit him so powerfully when everything came to a head last night.