by Mari Carr
“Art wasn’t the first person I wanted to start with,” Harley murmured.
Caleb grinned. “Yeah. You’re not kidding. Judgmental prick. But I think we can dodge this one. Say Art didn’t have a clear view and he was mistaken, or hell, it wouldn’t make me feel too guilty to call the guy a liar outright.”
“His dislike for me is pretty well known. It wouldn’t be out of the realm of believability for him to try to start a rumor about us. Besides, there aren’t too many people who like Art. Most folks around here tune him out.”
Harley understood there were a lot of reasons for keeping quiet as well beyond the risk of hurting their families.
There weren’t many times she’d actually felt fortunate to have such a fucked-up family, but the fact that her parents had screwed up their own lives so royally basically meant they didn’t exactly have high expectations for her success in romance either.
Granddad might be shocked at first, but he loved Tyson and Caleb like they were his own, and she’d heard him remark a couple times now about how sweet he thought Jeannette’s relationship with the firefighters was. Now that she considered it, she wondered if she had somehow shown her hand, and he was telling her that he was cool with whatever might transpire between her and the guys.
Caleb and Tyson had more to lose than she did—their standing in the community, as well as the potential loss of business and patients.
“I need to hit the road. See you at home in a few?”
She nodded, wishing he could give her one last kiss goodbye, but it was clear by the determination on his face, Caleb didn’t intend to make the same mistake again.
Harley waved as he left, then went back to the storage closet to record the measurements on her paper. She wanted to feel excited about the prospect of the new store and her future plans, but that feeling was muted by her concerns over what that same future held for Caleb and Tyson.
“What are you doing in here?”
Harley jumped at the sound of a man’s voice behind her. She turned and tried not to grimace when she spotted Art in the doorway of the storage closet. Fucker had her trapped.
“I’m renting this place.”
She wasn’t going to give him any more details than that. The man had never approved of anything she’d done. At the beginning of Art’s marriage to her mom, Harley had tried to forge a relationship with the man, tried to please him by attending church with the two of them, spending the occasional weekend at their house. And at first, it was okay. Sort of.
However, neither Harley nor Art managed to play nice for long. She had been right in the midst of her teen years, which meant rebellion was her middle name. Throw in a self-righteous, overly critical stepfather and Harley had worked overtime to make sure Art was unhappy by pushing every single one of his buttons.
She’d like to say she regretted her actions back then, but as more years passed, it had become abundantly clear that Art was a genuinely bad person. Not just to her and her mom, but to everyone. He had exactly three friends, equally as judgmental and miserable as him. They fed on each other like a cancer.
“Renting it? What for?”
“What do you want, Art?”
“Saw you kissing Caleb. Thought you were going out with the doctor.”
Fuck. He had seen too much.
“What made you think I was dating Tyson?”
“That phone call the other day. I don’t appreciate being threatened.”
“It’s clear the threat fell on deaf ears. We have nothing to talk about, Art.”
Art scoffed. “Yeah. Right. Your mother filed for divorce this morning.”
Harley worked overtime to keep her face impassive. In truth, she was shocked as hell. Her mother had never made a single move on her own without Harley hearing about it. Jesus, her mother actually never made a move at all. She generally told Harley what she wanted and Harley did the legwork, tried to find a way to give her what she wanted. Typically, that meant moving her mom out of Art’s house. She had never gotten her mom as far as a lawyer’s office. The fact that her mother did this without her…without even telling her…
Harley couldn’t decide if she was relieved or hurt.
God, talk about old habits dying hard. It was well past time her mom took care of herself, and Harley was glad to know she was doing that.
“So?” Her nonchalant tone appeared to fool Art. Not that it would take much to fool him. Art knew who’d been pulling the strings on all her mother’s failed attempts to escape over the years.
Art had done quite a number on Mom’s self-esteem. Harley had read an article once about bullying behavior and emotional abuse. Art’s techniques were textbook.
“So I want to know where she is. She’s not returning my calls.”
“This conversation is starting to feel a lot like déjà vu. After all these years, it’s like you don’t know me at all.”
“Determined to ruin my marriage, aren’t you? Not that I should be surprised. You never did have any morals. Heard you moved in with Caleb and Tyson. Living in sin with two men! There’s a word for women like you.”
Harley laughed. “Let me guess. Whore? Slut? Which one were you leaning toward today? Or maybe you were thinking of something fancier. Jezebel? I always liked it when you used that one. Felt like you were making a real effort.”
“If the shoe fits…”
“Apparently it fits me like a glove,” she taunted, making sure he knew how little his insults hurt her. When she was sixteen, she’d made the mistake of crying when he’d embarrassed her in front of some girlfriends, telling her only a whore would show so much of her body when she’d worn a bikini in public. She’d been at the beach by the lake and had expected her mother to come pick her up. Instead, Art showed up, storming across the sand, demanding that she wrap herself in a towel and get in the car. It was the first time he’d called her a slut. And it had hurt like hell.
When they returned home, he’d dragged her mother—who’d gone to bed with a blinding migraine—downstairs and told both of them they were sinners. Harley for wearing the bikini and her mother for allowing it. Then he’d told them to get on their knees and pray for forgiveness.
It was the first time Harley defied Art. She’d refused. And he’d slapped her.
Harley had looked at her mother, expecting her to defend her, to get them out of the house. Instead, her mother had knelt to pray.
Harley had run out of the house and straight home. Granddad and Johnnie had comforted her, and then her grandfather had paid a visit to Art. Harley had no idea what had been said between the men, but that had been the last time she’d ever stayed in Art’s house.
“I will find her, Harley. And when I do, she’s coming home. Where she belongs. Divorce is a sin.”
So it was the divorce he was worried about. Not his wife. Harley’s blood boiled, but she didn’t bother to respond. She’d learned a long time ago her silence was just as powerful as words with Art. He loved to argue, so when she shut up and offered him nothing to respond to, he got frustrated.
“You hear me?”
She just stared at him, stone-faced.
“You tell Polly that I expect her home tonight! Hiding from me isn’t going to get her what she wants.”
Harley didn’t move, barely blinked. She just painted on her best bored look and held it.
Art turned and stormed out of the storage closet, his last word his usual goodbye. “Whore,” he muttered as he left the store, forcefully shoving the front door open. No doubt he would have slammed it if he could have.
Harley sucked in a breath. She needed to calm down, but right now, she was overwhelmed by the desire to punch something. Hard.
“Fuck it,” she said aloud to the room. “Fuck him.”
She took her measurements, wrote them down, and then she left. She wasn’t in the mood to dream about her new store anymore. Between Art and her mother, and concern over Tyson’s and Caleb’s reputations, she decided fresh air and a nice long walk w
ere in order.
Locking the door behind her, she tucked the key in her pocket and headed for the park. There was a lovely walking path through the trees that had always been one of her favorite retreats. Many a Wednesday, she’d drop Johnnie off at Sparks Barbeque and then head off to the park for a long walk, while her brother flirted with Macie.
The memory didn’t make her as sad as she might have imagined. She missed Johnnie, but as more time passed, that feeling lessened. She knew it would never go away completely, but at least now, the pain was more manageable.
She walked for a good hour and the solitude of the place worked its magic on her. Grabbing a bench in a particularly secluded spot, she dropped down and glanced up. It was a picture-perfect day. The sky was bright blue with fluffy, white clouds and soft sunlight. There was a cool breeze blowing that kept the humidity at bay.
She sighed contentedly as she closed her eyes and enjoyed the warmth of the sun on her face.
When she opened her eyes again, a movement to her right caught her attention.
It was clear her father was as surprised to find her here as she was to see him. But they were too close to ignore the fact they’d both seen the other.
Her dad only hesitated for a moment and then he continued toward her. Looked like today was her day for uncomfortable confrontations.
When he was close, he gestured toward the spot next to her. “Mind if I join you?”
She shook her head and slid over to make room.
Dad sat down, but his eyes remained forward, focusing on the trees across the path from them. “I like this place.”
She didn’t bother to look at him. This was the first time her father had attempted to have a real conversation with her since before Johnnie’s death. “Me too.”
“You know it wasn’t always a park. Back when I was in high school, this was actually the edge of town. A lot of these paths were dirt lanes through the trees. I used to wait for your mom after school. She’d hop on the back of my motorcycle and we’d ride all over this place. I didn’t have my Harley back then, just a piece of shit Honda I’d gotten secondhand from a guy in Douglas.”
It had never been any secret Harley’s name had come from her dad’s beloved Harley-Davidson. And Johnnie’s from the Johnnie Walker whiskey he loved…a little bit before they were born and too fucking much after Johnnie was confined to the chair. Shortly after Johnnie’s accident, she’d viewed their names as curses. However, before that, she’d always loved them, thought they were unique and special.
She’d been a daddy’s girl until the accident, certain that her father hung the moon. That feeling had faded over the years until she’d all but forgotten the man who’d taught her how to ride a horse, fish, and skip stones in the lake.
He pointed out a particularly dense copse. “Polly and I used to park over there and…well, you know.” He let his wink and grin fill in the rest.
Harley couldn’t help but answer his smile with one of her own. It had been a long time since she’d seen that easy grin on his face. “I didn’t know that.” Then she jokingly added, “And I really don’t need to know any more than that.” It was hard enough to reconcile the parents who barely acknowledged each other’s presence with the two people she’d seen in Johnnie’s room the other night. It would be impossible to add in any component that involved them being in love and having sex.
“Your mom used to call me her bad boy.”
Given his love of whiskey, tattoos, motorcycles and loud rock music, Harley figured that description was accurate. Which made her mother’s second marriage to the most boring, devout, straight-laced man on the planet make a bit more sense.
And no sense at all.
If she was looking for polar opposites, Mom had found them in Dad and Art.
“Guess she was right,” he murmured, more to himself than to her.
Harley glanced over, looking at him—really looking—for the first time in a long time. Years spent abusing alcohol had taken their toll. When she was younger, she’d always thought her daddy was the most handsome man in Maris. The lines around his eyes were grooved deeper than they used to be, the wrinkles not driven by the smile that always used to be on his face, but rather by stress.
When she left last year, he’d been sporting a large spare tire, a serious beer gut. Obviously Granddad had worked that extra weight off him at the farm. He was slimmer now, and the muscles he had used to lift her on one shoulder and Johnnie on the other when they were kids were starting to reappear.
An ancient tattoo peeked beneath the edge of his T-shirt sleeve, the colors faded, leaving it primarily dark gray.
His dark hair was thinner and streaked with gray, and his skin looked like an age-worn leather jacket that had seen better days.
“What did you do with your Harley?” She wasn’t sure where that question came from, but it suddenly occurred to her she didn’t know. Her dad had bought the beloved motorcycle before she was born—a 1980s sportster—and practically rebuilt the entire thing. He called it his tinkering toy, and one of her most vivid childhood memories was getting off the bus after elementary school and running to the garage to tell her dad about her day as he worked on the motorcycle.
Dad looked at her, as surprised by the question as she was. “I…” He swallowed heavily, and it occurred to her he didn’t want to tell her.
Resentment bubbled up. Knowing him, he’d probably gotten drunk and driven it into a tree. “Forget it,” she said, the usual hostility creeping back into her voice.
“I pushed it off Fraser Bridge.”
She froze. Shocked. “What?”
“When we found out Johnnie was paralyzed from the neck down, that he’d never walk again, I drove it to Fraser Bridge and…I pushed it off.”
“It’s at the bottom of the lake?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“Oh.” Harley struggled to imagine how much grief and guilt her father had been suffering to do such a thing.
“Harley, I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness. I’ve been the world’s shittiest dad. But I just wanted to say I’m sorry. For all of it.”
Harley’s throat closed completely as she fought not to cry. It took her a few moments before she could choke out just one word. “Okay.”
He didn’t look at her as he spoke. Instead he leaned forward, elbows on his thighs as he ran his hands over his weary face. “I couldn’t see beyond my own guilt. My own anger. I hated myself for what happened, what I’d done, so I figured everyone else must hate me too.”
“I’ve never hated you,” she whispered without hesitation. She hadn’t. Despite years of anger and disappointment, she’d never once stopped loving her dad.
He glanced over his shoulder at her with a sad smile. “That’s what Johnnie said too.”
“When?”
“I went to see him in the hospital. Just before he…” Her dad wasn’t any better at saying the words than she was. She couldn’t ever seem to push out that fucking horrible word either.
This time, it needed to be said. “Died,” she forced herself to finish for him.
He nodded. “Tyson came to see me. Told me Johnnie had pneumonia. That there was a good chance he wouldn’t survive. He poured coffee in me until I sobered up and then Caleb drove me to the hospital and got you out of the room, so I could sneak in to see him.”
Harley stared at him in quiet disbelief.
“Don’t be mad at them,” Dad added quickly. “I swore them to secrecy. Made them promise they wouldn’t tell you I’d gone. You were devastated enough. I knew…well…I knew if you’d found out I was there, it would’ve just added to your pain.”
Harley didn’t know how to reply. So she remained quiet as her father continued speaking. “That visit, God, Harley, it changed my life. It saved my life.”
Hearing that, she realized she wasn’t angry with Tyson or Caleb. If anything, she’d just fallen even more deeply in love with her best friends. “I’m not mad.”
“I told Jo
hnnie I was sorry. Sorry for putting him in that chair.” Dad ran his fingers over his mouth, his eyes unfocused, as if he was reliving that conversation. “Johnnie said he never blamed me. Not once. Said the only person in that room who couldn’t forgive me for the accident was me.”
Harley wiped away the tears that wouldn’t be stemmed. “That sounds like Johnnie.”
“Then he looked at me. Made me promise I’d look after you when he was gone.”
Harley laughed though the sound came out as a choked sob. Her whole life she’d always thought she was taking care of Johnnie. It was funny to learn that he saw it the other way around.
Hell, when she considered it, he was right.
She closed her eyes and tried to pull herself together.
Her father was quiet for a few minutes, the two of them sitting side by side, both trying to battle the heavy emotions.
Finally, he said, “You know your mom’s been staying at the farm, sleeping in your old room.”
“Yeah,” Harley said. “I know.”
“You okay with that?”
Why did everyone keep asking her that question? Tyson and Caleb had asked the same thing. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Dad shrugged. “We left you alone, Harley. Made you do all the hard stuff by yourself. We deserted you and Johnnie when you needed us most.”
“Granddad was there.” And so many others. The Sparks’ family was amazing to her and Granddad, as were Caleb’s parents. They raised funds to help pay the medical bills, Chas’ Uncle Julian and his construction crew donated one whole weekend to building handicapped ramps around the farm and redesigning the downstairs bathroom to accommodate Johnnie’s needs. When Tyson returned from med school, he took over as Johnnie’s primary physician, stopping by once, sometimes twice a week to check how her brother was doing.
When she considered it, she’d never felt alone or weighed down with responsibility. She knew there were some—maybe even Tyson and Caleb—who thought she’d taken on too much, but in her mind, the entire town had stepped up to care for her brother when her parents fell apart.