The Best Revenge

by Justine Davis

It’s such a pity, Al is such a wonderful man.

  I always thought she just was a bit slow, but apparently it’s much worse.

  It’s so honorable of him, to stay with her, take care of her. And with that boy of his always in trouble to worry about, too.

  Did you hear? She actually killed herself.

  Stupid.

  Crazy.

  Unstable.

  She hadn’t been aware of sitting down, yet she apparently had, on top of the shortest stack of feed sacks. So many of those whispered statements had been preceded by the words Everybody knows…. But had anyone really known? Or had those rumors been as unfounded as the ones about Adam?

  “My God,” she whispered. “He did it to her, didn’t he? He destroyed her by innuendo and rumor. Just as he tried to do—”

  She cut herself off before the words with you escaped.

  She looked up at him, towering over her. He was staring down at her, an intensely focused expression on his usually unreadable face. His jaw was tight—she could see the tension beneath the scar. “You remember.”

  The words came out sounding compressed, as if he’d tried to hold them back but failed. She couldn’t imagine him failing at much, so she picked her answering words carefully.

  “Yes. I was young, but…yes. I remember the whispers, the way people talking about her always stopped when there were kids around, the way they looked at her the few times she ventured out.”

  “Prisoner.”

  The word jabbed at her painfully, and she lowered her gaze. “I see that now. Then, everyone thought it was her choice, and that it was safer that way since she was…”

  Her voice trailed off, pain and regret making it impossible to go on. She’d only been a small child when Marlene Alden had committed suicide, yet now she still felt as if she should have done something.

  Just as she felt she should have done something for the son she’d left behind.

  “Crazy,” he said, finally completing her unfinished sentence. She looked up at him then. The impassive expression was back, as if those moments of intensity, of emotion, had never happened.

  “Yes,” she said, seeing no point in denying what he obviously knew.

  “Next step,” he said.

  She wasn’t quite able to make that verbal leap. Was he talking about their next step, or Alden’s? And then it hit her.

  “You mean…his next step will be to try to convince people I’m crazy?”

  “True to form.”

  She sighed. “You know, if he can convince enough people in this town of that, then I’m not sure I want to be their mayor.”

  “Stop him,” he said.

  “I won’t play the game his way,” she said warningly as she stood up and dusted off her hands. “I won’t be part of bringing that kind of dirty politics to Cedar.”

  “I’ll play it.”

  “I don’t know if—”

  She broke off suddenly as Maui rounded the corner of the barn, apparently released today from moral-support duty for her mother. The dog came to a halt, staring at the man beside her. She opened her mouth to tell him it was all right, usually a requirement before the big dog would accept any stranger too close to her. But before she could begin the introductions, the golden plume of a tail began to wag. An almost joyous bark escaped. And amazingly, the dog loped the last few feet between them and skidded to a halt at St. John’s feet. Then he plopped down in a perfect sit and looked expectantly upward, tongue lolling happily.

  The man stared down at the dog. Jessa never looked at Maui, her gaze was fastened on St. John’s face. Maui waited. St. John stared. Jessa watched, intently, even though she wasn’t even sure what she was looking for.

  Until she saw it.

  He smiled.

  It was the barest, faintest curving of his mouth, and it lasted only a moment, but as he looked at the dog who was the grandson of the dog he’d once called the best kind of friend in the world, he smiled. And in that instant she glimpsed the boy he’d been.

  He’d been her secret heartache, the cause of so many hours of anguish, for reasons that were far too adult. But her heart leaped at the sight just the same; there was still a trace of the boy he’d been, there was still some bit of the softer emotions left in him.

  And when he reached out to lay a hand on Maui’s noble head, she nearly cried.

  “It’s like he knows you,” she whispered. “He’s usually more cautious of strange men around me.”

  “Good,” St. John said, sounding gruff enough that she knew he was just ignoring her first words, not that he hadn’t heard them. But the dog’s reaction had her wondering about things like genetic memory.

  Then the dog was on his feet, eyes alight and tail up alertly as he stared toward the street. They turned as one to look, and saw a dark-haired boy peering almost furtively around the corner of the barn, watching the dog avidly.

  Jessa’s breath caught when she recognized the child. “It’s okay, you can come pet him,” she said softly, just loud enough for the boy to hear.

  For a moment a smile flashed across the boy’s face, much as it had across St. John’s moments ago, and he took a tentative step forward.

  “Tyler, get back here! This instant!”

  The woman’s shout from up the street made the boy’s head snap around, and Maui barked sharply. But the boy didn’t move, and looked back longingly at the dog.

  “Don’t make me tell your father!”

  The boy went very still. Every muscle in his wiry body seemed to go tense. “He’s not my father.”

  The words were muttered under his breath, barely loud enough for them to hear, and certainly not enough for the woman hustling toward them to hear.

  The boy glanced in the direction the angry words had come from, then, for the first time, looked at them.

  “I hope you beat him,” he said to Jessa.

  Then he turned and ran.

  Jessa stared after him, her emotions a roiling tangle of old and new. She risked a glance at St. John. Realized by his murderous expression that he knew exactly who the boy was. And knew that he had heard the fear beneath the boy’s words, a fear that had been echoed in the voice of the woman calling for him.

  “I won’t just beat him,” St. John said, startling her with the fully formed sentence and almost frightening her with the savageness in his voice.

  She opened her mouth to speak, but stopped when she realized she’d been about to call him by his birth name. Because it was the boy Albert Alden had brutalized who was speaking now, she knew. And when he added four words, she knew he meant them as ferociously as if the abuse he’d endured had occurred yesterday.

  “I will destroy him.”

  Chapter 10

  St. John saw the knot of a half-dozen people gathered in front of the drugstore a few doors down from Hill’s. Taller than most of them, Albert Alden stood out. He was shaking hands, smiling widely, nodding, clapping the men on the shoulder, patting the women’s hands.

  He realized with a jolt that he had taken several steps toward the group. He stopped. Then, recklessly, he began to walk toward them again, his gaze fastened on the target. A couple of the people broke off and left, then a third waved a cheerful goodbye as he came to a halt barely six feet away. Out of reach, but still as close as he’d come since he’d gotten here.

  He watched the polished, practiced moves, the facade of down-to-earth genuineness, all the while fighting the memories that face stirred in him. That face, looming over him, haunting him, until he’d learned about the walls and built a solid, impenetrable cell in his mind for this man and all he stood for.

  At least, he’d thought it impenetrable. Until he’d come back here.

  Albert Alden looked up sharply, as if, like any predator, he’d sensed a threat. His gaze locked on St. John. He studied him for a moment and then, probably because he knew St. John wasn’t a resident of Cedar and therefore of no use to him, went back to his glad-handing of potential voters.

  St. Joh
n turned away, satisfied. He’d been—unaware—holding his breath as he looked his father straight in the eye for the first time. He released that breath now, knowing there hadn’t been the faintest flicker of recognition in the shrewd, assessing gaze.

  But there would be. Someday. Soon. He would allow himself that before this was over.

  He’d earned it.

  “And most of this town thinks he’s so damned noble, adopting Tyler.” Jessa tossed her pen down on the desk in a movement that seemed as disgusted as her tone. “When I think of what that boy must be going through…”

  Her voice trailed away. St. John halted his pacing of her small office, wanting more than anything not to talk about this, but knowing it was going to happen anyway.

  “Hasn’t started yet.”

  Jessa looked up at him. “But I’ve seen bruises.”

  St. John shrugged. “Beatings, yes. But the other…not yet.”

  She stared at him for a long, silent moment. “How can you be so sure?”

  He had the odd feeling she had asked, not because she doubted his assessment, but because she wanted him to admit how he knew.

  And that he would never do.

  “Too much fight left in him.” He turned away to continue his pacing, telling himself he simply needed the movement, not that he couldn’t bear seeing the look in her eyes a moment longer. Not that it helped; the next words broke through despite his efforts to squelch them. “Still time.”

  “Time?”

  “Take him down before it does.”

  She studied him for a long moment before she said, “You meant what you said after we saw Tyler. You want to destroy him.”

  She said it calmly, without surprise or dismay.

  “Yes.” He gave her a sideways look. “Problem?” “No.”

  He hadn’t expected her to take it so calmly. But then, she didn’t know what he meant by destroy, probably thought he meant it figuratively, when in fact he meant it quite literally. When he finished, there would be nothing left of that particular piece of human scum.

  But at the least he’d expected some annoyance that he hadn’t come here to help her win, but to make sure Alden lost. Of course, when he’d come here, he hadn’t known she was the bastard’s opponent.

  “I’ve always known this was about him for you.”

  Her quiet words shocked him out of his thoughts. It was as if she’d read his mind, had somehow followed those thoughts. His gaze shot to her face.

  But then, Jessa had always been able to do that before, and his cryptic speech pattern didn’t seem to hinder her much now. “Mind?”

  “Not if you can do what you say. For me, it’s never been about winning this, it’s been about stopping him.”

  “I can.”

  Again she studied him. And again he caught himself wondering if somehow, some way, she was able to see past the physical changes that made him unrecognizable as the boy who had fled this town all those years ago.

  “I believe you,” she said at last.

  For an instant, a brief flash of time, she was that child again, and he was that scared, aching, confused kid, clinging to the one person in his life who had ever said that to him when it mattered. The one person in Cedar who had believed him over his father’s accusations.

  The person who had followed that fervent declaration with one even more burning, adding one tiny word that made him feel like doing what he’d refused to do in the face of his father’s brutality. Cry. “I believe in you.”

  She’d said it fiercely, passionately, and he’d known she meant it with all the strength of her gentle heart and bright, quick mind.

  An urge nearly swamped him, the urge to tell her everything, what he’d done, what he’d become, who he was now. To show her she’d been right to believe in him, to believe he could find a way out, make a life for himself.

  A rapping on the outer door reminded Jessa that she hadn’t yet unlocked it for business. She moved quickly, letting in a red-haired man in worn denim pants and shirt.

  “Hello, Doc. I’ve got your order ready in back.”

  “Thanks, Jessa. I knew you would.”

  “I had to change suppliers, that’s why the delay.”

  The vet lifted his grubby baseball cap, smoothed a hand over what was left of his hair and settled the cap back down before he answered.

  “It’s all right, we got by.”

  “Thanks, Doc.”

  “I haven’t forgotten how your father carried us through that rough patch back in the day. I’m not about to shift my loyalty now, no matter what Bracken’s does.”

  St. John watched as she processed the sale of what was apparently some special kind of salt block. Another customer arrived before she finished, a woman in a pair of stained coveralls that somehow managed to look stylish on her thin frame. She gave St. John a curious glance, but said nothing.

  Jessa greeted the woman by name, and the two customers nodded at each other and chatted briefly about their respective families as Jessa finished. Small town, he thought. Everybody knew everything about everyone.

  Except the dark side of the man who would be mayor.

  The man left, and the woman stepped forward. “I know you’re not a garden shop, honey, but those berry plants you special ordered for me last year have done so well, I’d like more for next spring. Thirty, I think. You said you’d have to order early for that many.”

  “Of course. Anything to keep my supply of Margie’s jams and jellies coming,” Jessa said with a smile that made the woman laugh.

  “That’s why I come here,” the woman said with a laugh. “Those folks over in River Mill, they don’t even remember my name, let alone what I do.”

  “If they ever tasted what comes out of your kitchen, they would,” Jessa said.

  The woman gave a pleased laugh. “See? Why would I drive all the way there when I can get such lovely compliments right here at home?”

  The woman gave St. John another sideways glance as Jessa made notes on an order form. When she finished, she tore off a copy and handed it to the woman.

  “I’ll call them right away and reserve them,” she said. “And I’ll let you know as soon as I find out when they’ll be shipped.”

  “Thanks, Jessa,” the woman said. “Give my best to your mom. You’re both on my mind every day.”

  “I will. And thank you. It means a lot.”

  The woman turned to go, gave St. John one last glance, then looked back at Jessa.

  “Sweet. Hope he’s more than a customer, honey,” she said with a conspiratorial wink. Then she flashed a grin at St. John, a grin that lit up her rather plain face.

  The teasing caught him off guard, and he pretended to be fascinated by the display of birdhouses. But not before he’d noticed that Jessa had blushed. Furiously.

  When she had finished with her phone call—when she’d said right away, she’d meant it—she busied herself filing the order in the box beside the register.

  “Bracken’s?” he asked. “In River Mill?”

  She looked at him then. He hadn’t been sure she’d been avoiding it, but he was now, by the relief in her eyes at the change of subject from Margie’s arch comments.

  “The feed and garden store there.”

  Something in the way she said it made him want to pursue the inquiry. He waited silently as she made a note on another order and refiled it.

  When she turned to go back to her office, he realized she wasn’t going to elaborate unless he pushed. Unlike most people, Jessa didn’t seem always compelled to fill the silence, which made the technique much less effective.

  “New?” he asked as he went after her, knowing they hadn’t been around when he’d been here.

  “Not really.” She went to the desk, sat and reached for a stack of folders before continuing. “They opened about six years ago. Never been a problem for us, until they started undercutting our prices by enough to lure people to make the drive.”

  He went still. “When?”

/>   “A few weeks ago. Everybody in town started getting flyers.”

  “How bad?”

  With a grimace, she looked up from the folder she’d opened. “Bad enough.” She tapped a slender finger on the papers in the folder. “I know how much the stuff they’re selling costs, and how much it costs to get it out here. I don’t know how they do it and stay in business.”

  I’ll bet I do, he thought.

  His jaw set, he began to make plans.

  Chapter 11

  Jessa didn’t have to try to keep herself busy, didn’t have to look far for distraction. The work was always there waiting, and she never seemed to catch up. If it weren’t for her mother, and the fact that she needed to be with her as much as possible right now, she’d have spent all the evenings after they closed here in the office, trying to at least get even on the paperwork.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t want to be with her mother, she did. She was the only person in the world who truly shared her grief, who had been as devastated as she at the loss of the man who had been their rock. But this store was their livelihood, had been her family’s for decades, and she couldn’t neglect it, either.

  She thought again of that conversation with St. John about Bracken’s. His intensity had seemed odd for the subject. It wasn’t his problem, after all. But while his face had been his usual expressionless mask, his voice had betrayed a laser focus.

  Yet after that morning he’d seemingly vanished. She hadn’t thought much of it the first day, but after the second ended without a sight of him, she wondered if perhaps he’d changed his mind about this whole thing and gone as unexpectedly as he’d first appeared.

  The thought unsettled her. She had things she wanted to ask, to know, not about the election, but about the boy he’d been and how he’d become this mysterious, laconic to a fault man. Perhaps she should have told him she knew who he was the moment she’d become certain. At least then she might have gotten some answers.

  The fact that Adam Alden was not just alive, that he hadn’t merely survived, but had apparently done well enough to truly make something of himself—although she had no idea what—had been a source of constant joy, wonder and more than a little bewilderment ever since the moment in the cemetery when she’d finally realized what she should have known instantly.