It Happened on Love Street

by Lia Riley

  Her thoughts drifted back to the teacup and Delfi’s gentle question. What does your heart tell you? She gave an internal shrug. Tea leaves—logical decision-making method there, Pepper. Jesus. She was the one losing something—her damn mind.

  “Hey, I forgot to ask. Has anyone found that missing dog statue?” Tuesday popped her face between the two seats.

  Pepper twisted in her seat, grateful for a distraction. “How’d you hear about that?”

  She shrugged. “The mayor’s column.”

  Beau’s conversation from the dog park came flooding back.

  “I need to actually have a word with you later about that,” Pepper said. “I hear you’ve been quite the trolling commenter.”

  Tuesday blanched.

  “What’s this now?” Rhett asked.

  “Nothing,” Tuesday said, right as Pepper replied, “Secret sister business.”

  “Sounds like a whole lot of I don’t want to get involved,” he replied. They hit the edge of town, and Rhett turned onto a bumpy road. He rolled the windows down, and the cicada song increased in volume. The dogs jockeyed for the best place to hang their tongues out.

  “Why aren’t we going to the river?” Pepper said, studying the fields.

  “We are in a roundabout way. Mars Rock is above the wildlife refuge. There’s a historical monument here, too, honoring one of the region’s early settlers. Joseph Elleselle was a British soldier, marooned by Redbeard on the nearby coast after his ship was plundered and set alight. He led a group of survivors upriver to this spot. They lived here for another year before the English navy finally rediscovered them, and in that time they only lost two of their party. Elleselle founded Everland, and a few of the other men returned with their families.

  “My mama could trace her roots back to that period. It’s the whole reason why I know about the memorial. She used to take me and my sister out here and make sure we’d never forget our history.”

  “Only one other car’s here,” Pepper said, examining the lone Subaru with a trailer in the parking lot.

  “That’s a good sign, right?” Hope infused Tuesday’s words.

  “Those guys are probably mountain bikers here for the river single track. Lots of riders come here. But if it’s otherwise empty, I’d say that is a very good sign,” Rhett responded. “The ‘out of this world’ comment threw some people. Most folks are honing in to the crater crash.”

  “Crater?” Tuesday asked, jumping out the back door with J.K. Growling’s leash.

  “A myth that’s been debunked. A few scientists from Ithaca came out couple years ago. I don’t know how they tell one sink hole in the ground from another, but guess they took one look and knew it wasn’t from anything from outer space. Still, locals are stubborn, and plenty are combing that area.”

  Tuesday hugged herself. “But if locals are stubborn, wouldn’t the Pillage organizers have hidden it there, believing the story was legitimate?”

  “Trust me, I’m right.”

  “I trust you.” Pepper swallowed back a flicker of self-doubt.

  Tuesday said nothing.

  It has hard to tell if Rhett noticed as he was busy letting out the dogs.

  Once everyone had their boots laced and a leash (or three) in their hands, they set out. At one end of the parking lot was a hand-painted wooden sign. The words ELLESELLE MONUMENT were faded but legible, as was the arrow. A half mile out, the trail dipped downhill, narrowing from a flat, easy boardwalk into a steep single-file gravel path cutting through waist-high grass. Furtive rustling sounded as small creatures fled at their approach. Butterflies abounded. In the copse ahead rose a stone tower. “There,” Rhett pointed.

  Tuesday broke into a run, but Pepper hung back, taking Rhett’s hand. The medallion hunt had been distracting fun, but what would happen after her sister found it? Ten thousand dollars could be enough to restart life somewhere new.

  Was Tuesday serious about her Chicago plan? Would she go with her? Did she even want to?

  Don’t count a medallion before it’s found.

  Screams filled the air. Not Tuesday. Lots of happy screams. Of course, the amusement park, Happily Ever After Land, was through the forest.

  Just like the riddle had described.

  This was the place. A wash of certainty flooded Pepper, confirmed a moment later when her sister whooped.

  “Got it!” Tuesday brandished the medallion in the air. It had been stuck under the historical marker. “We did it. We did it.” She ran toward them, arms flung out wide.

  “You did it,” Pepper whispered.

  “Not without your help.” Rhett drew her in. “We make a great team.”

  “Now we have to get this bad boy over to the Everland Examiner office and claim the prize. Decide what to do.” The smile slipped from Tuesday’s face as reality sank in. Fun and games were over. Time for real life.

  So many decisions, but which was the right path?

  “Honey, are you sure you don’t want to go back to New York?”

  Her sister’s headshake was adamant. “There’s nothing for me back there.”

  “Except for oh, say, five hundred theaters,” Pepper persisted. She couldn’t stop pushing this line of thinking. If her sister reverted back to her original plan, it would be easier to follow suit.

  “Do you need me to hire a skywriter to write ‘New York won’t make me happy’? What about you? Your happiness?”

  “I’m working on it.” Pepper was unable to meet Rhett’s gaze. No fun being in the hot seat.

  “Let’s call Dad. At least he’ll be excited.” Tuesday slammed the phone to her ear and after thirty seconds rolled her eyes. “No answer.”

  “This is weird.” Concern skimmed Pepper. “I’m starting to worry.”

  Tuesday shook her head, her mouth twisting wryly. “Imagine a world where a sixty-plus man doesn’t feel the need to check in with his daughter like she’s his mother.” Her tone was light, but the intent was not.

  Ouch.

  She saw Rhett’s sympathetic expression out of the corner of her eye, but shrugged it off. He didn’t have to swoop in. Nothing to rescue. Move along. Nothing to see here. Her footsteps grew louder; she’d started to stamp. With a deep breath, her gait resumed something less militantly annoyed.

  So much for fun.

  The walk to the Bronco was silent. Even the dogs were subdued. It was a ten-minute drive back to town and the modest two-story brick shopfront a block from Main Street, home to the Everland Examiner. Pepper and Rhett hung back, allowing Tuesday to pose for the check. She enjoyed the spotlight, and Pepper found her own mood too unsettled for celebration. The deep furrow between Rhett’s brows, coupled by the fact that he kept his hands balled in tight fists, told her he felt the same.

  After he took the dogs for a stroll around the block, a stout reporter wandered over.

  “Nice day,” he said. He wasn’t much taller than her. Unfortunately that meant it was harder to avoid his direct eye contact.

  Pepper gave a polite smile that faded as he brought out an audio recorder.

  “Oh no, please,” she protested. “My sister is the one you want to talk to about finding the medallion.”

  “What do you want to know?” Tuesday bounded over.

  “What next?” He clicked the play button. “Do you have special plans for the prize money?”

  “Indeed we do. My sister and I are going to move to Chicago as soon as possible. We’ll stick around until the end of the festival and then it’s off on a new adventure.”

  “I see. We can’t entice you to stick around longer?”

  “Don’t get me wrong. Everland is great. Beautiful. Romantic. Quaint. But there’s nothing for us. Not in the long term.”

  “Ah, Rhett, just the man I’d hoped to see,” the reporter broke in ahead of Pepper. “Do you have any comment on these women leaving town? Rumors have been flying you’ve gotten involved with one. A Miss Pepper Knight, allegedly from Maine by way of New York City and soon to be
Chicago.”

  A crowd gathered, humming with speculation.

  “No,” Rhett said automatically.

  “Are you prepared to go on the record?”

  “I am prepared to tell you to back off and leave me out of any town gossip. You’re with the Examiner. Why not cover real news?”

  The reporter cleared his throat. “Well, numbers have been falling with the launch of the Back Fence. I’ve been ordered to sex things up.”

  “Well, there’s none of that here.”

  “Care to sit down then for a round of twenty questions tomorrow afternoon?” The reporter pushed, undeterred. “Build up the buzz before the silent auction.”

  Pepper frowned. “What buzz?”

  “Every year the Village Pillage holds a silent auction. All the downtown businesses donate. Plus, there’s always two popular extras. The condo timeshare in Key West and the Night with Mr. Scallywag.”

  “What’s that?” Tuesday asked. “Sounds tempting.”

  The reporter chuckled. “That’s the idea. An eligible local bachelor is auctioned off for a real date.”

  “I see.” She didn’t, though. Rhett was auctioning himself off as Mr. Scallywag?

  “Do you have anything to say about that?” The reporter shoved the voice recorder back in her face. “Confirm the rumors of a secret fling?”

  “Rhett and I are good friends. He offered me a job and helped me through a rough patch.”

  “So there’s nothing romantic between you two?”

  “Me and Mr. Scallywag?” She glanced to Rhett. In the top secret corners of her mind, hidden behind caution tape and classified stamps, she’d kept a hope that their so-called fling meant as much to him as it did to her. But he’d signed up to be put on the chopping block for all the single ladies in Everland. Agreed to go on a date.

  A date!

  Perhaps they’d made a pact to keep their fling a secret, but they hadn’t discussed seeing other people.

  “I’ll be going to Chicago and looking to restart my planned career in law,” she set her jaw and announced firmly. “Like my sister said, we have no future here.”

  “Over to Rhett.”

  Her stomach tingled with an unexpected fluttering, the lightest gossamer kiss to her core. Tiny hope taking flight. It was so stupid. So impractically stupid, but for a moment it seemed possible he’d do the thing she couldn’t. Recover the situation. It was like they were at a Choose Your Own Adventure cliff-hanger and he had the power to get them to the next chapter. She rose up on her toes. Leaned in.

  Please.

  A wordless whisper, a word written in white crayon on blank paper. This was the chance. The chance for him to prove—

  “Pepper Knight is my neighbor.” His growl was so rough that the words were barely comprehensible. “She’s a dog walker. That’s it. End of story.”

  Their gazes locked. All the butterflies from her stomach flew into a pesticide cloud of practicality and dropped stone dead. She locked her face, erasing all emotion.

  Rhett was absolutely right.

  This was the end of their story.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Pepper held it together until they got home and Tuesday wisely announced she was going into the backyard to try calling Dad one more time.

  “Chicago. Really?” Rhett said as the kitchen door slammed.

  “What’s wrong with that, Mr. Scallywag?”

  That innuendo struck home. He raked a hand through his hair. “Listen. Pepper, I didn’t—”

  “Oh my god. Holy shit. Pepper? Pepper!” Tuesday stumbled in with J.K. Growling and Kitty in hot pursuit.

  “Now what,” Rhett muttered under his breath.

  “It’s Dad! He’s in the hospital,” Tuesday panted, pacing in front of the stove.

  “What?” Pepper was halfway across the kitchen before she realized her legs were moving. She grabbed her sister by the shoulders. “Details. Everything. Now.”

  “I just checked my voicemail bank. There was a message from two days ago. A nurse saying that they were trying to reach next of kin.”

  “Next of—oh my God.” Pepper fisted her sister’s shirt. “Two whole days?”

  “I didn’t know. I hate checking messages. If anyone wants to get in touch with me they can text.”

  “Tuesday!” Her adrenaline, pumping from the fight with Rhett, threatened to replace the blood in her veins.

  “Look, I’m sorry, okay?”

  It wasn’t her sister’s fault. The impulse to strangle her lackadaisical neck was coming from a place of pure panic. “Why didn’t the nurse call me?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know anything except oh, she said that it’s his back.”

  Of course. The great ticking time bomb. “Is it the community hospital near Moose Bottom? Did you get that much at least?”

  “No. Portland,” her sister murmured.

  “That’s nowhere near the house.” Dizziness set in. “What if he was air-flighted? We have to think. You call the hospital. Try to figure out what the hell happened. I’m using part of my medallion money to book a flight. I should be able to get on a red-eye.”

  “A what? You’re booking now? Wait a second. Let’s get a handle on the situation first.”

  If she waited another second she’d scream and start walking north.

  “Tuesday is right. Get more facts before doing anything,” Rhett said gently.

  She shook him off. “I don’t need to have every scrap of information to know my father is a thousand miles away with no one to look after him. I knew this would happen!” She didn’t mean to shout, it just happened. “I knew it.”

  “What did you know?” Tuesday glanced up, scrolling through her phone contacts.

  “That I’d have to take care of him. That it would come down to me.”

  “And everyone says that I’m the drama queen,” Tuesday muttered under her breath. “Cool your jets. Everything will be okay in the end, if it’s not okay, it’s not the end.” Tuesday’s blithe assurance didn’t improve the situation one iota.

  “I have so much to do. I have to pack. I have to call Norma and quit. Forget Chicago.”

  Tuesday lowered the phone and stared. “What?”

  “Dad has his whole life in Maine. A farm doesn’t pick up and move. And if he isn’t able to run it anymore, it will take time to dismantle, and I’ll have to find a law practice close by, and he can live with me and—”

  “Stop,” Tuesday said. “This is crazy. You don’t even know what happened.”

  “I know that if this isn’t serious—and right now I doubt that—then at some point it will be something else.”

  “You can’t live your whole life afraid of bad things happening. Dad would never ask that of you.”

  “Maybe not, but I can’t live if I don’t ask that of myself.”

  “Being a martyr,” her sister spat.

  “Who else is going to help him?” Pepper dropped her voice to a menacing whisper.

  “Um, last time I checked, I was still his daughter, too.”

  “And what will you do? Community theater?” She hated making her sister flinch, but there was no time to pussyfoot around sensibilities. “I know you love being an actress. You are great. You can sing, dance, it’s so fun. I want you to have that. But let’s be honest. It’s not exactly going to pay the grocery bills.”

  “Wow. Ouch.” Tears pooled in the corner of her sister’s narrowed eyes. “Tell me what you really think.”

  “This is why I have made every decision I ever have.” Pepper’s pulse pounded, sending tremors from her wrists to her temple. “Because you want to be an actress, and Dad wants to make maple syrup. I want you both to be happy.”

  “Let’s get one thing straight,” Tuesday snapped. “No one ever asked you to sacrifice your happiness. Not once.”

  “Someone has to be practical.”

  “I think what Pepper is trying to say—” Rhett began.

  “Stay out of it, Valentine,” Tuesday
snapped, her color high. “You are trying to tell me that you never wanted to be a lawyer? Pepper? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Wanting has nothing to do with it!” she shouted. “What I want doesn’t matter.”

  “What you want is always important!” Tuesday raised her voice to match.

  “I want you to be happy.” Pepper closed her eyes and drew a deep breath. “I want Dad happy. I want my family to be safe and okay. Screw Chicago. Take your part of the medallion winnings and, I don’t know, go to Hollywood.” She opened her eyes back up and looked pleadingly at her little sister. “You have more talent in your little finger than most people have in their whole body.”

  “Stop with the martyr routine. You’re acting like that tree from The Giving Tree. I hate that book.”

  “I love that book.” The tree was selfless, gave everything until she had nothing left, and then the boy came back.

  Granted she was a stump, and he sat on her, and never seemed very grateful…

  Huh.

  “And what about him?” Tuesday jabbed a finger at Rhett. “Do you even look at yourself in the mirror these days? You’re different. Lighter. Smilier. That’s what’s different about you. You are happy, on the brink of finding passion.”

  “Passion is self-serving,” Pepper shot back. “Obligation is what matters.”

  “Can’t you do what you love, be what you love, and still meet your selfless responsibilities?” She flicked her brows up, and her small smile was devoid of its usual warmth.

  “Ha.” Pepper tried for a joke. “And I thought you were the one who didn’t believe in fairy tales.”

  “Stop!” Tuesday’s foot stamp shook the floor, crushing any attempt at flippancy. “Remember senior year? You worked at the hardware store that whole winter. I magically scored a scholarship to theater camp in Boston even though I didn’t apply. And you said you put your money toward college. Did you think I was stupid? I knew it was you. But I couldn’t even say thanks because you didn’t want me to know you were helping. And it made me feel guilty.”

  “That’s not what I want.” Pepper’s shoulders were stiff. What was wrong with helping? She cared about her sister and was good at solving problems. “I never meant for you to feel that way.”