by Kym Roberts
“Dad, I can’t really talk right now. Everything okay?” The last thing I needed was for him to hear my fear and attempt to rescue me. I exhaled over my shoulder, and tried to calm myself while listening for glass breaking downstairs. Where did I hide that shotgun?
“I think that’s a question I should be asking you. Why is this young man holding his foot on your porch?”
In that moment, life froze for an eternity. Bogart no longer barked — he frantically clawed the back door. And I ran to save my Dad from a killer. The steps were there — yet they weren’t. My hand slid down the railing, carrying most of my weight while my feet barely touched the steps. My ears plugged with my own blood rushing through my body and I screamed, “Dad, run!”
I didn’t have time to explain. He just needed to listen.
For once please just let him listen.
Bogart began barking again as I reached the family room. I yelled for him to move, dropped my phone and began shoving the desk. I yelled again.
“Dad! Run! He killed Ryan!” I could hear muffled voices, but couldn’t bear to imagine the terrible things happening outside. Fear tied my gut as I shoved at the desk, not caring if it gouged my wood floors. I flipped the dead bolt and swung the door open with so much force that the door bounced off the wall and glass sprinkled to the floor.
Dad sat on my rocking chair, facing Steve who was sitting on the swing — his swollen ankle on my dad’s knees being examined by my father. I search frantically for a gun, but Steve’s hands were tightly gripping an arm rest at each end of the swing. The only weapon in sight was my Dad’s pocket knife, as he cut off the sock on Steve’s foot. Both motionless. Both staring at me.
Confused and short of breath, I reached in my pocket for the phone, but came up empty. Then announced, “I’m calling the police,” before turning back to the house. Hopefully I hadn’t broken the phone.
“What’d you do to him?” Dad accused over the top of his glasses. His voice was different — almost like he thought I’d lost my mind.
I turned in time to see Steve rubbed his hand over his face in frustration, or maybe he was pushing himself to keep up the ruse.
“What’d I do?” My voice squeaked. It seemed to be doing that a lot lately. “Dad, he killed his best friend over a woman. It’s written all over his face!”
Steve’s big blue eyes rounded, then filled to the brim with unshed tears. In his double layered polo, khaki shorts and stylishly messy hair, he looked like a twelve-year-old prep school student facing expulsion.
Dad looked at the pained expression on Steve’s face. “He looks like a man who’s lost everything. Maybe a little guilt and physical pain mixed in, but grief is the underlying emotion.” Dad pulled off the remnants of cotton and elastic and lifted a purpling ankle with blood dripping from an abrasion across the bone. The fact that it was rapidly losing its natural shape calmed my nerves.
“I need peroxide, some four by four’s, an Ace bandage and some ice.” Dad looked up at his patient. “Can you move your toes?” When the toes in front of him wiggled, he nodded. “Good, good. Now, can you move your foot up and down?” Glancing down his nose over the top of his glasses, Dad watched Steve’s foot jerk, accompanied by a painful hiss.
I stood back, folded my arms and leaned against the door jamb that had smashed Steve’s flip-flop. My legs crossed, and a smile of satisfaction spreading across my face. He deserved the pain. If not for his crimes, then for being stupid enough to wear socks with a shoe meant for bare feet.
Dad glanced at me. “Rilee. Corporal punishment is not in your nature. Make yourself useful.”
Spank.
My dad had never taken a hand to me, but every now and then, he could deliver a simple verbal punishment that’d make me wish he had. Nearing thirty, and my Dad just made me feel like an immature adolescent.
I sighed in resignation, dropped my arms with more force than was necessary and almost forgot to tiptoe through the garden of glass that sprouted in my entry way. I returned with a first aid kit meant for power tool injuries, not ankles stuck in doorways, and watched the grown man crumble on my swing. Steve bawled like a baby, maybe worse.
“I didn’t kill him, but it’s my fault he’s dead. It’s my fault he cheated on Missy. He would have never done that if I’d just let him leave when he wanted to.”
“We don’t make choices for people, Steven. They make their own.”
Dad’s voice was tender. Like when he’d consoled me about Jacob’s choice. ‘Jacob would never leave a couple up there to die. He’d do whatever it took to save them. That’s the kind of man he was.’
Steve looked up at me and I saw what my Dad had seen — the truth. He wasn’t a murderer, but I was about as low as it got for accusing him of such a horrible crime.
“I’m sorry I lied, Rilee. I just couldn’t tell Missy the truth.” He wiped his face with the crook of his arm, letting go of the pain, letting his shoulders broaden to accept the burden.
“What really happened?” I asked without any more accusation.
Steve took a deep breath before he began. “Everything happened just the way I said it did. My sister needed a picture cause she was making their cake, so we unwrapped your sculptures to text her the photo. Then I took the bride. Ryan followed me into Woody’s to get her back, but I swear he left with it, and he was madder than hell.”
That explained the painting. Steve didn’t have the actual piece in front of him, but he could certainly copy the pattern from a picture.
“I got pretty wasted after Ryan left. When I finally left the bar, I found the SUV in the lot with flat tires and the doors unlocked. I looked around and saw one of the dancers coming out of the woods. She was adjusting her clothes and she had Missy’s bride in her hands. I yelled at her to hand it over, but she said she’d earned it and unless I had a hundred dollars cash to pay her for her performance, I wasn’t getting anything.” Then she went in the back door of Woody’s.
“I thought I’d be happy if Ryan cheated on Missy. But I wasn’t. I was angry, I was sad, I felt betrayed even though I had no right to feel anything after what I’d done.” Steve ran his fingers through his hair, before looking away. “Then I heard him moving around in the brush. I began calling him a no-good cheat. He wouldn’t come out of the woods. I yelled for him to stop hiding from the truth, I knew it and Missy deserved better. He still didn’t come out. I told him he was a coward and that I was going to kick his ass all the way to her house and make him tell her.” Steve’s eyes closed. “If I’d been a better friend he wouldn’t have gone deeper into the woods to get away from me. But I was an all-around dick, and he got killed by a train because of me.”
I felt his anguish, anyone would. But what he’d started, Ryan had finished. Dad was right. Ryan had made the choice and died because of it.
“Missy doesn’t need to know.” I certainly wouldn’t want to know if Jacob was cheating on me. Cherishing what we had, was all I had left. “Keep their love intact. For her.”
“But after meeting you, Missy said she wanted the toppers. They were the last thing Ryan had done for her, and she wanted to go looking for them. I’d been so worried she’d somehow run into that stripper when we were here, I certainly don’t want her to come back.” Again his fingers worried through his hair. “She won’t stop until she has them. So I told her I’d find them.
“I went back to Woody’s — prepared to pay whatever price it took. But the bouncer wouldn’t let me in. Said I’d caused enough damage.” He looked up at my Dad who was almost done doctoring up the wounds I’d given him. “All I was trying to do was undo a little piece of what I’d done.”
“What did the bouncer look like?” I asked, knowing darn well that it had been my overprotective buddy, Tommy.
“It was the same guy, both nights. He looks like a wrestler, big guy, dark complexion. He’s got a scar in the middle of his forehead.”
Recognition lit my Dad’s face. “Is that the guy in our—”
&nb
sp; “Yeah,” I turned to Steve. “It sounds like one of the members of our carving group. He’s going to bring his girlfriend in on Tuesday. Can you wait until then?”
Steve looked skeptical. “Do you think you can get it back?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to try.” It bothered me that Tommy knew about what happened behind Woody’s that night, yet acted like he didn’t. I changed the subject to clear my head of the dark thoughts trying to invade. I’d already made that mistake once, and I didn’t want to accuse another innocent man. “Why are you painting a picture of Missy?”
“The picture Ryan emailed you to use as a guideline for the cake topper was the wall paper on his computer. It was his favorite picture of Missy. He took it the day he proposed to her. No one could capture the light in her eyes the way Ryan could. Yet, somehow you did. If I couldn’t get the toppers back, I wanted to show her what Ryan saw. What Ryan would want for her future.” His voice turned into a husky whisper. “He would never want this for her.”
This. Was I living in a world of this, or was I living in the world I was meant to? Again the question hung in the air — and suddenly my life and everything I’d believed for the last two years, nine months and twenty-four days was in doubt.
Chapter Eighteen
Sunday morning was my lazy time. The store didn’t open until noon and my murder investigation was over. Steve was innocent, at least of any crime. No doubt he would have difficulty forgiving himself for his sins, but who wouldn’t? He’d given a reasonable explanation for the missing bride, and for Ryan’s disappearance into the woods. The coroner’s report took away all the other questions, leaving me satisfied that my imagination was bigger than necessary.
I did, however, promise Steve I would talk to Tommy and find out if Brandy Kay was the stripper in question. If so, I’d do whatever it took to convince her to turn the bride over to me. And if she wanted money, Steve promised to cover the cost. Hopefully that wouldn’t happen. As a last resort, I still had the second bride in the making.
Bogart rolled over onto his back leaning all his weight against me, effectively pushing me to the very edge of the bed.
“I think your level of comfort is a little too high, dog.”
Bogart’s body turned into an eighty-pound wiggly worm, while he spoke to me in little (not so quiet) noises similar to those made by a thirsty dog. “Huuuuh-huuh.” He began to gnaw on my hand — pushing against my arm with his feet so that my hand couldn’t escape the warm slobber. And somehow that didn’t bother me. Maybe because his bites were so gentle, or maybe because it was the most loving contact I’d had in a long time, with the exceptions of my Dad’s hugs. Whatever the reason, I played with my mongrel for about fifteen minutes until he decided it was time to get up. At that point, he made his way slowly off the bed, one foot at a time. Then he shook all over, a funny-looking shimmy shake that traveled bit by bit from his head to tail. I envied the way he could compartmentalize his body’s movement.
I, on the other hand, got out of bed as one big lump on a log. My hair spiked at the crown, my flannel PJ’s were crumpled, and my entire body felt stiff for no apparent reason. My socked feet shuffled across the floor to the bathroom where I turned on the water and got in the shower.
“I’ll make it quick, I promise.”
Bogart let out a heavy sigh and laid down in the doorway. His behavior was so much like my husband’s had been, it made me smile. Granted Jacob hadn’t laid on the floor, but if he didn’t join me under the hot spray, he’d sit on the toilet and talk to me while I got ready. It had been my absolute favorite time of day. But for the past two years, nine months and twenty-five days, it had been the loneliest part of my day, until Bogart.
“We’re going to see Stone today. I owe him an apology for the way I treated him. It really was rude of me to leave him in the park. As far as I know, the poor guy may have had to walk the ten miles back to his camp.” Massaging shampoo into my hair, I began to wonder what brought Stone to Sandy. Maybe he wasn’t at his camp site any more. Maybe he’d gone back to Tom Dick and Harry Mountain. Maybe I’d never see him again.
“Would you miss Stone if he was no longer out there in the woods?” I pulled the curtain back to look at Bogart.
He didn’t verbalize any regret, but his eyes somehow seemed to droop more, his chin scrunched up into his face, and his head sunk down deeper between his legs. A broken heart personified.
“Yeah, I was afraid you’d feel that way. I’m sure he’ll be there. He told me I could find him there.”
After completing my morning routine, I did something I hadn’t done in a long time — I put a little blush on my cheeks, a touch of mascara, and swiped my lips with Just Bitten lip balm. A gift from my best friend Dara, because, ‘That shade — Desire — it’s a must with your green eyes.’ After looking at myself in the mirror, I had to agree my mouth looked good, but my hair was showing obvious signs of neglect. I definitely needed to make an appointment with Dara at her Black Diamonds Salon and Spa. And I was definitely overdue for a little girl time. Maybe she’d be up for a movie and popcorn on my couch.
I pulled my hair back in a ponytail and turned to my dog. “Let’s go, Bogart.” He was on his feet and down the stairs before I reached the bedroom door.
Dew glistened on the grass outside the house. The scent of pines filled my nose along with the clean smell of fresh mud from last night’s rain. The sun shimmered through the tree tops, burning off the fog as the water in the creek rushed past the boulders with its increased depth. My anxiety wasn’t as bad as it had been the last time I crossed the creek, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that my pulse still raced at the sight of the water crashing against the pillars of the bridge.
Bogart ran ahead of me, like he’d traveled the path on numerous occasions, bounding over fallen trees and up the rocky terrain. I made my way a little slower, making sure I made enough noise to scare off any wildlife. My Dad’s warning about the bears sat in the forefront of my thoughts, right alongside a desire to let Stone know I was coming, just in case there were any more armed booby traps I didn’t know about.
“You look nice, Rilee.” The rasp in his voice covered me with comfort — despite his sneaky tactics.
I turned to see Stone standing behind me to the left, not ten feet away. “Do you know how to make noise?” I asked, trying to sound like I was scolding him, but feeling a giddiness rising inside of me, and knowing it registered on my face as I took in his camo shorts and t-shirt. There was no hiding his prosthesis with its combat boot, but it was just as attractive to me as his other muscular calf.
“What brings you to my neck of the woods?” He knew I was coming to apologize, but he obviously wasn’t going to let me back down. So be it.
“I want to apologize for my behavior the other night. I shouldn’t have left you stranded.”
“No, that was rude, especially given my condition.”
“What con...” My eyes strayed to his leg. “Oh.”
His laugh brought Bogart out of nowhere. Racing through the trees, my dog leapt on Stone like a long lost buddy. The two wrestled each other for a few moments in a dance of balance. Each had his weaknesses, each had individual strengths. In the end, Bogart tired first of his two legged battle and sat down next to Stone. Their camaraderie was apparent — and finally seeing the depth of their relationship was like a bucket of ice cold water over my head. They’d known each other longer than I’d know either one of them. And that relationship was probably evident to everyone but me.
“What’s his name?”
Stone’s eyes bore into me, and I dared him to deny what had been in front of my face the whole time.
“Sam.”
“Sam?” I expected Butch or Rocky, or maybe even Tyson. But Sam?
“Humphrey Bogart’s most trusted companion in Casablanca — ‘Play it again, Sam.’” His impression of Bogart was pathetic to say the least. But it made me wonder.
“Because you’re Rick Stone?”
He didn’t look like a Rick.
A dimple formed on his cheek. “No, his father’s name was Bogie after Humphrey Bogart. It seemed natural for me to keep up the tradition. Kind of threw me off when you named him Bogart.”
“Why did you let me; he’s your dog?” It hurt to say it, but the sooner I accepted it, the better off I’d be.
“Sam’s used to being inside. He’s pampered and spoiled. I got him after my injury, when I didn’t spend much time outside. But now I practically live outdoors and he’s been miserable. Scared of his shadow, cold, and you’ve seen how clumsy he is. He’s not suited to live outdoors.”
I started to argue. “But...”
“You need someone to watch out for you. Sam — Bogart needs someone to take care of him. The two of you belong together.”
“I can’t take your dog.”
“You’re not taking him, I’m giving him to you, because I’m not the right parent for an overgrown baby.”
“But how can you do that to such a wonderful dog who obviously loves you?”
Stone shrugged, yet I knew this wasn’t an easy topic for him to discuss. “It’s not a matter of how can I do it, it’s a matter of how can I not do it?”
“Did the military teach you that? To do things because they’re the right thing for someone else, not yourself.”
A slow painful smile spread across Stone’s face telling me everything I needed to know. This man had seen his fair share of combat. He’d made difficult decisions that had to be made. Not because he wanted to, but because he had no choice. The rest of America got to choose — not Stone, not this soldier.
Stone knew how to change the subject fast. “Besides, who else would keep you warm at night in that big bed?”
My face crimsoned. Who, indeed. That was the question of the day. Was I moving on with my life?
Choosing the coward’s way out, I said, “I also wanted to let you know the murder case is closed. The coroner was right all along.”