by Mary Stone
He replied with a: Nice. When?
Valentine’s Day
Great news
He thought she was done, but then saw the three dots again, indicating she was adding more. Linc wasn’t one to carry on conversations via text, but Kylie never met a text she didn’t respond to. But the line at the front of the plane was moving. He’d have to text her later.
Standing, he grabbed his carry-on from the overhead bin and went to the luggage carousel, where he picked up the Glock he had a concealed-carry permit for, all packaged away in its safety case. At the car rental area, he was happy to discover that his car was waiting for him. Twenty minutes later, he was on the road, heading for Lake Sucession.
He’d be staying in one of the few hotels in the small town, but as he checked his watch, he realized he’d probably miss the end of the wake unless he went straight to the funeral parlor.
He pulled in at the parlor and adjusted his suit and tie. It was wrinkled from flying all over the place, and he’d really hoped to make a better impression, considering he’d never met any of Will’s family. But…at least he was here.
So were slews of other people. Will was a likable guy, so this came as no surprise. Linc stood in a line that stretched out the door of people waiting to pay their respects to Will. The room was full of mourners. As he slowly inched his way to the front where the smell of flowers grew strong, he heard people murmuring the usual things: “Such a shame,” “Good man,” “Gone before his time,” “Taken too soon.” Before he got to the casket, he noticed it was closed.
Relieved, he tried to remember the last time he’d seen Will. Emotion clogged his throat as he realized that he’d never see that cocky little smirk on his face again. His jaw stiffened as he braced himself.
He knelt in front of the casket and said a quick prayer, then turned to face a woman with Will’s dark hair and eyes. She was huddled between two strikingly beautiful women. He approached them. “Mrs. Santos?” he said gently.
She looked up. “Yes?”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he murmured, nodding at the rest of the family. “I’m Linc Coulter. I worked with Will during many search and rescue cases.”
She took his hand and gave him a watery smile. “Thank you for coming all this way. Will always spoke so fondly of his SAR friends. Were you with him on the night that…?”
“No,” Linc finished for her, seeing the pain in her eyes. “I was with him earlier in the day, though.”
She shook her head. “It’s hard. Hadn’t seen him since the summer. He was supposed to come visit soon, but not like this.”
He sat with her for a few moments, making small talk with Mrs. Santos and his younger sisters, then excused himself when other family members arrived. He walked out to the lobby and got himself a paper cup of water from the cooler, then another, sucking each one down.
Funerals were like knives to his heart.
As he was pouring out his third one, a man approached him. Linc did a double take. The man looked almost exactly like Will. “Sam?” he nearly spit out.
The guy nodded and shook his hand. “Linc Coulter. Will talked a lot about you. Said you were a legend.”
Linc snorted. “Not exactly, but that was very kind of him. He spoke of you often. He was proud as hell of you. You still playing ball at Clemson, right?”
Sam nodded. “This is my senior year. One more semester then I’m heading for my master’s.”
“You’re a running back, right?”
The kid smiled. “Yeah.”
“Me too,” Linc said. “Duke.”
His grin broke wider. “Right! I remember Will telling me that. You were overseas too. Army?”
Linc nodded. They wound up walking together to the end of the hallway, away from the crowds and the somber mood. When they burst out into the light of the afternoon, they found themselves at a service entrance on the side of the building. They launched into a heated conversation about Clemson’s chances of making the championship this year.
After a while, the conversation turned to the other thing they had in common: Will.
“He came to my last game, you know. Drove three hours straight after a long day at work just to be there,” Sam said, smiling at the thought. “Geez. I can’t believe he’s gone.”
Linc plunged his hands into his pockets and sighed. “Yeah.”
Sam Santos reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a sleeve of Marlboros, offering one on the sly to Linc. When Linc shook his head, he plucked out one and put it between his lips. “You see my mama coming, holler. She doesn’t know I do this. I don’t, really. Only when I’m under stress. And dios mio, this qualifies. Man, mi mama’s a wreck.”
Linc nodded as the kid fumbled with his lighter, then took it from his trembling hands and got the flame going. Sam sucked in deeply, then exhaled a cloud of smoke. “You don’t mind if I do this, do you?”
Linc handed him the lighter. “Nah.”
The next time the kid looked up, there were tears in his eyes. “You know what? You’re the reason Will stopped drinking. Did he ever tell you that?”
Linc raised an eyebrow. He’d known Will had had a problem with drinking because he’d mentioned his DUI, and he had seen him drunk off his ass quite a few times in the old days. But he didn’t know that had changed. “No. I didn’t know that he had stopped—”
“Oh. Yeah. You know him. Always up for a party. I think he thought it was his duty to keep everyone having a good time. When he was drinking, he was a really happy drunk. You know that.”
Linc laughed. Yes, Will Santos definitely knew how to have a good time. “Yes, I do.”
“Well, a few years back, my mama was really worried about him,” he said, sucking on the end of his cigarette. “This was when he lived at home. He was always coming in, so drunk he could barely stand up straight. Every night. I was in my first year of college then, I guess, but my sisters would tell me stories of how bad he was.”
This didn’t surprise Linc. This was the Will he knew. Always out for a party, a pretty woman. He’d been quite the hell-raiser. “What happened?”
“Well, I was always on the horn with him, telling him that if he didn’t shape up, he was gonna put our mother in an early grave. He didn’t listen to me, of course. I was just his stupid younger brother.” He shrugged. “But one day, he just stopped.”
Linc’s eyes snapped to his. “Why?”
“I asked him that too,” he said, blowing out another cloud of smoke. “And he told me he’d been out talking with you, swapping war stories, and you told him about your time overseas. And how you’d been through a lot, but when you finally got help for it, you became a changed man. Whatever you said to him really hit home because he stopped drinking then and there. He didn’t even have champagne at my cousin’s wedding, man. You inspired him, big time.”
“Really?” Linc said. The funny thing was, he could barely recall the conversation in question. He certainly had no idea it’d had such a profound effect on his friend.
Sam’s smile dissolved, and he kicked at the curb. “That’s why it doesn’t make any sense. That he would just drunkenly drive off the road.”
Linc crossed his arms. “You don’t think what the police are saying is right?”
Linc didn’t think it was right either. Blood alcohol couldn’t be accurately measured once a person was dead. Due to postmortem fermentation, there could be “false positive” blood alcohol levels up to 0.20 grams, which was nearly two and a half times the legal limit of 0.08 for drivers in Georgia.
“Fuck no,” Sam nearly shouted. “No. He’d driven that road a hundred times. And he’d even taken one of those FBI defensive driving classes once, when he’d wanted to become a federal agent. He wasn’t a dumb moron who’d overcorrect not to hit a squirrel, like some of the other guys were saying, either. He knew how to handle himself. He’d be the last person to get into an accident like that.”
Linc studied him, thinking of Kylie. Oh, Kylie’d love
to be here right now. She and Sam could go into their wild theories together of how a murderer was picking off the SAR people one by one. “Why’d he go to the bar then?”
“He always liked going to bars. The atmosphere. The ladies. You know him. Loved the ladies. He’d have a beer or two, if there was something good on tap, but nothing crazy, just because he liked the taste of a really good, well-made beer. Think he liked testing his sobriety too. If there was nothing good on tap, he’d go and order a rum and coke, hold the rum. That was his big joke.”
Linc started to ask if he’d had a relapse when the side door opened. In the doorway stood one of Sam’s pretty sisters, glaring at her brother.
Sam quickly threw down his cigarette and stubbed it out with his dress loafer as his sister said, “Samuel, Mama’s looking for you. Uncle Lucas is here from Texas.”
“Be there in a sec.” Sam fanned the cloud of smoke away from his face and gave Linc an apologetic look. He shook his hand again. “Really good of you to come.”
Linc was still dwelling on Will’s accident. “Wait, Sam. About the accident…if alcohol and user error wasn’t involved, what do you think it was?”
Sam shrugged and reached for the door. “Damned if I know, but I’ll tell you one thing…it kills my mama every time someone even says the word DUI. She’s been through that once before. She doesn’t want her oldest son to go down in the books as having lost his life that way. Our family would pay any sort of price to find out.”
He went inside, leaving Linc alone. Linc took a little walk around to the front of the building, thought about going back in, but then decided to get in his rental car and go back to the hotel.
The funeral was tomorrow, and after that, he had an afternoon flight.
This had been a sad, sad day, and he needed to connect with Kylie. He lifted out his phone and stared at it, realizing that when she’d indicated she was replying, she actually hadn’t replied.
He sent a message to her to tell her he was going back to the hotel, but strangely enough, didn’t get yet another reply.
That wasn’t like her. Knowing her, she was too busy shopping with her mother to respond. She’d respond soon.
Still, he couldn’t wait to get back home.
24
Kylie got home at a little after eight in the evening.
She threw her plastic-wrapped dress over the staircase railing, then went to the recliner in the living room and collapsed on it as the dogs jumped at her feet.
“Three hours, tops” had turned into six, as her mother had tried on every dress in her size at Always Beautiful Bridal Boutique in downtown Asheville. There had to have been at least a thousand. Most brides had some idea of what kind of dress they wanted, but not Rhonda Hatfield. She was open to anything, and the stylist was only too happy to keep shuttling out dress after dress to her. Kylie helped her mother put each one on, and now the tips of her fingers ached from tying corsets and buttoning tiny silk-covered buttons.
And Kylie had tried on…precisely one dress.
The dress she’d immediately fallen in love with despite her mother’s objections that she needed to shop around.
She’d seen it on the mannequin and hadn’t cared one bit about the tiny little stain on the bodice. It was satiny, form-fitting with a small train, and had absolutely no fluff to it. The stylist had told her it was a vintage gown from the 1920s.
Kylie had once seen a picture—she forgot where—a long time ago, of a woman in a similar dress. The couple had gotten married in the country, and the man had only worn a relaxed suit. The sun setting behind them had given off the most ethereal light, making Kylie sigh. That was the only wedding picture that had ever had any sort of effect on Kylie, and that bride had always stuck in Kylie’s mind.
Her veil had just been a long train of tulle. It had been so romantic, the way the two of them were standing in that field, staring into each other’s eyes. Kylie guessed she’d had that photograph in her head when she’d decided to buy the dress.
But now, Kylie wasn’t sure if the dress was anything like that picture, or she’d look anything like that bride.
She wasn’t sure about a lot of things.
One thing she was sure of? The wedding would be a disaster. With Kylie planning it, she couldn’t imagine it being anything else.
Truly, her heart wasn’t in the wedding planning. Not like Rhonda’s was.
After the shopping, they’d gone out to dinner, but Kylie couldn’t stop thinking of Linc. He’d texted her after the wake to tell her he was at the hotel and thinking of getting something to eat and then turning in early. She’d tried to get more out of him about the wake, but he was a notoriously terse texter, so she figured she’d have to wait until the following day to get the rundown.
She looked around the house in the dark, an unsettled feeling coming over her. Only one night here, alone. She could do it. Linc would be back with her in no time.
Still, Kylie poured herself another extra-big glass of wine, just for insurance.
She picked up her phone to tell him she’d gotten a dress but decided not to. Why should she be excited about something she wasn’t even sure he’d like?
She just typed in: Hope you sleep well. I love you and miss you more than I thought was possible.
She swirled the glass of wine in her hand and took another sip. The wine was already making her feel drowsy. That was just what she needed to dull her senses to the fact that Linc’s body wouldn’t be next to hers.
And other things…
So many other things.
Besides missing Linc and the wedding woes, and thoughts of a possible killer targeting SAR people running around, she also had her career to think about. Before the shopping excursion from hell, she’d gone into the office to see Greg. But the office had been empty. It looked like it hadn’t been open all week. As she peeked in, all those worries about Greg closing up shop and retiring came back to her.
It wasn’t as simple as just taking over his business. She didn’t have enough experience under her belt yet to get the license to operate on her own. She needed at least six more months of working under Greg to get that. But if he decided to retire, she’d have to find something else. There was no other way around it. Greg had been good, taking her on like that, teaching her all he knew. She imagined that most PIs didn’t want to waste the time.
Not only that, she was sad. She, very simply, missed Greg. She missed his grumpiness.
Her sigh turned to a smile when Linc texted back. You too. I love you.
She responded with a good night, then closed out of the message and went to her Facebook. Dina’s Facebook page still hadn’t been updated, and she still hadn’t read any of Kylie’s messages. She’d said it would take two days to drive across the country. If she didn’t respond by tonight, Kylie decided that she’d call someone in the morning. Find her family. Call the police. Something.
Kylie didn’t even make it up to the bedroom. She fell asleep on the chair with the wine glass in her hand, having consumed about three glasses in an hour, way more than she was used to.
When she woke up, a strong light was slashing through the blinds. It felt like she’d been laying in this position for a hundred hours. The second her eyes flickered open, she had an unsettling feeling that something was totally off. She couldn’t pinpoint what it was. She blinked, then felt something wet on her shirt.
“Shit!” she said, jumping up as she realized a large puddle of red wine was seeping into her favorite sweatshirt. The dogs started to bark. She grabbed a nearby napkin and dabbed at it as the wine ran down her legs, then let out a big groan. “Perfect.”
She tripped over Vader as she rushed to the kitchen, grabbed some paper towels, and swabbed up the mess. As she did, she knocked over the glass, and it shattered all over the floor. “Gah!” she shouted, picking up the large pieces in her hand and carefully stepping through the minefield that she’d turned their living room into. She grabbed the vacuum and managed to clean it up,
still half-asleep.
It was only when she finished that she realized she had a massive hangover.
She went into the bathroom and popped some Excedrin. When she came out, the dogs were both looking at her like, Wow, you really can’t handle yourself without Linc, can you?
She muttered, “Exactly. Don’t give me that look. Like you guys are much better without each other, Mr. Peanut Butter and Miss Jelly, over there?”
They gave her equally innocent looks.
Shaking her head, she let them out to go use the potty, and as she did, her eyes drifted to the garment bag with her wedding dress still hanging on the banister. Kylie’s stomach sank. The more she thought about it, the more she was sure she’d look nothing like that photograph she’d once seen.
She decided she’d have to take the bag upstairs and stuff it deep into the closet, where Linc would never see it. As she was heading up there, thinking of Linc and wondering if he’d made out just as terribly as she had last night, it struck her. She must’ve been drunk. When was the last time she’d woken up and not grabbed for her phone first thing?
She’d also left it down in the living room. Hell, when was the last time she’d left the room without it?
Dropping her dress on the landing, she rushed back downstairs, finding it on the coffee table, right next to Linc’s latest issue of Wilderness SAR magazine. She lifted her cell and eagerly unlocked it.
The first thing she saw was the time. It was after noon. How did that happen? When had she ever zonked out like that?
The second thing she saw was a message from Linc: And how did my beautiful girl sleep?
She smiled and typed in: Are you talking about Storm?
A moment later: No, YOU are my beautiful girl. Then: Heading to the funeral now. Can’t wait to see you tonight. Flight’s at five so I should be in by bedtime. I’ll take an Uber so I don’t disturb you.
She found herself grinning goofily at the display as she tried to think of something to tell him. She didn’t want to talk about the wedding plans, or the fact that the only reason she was able to sleep was because she’d gotten herself drunk. So she just said: I love you.