by Erin Wright
“I told her no, that I was going to go to bed. Told her to take Sierra, our daughter, and go to the store to get the damn milk, that I was too tired to watch her while my wife was gone. She was angry with me, and they left together. I never saw them again.” His voice cracked completely, and he had to stop for a minute, until he could gather his composure. “I was asleep when the knock on the door happened. On their way back from Franklin, a drunk driver hit them head-on. I drove to the scene and I wanted to see them. I wanted to tell them how sorry I was, and how much I loved them.” His voice cracked again and his jaw trembled as he tried to gain control. Abby wanted to run to his side, slip her hand in his and tell him that it was going to be okay, but would it? They would never come back.
How could it be okay?
“The first responders were working on them, trying to resuscitate them, and I came running up in the middle of it. I shouldn’t have because I was just getting in the way, but that night…I wasn’t thinking clearly. The sheriff grabbed me and pulled me away, telling me I had to leave them alone and I took a swing at him.”
“He knocked me on my ass and damn near broke my jaw!” the sheriff broke in, anger pouring out of him. “I ended up having to—”
“Enough!” the judge roared. “If you interrupt these proceedings one more time, Sheriff Connelly, I’ll have you arrested for contempt of court! You may sit down.” He glared at her father over the half-moon of his glasses, the “request” no request at all, but a direct order.
Her father sank down beside her on the bench, muttering under his breath. Abby tried hard to block his words out. Whatever he was saying, she wasn’t going to agree with him on it, so it was best if she just ignored him. He’d calm down…eventually.
“You may continue,” the judge said to Wyatt.
Wyatt nodded and said, “He’s right. I did knock him backwards. I didn’t meant to, but I was wild with grief and not paying much attention to what I was doing. I was simply trying to get to my babies.” He shrugged. “I was arrested for assaulting an officer but the prosecuting attorney in Long Valley County refused to press charges against me. My wife and daughter died that night, on the side of the road. I guess the prosecutor figured I’d been punished enough.”
“What happened on the evening of November 13th, outside of Mr. Petrol’s convenience store?” the judge asked.
“It was my wife’s brother. He and I had never been best buddies, but after my wife and daughter died, he decided to blame me for their deaths. I’m not entirely sure he’s wrong, because I made them drive to Franklin when I should’ve been the one to do it.” He swallowed hard and the lump in Abby’s throat only grew. Surely, after all this time, he didn’t still blame himself for his wife and daughter’s death. Surely he realized that accidents happen, and it was the fault of the drunk driver.
It was the second wreck the driver had caused while being intoxicated, and he was driving without a license when it happened. The drunk driver was the kind of person who should be locked up, the key just thrown away.
Not Wyatt. He was rough and spiky and testy, sure, but he was also loving and loyal and a damn hard worker.
He continued, interrupting her wandering thoughts. “When he pulled up that night at the convenience store, I thought he was going to take out the plate glass windows. He skidded in much too fast and only just stopped in time.”
“Did you know who it was when he pulled in?” the judge asked.
“Yes, Your Honor. He drives an orange camo Jeep. There are only so many of those in the Long Valley area.” He gave a little smile at that.
The judge nodded. “Go on.”
“Well, he came in and bought a 24-pack of Bud Light. The clerk let him because his probation was almost up, and he didn’t want to piss off the judge’s son. I believe Dick knew that, and took full advantage of the situation. I went outside to tell him to not drive drunk, when he called me ‘Killer.’”
The whole courtroom gasped, even her father. Abby felt like someone had punched her in the gut. Holy cow. Richard was lucky he was still alive. Somehow, in all of the rumors that had swirled around about the altercation that night, no one had mentioned that part.
“That’s when I pulled him out of the Jeep and started swinging.”
The judge nodded slowly, thoughtfully. “Am I to understand that you’ve been undergoing counseling since this happened?”
“Yes, Your Honor. I’ve been seeing a counselor twice a week. She comes to the jail and we talk.”
“Well son, you need to realize that you can’t keep punching your way through life.” Her father harrumphed next to her, pleased to hear that the judge was finally seeing reason. “However, you’ve also served much more of a jail sentence than you ever should have, under the circumstances, something our fine prosecutor here seems to have realized.”
The prosecutor jerked his head up, surprised to have been brought into the conversation. Abby hid her smile. The man had promptly stopped paying any attention to the proceedings, as soon as the judge asked Wyatt to stand, and had instead been shuffling through papers and making notes. She was pretty sure that the paperwork in front of the man had nothing to do with Wyatt. In the largest county in the state of Idaho, she was sure that a brawl outside of a convenience store ranked just above “jaywalker” on his list of things to worry about, and it showed.
“Yes, I agree,” the prosecutor said, jumping to his feet. The judge waved him away and the man gratefully sat back down and got back to work. Her father’s harrumphs promptly turned…less genial and if they hadn’t been in the courtroom, she was sure he would’ve given the lawyer a piece of his mind.
“I hereby sentence you to three counseling appointments per week for three weeks, and 75 hours of community service. Perhaps you can learn to start solving your problems with something else other than your fists.”
“Yes, Your Honor,” Wyatt said.
“Now, we need to discuss the terms of your community service. You’ll need to drive here to Boise so you can check in with our probation officers – how far of a drive is it from Sawyer?”
“It’s 90 minutes, Your Honor,” his lawyer said. “Through a narrow canyon.”
The judge’s eyebrows drew together. “Certainly not ideal during the wintertime,” he mumbled. “Unless we can find someone local to handle your probation, however, I don’t see a way around it—”
“I’ll do it!”
The words were flying out of Abby’s mouth before she could stop them. She found herself on her feet, grasping onto the bench in front of her. The judge shot her a puzzled look. “And who are you?” he asked, not unkindly.
“Officer Abby Connelly from Long Valley County,” she said.
“Is this your father?” he asked, jerking his head towards the sheriff. She could practically feel the anger rolling off her father, threatening to set her on fire with the strength of it.
“Yes, Your Honor.” If he doesn’t disown me by sundown, that is.
“Well, I accept your offer. Seventy-five hours of community service, with Officer Connelly as the probation officer, and counseling sessions. Hearing dismissed!” He banged his gavel and just like that, the hearing was over. Abby was surprised by the abruptness of the dismissal, but she quickly gained her bearings and hurried over to Wyatt before her father could drag her outside by the scruff of her neck and pitch her into a snowbank.
Wyatt was discussing something in low tones with his lawyer but at her approach, he looked up and grinned, the relief writ large all over his face.
She grinned back, and the feeling of relief washed over her again. She may’ve just pissed her father off for life, but she didn’t care. She’d done the right thing, and that was all that mattered.
Chapter 15
Wyatt
When Abby came walking toward him, Wyatt couldn’t hide the giant grin threatening to split his face. When the judge had started talking about having him do his community service in Boise, his stomach had dropped to the f
loor. They’d been lucky today to have clear roads the whole way through. More than a few people died on the trip from Sawyer to Boise because of black ice, avalanches, or treacherous conditions that sent them spinning off the side of the road. Many people in Long Valley owned two or three chest freezers so they could stock up on food to minimize the needed trips to Boise during the winter. He would’ve hated having to make the trip every week for weeks on end.
But now…
Abby grinned back at him, obviously just as happy with the judge’s ruling as he was. He held out his wrists and with a huge grin, she unlocked them, pulling the metal away from his wrists and hooking the handcuffs back on her belt. They shared an unspoken victorious smile, and then they headed back out into the wintry day, the icy wind piercing his skin almost immediately, but it didn’t matter. Nothing could bother him now, not even sub-zero temperatures.
Sheriff Connelly followed along behind them, and Wyatt knew that he was in for a hell of a car ride home. The sheriff was going to be as excited about what happened in the courtroom as he would be to have his home set ablaze, but Wyatt couldn’t exactly find much pity in his soul for him.
He’d tried, once, to tell the sheriff the truth about the rumors that had swirled around town, but the sheriff had brushed him off, and quite frankly, Wyatt wasn’t the kind of person to beg for another’s time twice. If the sheriff didn’t want to listen to him, Wyatt wasn’t about to wrestle him to the ground and force him to.
They got into the car, Wyatt still in the back of course, but this time, without his hands cuffed in front of him. He stared down wonderingly at his hands. Freedom. Sure, he still had his community service to do, and yes, he still had his counseling appointments to go to, but he could take Maggie and he could go home. To his own bed.
Nothing sounded more heavenly at the moment than that.
As they followed the road back out of town and back into the hairpin turns of the canyon between Boise and Sawyer, he started to think about his community service. Sure, Abby was going to be his probation officer, but what was he going to do on his probation?
He couldn’t imagine stamping books in and out at the library, and it wasn’t like he could do a landscaping project for a local organization in the dead of winter. He could shovel snow every week for the Senior Citizen’s Center so they could get people in and out for bingo night, but as soon as he thought of it, he dismissed it. This was Long Valley. They would already have someone to shovel snow; they didn’t need him. He wanted to do something that mattered with his 75 hours.
Which was when he sat back with a huge grin on his face. Of course. Adam Whitaker. That should’ve been his first thought. Adam, or Vet Whitaker, was one of his closer friends, outside of Declan of course. If Wyatt had to choose a person to call a friend who wasn’t also a relative, Adam was it.
He’d started up a therapy camp for children with special needs and foster children. They worked with horses, learning how to saddle, bridle, brush, and love them. Adam had been smart and picked the gentlest horses this side of the Mississippi, so when one of the children got over-exuberant, the horses stood still for it all. The camp was still in its infancy, and he was sure Adam could use his help with it. Here was something that really mattered.
Wyatt settled back in his seat with a big grin on his face. He hadn’t expected to come up with a genius idea so quickly. He just had to ask Adam if he’d be willing to sign off on all of the paperwork, and he’d be set to go.
The smile faded from his face. He was going to have to ask Adam to sign off on all his paperwork. The idea was damn embarrassing. He hated admitting that he was even on probation, let alone having to ask someone like Adam to do his paperwork for him.
With an inward groan, he stared out the window at the passing pine trees. He was being an idiot. While he’d been stuck in jail all those endless weeks, he’d been able to pretend to himself that no one knew about him and what had happened. He was isolated from the Long Valley community, and considering he wasn’t exactly a socialite to begin with, he had been perfectly happy to stick his head in the sand and ignore the outside world.
But the chances of no one outside of Abby and the rest of the county employees knowing what happened that night at the convenience store was about -2.73%.
Everyone knew, and had probably been dining out on the gossip for months now.
Also, if he had to ask someone to sign off on his paperwork, why not make it Adam? At least Adam wouldn’t be sending him judgmental glances through it all, tsking about how Wyatt just couldn’t control his temper.
No, Adam would ignore it all, and just be happy for the extra set of hands. He was as low-key and drama-free as they came.
Which was exactly why they got along so well.
He was just gonna have to learn how to swallow his pride a little, and ask for some help along the way. It might kill him, but he’d do it.
The sheriff was continuing to make as many comments about Abby’s driving on the way back home as he had on the way to Boise. Watching the two of them in action, Wyatt realized that Abby had enough patience for six saints, because if he’d been nitpicked to death by a backseat driver like that, he’d have pulled over and booted the person out of the car, boss or no boss. Father or no father. He just didn’t have the patience for those kinds of shenanigans.
About the fifth time that Sheriff Connelly snapped at her for riding the brake too much, Wyatt found himself grinding his back teeth. He didn’t figure it’d do to get in a fight with an officer of the law just hours after a hearing about getting into a fight with the son of a judge, but this whole ride was surely testing his patience to the max.
He thought back to what his counselor, Rhonda, had told him. “You can’t change what others do, only your reaction to what they do.” Which was the kind of mumbo-jumbo bullshit that he hated to hear, but he still tried to figure out what she’d want him to do under the circumstances. Obviously whacking the sheriff upside the head and telling him to quit being a jackass was off the table.
So was saying anything, even politely. The sheriff wouldn’t take to being told what to do by a lowly citizen of the county.
I can change the conversation topic.
Of course. It seemed obvious once he thought about it, but in his defense, this was the first time he’d attempted something like this. He’d admit this out loud about the same time he gave up farming, but there just might be some truth to the idea that he tended to solve his problems with his fists, not his mouth.
“So what news did I miss in the Valley while I was on my vacation?” Wyatt asked through the metal grid separating him from the Connellys up front. “Anyone have a baby or get hitched over Christmas break?”
The sheriff ignored the question, clearly thinking that Wyatt had lost it for wanting to catch up on the local gossip, but Abby was game, and started listing off all of the births, divorces, and marriages of the last couple of months. As they chatted, the sheriff’s shoulders eventually loosened just a little and he even smiled and nodded a bit.
Wyatt couldn’t wait to tell Rhonda about the progress. She’d be thrilled.
They pulled into town just as the sun was setting in the west, darkness settling over the valley abnormally early, just like it did throughout the winter. Because Sawyer was set in a long valley between two parallel rows of mountains marching into the distance, the short winter days were even shorter, as the sun sank behind the tall mountains, blocking the weak light that would’ve otherwise filtered through. Long Valley had almost endless twilights because of the mountain ranges, but Wyatt wouldn’t have it any other way. These mountains told him that he was home. There was no other place in the world as beautiful, he was sure of it.
Finally pulling into a parking spot behind the courthouse, they all got out and stretched, and then shuffled inside. The sheriff disappeared into his office while Abby completed his release paperwork and Wyatt gathered his few possessions from his cell, leaving his hated striped pajamas behind. With a b
ig grin, he walked back up the cell block, Maggie by his side, tail fanning the air as they went. She couldn’t possibly know what was going on, but she could tell when he was happy, and right then, he was just about radiating happiness.
With a nod of farewell to Abby, he stepped out into the weak winter twilight, growing darker by the moment, and then stopped. He had no way home. He hadn’t thought to ask Declan to come pick him up, and after he’d been arrested at the convenience store, Declan had arranged to get his pickup back to his farm. Which was six miles outside of town, and he was in no condition to hoof it. When he’d been arrested seven weeks earlier, it’d been much warmer and he’d arrived with only a light fall jacket on his back.
Maggie, happy to be outside – truly outside – for the first time in weeks, was busy marking every tree and bush and snow pile in sight. She’d filled out since they’d first brought her to his cell; her hip bones weren’t sticking out as far, and her coat was a lot thicker and shinier. Not that she was in any shape to walk six miles in the wintry darkness either.
With a sigh, he decided to head across the street and ask to use their phone at the diner. He didn’t want to go back inside and admit to Abby that he hadn’t considered how he was going to get home; she would think him a true idiot. He’d just fake it and make it home. Somehow.
Just then, the front door of the sheriff’s office opened up and out stepped Abby. “Hey, we forgot to arrange for you to get a ride home,” she said, her breath coming out in puffs. “Let me just swing you out there myself.”
Wyatt’s shoulders immediately relaxed. He hated to admit that she was right, but on the other hand, it wasn’t exactly like he could hide it from her. He realized then that it was futile to even try. He’d been under lock and key for months now. When, exactly, was he supposed to have made a phone call without her or someone else noticing?