The last threads of Brendan’s tolerance stretched to breaking. Brendan flexed his hands. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
The condemnation flickered in Jimmy’s eyes, and his face wavered before turning to stone. “Let’s go.”
Brendan clenched his jaw together until it ached.
Jimmy wouldn’t see him as anything but the teenager with the sketchy past. So much for second chances.
Beth strapped her purse over her body and slammed the car door too hard. It was one thing to leave the busy restaurant when her little brother got into trouble at school. It was another thing for Brendan to call her from jail.
She fanned her face with her hands as she stormed down the sidewalk to the jail. Her cheeks were probably fuchsia by now. She hated that the flush of her skin could give away her level of emotion.
Inside the small lobby with the cement block walls, an officer looked up from his clunky computer. “Excuse me. I’m looking for …”
A metal door slammed, and Jimmy sauntered through it with his head shaking.
“Where is he?” she asked.
Jimmy cleared his throat and pointed behind her.
She turned around where Brendan sat hunched over on a metal folding chair. His elbows rested on his knees, and his head hung down. Beth gave Jimmy a weak smile. “Thanks.”
Brendan pushed himself to standing and rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Thanks a lot, Jimmy.” His voice was filled with irritation.
His attitude was worse than her teenage brother’s. Beth’s eyes widened. “Let’s go.”
Brendan fell into step behind her. “I appreciate you coming to pick me up. I need a ride back to my bike.”
Beth pushed the front door open. “This is unbelievable.”
Brendan laughed. “I know. I used to sneak video games to him when we were kids. Now he thinks he can treat me like a criminal.”
Brendan’s blasé feelings about the situation hit Beth like a train. She pointed at him. “Not him. I’m talking about you.”
Brendan’s light eyes widened. “Me? I didn’t do anything wrong. I was taking photos on Mr. Perkins’s place, not trespassing. Even Mr. Perkins took my side. He didn’t press charges even though Jimmy practically begged him to.”
Her neck and shoulders tightened. “You’ve only been here forty-eight hours, and you’re already dragging me into your trouble. You come into town, and it’s like a thunderstorm has rolled in.” And Beth had seen the messes storms could leave behind. She fumbled in her purse for her keys.
Brendan’s gaze hit the cement, and he walked around to the passenger side of her car. “Well, I couldn’t call anybody in my family. I’m trying to convince them I’ve changed.”
Heat rushed to Beth’s face. “What about me? Did you ever think I might need some convincing?”
He stared at her with his mouth open.
Beth put a hand on her hip. “Look. Jimmy shouldn’t have taken you into the station. It’s just that I don’t have time for this. I have a hundred things to do at the restaurant.” She nodded toward the car. “Let’s go.”
They both climbed in the car. His elbow brushed hers, and she pulled away from him.
He turned toward her. “I’m sorry I took you away from the restaurant. I didn’t know who else to call. I don’t have many friends left in Wyatt Bend.”
Beth shut the door and jammed her keys in the ignition. “That’s because you left them all here and never looked back.”
Brendan’s eyes widened. “What?”
“Sometimes I think you forgot how you left. How could you pick up and leave your friends and your family without even saying good-bye?”
Brendan leaned back in his seat, and silence hung between them. “I had graduated high school. All my classmates were leaving for jobs or college.”
So all these years he’d convinced himself he’d simply left home like everyone else. After the accident, everyone was still trying to figure out how to cope. He vanished, and for months Beth didn’t even know where he’d gone. “You know it wasn’t the same. You didn’t move off to college. You snuck away in the middle of the night and never came back. We were worried about you.”
He shook his head. “Have you been carrying this around since I got here?”
Beth had been carrying it around for the past fifteen years. She gripped the steering wheel of the parked car. “I thought there was something special between us. I didn’t understand how you could just leave like you did.”
His shoulders fell. “It was special, Beth.”
Beth gritted her teeth together. She’d said too much, but once she’d unlocked the vault, the words were hard to contain. “I don’t know why we’re talking about this. It was years ago. We were teenagers.” She strapped the seat belt across her and put the car into REVERSE. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
He put his hand on top of hers on the steering wheel. “Wait. Is there anything else you wanted to say?”
Beth shifted the car back to PARK. “Yes. You tried to convince me you’d be a good influence on my brother. Then you get picked up by the cops. Listen, I’m glad you feel like you’ve grown up. I am.”
Brendan didn’t look away. “But?”
Beth cleared her throat, searching for the right words to say. “We’ve all changed. Just because we didn’t leave town on some big adventure after high school doesn’t mean the rest of us aren’t different, too. We’ve had our own hardships while you were gone.”
The creases between his eyes softened. “I know you have, Beth.”
She leaned her head back on the headrest and sighed. “But you weren’t here to see any of that. Don’t pretend you’re the only one with a story.”
His upper lip twitched. “I’m sorry you had to go through all that, Beth.” Regret replaced his earlier tone of indifference. “I guess I felt like I needed to go through my problems alone. I didn’t want to drag anyone else down with me—especially you.”
When Beth had tried to talk to him after the accident, she was met with a wall and no emotions. “You never let anyone know what you were feeling. After Aaron passed away, you wouldn’t talk to me.”
At the mention of the accident, something flashed in Brendan’s eyes, and he turned away from her. “You’re right,” he said. “That was a long time ago. Let’s not talk about this anymore.”
The grief in Brendan’s eyes told her that he was still running from his past.
“You can’t keep pretending nothing happened,” Beth said.
Brendan stared straight ahead, his face blank. “I think we should go get my bike now.”
Chapter 8
The light from the lamppost guided Beth’s way as she pushed her old blue bicycle up the front steps. The bike rattled as she leaned it against the wall of the front porch. She would have driven her car if she’d known she wouldn’t be coming home until after dark. Her staff was capable, but there was always more work to be done.
She stuck her key in the front door and entered into a dark living room with only the glow of the television flickering. Beth tiptoed around the couch to see Chase sprawled out in gym shorts, a T-shirt, and short white socks. His thin legs hung off the edge of the small couch.
“Hey,” he said.
She jumped and rested her hand on her pounding heart. “I thought you were asleep. I couldn’t see if your eyes were closed.”
He sat up and clicked on the lamp on the side table. “I’m awake, but I thought you’d be home earlier.”
Beth sat on the arm of the chair across from him. “Sorry about that. If I had known I was staying until close, I would have had you come up to the restaurant.” The truth was that when she was busy, she didn’t have time to worry about Chase’s problems at school or Brendan’s reappearance into her life. She enjoyed getting lost in the work, but seeing Chase here alone made her realize how selfish that was.
Chase stretched his arms out over his head. “That’s okay. I’d rather be here with the television.”
; “Did you get any chores done today? Any schoolwork?”
His eyes wandered back to the sword fight in the movie. “Huh?”
The remote peeked out from between the couch cushions. Beth grabbed it and clicked the television off. She sat cross-legged beside him on the couch. “I’m glad you’re up because we need to talk about what happened at school this week.”
His body went limp. He fell sideways, his head landing on the arm of the couch. “Do we have to talk about it again?”
“Mrs. Lowry says we need to work on our communication. She even thinks we should go to counseling.”
He scrunched up his forehead. “That’s just one more person who will want me to talk about this stuff.”
“I know, but I think she’s right,” Beth said. “Maybe it would be good to have another person to talk to.”
Chase yawned a big, open-mouth yawn. “So if I talk to a counselor about it, does that mean I don’t have to talk about it with you?”
She rolled her eyes. “Nice try. Some things, yes, but not the fight at school. I’m going to keep bringing it up until you tell me what really happened.”
Chase sighed. “Fine. It’s just that that guy is a total jerk. He called a girl in our class some pretty bad names, and he just kept at it.”
Beth took a pillow from the corner of the couch. “And that’s why you hit him?”
He turned and looked in her eyes. “Well … yeah.”
She squeezed the pillow in her lap. “Why didn’t you tell a teacher, Mrs. Lowry, anybody?”
He rubbed the corner of his eye. “I didn’t want to embarrass the girl.”
Beth studied her brother’s eyes, and even though she didn’t condone what he did, she recognized his compassion for his classmate. “Even though I admire that you were trying to stick up for someone else, there were some much better ways you could have handled that. It’s not okay to fight at school.”
“I know that, but when he was saying all that stuff, he reminded me of that guy Mom married. Someone needed to shut him up.”
Beth bit the inside of her lip. “Thanks for telling me what happened.”
Chase shrugged, staring down at the cream carpet.
“But you know we still have to go see that counselor,” Beth said.
Chase nodded, never looking up. “I know.”
She laughed and nudged her shoulder against his. “But we’re going to be okay, right?”
He shrugged. “I guess so. I’m going to bed.”
Brendan walked into the church he attended as a kid, and the same vase of plastic flowers greeted him inside the front doors. The eerily familiar hum of the organ music and noises of the kids in the nursery down the hall filled the church vestibule. Brendan had never intended for his avoidance of church to last this long. He’d committed himself to Christ in grade school, but after the accident he didn’t feel as though he deserved God’s love.
Brendan scanned the room for his family and found Connor at the sanctuary doors with a stack of bulletins in his hands. When Connor turned toward Brendan, Connor’s eyes widened and a smile turned up the corners of his lips. Connor handed his stack of bulletins to a man standing on the other side of the doorway and met Brendan near the windows at the front of the room. “Wow. This is a surprise.”
Brendan held up his hands. “What can I say? I’m full of surprises.”
Connor slapped a hand on the back of Brendan’s dress shirt. “It’s good to see you here.”
The breath rushed out of him when Beth entered the church in a dark-blue dress. The years had only made Beth more striking. Behind her, Chase pulled at his wrinkled collar. A bandage covered most of the scrapes from his fight.
Brendan raised his hand up by his face and waved, but Beth’s eyes passed right over him. The phone call from jail hadn’t done much for convincing Beth he had changed. When he’d balked at talking about the accident, the drive to his motorcycle had been quiet and awkward.
“What’s that all about?” Connor asked.
Brendan shrugged, but he didn’t take his eyes off Beth. “You know me. I have a talent for doing dumb stuff when dealing with women. The smarter and more beautiful she is, the bigger the mistakes.”
Connor’s laugh bounced off the tile floors of the lobby. “I guess that’s an Overman family trait.”
Chase left his sister’s side and walked over to Brendan and Connor. Chase would be taller than Brendan if he’d stand up straight, but Brendan remembered what it felt like at Chase’s age, trying to break out of that stage of teenage awkwardness.
“Hey, Chase,” Brendan said. “I guess you know my brother, Connor.”
Chase’s eyes rocked back and forth between them. “Yeah, but I didn’t know you were brothers. That’s cool.”
Standing beside a fifteen-year-old made Brendan feel prehistoric. “It is cool. What’s going on?”
Chase flicked a strand of hair out of his eyes. “Everybody around here is sort of bummed. Our youth minister moved to Texas.”
Brendan frowned at Chase. “I’m sorry, man.”
Chase’s eyes looked down at his scuffed brown dress shoes. “Yeah. He took us hiking and camping this summer. The guy leading now won’t do anything like that.”
A knot formed in Brendan’s chest. Something about this kid made Brendan want to help him. “Maybe I could help out with the group.”
“Hang on,” Connor said, his face wrinkled. “You’re saying you’d volunteer to work with the church youth?”
A ripple of defensiveness rose up in Brendan. “Why not?”
Chase’s shoulders straightened. “Really?”
Brendan shrugged. “Sure. Sounds like fun.”
“I’m going to tell the guys.” Chase bolted to the other side of the room.
Connor stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Promise me you won’t try to take them camping.”
Brendan pulled his head back. “What are you so worried about? How hard would it be to take a few teenagers camping? We used to camp all the time.”
Connor’s jaw tensed. “If I remember right, Dad refused to take any more family camping trips because we always ended up at the emergency room.”
Brendan tilted his head down and looked up at Connor. “It’s not like I’m going to jump off the top of a Porta-Potty again. I’m not thirteen anymore.”
“What about the ride down the zip line we made out of rope and hangers?” Connor asked, his eyes wide as if the memory traumatized him.
Brendan rubbed his chin in an attempt to hide the smile spreading across his face. “That was Will.”
“Yeah,” Connor said, fighting to get the words out through a laugh. “But you paid him five bucks to do it.”
The image of Will in the tree hanging on to the branch while Brendan urged him to let go made Brendan hold his ribs as he laughed. A woman in a long dress glared at them. Feeling like a kid again, Brendan stood up straight and cleared his throat. Across the room, the back of Beth’s head nodded up and down and Jimmy stood on the other side of her, his hands gesturing as he talked.
Brendan’s smile slid from his face. “Jimmy attends church here now?”
The swelling crowd of families in the lobby pushed Connor and Brendan farther into the corner. “Yeah, and he’s filling in as our youth pastor until we can hire a new one. That’s who you’ll need to talk to about helping with the youth group.”
As soon as the groan snuck out of his lips, Brendan regretted it. He didn’t want to explain his incident with Jimmy to his brother.
Connor leaned past Brendan to look at Jimmy. “I thought you guys were friends in high school.”
Brendan looked out the window to the busy parking lot, avoiding his brother’s eyes. “He seems a little shady these days. Don’t you think so?”
Connor shifted his head. “Shady? He’s a cop who volunteers with the youth group at church. How bad can he be?”
Brendan shrugged his stiff shoulders. “I’ve run into him a few times since I’ve been back. He s
eems different.”
Connor smiled. “And you’re sure you’re not saying that because he’s standing there talking to Beth Kearn?”
Jimmy’s voice carried across the room and reminded Brendan of an old neighbor’s dog that barked by Brendan’s bedroom window all night. Brendan swallowed and did his best impression of someone who didn’t care. “Of course not. Beth can talk to anyone she wants.” As Brendan said the words, a pang of heartache twisted in his chest.
Beth nodded as Jimmy told her an impossible-to-follow story about an action movie he’d seen last week. She almost regretted dragging herself out of bed for church this morning. Yesterday had been a disaster, and this was the only day she had away from the restaurant. It was tempting to spend it recovering in bed, but if she didn’t attend church, Chase didn’t attend church. Besides, Beth needed the time of worship to recharge after her crazy week.
She nodded her head at Jimmy as Chase laughed with two other high-school boys. She’d cringed when Chase had gone over to talk to Brendan. She was still so frustrated with him. Beth had done everything she could think of to put Chase in a better mood. After a few minutes with Brendan, he was practically skipping over to the other guys in the youth group. Beth should have been thankful Chase liked Brendan, but instead she feared Chase would only be let down.
“What do you think?” Jimmy said, his face too close to hers.
She blinked at him. She hadn’t been listening. “Um, I …”
His lips parted in disappointment.
“Beth,” Sharon Overman said just in time. “I’m sorry to interrupt.” Brendan’s mom wore a Hawaiian print dress and stared up at Jimmy, her eyebrows high.
Jimmy’s mustache twitched. “No problem, Mrs. Overman. Maybe I’ll see you after church, Beth.”
Jimmy was always so kind to her, but she didn’t have the patience today for another of his long-winded stories. “Maybe,” she said.
Jimmy lingered for a moment and then wandered into the crowd.
Sharon wrapped a hand around Beth’s wrist. “I wanted to thank you for bringing Brendan to the party.”
By going to Cassie’s birthday party with Brendan, Beth had put herself exactly where she shouldn’t be—in the middle of the Overman family saga. “I didn’t exactly bring him,” Beth said, but Sharon’s eyes were on the front doors of the church.
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