* * *
Erin tapped on her father and Shelby Rae's partially open bedroom door.
"Come in."
Trouble slipped inside the master bedroom just ahead of Erin and jumped up on the tall four-poster bed where Shelby Rae was curled against a bank of pillows, reading a magazine. Trouble didn't notice that Jocko was buried in the comforter Shelby Rae had pushed to the end of the bed, and when the little dog's head popped up, Trouble went vertical at least six inches. When he came down, he stiffened his tail and stalked to a corner of the bed to settle as though it was what he meant to do all along.
Erin stifled a laugh. Jocko and Trouble were like an ill-suited comedy team.
Shelby Rae gave Trouble an irritated look, but she didn't shoo him off the bed. "When is that Tammy person coming back for the cat?"
"I'll take him out with me when I go. She'll be back in town next Monday, I think. She's going to email me if not. Are you feeling better? Is there something I can get you?"
"I'm going to get up in a few minutes. It's not like I'm one of those invalids. Lying around in bed is so boring, you know?"
Erin felt luxurious if she took a day to lie in bed and read books until the summer daylight faded. Her father encouraged her to relax while she was at home because he knew how hard she worked at school. This summer she’d only been hanging out with MacKenzie and volunteering a few afternoons at the animal rescue shelter up the road, and she felt a little guilty. She might as well have been tucked in the house reading. But then she would’ve been stuck with Shelby Rae, which was something neither of them wanted.
Shelby Rae slid her tanned legs off the bed, letting her satin nightgown drop to cover her thighs. Her hair was still a mess, but at some point she had at least gotten up to cut it so it was no longer so uneven. Sighing dramatically, she crossed her arms to pull the nightgown over her head and walked to her closet. Erin wasn't fazed by her habit of undressing in front of her. She did it in front of the housekeeper as well. In some ways Erin admired her stepmother's lack of self-consciousness.
"We—I mean, I found your earring up on the path." Erin stood by the bed, stroking Trouble's soft fur.
"Which one?"
"The white enamel butterfly. I have it right here." She took the earring out of her pocket and looked at it. Its lower right wing still had dirt on it.
Shelby Rae came out in her bra and panties, taking a sundress off a wooden hanger. As she crossed the room silently on the rich blond carpet, Erin noticed that her upper chest was getting freckled with age and sun exposure. "Let me see." She plucked the earring from Erin's palm. "Huh. Wondered where that went. I lost both of them. But they're vintage, right? Cute. Too bad." She tossed the earring into the small trashcan next to Bruce's nightstand.
"So you weren't wearing them on Sunday?" Erin was confused.
Shelby Rae shook her head. "It was a barbecue." She rolled her eyes as if Erin should know better. Stepping into the sundress, she turned around and asked Erin to zip her up. When Erin finished, Shelby Rae headed for her vanity counter in the bathroom.
She brushed her hair and covered much of it with a scarf so only a fringe was visible. "I got an emergency appointment for my hair. I'm not going to let those assholes ruin my life and my hair. It was a weird and shitty thing for them to do."
"You're going out? Already? I don't know if that's a good idea, Shelby Rae. I still think you should go to the doctor."
"It's over. I want to move on."
"But you were kidnapped! How can you just pretend everything's normal?"
Shelby Rae met Erin's eyes in the mirror. "How am I supposed to act? You weren't the one it happened to."
Erin felt chagrined. "I'm sorry. I know you said you don't want to talk about it..."
"I still don't. I'm okay, all right?"
"What did the place they took you smell like? Did you hear any noises that might identify it? Maybe a train or traffic going by. Or did it smell like you were by the lake?"
"Look, it's over. I was scared to death, and at first I thought they were going to kill me. Why would I want to remember anything about it? They didn't treat me all that badly, except for when they threw me out of the van." She smoothed cover-up and foundation over the bruise on her face as she spoke. But Erin noticed that her hand shook a little bit.
"But if it was Bryn Owens, and some man, they're still out there. They could do it again. They could try to kidnap you again. Or Dad." Erin's voice trailed off. She didn't understand why her stepmother wasn't more of a basket case, why she was even considering leaving the house after what she'd been through. Was she just dumber than Erin had ever considered? No. She's not dumb. She got my father to fall in love with her and marry her, even though they had nothing in common.
Shelby Rae turned to Erin. "Or you, right? Your father told me you were always afraid of a boogey man coming to get you in the dark. He said you had night terrors until you were seven years old and used to camp out in front of their bedroom door in the middle of the night, and he would almost trip over you in the morning. They happened again after your mother died. Are you really worried about me, or are you just scared for your own sake?"
Erin took a step back. "What are you talking about? No!" She'd put the night terrors out of her head for so long. They'd come back for six months after her mother was killed, and her father had kept a blow-up mattress on her mother's side of the bed that she could collapse onto whenever she woke and was afraid to be alone.
"Don't be embarrassed, honey. We all get scared sometimes." The tone of her voice was gentle and reminded Erin of when they'd been close, before Shelby Rae and her father were married.
Now Erin felt like she was twelve years old again, and remembered the touch of her mother's hand on her hair in a way she hadn't in many years. The day her mother was killed, Julie Berry showed up at school in the middle of the day to take her to her house in town. Erin had known something was wrong, but Julie smiled unconvincingly and said she wanted to wait for her father to come and get her. She made her a grilled cheese sandwich with the crusts cut off, the way Erin's mother always did. But Julie had used Crisco instead of butter in the pan and the sandwich came out pale and limp, without the crisp swirls of darkened butter that were on the ones her mother made. She’d been too worried to eat more than a couple of bites.
For a long, long time, she'd felt like her world ended on that afternoon. A part of her would hold onto that feeling forever.
She didn't trust Shelby Rae with that part of her. Steeling herself, she returned Shelby Rae's gaze. The impulse to push Shelby Rae a little harder was one she couldn’t ignore. She asked the question she’d been thinking about.
"Is there something you don't want anyone to find out about the kidnapping? Maybe someone in your family needed fifty thousand dollars, and you thought Dad would notice if you wrote them a check that big, so you faked it?"
Erin was so stunned by the slap that she hardly understood what Shelby Rae said next.
"Don't you dare talk about my family that way! You don't have the slightest idea what I've been through. Not that your father even cared that I was gone, either. Do you see him here in the room with me? I'm sure he's downstairs back to work. You've never liked my family because you don't think any of us are good enough for you. I'm sick of it, and I'm sick of you!"
Erin heard the last part clearly. Shelby Rae's cheeks, which had blazed with angry color, went pale as she realized what she'd done. But she didn't apologize.
"What's going on here? Erin? Shelby Rae?" Bruce Walsh stood in the middle of the bedroom, confusion etched on his face.
Unable to speak or continue looking at her father, Erin ran out of the room with Trouble on her heels. Jocko remained at the bathroom door, looking anxiously between Bruce and Shelby Rae.
Erin didn't want to try to explain what had just transpired to her father. She had a pretty good idea whose side he would be on anyway.
* * *
There was always an air of a hol
iday about the dealership when Bruce Walsh wasn't in the office because it didn’t happen very often. Noah had heard from techs who’d worked at other places that the owners didn't usually hang around much once the business took off. They came in just to show they were keeping an eye on things or to be there when a relative wanted a special deal on a vehicle. It helped that Bruce Walsh was a pretty nice guy. His people were happy to have him around, and when he was there they were conscientious about their jobs. But he'd been closeted in his office all Monday afternoon, and today he hadn't come in at all. People were starting to slack off a bit. Earl, the service manager, was in a sour mood, and Bruce Walsh was one of the few people who was good at joshing him out of it. Earl kept to himself, and no one knew where he lived or what kind of life he led when he wasn't behind the desk. But Bruce even occasionally got a half-smile out of him. Now Bruce was out, and only Noah knew why the light in the big, open office in the loft overlooking the showroom was really off.
Speaking of slacking off, he was irritated with himself for checking his phone every fifteen minutes to see if Erin had texted him back. Had he said something wrong? She was the one who had texted him before he'd been awake for ten minutes, right? Maybe he was being immodest, but usually when he asked a girl out, or they exchanged numbers, he got a lot of interest. Some of it was the wrong kind, of course. There had been that girl with the Shelby Mustang he'd met when he and Katelyn were fighting a lot the previous fall, who’d gotten his number then sent him a half dozen snaps of herself in her lacy neon-pink bra and panties. And one in which she had no bra on at all.
It had to be that photo that he forgot to delete—genuinely forgot, seriously—that Katelyn found. Katelyn had thrown the phone at him, calling him names he hadn't even known she knew.
The truth was that their relationship had been headed downhill for months. Katelyn's parents and the people at her Pentecostal church were pressuring him not so subtly about them getting married. While he was cool with their not having sex (Katelyn prized her virginity above all things, which was her privilege), the last straw came when her father took Noah aside after dinner at their house and asked when he and Katelyn were going to start talking to the pastor about premarital counseling.
Despite the row over the photo, they kept dating until right after Christmas. He sensed that Katelyn didn't want to give up, that she felt she could somehow convince him, or at least guilt him into being the guy she wanted him to be.
It wasn't that he didn't want to be married someday, but the idea of settling down at twenty-one with Katelyn, and having kids right away, before either of them knew for sure what they wanted to do with their lives, freaked him out. Katelyn came from a huge family and made no secret of wanting the same thing, and soon. That was fine for somebody else, but he wasn't sure he even wanted to have kids. The idea of being a father terrified him. His own father was a poor excuse for a human being, let alone a father.
Now his father was back, and he hadn't changed a bit.
* * *
Tuesdays were slow, and Noah was packed up and headed for his car at five minutes after five. Still no answer from Erin. Screw it. She wasn't really interested. He guessed she'd really only texted him to let her know that Shelby Rae was home and all right.
A couple of the guys were going out for a beer, but he wasn't in the mood.
"Yeah, I saw you hitting on the boss's daughter, Daly," one of them said. "You headed out for dinner at the mansion?"
The other guy laughed.
"Piss off, Duke. Like she'd even look at your sorry ass." Noah kept his tone light, knowing that if he protested too much, it would just get worse. Was I that obvious?
Duke, who was in his early thirties and had already been divorced twice, made a scoffing sound and put on his solid black sunglasses against the late afternoon sun. "Too skinny for me. I like a woman of..." He made a squeezing gesture with his open hands. "You know. Substance."
The guy who with Duke laughed but then started rattling off names of women that Duke had spent time with who could definitely be described as skinny.
Seeing his chance to escape, Noah walked over to his bike to put on his motorcycle helmet. Nearly every other guy he knew who rode a bike rode bareheaded. He knew and half-agreed with the argument against helmets— that they wouldn't keep you from getting killed, but would protect you just enough so that you ended up brain-damaged. But it was hearing Katelyn's mother, a nurse, comment every time she saw a rider without a helmet ride by that always made him think twice. "There goes another organ donor," she'd say. "I guess we should all be grateful."
As Duke and the other guy got into Duke's tricked out vintage F-150, Noah cut a wide half-circle around them and pulled out onto Main Street. Maybe he should've gone with them. Tuesday night was one of the nights he used to ride out to Paul's Dine-Away by the lake, and pick up chicken dinners for himself and his mother because she was off work. But now his father was home and things were different. He didn't really want to go home, and there was no way he was going to buy his old man's dinner.
When he got to Ash Street, where he should've turned to get to his mother's house (he wasn't yet ready to think of it as his mother and father's house, and hoped he'd never have to again) he surprised himself by continuing on out of town toward the lake.
Yes, he was stupidly transparent. Long before he reached the Walsh property, he slowed down so that when he passed he could get a good look. There was Erin's Challenger, black and sleek in the circular driveway. The afternoon was clear, the light mellow, and the azalea bushes and blooming crape myrtle trees out front made the house look welcoming. Erin was home, but she wasn't outside. What if she had been? She'd have seen him, and that could have been embarrassing. She might think he was stalking her.
He wanted to kick himself. When had he turned into a middle school girl?
* * *
Noah counted two unfamiliar trucks in the driveway and another two cars in front of his house even before he was halfway up the block. None of his father's old friends had had the nerve to come by the house to visit while he was in prison. It wasn't like they were family friends, and Noah was glad. He knew a couple of them by reputation: Scott and Billy Attwell. They'd taken over their old man's body shop north of town, and now it was known for selling as much dope as paint jobs and fenders. His father had mentioned that they'd made the trip to visit him at the prison a couple of times.
"True friends," his father had said over the spaghetti and meatballs Annette made for dinner his first night home. He'd pointedly kept his gaze on his dinner as he spoke. "You really learn who your friends are in a situation like that." Noah had only visited at holidays for the first few years, when his mother insisted. Then he'd stopped going.
As he slowed to turn the bike into the driveway, a different truck, this one a spanking new black king cab, rumbled toward him. The low sun glinted off the windshield, and he recognized the driver's reflective aviator glasses and Cincinnati Bengals ball cap. The driver put his hand out the window in more of a stopping motion than a wave.
Noah stopped the bike and put his feet down to keep it standing. "Hey, Zach. How's the new ride?" Most of the rest of the town knew Zach as Chief Deputy Zach Wilkins, the officer who had accidentally shot and killed Rita Walsh. But he'd made a friend of Noah after Jeb Daly went to prison.
"It's not the boy's fault," Zach had told both the sheriff and Noah's mother. "He needs a guiding hand to keep him from his father's path." Noah's mother had been surprised but grateful. The shame alone of her husband's attempted robbery of the bank and his role in Rita Walsh's death had nearly overwhelmed her. While she knew Noah was a good kid, she'd thought it wouldn't hurt to have someone in the sheriff's office keeping an eye on him.
Zach had often shown up at Noah's soccer games and had helped him get a counseling job at an area summer camp. He'd taken him deer hunting several times, something Noah's father had never done. It had felt weird to Noah at first—doing things with a guy who wasn't his
dad, even though he and his dad hardly did anything together—but Zach wasn't pushy, and now Noah missed the times they had hung out together. The other thing Zach did was to teach him about engines and working on cars. Zach wasn't a collector, but he liked to have a project. Noah's favorite that they worked on together had been a black 1982 Crossfire Trans-Am.
Noah was old enough to know now that there were men out there who preyed on vulnerable teenage boys, but he'd never gotten any weird or creepy vibes from Zach. He really just seemed to be a responsible, nice guy. Well, maybe nice wasn't the word. He was pretty macho, as Noah's mom would say. A man's man. Responsible, but not a sap.
"Looks like you've got a houseful. How's it going?" Zach raised his voice over the sounds of their rumbling engines.
Noah unsnapped and lifted his helmet off and shook off the sweat beading at his hairline. The guys inside the house were probably getting an eyeful, unless they were playing cards or video games already. "Hey, it's going okay. Busy at work and stuff."
"Welcome-home party?"
Noah glanced at the front of his house. There was a cooler he didn't recognize on the porch with a pair of torn up 12-pack boxes that had contained bottles of Pabst beside it. "Yeah, I was just coming home with dinner. Surprised the heck out of me."
Zach grinned, his straight white teeth gleaming beneath his dark mustache. There was something about Zach that reminded Noah of Burt Reynolds, an old movie star from the seventies that his mom was crazy about. She’d wondered aloud more than once why Zach wasn't married, he was that good-looking. There was never much gossip about him around town. Noah envied him, though, living alone the way he did on a nice spread south of town, with a big barn and plenty of land for hunting. It sounded good to him.
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