by Dawn Brown
He grabbed his coat off the hook and left with a quick good-bye. At last, a quiet moment.
She tidied the project she had been working on, then sat behind the counter to go over the bills.
The sky had turned dark and so had her mood by the time she tucked the folder away in the drawer. Working on payables did that to her every time. And the idea of returning to her mother’s house and seeing Paige again wasn’t helping.
She stood, stretched her aching back muscles, and walked to the front door. Outside, tiny flakes of snow fluttered gently to the sidewalk. She flipped the sign in the window to “Closed”, but didn’t bother to lock the door. With not a single customer for the better part of the afternoon, she’d relish one now. Anything to keep her from having to face her family.
She was about to turn out the lights when the bell above the door dinged. A customer, thank God.
She poked her head out from the workshop. A tall, skinny man, bald except for blond fringe circling the back of his head like a hair horseshoe, stood with his back to her, his attention focused on a painted kitchen set.
“I saw the ‘closed’ sign,” the man said, “but the lights were on and the door was open. I hope you don’t mind.”
She knew that voice. “Nate?”
He turned, a wide smile spread across his narrow face, and held his arms open. “How have you been?”
“I’m so glad to see you.” She moved in for the hug. His arms wrapped tight around her until she couldn’t breathe, then he released her.
“The place looks good,” he said, slowly walking the perimeter of the shop. “Hell of a lot better than when your father and I ran it. Must have needed a woman’s touch.”
“I don’t know how true that is.” Haley couldn’t remember the shop ever going an afternoon without a customer when her father and Nate had been in charge.
“It’s true. You always had a feel for the place. Not like Garret or that sister of yours. I knew when I sold you my share that this place was meant for you. Your father would have been so proud.”
Haley fought to ignore the hot, suffocating sensation sliding over her. “Thanks. I was so sorry to hear about Joan,” she added.
He dropped his gaze and a pang of guilt pierced her conscience. Maybe she shouldn’t have mentioned Joan. He’d only lost his wife a little more than a month ago to ALS, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or more commonly Lou Gehrig's Disease.
“It’s terrible thing watching someone you care for suffer for so long.” His voice was soft and far away. “When the end came, it was almost a blessing.”
“I wanted to come for the funeral, but with my mother…” She didn’t need to explain. Nate knew both she and Garret couldn’t be away from their mother at the same time, and Garret was his son-in-law.
“I know you did.” He took her hand in his and gave it a squeeze. “How are you holding up since Michelle was found?”
“I’m fine.”
He gave her a look that told her he clearly didn’t believe a word, but he didn’t press and she was glad.
“Claire?”
“It’s been hard on her.”
“And on you.”
She slid her hand from his grip. “This has stirred everything up again. In time, it will settle.”
“You’re probably right.” He smiled and nodded toward the door. “I should be going. I want to get to Garret and Erin’s before the grandkids are off to bed. It’s been too long since I’ve seen the girls.”
“They’re getting big,” Haley told him as she walked him to the entrance.
He stopped before leaving. “If you need anything, I’m always here for you.”
“Thanks, Nate. You’re very kind.”
He nodded and slipped outside. As she closed the door behind him, she waved. Nate had always been a good friend to her family. Family. With a sigh, Haley gathered her things, set the alarm, and locked the door behind her. Her family waited.
Chapter Three
Dean slouched in his seat and drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. When Nate Johnson emerged from Hareton Furniture Restoration, Dean’s hands stilled and he slunk down farther.
“Relax, he can’t see us,” Al said, shoving a handful of French fries into his mouth. One fell from his fingers and slipped between the seats. Dean rolled his eyes when Al made no effort to retrieve it.
Al was right, though. No one could see them tucked into the shadows with only the front bumper touching the pink circle cast by the streetlight. Still, Dean held his breath as Nate climbed into his car and pulled away from the curb, passing them only a few feet away.
Moments later, Haley stepped out of the store. His stomach jumped, and his skin grew damp as he watched her lock the door, then start walking down Main.
“Should we go in?” Al asked around a mouthful of burger.
Dean shook his head. “Not yet. Wait until she’s out of sight. Then we’ll slip around back. I don’t want to risk being seen.”
“If you’re so worried about being recognized, here’s a tip.” A shred of lettuce clung to Al’s bottom lip. “Don’t show up at the store again.”
“I waited for Haley to leave.” Dean watched as she crossed the street and disappeared around the corner.
“Billy saw you.”
“So? He doesn’t know who I am. If you hadn’t been so weird, he wouldn’t have looked twice at me. Anyway, she’s gone. Let’s go.”
He climbed out of the car and crossed the road. The cold air nipped at his cheeks and hands.
“Damn,” Al muttered, breathing into his cupped hands and rubbing them together. “Feels like thirty below out here.”
Dean nodded and followed Al down a tight walkway between Haley’s store and the used bookshop next door. The path opened into a narrow alley running behind both buildings. He tucked his hands under his armpits and shivered as Al fumbled the key into the lock. The sound of something plastic rattling inside the huge metal Dumpster set his teeth on edge. He didn’t like being there, exposed, despite the alley’s obvious emptiness.
“Got it,” Al whispered, yanking open the heavy steel door.
Dean relaxed a little as he followed Al inside. A piercing electronic beep filled the store while Al punched numbers into the alarm system on the wall, then, finally, silence.
“You are going to get me so fired,” Al said.
“If that happens, you can come work for me. I owe you one after this.” He sincerely hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
Al flipped on the fluorescents over head. Their faint hum filled the air and an eerie white light fell over the dull gray walls and bits of unfinished furniture.
Dean stood rigid, determined to ignore the goose bumps spreading over his skin. God, it was like stepping back through time. Almost nothing had changed. From the pungent odors of turpentine and wood stain, to the tools scattered over the workbenches.
“So what’s next?” Al asked.
His voice snapped Dean out of his reverie. “This will only take a minute.”
He opened the gate on the tool cage, an oversized chain link box in the back corner of the room, and worked his way past cans and jugs of chemicals. From the other side of the steel fence, Al watched him move dusty boxes of forgotten accessories and bolts of fabric from rotted wood shelves then, at last, the shelves themselves.
“I didn’t know there was something behind there,” Al said as Dean stooped to move into a small crawlspace.
Until the day he was fired, Dean hadn’t known either. That day, with Darren Carling’s hard gaze forever branded in his mind, and Carling’s tight angry words still echoing in his ears, Dean had walked into the back room, shaking and sick, his face hot with shame. He snatched his jacket from the hook next to the bench and started to set his store key down, but the thin metal slipped from his sweat-slicked fingers and bounced into the tool cage, disappearing behind the shelf.
Even now, the ping of metal on the concrete floor reverberated in his head.
Now
, the crawlspace was empty. Only a thick layer of dust on the floor and tattered cobwebs clinging to the stout ceiling remained. Gone was the green plastic garbage bag he’d found there twelve years ago with an old quilted blanket and a pair of navy coveralls inside, both dark and stiff with reddish-brown stains.
When he had shown them to Nate, the older man tried to convince him it was just a furniture tint. But Dean had never known furniture stain to smell like that. Sweet and meaty. Still, it was better to believe that than the other. Especially when he thought of those reddish brown stains splattered over the bright white stitching of the name Carling on the patch.
“So, what’s in there?” Al asked.
Dean moved back into the tool cage and started fixing the shelves in place. “Nothing.” Had he really expected otherwise after more than a decade?
Finding them would have made life easier. A smoking gun. Everything he’d gathered on his own may be compelling, but it was all still circumstantial. It might be enough. There was the house, after all. Why had Carling held onto it for so long? Fear of Michelle being found?
“What were you looking for?” Al asked.
“Something I forgot before I left.”
Dean wished he had paid more attention when he took the boxes from the shelves. Hopefully, it had been so long since Haley had been in there she wouldn’t notice if something had been moved.
“So, I guess that’s it, huh? Now you’ll just go home.”
“Not yet.” He had other avenues still to explore.
There were two cars in the driveway when Haley got to her mother’s, both blocking her old rust bucket in the garage. She recognized Garret’s green SUV. The convertible Mustang could only be Paige’s.
With a deep breath, she squared her shoulders and went inside.
“I can’t believe you didn’t make dinner,” Garret was saying as Haley entered the house.
Paige leaned over the sink with a cigarette in her hand and blew smoke out the window. “I’m not her maid and cook.”
“If she’s drinking like that she needs to eat something.” Garret crossed the room and flung the fridge door open. It banged hard off the cupboard next to it.
Haley leaned against the doorframe between the kitchen and the hall. Both Garret and Paige were far too absorbed in their argument to notice her. There was something disconcerting about watching them fall back into the older brother and bratty sister roles after so many years. She half expected Michelle to bounce into the room.
“I asked her if she wanted something to eat, she said no.” Paige turned on the faucet and ran cold water over the cigarette’s glowing tip. It went out with a sharp hiss.
Garret cracked an egg into the glass bowl on the counter. “Well, of course she’ll say no. You have to fix something and then make sure she eats it. Haley knows this.”
“Good for Haley.” Paige closed the window. “When the hell does she get home anyway?”
“Right now,” Haley said. They both whirled to face her.
“I just saw your father-in-law at the store,” she told Garret. “He’s on his way to your house.”
“Oh, great. Nate’s back in town.” Paige rolled her eyes.
Haley ignored her. “Anyway, I’m not staying. I just came to get my things. I need you to move your cars so I can get mine out of the garage.”
“What do you mean you’re not staying?” Paige asked with something akin to panic in her voice. Dark pleasure welled inside Haley.
“I’m going home tonight.”
“Who’ll take care of Mom?”
“You’re here, you can do it.”
“Oh, I see.” Paige rested her hands on her hips. “You’re mad, and this is how you’re going to punish me.”
The hair on the back of Haley’s neck bristled as she clamped down on the urge to punch her sister in the mouth.
“If taking care of Mom is a punishment,” she said through gritted teeth, “I’ve been serving a life sentence. So, aside from being born last, what the hell did I do to deserve it?”
Haley didn’t wait for a reply. She turned on her heel and stormed up the stairs. Her mother was nowhere in sight.
Fury pounded at her temples as she went into her bedroom, slammed the door and fell back against it. Where had the anger come from? Her fingers trembled as she raked them through her hair. She breathed deeply in an effort to pull herself together before she dealt with her sister again.
“I suppose I walked right into that,” Paige said, shaking another cigarette from the package. After having quit nearly a year and a half ago, her lungs burned and her mouth tasted like day-old gym socks, but since her mother’s little explosion earlier, she needed something.
She slid the window over the sink open again, while Garret searched for something in the cupboard. He stopped long enough to give her a disapproving glare as she lit up.
“Where is the goddamned vanilla?” he muttered, resuming his search.
“Perhaps Mommy Dearest drank it on a dry day,” Paige suggested, exhaling through the screen into the cold night.
Garrett didn’t reply as he put a frying pan on the stove.
“I can’t believe she’s still mad. It’s been four years,” Paige said.
Garret slopped a spoonful of margarine into the pan. “You kissed her fiancé.”
“He kissed me.”
“You kissed him back.”
“Well, I didn’t want to be rude.” Paige shrugged. “I actually did her a favor. He didn’t love her. She shouldn’t marry a man who doesn’t love her.”
Garret rolled his eyes. “This talent you have for rationalizing everything you do never ceases to amaze me. Even when you know you were wrong, you can still find a way to twist it around.” He slapped the egg-soaked bread into the pan.
“You’re no better than me. You live two blocks away, but how often do you help look after Mom? Once a week? Once a month? Ever? Yet you smugly lecture me about rationalizations when you go home every night and hide behind your family.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Paige shivered next to the open window while Garret turned back to the French toast frying in the pan. He always took Haley’s side.
After running the tip of her cigarette under water and tossing the butt in the garbage, she closed the window and sat down at the table.
“Where’s Mom?” Garret asked, setting the French toast on a plate. Paige looked up and realized he wasn’t speaking to her. Haley again stood quietly in the doorway. How long had she been there? How much had she heard? Heat stole into Paige’s cheeks.
“She’s in the shrine,” Haley said. “I need you to move your car.”
Garret walked past her toward the stairs. “In a minute.”
Haley flopped down in the chair at the opposite end of the table, still wearing her coat, her bag at her feet, and stared in stony silence at the window.
“How’s the store?” Paige asked. Sitting without speaking like two angry children was ridiculous.
Haley turned and glared. “Fine.”
“Good. This was always a busy time of year.”
“Give it a rest, Paige. You’ve never been interested before, so don’t pretend to be now.”
Why couldn’t the floor just open up and swallow her? Anything to escape this place.
“We have to talk,” Garret said when he returned.
“Move your car,” Haley repeated. “I’m tired, and I want to go home.”
He plopped more egg-soaked bread into the pan. “You can’t leave yet. There are things we need to discuss.”
“Such as?” Haley ground out.
“Mom wants a funeral.” He didn’t look at either of them when he spoke. Instead, he kept his gaze fixed on the bread sizzling in the pan.
“So, we give her a funeral. What’s the big deal?” Paige shrugged. Her fingers itched for another cigarette.
“What would we bury?” Garret asked as though she were the stupidest person alive.
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br /> “When will they be releasing the body?”
“After a trial. And, funny, I don’t see that happening anytime soon.” Garret set a tub of margarine and plastic syrup bottle in the center of the table.
“Did they tell you how she died?” Haley asked.
“Marks on the bones suggest her throat had been cut, but with only skeletal remains the investigators can’t be sure.”
“This is morbid.” Paige realized she was holding her neck and forced her hand down to the tabletop as Garret set a plate of French toast in front of her. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
He set a second one in front of Haley. She pushed it away.
Garret finally sat down with his own plate, and seemed not to notice that neither of his sisters touched the food in front of them.
“Maybe we could have a memorial or something,” Haley suggested.
Garret nodded. “That’s what Mom’s going to want.”
“Or,” Paige said, “we could just tell Mom no. Make her deal with reality, whether she likes it or not.”
Haley snorted. “That’s a great idea. And since you’re not here to deal with the aftermath, what do you care?”
“Just because I’m not willing to waste my life playing nursemaid to her doesn’t mean I don’t care. She acts the way she does because you and Garret let her.”
“Oh my God, Paige, you’re so wise. How do we get by without your sage advice in our everyday lives?” The thick sarcasm in Haley’s voice scraped against Paige’s nerves.
“You are such a martyr.”
“Shut up, both of you,” Garret exploded. “Could we get through one conversation without the two of you going at it? Let’s just get this done. There will be a memorial service.”
“Fine,” Haley said. “Who’s going to make the arrangements?”
Paige turned to her, as did Garret.
“Forget it,” she told them. “I did Dad’s funeral. You two can work it out on your own.”
Garret turned to Paige. “I’ll call you tomorrow and we can figure out what to do then.” He glanced at his watch.