“What?” I walked out the kitchen door, my eyes scanning the restaurant for Adele.
She was leaning over her podium, a silly smile glued on her glossy lips as she giggled and cooed at the man in front of her. A man who was capable of reducing even the most self-assured woman to a puddle of giggling girl. Jack.
“Seriously?” I asked him. “You’ve been up here more in the past few weeks than you ever were when you had a wife and a house to worry about.”
“Aw love, I still worry about you. Don’t you know that?”
“Outside,” I hissed, ignoring his lilting brogue and the way Adele hung on every word. We pushed out the doors of the diner into the evening chill beyond. This parking lot was beginning to feel like our spot, we’d stood out here so many times, and the last thing I wanted was to have ‘a spot’ with Jack. “What the hell do you want now?”
“Love, you don’t need to be hostile.”
“Stop calling me that!” I was confused and hurt, Connor’s anger and possible arrest stirring up every possible feeling inside me. Jack’s condescending smile was the last thing I wanted to see. “And I’m feeling pretty damned hostile. So get to the point.”
“Saw your website up, Maddie. All those photos you used to take.” He smiled again and I wanted to punch him in the mouth. I dug my fingernails into my palms as they fisted at my sides instead. “They’re good. I’d forgotten how good you are at that.”
Jack had made me quit. Jack had told me how silly it was, wanting to take pictures of other people. I just stared at him. There had to be a point here somewhere.
“Anyway, that’s why it makes so much sense that your photographs would be your salvation.” He looked quite proud of himself, and I sensed that he thought he’d just said something deep. Before I could kick him in the shins or even spin to walk away from his peculiar form of insanity, he was pulling a thick envelope from inside his navy blue sport coat, holding it out to me. “Here you go, love. The money I promised you.”
I raised an eyebrow, forcing my hands to remain at my sides. “You promised a lot of things. I don’t remember money being one of them. Not recently, anyway.”
He chuckled, reaching his manicured fingers into the envelope to reveal neat stacks of cash lined up inside. “For the photograph. I sold it, just as we’d agreed.”
Darkness swept through me then as anger finally won out over the other warring emotions. I opened my mouth to let out the litany of curses and frustration that had been building in me for weeks. But I didn’t get a chance to speak.
“That’s perfect,” a deep rolling voice said from behind me. Shock sifted through me, turning the hot poker of anger in my gut to ice. Connor.
I spun to find him standing just behind me on the sidewalk, his face shadowed in the dimming evening light. “Connor, I…” the words slipped from my lips, barely audible. “I’m so glad to see you.” A weight lifted from my shoulders. It hadn’t been him in that police car. He was still here, he wasn’t guilty. I knew it! I wanted to throw my arms around him.
“Mr. Charles,” Jack said, his voice strong and clear and oblivious as usual.
“Jack.” Connor practically spit the word out. “This is all so clear now.” He looked back and forth between us, disgust clear on his face. “I don’t understand why things didn’t work out between you. You’re perfect for each other, you know that?”
“No,” I said, wishing my voice wasn’t shaking. I could see what Connor was seeing. Jack, handing me a fat wad of money and talking about the photograph he’d sold. It looked awful. It looked like we’d worked together to betray him and I’d lied about it. I took a step away from Jack, wanting to distance myself from his evil, but I could see it was too late as Connor shook his head slowly back and forth.
“I used to think I was a good judge of people,” he said, his voice holding a sadness that pulled me to pieces. “I came down here to apologize to you. I’ve been thinking about what you said. I wanted to believe you. I was sure I’d been wrong.” He whispered the last part, a hand rubbing across the back of his neck as he stared at me. “I’m an idiot.” He turned and walked away, leaving me standing there next to Jack, the money still in his hand like a gleaming beacon of our shared evil.
“Well he seems put out,” Jack said, turning everything into a joke as he always had.
I spun back around to face him. “Listen to me, Jack.” I pulled myself up straight even though all I wanted was to crumple into a ball and cry. “I don’t want this money. I didn’t sell that picture. You did, without my permission. I could sue you for copyright infringement, or libel, or…” my brain spun as I tried to figure out how Jack stealing my picture might be a prosecution-worthy offense.
Jack was laughing at me, chuckling silently beneath his smarmy smile.
“Just go away,” I said, my voice becoming thick as tears threatened. “Please. Just go away forever. Go marry Annalise and leave me alone. Don’t come up here again. Don’t call me. Just go away. Please.” My voice broke on the last word and I wiped at the tears rolling down my cheeks. I was too exhausted to try to hide them.
“If that’s what you want, Maddie,” Jack said, pretending to be hurt. “I was just trying to help…”
If he said anything else, I didn’t stay to hear it. I was already in my car, starting the sad little underpowered engine.
*
The night at my trailer was quiet and sad. And cold. The temperature had slipped in concert with my good fortune and it was tough not to see myself as the loser in some kind of universal game of odds. Wine glass in hand, I sat at the tiny table in the trailer staring out the window into a darkness that seemed unfriendly and harsh.
Self-pity was not something I’d been bred with, but it was quickly becoming familiar. If I looked at my life—really looked hard at it—I couldn’t find one place where I’d made good decisions, where something I’d done had resulted in anything but the complete disaster that my life now was. Jack had been a colossal failure of judgment. I’d essentially abandoned my family, and given up on creating a real business that might have supported me through the crisis I currently faced. And now I’d ruined any potential of a relationship with Connor. At least I still had my fantastic job at the diner. I raised a glass to myself as the phone rang, startling me from my stewing.
The number was familiar—Dad’s care facility. I braced for more bad news. “Hello?”
“Hey Peach.”
Hearing my father’s voice was comforting, even given the realities of his situation. I closed my eyes and let the familiarity of it fall across me like a blanket. “Hi Daddy.”
“What’s wrong, darlin’? You sound upset.” And he sounded lucid. Sometimes he had clear days, and the nurses at the facility usually tried to have him call at those times.
“Nothing big. Just realizing that everything that’s not right is generally my own fault.”
“Not always. Anything I can help with? I mean, my sphere of influence isn’t real big at this point, but…”
I smiled at his understatement. I loved talking to my dad when he was capable, but hearing him acknowledge the realities of his own situation was sometimes hard to bear. “I don’t think so. Just tell me that I didn’t always make such bad choices, that sometimes I might have actually done the right thing in life.”
He was quiet a few seconds, the silence swelling over the phone line. Finally he said, “Peach, I don’t have much to give you anymore. But I have a suggestion. Don’t waste time on regret. Looking backwards won’t solve anything, and wishing you’d done something different is of no use. You made the best choices you could with the information you had at that point in time.”
I nodded, though he couldn’t see me.
“You can’t spend your life thinking about what you might have done. You can only control what you will do. So look forward instead. I don’t know what’s wrong, honey, but give yourself a night to grieve it, and then get up tomorrow and walk forward. Regret is just wasted energy. Pour
that effort into something positive instead.”
“You’re right.” My voice cracked a little and I cleared my throat. “Thanks for the perspective.”
“Anytime. You coming down for a visit soon?”
“I will. Definitely.”
“Okay, honey. I should go. I love you, Peach.”
“Love you too, Daddy. Bye.”
We hung up and I took his advice as best I could. I’d let myself stare morosely out the window for one night. But tomorrow would be a new day.
Chapter 18
I arrived for my shift at the diner the next day on time, and the sun sprinkled gold through the treetops, making me feel like the universe and I had come to some kind of agreement.
Miranda practically bounced off the counter toward me when I arrived. “Did you hear?”
I shook my head, putting my bag beneath the counter and tying on an apron after giving the diner a quick sweep with my eyes. Only a few patrons, all contentedly eating. “Hear what?”
“The police cars, last night. It wasn’t Connor.”
My heart squeezed a bit at the mention of his name. “Oh.” I nodded. “Yeah, I knew that.” But things had gotten so busy right after the police cars had sped by that I hadn’t given much thought to who was inside if it wasn’t Connor. “Who was it?”
Miranda’s face contorted a bit. “Amanda’s father.”
“What?” I’d met Mr. Terry a couple times. I couldn’t imagine the man doing anything terrible to his daughter. “You mean he…did he hurt his daughter?”
She shook her head. “Amanda was never really missing.”
It was my turn to shake my head. “I don’t get it.”
“Well, this is just the gossip around the village, so I’m sure there are pieces missing. But Carol Hammond was in early, and she told us some of the details.”
“How did Carol Hammond know?”
“She lives next door to the Terrys, and I guess she was the one who called the police.”
My eyebrows went up. It was hard to say if living in a village full of busybodies was a good thing or a bad thing. “Why?”
“I guess she was at their house when Amanda called. You know she and Mrs. Terry are old friends.” Miranda was nodding. She loved telling a good story. “Mrs. Terry wouldn’t tell her anything, but she figured a few things out from what she heard—mostly that Amanda wasn’t missing, that she wasn’t in danger. She was calling home for a chat.”
“They pretended she was missing?” An idea of what the Terrys might have been doing formed in my mind. “They were trying to make it look like Connor had done something to her?”
“He is kind of an easy target, I guess. One with a lot of money.”
That made some sense. They must’ve had some plans to blackmail him. “But if they were trying to blackmail Connor, why didn’t he just go to the police?”
Miranda shrugged. “Police work is not my specialty.”
Just then Chance and Sam Palmer swaggered through the doors and Miranda’s jaw dropped open.
“Go seat them,” I hissed at her, pushing her from behind the counter.
Adele was making a beeline to help the brothers, but Miranda stepped up, regaining herself. “I’ll help these guys, Adele.”
I watched as Miranda showed them to a booth and managed to hand them menus and get their coffee without spilling a drop. She didn’t manage many words, but at least she hadn’t broken any plates yet.
“Nicely done,” I commended her when we were back out of earshot.
“Thanks,” she said. “Now what about you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You. And the hot writer. He’s off the hook. What are you going to do?”
“Nothing. He hates me. More than ever.” I recalled his angry face from the night before. He’d already convinced himself of the kind of person I was. I was going to do as my father suggested. Look forward, not back.
“You’re just trying to talk yourself out of doing anything because you’re scared after Jack was such an asshole.”
I gaped at her. “I don’t think the two things are related.”
“Yes they are.” Miranda was twenty-four. And she still lived at home. But maybe she’d hit the nail on the head. I cringed as she continued. “And you’re afraid that every man is an asshole at heart, that they’re all going to hurt you like Jack did.”
“That’s not true!” That probably was true…
“You’re scared, Maddie. And when we’re afraid of something, that’s when life is showing us an opportunity.”
“I’m afraid of heights but I don’t plan to jump off the Golden Gate next time I’m in San Fran. I’m not sure your logic holds.” I lifted an eyebrow. It was hard taking sage advice from her, but I knew she was probably right.
“Okay,” she said, spreading her hands in front of her and taking a step back. “Just trying to help. And really, I’m just telling you all the stuff you told me about going after Chance.” She walked away, her ponytail swinging, and circled the restaurant, checking on tables and lingering to take Chance and Sam’s order.
I held my spot at the counter for a few more minutes. I knew I should try to mend things with Connor. If nothing else, I needed him to know that I would never betray him, that I hadn’t sold that photo. Even if he didn’t believe me, I had to try. And I couldn’t imagine never seeing him again.
*
When I got home that evening, I didn’t give myself time to back out. I pulled off the ugly maroon polo shirt I wore for work and put on a simple white button-down blouse with jeans. I splashed some water on my face and tried to tame my curls, finally giving up. Connor hated me. It wouldn’t matter what I looked like when I went to apologize and try to explain, only that I did it.
I drove to his house on the other side of the meadow with butterflies dive-bombing around in my stomach, my emotions careening wildly. I was nervous and scared, but the fear I felt now was of a purely emotional variety. Connor had nothing to do with Amanda Terry, her father’s arrest made that clear enough. It felt like a redemption to know that at least I hadn’t been completely wrong about that. Connor was a good person. And that was why he deserved my explanation. I just wasn’t sure he’d be willing to hear it.
The pointed deck loomed above my head as I walked to the recessed front door, the stars just beginning to prick points of light in the dark canvas of sky over the house. I took a deep breath and then knocked hard on the door, the sound reverberating in the cave of rock around me.
I stood for a few minutes, shifting my weight from one foot to the other, my nerves threatening to overwhelm me as the moments grew longer. I’d seen Connor’s car. But he could have gone for a hike. Wherever he was, it didn’t seem that he was here. Or maybe he was just ignoring me. I didn’t really blame him.
Without thinking too much about it, I circled around to the other side of the house, following the small dirt path that ran along the meadow. Another tiny porch jutted out from that side of the house, overlooking the grass and greenery below. And sprawled in a chair on the porch, his feet propped up on the railing and glass of something raised in his hand, was Connor. He was staring out at the murky sky and hadn’t seen me yet. The door behind him was closed, so I was certain he hadn’t heard me knocking.
I turned, changing my mind about disturbing him and giving myself an out. He looked so peaceful, I told myself. I’d come back tomorrow. But just as I ducked back into the shadowed overhang, he called out.
“Maddie.”
I stiffened and turned back, walking back out into the open.
He’d stood and was gazing down at me. His face was impossible to make out in the dim light. I had no way of reading his expression, and his voice had held little to guide me as to his feelings.
“Hi. I’m sorry to bother you.”
His head tilted to one side and then he took a sip of his drink, but he remained silent. I sensed that he was deciding what to do. “You want to come up?” He sounded tired, but n
ot angry.
I shrugged, surprised at the invitation. “Okay, sure. Yes.”
He turned and disappeared into the house, and a moment later the heavy door opened. I went in and then followed him up the stairs to the main living area.
“Drink?”
I stuffed my hands into my pockets. “No, I don’t want to keep you long.”
He waved toward the stools that faced the breakfast bar and I sat, my fingers finding their way to one another and fidgeting nervously. I was finding it hard to look him in the face as he sat next to me, our knees nearly touching.
“I wasn’t sure you’d even speak to me,” I ventured, still watching my fingers dance. “I hoped you might give me a few minutes to explain what you saw…what you thought…last night.” My voice wasn’t as firm as I wanted it to be.
Connor was silent, and when I ventured a glance up, his eyes were on mine. The piercing blue held my gaze until I broke it again, staring at my hands. “Okay,” he said finally.
I didn’t know how to begin. “Jack sold the photo I took of you.” I looked back up to see him nodding, prodding me onward. “I told you the truth before. I told him I didn’t want to sell it, and I didn’t give it to him. I honestly had nothing to do with selling it. But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I’d considered it. Things have been…” I paused and Connor filled the silence.
“I know they’ve been hard.”
“Right. Well, yes, but I knew I couldn’t do that to you. I didn’t consider it for long. And Jack and I were not working together. When he showed up at the diner with that money…it was nothing I was expecting, Connor. And I didn’t take it.”
“Okay,” he said, his voice gentle.
“I’m so sorry.”
“If you didn’t sell it, why are you sorry?”
I searched myself for the words. “I’m sorry for all the trouble it’s caused you—for the contribution to the mess that was already going on. I wish I had been here for you, helping to defend you.”
Love Rebuilt Page 19