After You Were Gone

by Alexis Harrington

  “Julianne—”

  Between the scraping, disinfecting, and hosing, she hadn’t heard anyone approach, despite the gravel. She jumped and saw Mitchell standing not more than fifteen feet away, holding her neon-pink advertisement. What he’d said hadn’t really registered. She knew only that he was her worst enemy.

  She dropped the hose and grabbed the shotgun from where she’d left it leaning against the back wall. A cyclone of thoughts spun through her mind, but she marshaled her courage and fury. “You get the hell out of here, Mitchell Tucker, or I’ll shoot your head off and work my way down from there!”

  She saw the alarm on his face. Standing on the working end of a weapon had that effect. She felt a surge of grim satisfaction pump through her, sharpening her adrenaline edge. He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender, the paper still clutched in his grip, and backed up a few paces.

  “Careful with that thing. Someone could get hurt.”

  “Yes, you this time.” How dare he stand here on her property with his world-weary eyes and tell her to be careful? “It’s not fun to be threatened, is it? You’ve got five seconds to turn around and leave before I start shooting.”

  “Julianne, listen—”

  She tightened her grip on the stock. “Tick-tock, Mitchell. Tick-tock. One, two—”

  “Put that shotgun down!” he ordered, in a voice so commanding, so unlike anything she remembered, her aim wavered. He must have noticed. “Put it down, now! I just want to talk to you for a minute.”

  Uncertain, she lowered her aim a bit but didn’t take her hands off her weapon. It gave her an unquestionable advantage. “What are you doing here, Mitchell? Had to return to the scene of the crime?”

  He frowned slightly. “I’ve been out of jail for a year. I came back to settle something between you and me.”

  “Really? By doing this?” She gestured at the steps. “And all those other insulting, lame-brained stunts you’ve been pulling?”

  He shook his head, obviously feigning bafflement, and she wasn’t buying it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. The last time I had anything to do with you was at Benavente’s. I guess you’ll be happy to hear I got fired after that. So did Cabrera.”

  “I’ll cry about it all night,” she said. “You haven’t answered my question. What do you want?”

  “I came to talk to you about this job advertisement.” He waggled the paper in his still upheld hands.

  Finally, she recognized it and felt her jaw drop. “You can’t be serious! What . . . why . . . are you crazy? What would make you think I’d hire you to do anything? You killed my husband!”

  He flinched as if she’d pulled the trigger on the shotgun. “I don’t expect you to pay me. I know you need the help and that money’s tight for you.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  Slowly, he lowered his hands. “This is a small town. You know no one can have secrets here. I heard about the farm and your plans for this place. I’ll work for nothing just till you get back on your feet.”

  That now made two men who’d volunteered free labor, and she didn’t trust either offer. “So you can burn down this place, too?”

  He dropped his gaze to a clump of tenacious bunch grass growing up through a crack in the hardpan. “I can understand that you wouldn’t trust me.”

  What an understatement. “No, I don’t. I don’t think much of any of you Tuckers.”

  “They don’t know I’m here. And they won’t know.”

  “Because it won’t happen. You can clean up this mess you left on my stairs and leave.” She gestured at the unfinished job.

  He shook his head. “What are you talking about? I didn’t do this!”

  “Mitchell, come on! Who else would have left burning bags of dog crap here? Who else would be harassing me with odd phone calls and vandalism? It started up again when you came to town. I’m not stupid, you know.”

  “I’m sure as hell no choirboy,” he said, his features fixed and angry-looking. “But no matter what happened in the past, I never lied. Not to you, not to anyone else. I’m telling you I haven’t done anything to bother you and I don’t know who’s responsible for that stuff.”

  She cut a wide path around him and headed for the front door. “Clean it up, or I’ll call Sheriff Gunter back here and he can haul you in for trespassing. I already showed this to him, so he’s keeping an eye on you.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Seeing Julianne again, talking to her, gave Mitchell dreams of the past. He’d been fueled by his own rage over Julianne’s easy abandonment of their relationship, and by a slashing pain so deep it felt like a knife twisting in his chest. One night he woke up with a sweaty lurch, nearly tumbling Knucklehead off the mattress. He wasn’t that kid anymore, but in the twilight world of sleep he was still nineteen, full of fragile confidence, running wild in the few streets and the low, craggy hills of Gila Rock, angry, careless, and secretly scared of what his future held.

  His encounter with Julianne had not gone the way he’d hoped. Man, she hated him. He’d never before seen her with a gun in her hands, but her steady grip had given him no doubt that she could and would fire it if she decided to. He sat up on the edge of the mattress, wondering whether his return to this flea-bitten town might have been another of his life mistakes.

  After all, this was no step up from Mitchell’s most recent life, he thought with more than a touch of irony. He was sleeping on what amounted to a dog bed in this old tin can of a hovel, and the mutt was overtaking Mitchell’s meager real estate. As if to reiterate his satisfaction with the situation, Knucklehead burrowed into the space Mitchell had abandoned when he’d sat up, and pushed his big paws against his back with a contented sigh.

  He just wanted to accomplish one thing—to cut out the cancer that still gnawed at his soul. Confronting Julianne again was his only hope for that, so he’d try again. And again, until he’d found that cure.

  Darcy Tucker bounced into the Captain Gas with keys jingling at his waist and a cigarette clamped between his teeth. He was happy to find Cherry Claxton working the counter, and even more pleased to see that she was alone for the moment. He had chugged up to the gas pumps in his latest acquisition, a 1987 Ford Escort with four different-color quarter panels and a dribbling crankcase. The passenger door was strapped shut with lashings of duct tape. “Hey, sweet thing. Ring me up for fifteen bucks of regular.”

  She scowled at him, punching the keys on the cash register while he rummaged through a bin of marked-down packaged snacks and squashed candy bars. “Don’t ‘sweet thing’ me.” She lifted her chin and looked out at the Ford. “I see you still have a good eye for death-trap cars.”

  “Hey, you know me. Just like the Petty-man says, one foot in the grave, and the other on the gas.”

  “Tom Petty wouldn’t be caught dead or alive in a piece of shit like that.”

  Darcy straightened and gave her a hard look. “Someone got up on the bitchy side of the bed this morning.”

  “So what?”

  “I thought you’d be in a better mood. I heard you got cozy with my big brother the other night.”

  “Well, I saw him. We had a few at Lupe’s; then he left me standing in the parking lot, claiming something important had come up. I guess that something wasn’t a party with me.”

  “He left?”

  “Hell yes, he left. I don’t like being stood up.”

  “He didn’t exactly stand you up—”

  “And I don’t play second string for any man.”

  Darcy fiddled with a display of e-cigarettes that stood on the counter, trying to figure out how they worked, and how something that looked like a kid’s toy could possibly compare to an honest-to-God, burning, paper-and-tobacco smoke. “He’s a different man than he was before he went to jail. I s’pose that’s to be expected. But don’t give up on him. I know he’s got a hot thing for you. It never went away, no matter that it’s been seven, eight years since he last nailed you.” He di
dn’t know anything of the kind, but if Cherry believed it, that was good enough. “I’ll elbow him along if you play nice.”

  She frowned again and swatted his hand off the display. “Either buy that damn thing or leave it. Don’t just stand there fingering the merchandise like a ten-year-old sneaking looks at a Playboy.”

  “I’m not buying a candy-ass gadget like that.”

  Flipping her long red hair back behind her shoulders, she said, “What’s your interest in this thing between me and your brother, anyway, Darce? You get a little nibble from me, but you’re pushing me toward Mitch. That doesn’t make much sense.”

  “We’re just having some fun, you and me—it’s fun, ain’t it? Our little games? That low sound you make in your throat, I never heard anything like it.”

  Finally, she grinned. “Yeah, it is. It’s fun.”

  “I know he’s the one you really want. You just help butter my toast now and then, so to speak, and I’ll see to it that you get to work your magic on Mitch. What say, pretty lady?”

  She gave him an arch look. “Sixteen-twenty, Toast Boy.”

  He threw down some rumpled bills next to a big jar of beef jerky, then withdrew a piece of the dried meat. “See you later, Deep Throat.” He winked at her and walked out. He heard her smoky laugh before the door closed behind him.

  Two days after the dog-crap caper, Julianne pulled up to the back of Bickham’s with eight gallons of paint in the bed of her pickup, plus all the paraphernalia she’d need to roll it onto the walls and ceiling. Cade had called every day, but he was still a no-show. Without his help to unsnarl the bookkeeping, she had to move on with those things she could manage by herself.

  After her unnerving, surprise visit from Mitchell, she’d been equally surprised to discover that he’d cleaned up the steps. She’d told him to do it but hadn’t expected anything. He’d even washed all the tools and coiled the hose. Was he actually innocent of this, as he’d claimed? No, this was his way of trying to lure her in, to make her believe in his sincerity. But why? She pulled the key out of the ignition and envisioned his attractive face, made flinty by time and circumstance. What did he expect from her, anyway?

  Under a scorching midday sun, she got out and went around to drop the tailgate and haul out the paint. Damn it. She’d asked Mike Carver at Carver Hardware to give her single-gallon cans. Now she discovered that he’d sold her only three. The rest of the paint was in a five-gallon bucket that weighed close to fifty pounds. He’d had someone load it all up while she was still in the store, and she hadn’t realized what she’d brought back until now. It was dead weight, in an inconvenient place and at an awkward height. Even with a hand truck, getting it down was going to be monumental task because she didn’t really have what she needed to manage it. Julianne wasn’t afraid of hard work—she was used to it after years of running that accursed pig farm with very little help. Sighing, she went to the shed to get the hand truck and a couple of two-by-sixes she’d seen in there to use for a ramp. It would be tricky, but it was the best she could do for now. After positioning the boards, she climbed up and shimmied the nose plate of the hand truck under the bucket, then rolled it to the end of the tailgate. “Careful, careful . . . ,” she said to herself. With a nudge, she started it down the ramp.

  One plank slipped. “No, no, no!” she said, as if that would stop what happened next.

  The handle jumped out of her hands as the tool lurched forward, and both bucket and hand truck tumbled off and hit the ground. The bucket lid popped off and rolled across the yard. A geyser of paint splashed back on Julianne, and a flood of pale-taupe latex, so fashionable on the paint chip, now looked like a stale, coffee-flavored milk shake as it gushed out in a thick glop.

  Julianne stared at the mess, stupefied, her dry mouth open slightly, before she sank to the splattered tailgate and lay back, her legs dangling at the knees, feeling defeat and the wet heaviness of latex paint soaking into her clothes. She put an arm over her eyes against the bright glare of the sun. Oh dear God . . . What—Why—Why was everything so damned hard? Who had she offended, what evil deeds had she committed, that kept sending bad luck to her by the carload? Tears ran over her temples into her ears. Yes, she had regrets, she wasn’t perfect, and she’d made some bad decisions, but how long would she have to pay for the past? Did that past warrant ongoing punishment?

  “Julianne?”

  Apparently, it did—she knew that voice. She yanked her arm away from her eyes to see Mitchell Tucker looking down at her from the side of the truck. The shotgun was in the rack inside the truck cab, so close, but too far. Hoisting herself to an upright position, she snapped, “Mitchell, what the hell do you want? Why is it so hard to understand that I don’t want anything to do with you? Just leave me alone!” She could hear the tears squeezing her voice into a quaver, and her frustration increased. She didn’t want him to sense her growing desperation.

  He gazed at the lake of paint spreading ever wider across the dust and weeds. “You need help around here. You admitted it yourself when you posted that help-wanted notice. I want the job.”

  “I can’t believe this. Are you insane? Did you not hear what I just told you—what I told you the last time you came around here? Besides, I’ve got help. He just isn’t here right now.”

  He glanced around the yard, then let his eyes settle on her. “So it seems.”

  She scrambled to her feet on the tailgate and towered over him. “I asked you the other day why you came back. You said you wanted to settle something. What is it?” She reached into her front pocket and jimmied out her cell phone. “If you’re going to try to kill me, I’ll fight and bite and bash in your head with anything I can get my hands on. If you just want to talk, this is your chance to explain, so you’d better be fast, because I’m calling the police.”

  “Will you come down from there? It’s like trying to talk to Godzilla,” he said, squinting up at her.

  She scowled and jabbed her passcode into the phone, even more inflamed when she saw the paint prints she left on the screen.

  He put up a hand, as if to stop her. “No, Julianne, don’t call the cops. I didn’t mean it as an insult. It’s just hard to see you against that bright sun.”

  She sat down on the edge of the truck box again and stared at him. “I’m waiting.”

  He glanced at the ground, then looked into her face. “I think you’re in a jam. You need help and I can give you that. And I’ve had nothing to do with the troubles you’ve been having. You have to believe that.”

  “I don’t have to believe anything you say, Mitchell. I told you, I have help. I can’t pay two people. What do you really want?”

  He dodged the blunt questions and shrugged. The midday sun caught a faint reddish glint in his dark hair. “Think of it as community service—after everything that happened. A couple of hours here and there, to help get you on your feet.”

  “Right. Mitchell, I just don’t trust you.”

  A gulf of silence opened between them, and he jammed his hands into his pockets. In the distance the teakettle-teakettle call of a wren sounded. Finally, he said, “Yeah . . . yeah, I know.” Then he turned to walk back to the side street where he’d left a clunker of a car, one that had been old when they’d been in high school. “Sorry to bother you—Mrs. Emerson.”

  The barb, true and sure, found its target, and it stung. She had been the one who’d broken off their relationship, and even now, she could still see his stricken, furious expression when she’d told him she was marrying Wes. Why did she still feel guilty for that after all this time?

  She looked at his retreating back, then at the spilled paint that seemed to have left no immediate surface untouched, and sighed heavily. A disgruntled noise escaped her, and she plucked at the clammy fabric of her shirt. It had been days since she’d first posted her ad around town, and not one suitable person had inquired about it. She’d had a twelve-year-old boy come around, and frail, old Grady Dunham, who had turned eighty last month, h
ad expressed interest. Time was flying, but she was at a standstill. So far, Cade was no help, and there was no one else. As much as she might wish for it, she couldn’t do this alone. The first bank payment would be due in less than forty-five days, and there was still so much to be accomplished before she could open for business.

  Mitchell said this was his community service. For a single irrational moment she wondered what she could do to atone for her own guilt in the events that had led to that horrible night eight years earlier.

  She stared at his back again. He gripped the door handle and was about to swing onto the ripped upholstery of the driver’s seat, and good riddance—

  “Mitchell, wait!” she called after him, amazed to hear the words come from her mouth.

  He waited. She gestured him toward the yard.

  When he walked back, his boot steps kicked up wisps of dust from the hardpan. Julianne couldn’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses.

  She drew a fortifying breath. “All right. I’ll probably hate myself for this, but all right.”

  “All right, what?”

  Briefly, Julianne pursed her lips. Oh, if he made this harder than it was already . . . She plunged on. “Yes, I can use your help.”

  His brows rose, and he took off the sunglasses. “Okay, then.”

  “Remember this, though, Mitchell. I swear on every family grave I have in the cemetery, if one thing—one thing—goes wrong or makes me uncomfortable, I’ll have the county sheriff after you and the entire Tucker tribe.”

  He nodded. “If one thing goes wrong, I’ll call Gunter myself. And I’m not going to tell anyone about this. It’s probably best. Word will probably get out, but not from me.” He’d never been good at hiding his thoughts from her. She let herself glimpse the sincerity in his eyes and hoped she was right.