“You’re not sick.” I examine him. “Is this drugs? Is that why you’ve been so distracted and dick-ish all week? ‘Cause that’s such a cliché.”
“Fuck you. It’s none of your business.”
“It is my business. You’re tangentially associated with Andy Pettigrew, rehabilitated alcoholic. You’re not to come within a hundred yards of him if you’re into that stuff. And I think he’d say that himself if he knew you were messing around with drugs.”
“It’s not that, okay?”
“Bullshit. What is it, then?”
“Death in the family, and if you press me for more information, I swear to God I’ll set you on fire.” Todd looks at me, eyes brimming with tears.
“Jesus. I didn’t even think. Does Andy know?”
“No, and I’ll tell him when I’m ready, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell him, and if you left me alone now.”
“Fair enough.” I go dump my bag and gear up to fish.
Who knew Todd Ford cared about someone beside himself. Of course, here I am, wrapped around Macy’s little finger, and I can name roughly a dozen business colleagues in LA who would testify under oath that I don’t have a heart.
I guess things can change.
I fish with the guys, I even hook a healthy Yellowstone cutthroat, but I can’t get off the river quickly enough. The whole afternoon feels like the last day of college before graduation—you can practically feel the time slipping through your fingers.
After a long day on the river, we all sit in the living room.
There’s a knock at the door. I jump up to get it, and in the process show my hand to my colleagues. I’m toast, and they know it.
She stands on the door step when I open the door.
“Miss Macy. How was the day?”
“Okay. And yours?”
“Long. Longer without you.”
“Stop. You’re too extravagant.” She smiles, and it makes me feel better already. “Are you all going to do dinner here?”
“We thought so. Tucker caught too many fish. We’ve got to eat some of them.”
“Do you mind if I beg out?”
I can see the fatigue in her eyes. “Not at all.” I don’t push it. Yes, it’s our last night together, but she’s human. “Can I come see you later?”
“I might be asleep, but I’d like that.” She leans in briefly and brushes my lips with a quick kiss. I notice she glances around the parking lot. She’s afraid of Richard, still, doesn’t want to get in trouble for messing with the guests.
I let her go and watch her drive away. The bottom of my stomach lurches.
I don’t like her leaving me. What am I going to do tomorrow morning?
I plop down on the couch in the lodge and watch the light purple up over the foothills outside. The river turns darker and darker blue.
Tucker strolls in. “What say you and I smoke the last of the Cohibas out on the deck?”
I nod. “Last chance to poison the fresh mountain air.”
I go grab two from my bag. I can hear Andy in the next room. Sounds like he’s on the phone with Quincy, ‘cause the discussion seems to center around doggies. Todd, as usual, is nowhere to be found.
Tucker’s out at the rail, looking over the river. “Thank you for indulging my vice.”
“The least I can do for the one who keeps us all alive.”
We light up and savor the cigars for a moment in silence.
Tucker looks at me. “I got the background check on Macy.”
My heart clenches. “You did.”
“Do you really want to see?” His face is totally neutral.
“Yeah, I do.” I take another pull on the cigar, try to steady myself.
He hands me a jump drive. “You want me to short cut any of it for you?”
“I don’t know.” All of this is wrong. I feel like I just took Macy’s little dogs to the vet to be put down, for Christ’s sake.
“Go sit and look at it. I’ll be right here.” He calls over his shoulder, “Be careful what you ask for. The need to know is dangerous poison.”
I walk in and sit at the desk in my room, slip the jump drive into my laptop, and swallow hard.
There, on the screen, is Macy Shea Summerlin in all the gory detail I was afraid of.
Mother surrendered her to foster care four different times, the first time in kindergarten, and the last time, for good, when Macy was thirteen. Mother’s whereabouts are unknown.
Macy was with a family for a while. The family accused her of stealing from them, so at fourteen and a half she went to live in a group home. The rest of the group home residents were pregnant or parenting teens. No one else was like Macy.
She has a sealed juvenile record.
She was arrested for shoplifting when she was nineteen. She was on probation for a year and a half.
She was hospitalized twice when she was twenty. The first time a man, who is in jail currently, put her through a sliding glass door at the local Baptist church. The second time she was the passenger in a roll-over accident. The man driving was arrested for driving under the influence. She was granted a restraining order against him until he was put in jail.
Richard, Mr. passive-aggressive owner of the fly-fishing lodge, co-signed with her to get her apartment. The local newspaper ran a feature on Macy, and Richard is quoted as calling Macy “the most gifted fly-fisherman I’ve ever known.”
She receives a small benefits payment every month because her father was killed in action in Afghanistan.
Her credit score is in the tank. She’s got three different accounts in collections, one with the local hospital, one with a furniture store, and one with a check-cashing place. She owned a car, co-signed with some other guy, and it was repossessed.
Finally, nine days ago, the police came to her apartment. They took Macy to the hospital with a concussion and a sliced-up hand. She wouldn’t file charges against anyone.
I stand up and consider whether I need to throw up in the sink in the bathroom or not. I rally and go outside instead.
“Well?” Tucker looks at me.
“Most of it I kind of expected.” I stand with him and hold the jump drive between my fingers.
“How so?”
“She already told me about the stealing. And the way she acts, I could guess about the guys, the abuse.”
“There’s a lot there.” He reveals nothing in his tone.
“Yep.” I roll the jump drive between two fingers, bite my cigar between my teeth. Try to breathe.
“And now, what do you do?”
“What I would’ve done anyway. I go to Toronto; she keeps working here.”
“And that’s it.”
“You tell me what to do, Tucker. Take her away from here? She loves guiding. She’s good at it. Where do I take her? To LA? To hang out with the crowd that runs there? That sure is a good influence on someone young and messed up.”
“You do what you want to do, Jeremy. I don’t have any answers for you.” Tucker smokes the Cuban, stands tall and still next to me.
“I guess I just need some time to think.” I think my hands might be shaking.
Fuck this.
“Well, right now we have two steelhead and steaks to eat. Maybe you just let it sit for a while. Maybe you’ll know what you want if you sleep on it.”
“Maybe.” I look at the jump drive in my hand.
Tucker stubs out his cigar and walks back inside.
I wind up and throw the drive as far out as I can. It lands with a plop in the river.
I go to sit at the table when it occurs to me—the man who sliced up Macy’s hand, who gave her a concussion. He’s still out there. I know who he is, and he came by for a visit, that day I was with her, a visit to finish business.
Troy.
Tonight is the first time she’s been by herself since that day.
“I have to go.” I get up as Andy walks into the dining room.
“Did I miss something?” He watches
as I take the keys off the kitchen island.
Tucker stands up. “I think we better go with you.”
Now, most white hat guys in movies might say something like, “I’ve got this,” and keep charging out the door, but you know what? Tucker is a professional.
And I’d like to destroy this Troy person.
So I’ll bring back up with me, thank you very much. I will bury Troy, and if it takes me and an army to keep Macy safe, then fine. I’m not too much of a man to do it.
“Fine. Come with me then.”
Tucker nods. “Let’s go.”
We pile in the Yukon. As usual, Todd is nowhere. We leave him.
I drive fast, faster than I should, but I can bet how this guy operates. He was there that morning, keeping an eye on her apartment. Surprised that I was there so early in the morning. Counting on her to take the dogs out.
She’ll have to take the dogs out tonight, after it’s dark, one more time before bed.
She’s in danger.
“Can someone please give me a clue what’s going on here?” Andy’s supportive, but Andy doesn’t know.
Tucker looks at him. “Macy’s hand. It was a guy.”
“She owes him money. He gave her a concussion. He was there the morning we left.” I don’t look over at him.
I don’t think he’ll judge, but if I were in his shoes, the first question I’d ask would be, why would a girl borrow money from a guy like that?
Because every decision she’s made in her life has been out of self-preservation, and sometimes jumping from frying pan into fire makes sense at the time.
The stealing. First grade, she was stealing because she was hungry.
I don’t know. The depth of this is way, way out of my league.
We’re coming up on Macy’s place. Tucker points past the turn off. “Pull in behind the complex; we can come in on foot in the alley.”
This is why I invited the bad-ass special ops guy. I guide the car in behind her place, kill the engine and drift in to park in the empty lot behind.
Andy gets out and looks at me. “What are we getting into here?”
“I don’t know.” I think clearly for a second. “We need to get her and the dogs. If he’s got a knife, he’s got other stuff, probably.”
We come even with a space between apartments where we can slip through to the front.
“Macy’s is over to our left when we come out front.”
Tucker puts a finger to his lips. We walk casually, but what are we doing? None of us has a gun.
Out front, I hear voices.
Macy’s. A man’s. Macy sounds scared.
We come around the building, and I see her.
Macy stands on the sidewalk by a parking space.
Troy has her by the wrist.
I cover the ground between us at a run and deliver a swift, hard fist to his nose.
He goes down, probably more in surprise than anything else.
“Macy, go with Andy to get the dogs. You’re coming with us.” I’ve never barked a command so convincingly before now.
She turns on her heels and runs into the apartment, followed by Andy.
I stand over Troy. “Stay down and listen, cowboy.”
He looks up at me. “Who the fuck are you? She’s no damn angel; she owes me money. This is none of your business.”
Tucker looms behind me. I wonder for a moment if Troy has a gun. If he does, I am a nice, juicy target right now.
“How much?” I stand firm.
“I told you, five hundred.”
I pull my billfold out and drop five bills on his chest.
“I want you to be clear. I don’t care why she made the mistake of borrowing the money from you. You’re paid now. You’re done. You have no reason to come back here. Are we clear?”
Tucker steps to the side of me. “I know two ex-Seals who live within twenty minutes of here. You mess with her, we’ll get wind of it. And my friends will, too. And they know how to dispense of problems.”
Tucker’s a huge man. A huge man who I’ve never heard say a menacing thing. Ever. I’m freaked out by his demeanor right now, and it’s not even directed at me.
Troy gets to his feet. I’ve bloodied his nose. I’m proud of that.
He sneers at us. “I could press charges. This is assault, and you’ve made threats against me. I could get your ass thrown in jail.”
Tucker snorts. “I know the Teton County sheriff. He’s really interested to know what thug put Macy in the ER with a concussion. And the town of Driggs already knows you. Whose story is going to fly, yours or ours?”
Troy flips us off and walks to his car, gets in. He leans on the horn once for good measure, and then he’s gone.
“What if he comes back?” I feel like that wasn’t as satisfying as I thought it could be. “I don’t like thinking he might hurt Macy to get back at us. There’s no reason why he won’t come back.”
Tucker shakes his head. He texts someone. “I’m not lying that I know Zeke. He’s wanted to toss Troy’s ass in jail for a while. When I shared what you knew about him from the other morning, paired with what we found out in the background check, he was curious to follow up. Now I’m telling him we saw him with his hands on Macy.”
“Background check?” Macy stands behind me, with Justin in her arms.
Tucker takes the dog from her. “We’ll wait in the car.” Andy follows him back to our car, Pierre Trudeau in tow.
I stand in front of her, the truth out between us.
“You ran a background check on me?” Her eyes fill up with tears.
“I wanted to know what I was getting myself into.”
Her hands go to her hips. “I was just something you were ‘getting yourself into’? That sounds awesome.”
“That’s not how I meant it. I mean, I wanted to help you, and you wouldn’t tell me anything.”
She’s crying now, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Maybe because I didn’t want you to know. God, you know how liberating it was for you not to know the whole mess of my life? I could just be Macy. I didn’t have to be ‘screwed-up Macy’ or ‘abused Macy’ or ‘white trash Macy’ or ‘abandoned Macy’ or ‘Macy the thief’. I was just Macy with you. I liked a clean slate.”
“It doesn’t change anything between us.”
“Whatever. You could’ve asked.”
“I did. Over and over. You wouldn’t tell me.”
“Maybe I don’t like to rehash my stupid decisions over and over. Maybe I’m not super proud of the choices I’ve made.”
“No one is proud of everything they’ve done. We all screw up.”
She kicks at the bumper of the car in front of us. “Mr. Honest. That’s a load of crap. You sure did screw up this time, Mr. King.”
She turns to go back in her apartment.
“Macy, wait.” I step towards her.
She waves me off. “No, we’re done. I don’t need to be the girl you save. Tell the guys to bring the dogs back.”
“You’re coming with us.”
“Why? Tucker just said Troy’s probably going to get arrested.”
“’Cause I want you to be safe.”
“You want to boss poor pitiful Macy around. You want to save me.”
“Maybe I do.”
“Well, there’s nothing to save me from. You can’t save me from my own bad decisions. They’re mine to make and learn from. And it’s getting better. I’m digging myself out of my own hole. I want to do that, damn it. I want to save myself.”
I stand there. That stings a little. It must be true. Me wanting to be all white hat, wanting to save her. Except she’s not interested. “You know, you’re right.”
She pauses. “What?”
“You’re right. It’s your mess to fix. And I’m headed to Toronto tomorrow. And LA after that. I guess this is where we part ways, anyway.”
“I guess.” She turns and goes in the front door of her place without another look in my direction.
T
he guys take the dogs back to her, and we drive back to the lodge without a word.
And that, my friends, is how love fucks with your life.
I will skip giving you the details of the next day. We packed, I got drunk, we flew to Toronto, I holed up in a hotel room and contemplated never emerging.
It wasn’t pretty.
Andy has his first meeting today for the reason we’re here, the movie he’s shooting.
I’m hung over. I’m heartbroken.
I don’t know what to do, so I’m going to do what I know how to do: be Jeremy King, super-agent.
I wake up at five, shower, and take as many Advil as I think my liver or kidneys can bear.
I look at myself in the mirror for a long, long time.
The guys were actually understanding. Quiet, but understanding. Tucker never once said, “I told you so.”
He so should have. I walked right into that one. I waltzed into it. He told me not to do the background check.
I screwed it all up. My need to know ruined it.
What’s “it”?
I don’t know.
I think I love Macy. I stare at myself in the mirror and think about her, back in Idaho, waking up to go guide. With those damn little dogs.
I feel like maybe I’m about to cry, so I smack myself, hard, on the side of the face.
Enough.
I made a nice, big, cozy bed for myself, and now I’m going to lie in it, roll around, suck it up, and get on with life.
I shave, I dress, and I feel stronger.
Jeremy King will not be brought to bear, be bowed, by something as petty as a pretty face.
She’s more than that, idiot. You know it.
I pick up my phone, my wallet, a bottle of water out of the mini-fridge, and prepare to suck it up for four to six weeks while we shoot and I commute back and forth from LA to Toronto.
I will be busy. Busy is good.
I ride in the town car by myself. I need space. I need so much space, this town can’t probably provide the expanse I’m after, but I can at least ride alone to set.
Tucker and Andy. They’ll be gentle. They won’t even mention her, probably.
Where in the hell Todd ended up, who knows. When we got back to the lodge, he was casually interested, and he must have been able to tell that I would have loved to beat him senseless. He got quiet real quick and stayed out of my way when I got into the tequila.
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