Take Me Back (Paradise, Idaho Book 4)

by Rosalind James

  Vicki had been stone-faced since she’d showed up. Now, her face twitched, and after a moment, she said, “You’re right, and you’re wrong. You can say it’s part of your father’s legacy, but it was Cole’s choice. Cole’s wrong action. And I’m . . . I’m sorry.” Her throat worked hard as she swallowed, and she sobbed once, then put her hand up, trying to muffle her weakness, or to hide it.

  Cole made a protesting noise from where he sat huddled in the armchair, and Jim raised his head from where he’d been studying his clasped hands, looked at his brother, and said, “Look at that, Cole. That’s your mom. She’s crying. She has to come back into this house and be ashamed again, and this time, it’s because of what you’ve done. She thinks it’s her fault.”

  Cole’s mouth twisted, and he said, “I didn’t . . . I didn’t mean to. I didn’t . . . I’m sorry. I didn’t think—”

  “Tell her,” Jim said.

  Cole took a deep, shuddering breath and said, “Mom, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Then he was crying, too. Trying to wipe the tears away and failing. Sitting in the chair, huddled up tight, a miserable ball of fifteen-year-old guilt.

  It was ten draining minutes by the time they sorted through it all. Finally, Cole was perched on the edge of his chair, ripping a Kleenex in his hands over and over again, his eyes red, and saying to Hallie, “I told . . . I told some of my friends about the letters, after I heard Jim telling Mom you were getting them. And they said, uh . . .” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “Wouldn’t it be cool if you just left. That we should do some . . . something else, and see if you would, and then I’d get it all. So after I came home from Anthea’s last night . . .” He gulped again. “I heard from Anthea that you were gone, so we rode our bikes out here, and we saw that there weren’t lights on, and we . . . we did it. I didn’t know there’d be cameras.”

  “You didn’t do the painting, though,” Hallie said. “You were the one standing back.”

  Cole shook his head, and Jim said, “What Cole’s trying to say is that it doesn’t matter who actually did the painting. They were both here. They were both responsible. But it does matter that the other person faces up to it, too, and that you get justice for it. Who was it, Cole?”

  Cole said, “I can’t . . . I can’t tell. I can’t do that, too. I can’t get him in trouble, too.”

  “Let me guess,” Jim said, his face hard. Grim. “Mr. Invisible Hand.”

  “I can’t,” Cole said, anguished. “If I tell, so somebody else is in trouble, it’s worse. I just make it . . .” His breath was uneven. “I make it worse.”

  “I understand that,” Hallie said. She knew it was a good thing for Cole to take responsibility, but it hurt to see his pain. There had been too much pain in this house, and most of it so unnecessary. “It was the wrong thing to do. You went along with it, and you shouldn’t have. And now you know how bad it feels to do something so wrong. I’ll bet you lay awake all night thinking about it, didn’t you?” When Cole nodded miserably, she said, “That’s a good thing. That’s shame, and you need to remember how it feels, so you don’t have to feel it again. You can see how bad you made your mom feel, and your brother. Remembering that is what’s going to make you change.”

  “And you.” The words were low. Muttered. “How I made you feel. If I . . . scared you.”

  “Yes,” she said. “It did scare me. And now . . . it hurts my heart.” She was clutching at it, she realized, because it was literally true. She ached. “It hurts me so much to know how bad you’ve felt about me, that you’ve been that jealous. And I want to tell you so much, too. I want to tell you about our dad. I want to tell you not to be sorry you didn’t know him, because he wasn’t a decent person, but that’s my own bitterness, and I don’t want to focus on that. It’s not something I can figure out how to tell you in five minutes, or in a day, but I hope . . . I hope that we’ll be able to talk about it, and that I can let you know.”

  A few tears were making their way out despite all her efforts to suppress them. Jim had his arm around her again, seeming to defy anybody to say anything about it.

  “And I want to tell you,” she finally went on, swallowing the tears once again, “how glad I’d be to have a brother. I always felt alone. I knew I didn’t have anything to complain about, not compared to other people. I was rich, and my dad wanted me, and he paid attention to me, even though it was the . . . the wrong attention sometimes. But I’ve never had a whole family. And now I might, and I can’t stand to think that you . . .” She took a deep breath and tried to continue. “That you hate me. If our father were here, he’d tell me that saying something like that to you was just lying down and asking to get kicked. He always said that there were winners and losers, and if you weren’t a winner, you were a loser. But I don’t think that’s true. I know I don’t want to win if it means somebody else has to lose. I don’t ever want to win like that. If that’s what having his money means, I don’t want it. But I don’t want his money to hurt you, either. I don’t want to see it twist you until you can’t even feel shame, the same way he couldn’t. That would hurt me more than anything.”

  Cole wasn’t saying a word. He was sitting and staring at her. Jim looked at him, not taking his arm from around Hallie, and said, “And what you just heard—that’s the real invisible hand, so you know. That’s the hand that pushes you in the right way. Maybe nobody’s teaching it in high school, but it’s real.”

  “That’s the hand of good,” his mother said quietly from his other side. “Or the hand of God, if you want to look at it like that.”

  “So what do you think?” Jim asked his brother. “Feel enough like an asshole yet?”

  Cole gasped, then gave a laugh out of what seemed like sheer surprise. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah.”

  “Right,” Jim said. “Then get out there and paint Hallie’s garage while she decides whether she wants to press charges.” He stood, and when Hallie got up, too, he said to her, “Oh, no. No way. Your part of this deal, whatever else you do, is to let Cole make up for what he did, and not let him off the hook. We bought everything we needed to do it, and it’s going to come straight out of that million-dollar trust fund. Mom and I are taking Cole over to Bob Jenkins’s office tomorrow and letting Cole explain why he needs it. But my main part of it is to make sure he does that painting right. He probably won’t finish today, but that’s all right. He’ll finish tomorrow.”

  “No,” Hallie said. “If you don’t mind—I’d like to do it together. I’d like to wipe it out and let it be over.”

  “In that case,” Vicki said, “I’d like to help.”

  Hallie walked over to Cole and put her arms around him. He stiffened, but she didn’t respond to that. She kissed him on the cheek, stood back, and said, “No way I’m pressing charges against my brother. No way.” Then she went to Jim, pulled his face down, and kissed him, too, heedless of his brother and his mother, and said, “And thank you for being such a good man. Even though you take my heart and just about tear it out.”

  His arms came up to hold her like he couldn’t help it any more than she could. “Funny,” he said, “but you do exactly the same thing to me.”

  She looked at Vicki and hesitated. In the end, Vicki was the one who kissed her, then said, “This isn’t easy, but lots of things aren’t easy. We’ll do it. We’ll get there.”

  THERE AND BACK AGAIN

  They painted the garage in a few hours, with only one early interruption. When Hallie turned to run her roller through the pan and saw her uncle’s Cadillac headed slowly up the driveway.

  She set the roller down and wiped her hands on her old jeans as Dale and Faye emerged from the big black car. Cletus, who’d been lying down at the edge of the driveway, was already up, wagging his tail. He would have gone over to greet the newcomers, but Hallie said, “Sit,” and held on to his collar for good measure.

  Faye spoke first, of course. “Goodness,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting to see such a . . . family party. Wh
atever happened?” She was staring at the right-hand side of the garage, which Cole hadn’t quite finished painting over yet. A couple words were still visible.

  ITCH

  DIE

  “Yes,” Hallie said. “Vicki and Jim and Cole came over to help me after my garage got targeted last night. As you see.”

  “Hello, Faye,” Vicki said. “How are you?” Taking the high road and speaking first. There was a spot of color in each cheek, but nothing but assurance in her voice. She was wearing faded black yoga pants and an old white T-shirt that Hallie had loaned her, but she stood like a queen against Faye’s casual-perfect slacks, long sweater, and gold jewelry.

  Hallie thought, That. That’s how I want to do it.

  “Oh, I’m just fine,” Faye said. “Dale took me to lunch at Sangria Station. He spoils me, I know. I’m too lucky.” She looped her arm through her husband’s. “Have you been there?”

  “No,” Vicki said. “Not yet.”

  “Well, it’s a little pricey, isn’t it, unless you can get somebody else to pay for it?” Faye’s smile was sweet as sugar.

  Dale said, “Hi, Vicki. Good to see you. Jim. Cole. But what exactly happened out here? Something to do with those letters you were getting, Hallie?” He looked at the scrawled black writing. “Is that what it said? That you’d die? Terrible.”

  “It did,” she said. “And you’re right, it was pretty upsetting. And as far as the letters—I don’t know for sure if they’re connected.” She didn’t look at Cole, but she could see from the corner of her eye that he was staring at the ground. “This was just some nastiness, I think. Mischief. I’m happy to have help to get rid of it.”

  “When did it happen?” Faye asked.

  “Last night,” Hallie said.

  “And you didn’t hear anything?” Faye said. “Goodness, I’d think that big dog would have barked or something.” She eyed Cletus without much approval. Hallie had taken her hand off his collar, because for once, Cletus wasn’t trying to go over and love everybody up.

  “I wasn’t home,” Hallie said. “I was at Sangria Station myself last night, in fact.”

  “Really,” Faye said. “What a coincidence. All by yourself? Or are you seeing somebody?” Her eyes went, reliably as clockwork, to Jim.

  “I went by myself,” Hallie said. “Decided I needed a night out. Tired of my own company, I suppose, not to mention my own cooking. But I ran into Jim and talked to him for a little while.” She was going to put it out there before Faye could find it out. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along. She channeled Vicki, who was still standing there, calm and straight. “I’m afraid I drank too much of their mulled wine and had to go sleep it off, though, so I missed the excitement of catching them in the act. Did you try that wine today?”

  “No, we sure didn’t,” Dale said. “Give me a Budweiser any day. Guess I’m old-fashioned. These days, seems like all kinds of things are old-fashioned. Regular beer, regular coffee. Minding your parents and your teachers, and being married to one person instead of fooling around.” He looked at the lettering again. “Well, we won’t keep you from your job. I sure hate to see that. Probably just kids, though.”

  “Probably,” Hallie said. “Which is actually a better thought. When an adult does hateful things, it seems more malicious, doesn’t it? Teenagers don’t have much impulse control. Adults, though—they have to go out of their way to be hurtful.”

  Dale nodded. “That’s true. Well, like I said, we won’t keep you. Just stopped by to check how you were. Good to see you, Vicki.”

  When Dale had turned the big car and they were headed down the driveway again, Hallie said, “Well, that was fun,” and picked up her roller again.

  “You did good,” Vicki said. “Stood right up to that and gave it back like a lady.” Hallie felt more than shaky, but Vicki still looked cool. But then, she’d probably had a lifetime of hearing that kind of thing.

  Now, Vicki drew her brush along the groove between two panels and said to Cole, “Paint out those words. I don’t want to see them anymore. I don’t like hate.”

  Hallie had her second dinner party at her house that evening. Pizza again.

  They ate it in the dining room, site of so many awkward family meals featuring Hallie’s father grilling her about school, ranting about politicians who wanted to give away hardworking people’s money, about welfare cheats, and people who had too many children, and immigrants who prayed to the wrong God. And cutting her to miserable shreds if she dared to argue with any of it.

  Tonight, it was different. The pizza was in a box on the middle of the table, she’d opened a bottle of red wine, and they were all tired and paint splattered, but the garage door was white again, and things were better.

  Everything was going well except for Cletus, who’d started out in his designated spot on the living-room carpet, but was inching forward as Hallie watched.

  “Cletus,” she said. “Bed.”

  He wagged his tail like an innocent dog who didn’t know what she was talking about, and Cole turned to look at him and said, “He’s still lying down, though.”

  “Yeah,” she said, “about five feet from where he started. He does this snake thing.” Even as she said it, Cletus wriggled his hips and slid a little closer to Cole. “That,” Hallie said. “Like he’s sneaky and I won’t notice. Bed,” she said more forcefully, staring Cletus down until he hauled himself up, walked away like a dog carrying a heavy burden, and plopped down with a sigh next to the couch.

  “He sure likes people,” Cole said.

  “He sure likes pizza,” Hallie said. “He was living with two little kids before, and I’m pretty sure they snuck him every single thing they didn’t want to eat, and he cleaned it up for them. He was Eileen Hendricks’s dog,” she told Vicki. “My dad’s cleaner.”

  “How’s she doing?” Vicki asked. “I heard you gave her Henry’s truck. I have to say . . .” She smiled, a secret, satisfied thing, and took a sip of her wine. “That made me feel good to hear.”

  “It made me feel good to do,” Hallie said. “Even better than getting rid of the bear.”

  “He had a bear?” Cole asked.

  “Stuffed,” Hallie said.

  “Trophy,” Jim explained. “Mounted on its hind legs in the entryway. Big sucker. Had a snarl you wouldn’t believe. Claws. The works.”

  “Wicked,” Cole said.

  “Well,” Hallie said, “not so much. Although maybe if I’d stuck it in the driveway, we might’ve spared ourselves some work today.”

  Cole grinned. “You mean, like, the lights would’ve come on, and we would’ve run? Oh, man. Tom w—”

  He cut himself off, and Jim said, “Oh, yeah? Ingeborg scared of bears? Scared of their invisible hands, maybe?”

  “I didn’t mean to tell you,” Cole said. “Please don’t tell,” he begged Hallie, sounding much younger than fifteen, in that way teenage boys had of bouncing back and forth between childhood and adolescence. “He’ll know it was me that busted him.”

  “Nope,” Jim said. “The cameras busted him. You didn’t tell, but too bad, so sad, he got busted anyway. Unless you’re in Hollywood, don’t perform on film. Words to live by. You can tell him all about it at school tomorrow. I promise you, he’ll already have found out.”

  He’d put a damper on the mood, Jim found. Well, tough. Actions had consequences. Painting over the graffiti was all fine and good, but no matter how forgiving Hallie was, it had still happened. And if the lesson was going to sink in for Cole, the bad feelings had to last more than a day.

  After dinner, his mom walked out the door with him and Hallie. Cole was already in the truck, as if he couldn’t get out fast enough, but Vicki lingered for a moment.

  “If I can suggest something . . .” Hallie said.

  “I guess you’ve earned the right to suggest,” Vicki said, but she was looking wary.

  “Well . . .” Hallie said. “When you take Cole to see Bob Jenkins tomorrow and tell him about paying for th
e paint, you might talk to him about getting the money for some counseling for Cole, too. This was so much to have dumped on him. The money—that’s a huge complication, and it’s going to keep on being one. I know how hard it’s been for me to deal with everything it’s brought up, and he’s only fifteen. I can get you some names from people at the school, if you like.” She paused another minute, then went on. “Doing what he did, something so reckless and out of character—as a teacher, I’d call that acting out. I’d call it a cry for help. If you get him talking, get him working out a way to deal with those feelings, though, today could be the best thing that could have happened.”

  Vicki nodded thoughtfully. “I guess I get that. I wouldn’t have thought of it. Counseling hasn’t come much my way. More like a sharp slap across the face and a twist of my ear. Which is probably why I ran away from home and got pregnant, so I’m willing to believe there’s a better way.”

  “I could see if I could find a therapist who’s a younger man, maybe,” Hallie said. “One who’s cool. Somebody who can gain his trust, who he can open up to, who’ll understand how confused he is.”

  “Not like me, you mean,” Jim said.

  Aw, damn. He’d known he’d done it wrong. It was so hard not to react like a cop.

  “It’s hard for you to separate,” Hallie said. “I’m guessing you were too much like him. That’s why he frustrates you.”

  Jim couldn’t help smiling. “You’re a witch, you know that?” When she looked startled, he said, “You see too much.”

  “I’m a high school teacher. It’s my job.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s my job, too. And you still see more. Or you see differently.”

  Vicki said, “Probably true.” She gave Hallie a quick, strong hug and said, “I’ll give it a try. Good idea. Thank you for today.”

  “Thank you,” Hallie said, hugging her back.