Hope Heals

by Tymber Dalton

  There were, no surprise, quite a few calls from collection agencies.

  But the last voice mail was the one that struck her like a nail driven directly into her heart. A woman’s voice. Soft, pleading.

  “I know you told me not to leave messages, but you said I can’t text you and I’m starting to get worried because you’re not answering. Call me.”

  The time stamp was from three days earlier.

  The caller’s number was stored in Michael’s contacts as Kelly.

  Something deep inside Sarah screamed she shouldn’t call the woman back. That it was a really bad idea, and would only lead to more hurt.

  But there was also a tiny part of her who knew if someone she cared about simply dropped off the face of the planet, she’d want a little closure. And who knew what lies he’d told this woman.

  My beef’s not with her.

  After taking a few deep breaths, Sarah called her number.

  It rang three times before the same woman’s voice answered. “Hello, Michael?”

  I can do this. “No, this is Michael’s wife, Sarah.”

  The pause was long and silent enough Sarah pulled the phone away from her ear just to check to make sure the call hadn’t dropped. “Hello?” she asked.

  The woman finally responded. “His wife?”

  “Yes. Sarah Heckman d’Antonio. Who am I speaking with?”

  “Kelly,” she quietly said.

  “I don’t have any other way to say this but to say it, Kelly. Michael’s dead. He was killed in a car wreck almost three weeks ago. Our son nearly died in the wreck with him.”

  “What?”

  “I also don’t know if you’re aware Michael had at least one other mistress besides you, because my mother-in-law decided to invite her to Michael’s funeral. In all honesty, I didn’t know about you or the other one. But let me tell you a few other things while I have you on the phone.”

  She quickly ticked off the list of Michael’s misdeeds, glad, for once, to have someone she could honestly lay out the cards with who wasn’t family.

  The woman silently listened without interruption.

  “So,” Sarah said in conclusion, “that’s how my past few weeks have been. I don’t know what the extent of your relationship was with the son of a bitch, but I would suggest you go get tested for STDs. I know I’m going to, as soon as I find a doctor down here.”

  She heard a little sniffle on the other end.

  “Kelly?”

  “Sorry. I’m here,” the woman quietly said.

  Sarah knew her own charitable nature was stretched to the brink. “If you want to ask me anything, ask it now, because I don’t plan on calling you again and I’m going to be shutting off this account.”

  There was a pause. “How old is your son?”

  “He’s seven. Didn’t Michael tell you about him?”

  “No. He told me he was getting divorced. We’d only… Just a few months.”

  “Well, count yourself lucky you only wasted a couple of months on him instead of twelve years, like I did.”

  After getting off the phone with Kelly, Sarah went through the texts on his phone. He had several from people she’d heard him talk about, guys, friends of his, but most she’d either only met once or twice or had never met.

  But no texts from women. Either he’d had another phone he kept hidden from her as well, and hadn’t had it on him the day of the accident, or he’d trained the women not to text him like he had Kelly.

  The likelihood that there were more women made her feel more than a little sick to her stomach.

  I’m going to have to get to a doctor.

  That conflicted with the terror she felt over what she might discover. Followed immediately by anger that she had to go through this in the first place.

  She quickly texted the men back, copying and pasting the message so she didn’t have to retype it every time. Then she shut the phone off and left it on the charger. She wanted to go through his emails but didn’t have the nerve to do it right then, and didn’t feel like booting up his laptop.

  All she wanted to do was crawl into bed and cry herself to sleep, but she couldn’t. She had to pull herself together for dinner, and then go talk to Sam and Pete.

  That thought cheered her immensely.

  Chapter Nine

  After dinner, she walked through their pasture, Big Mac deciding to shadow her, to the gate her dad had shown her that led to the Hopes’ pasture next door.

  “You stay here, you pain in the ass,” she told him, refusing to let him nudge his way through the gate with her. She replaced the clip holding the latch in place and got her bearings to head for the other pasture gate near the Hopes’ house.

  She’d never been over here before, the house originally built when she was just entering high school by a couple with no kids. The men kept it immaculately manicured, including a beautiful natural-looking rock waterfall and pond feature in the center of the gravel circular drive in front of the house.

  Must be one of their samples for clients to see their work.

  The house was a low, one-story ranch style similar to theirs, except their front porch was screened in and the Hopes had a garage instead of a carport. She let herself into the front porch and rang the doorbell.

  From somewhere inside the house, she heard a man yell, “Just a minute.”

  Through one of the frosted glass panes along the side of the front door she saw someone cross the entryway. It was Sam who answered, today wearing khaki shorts, a green, short-sleeved knit shirt with a collar, and barefoot.

  His brown hair looked damp. “Hey, Sarah. Come on in.”

  “Thanks.”

  She stepped into the cool air conditioning and looked around. The foyer was tiled with grey slate, but the living room ahead had been carpeted in Berber a light shade of beige with threads of blue and green shot through it.

  “You’ve never been in here before, have you?”

  “No.”

  “We bought it from Pete’s aunt and uncle a few years ago. His mom’s sister and brother-in-law. They’re the ones who built it.” She must have looked a little confused, because he added, “Our dads are brothers. That’s how we’re related.”

  “Oh.”

  He led her through the living room to the kitchen, which had been tiled in the same slate as the foyer and sported reddish granite counters that beautifully set off the warm cherry cabinets. “We just redid the kitchen a couple of months ago.” He led her to the back of the house and pointed at a closed door. “That’s Pete’s room. He’s still in the shower, I think.” He opened another door. “I have the master suite.” The bedroom was tidy, but like the rest of the house, had a lived-in feel that was comfortable.

  He showed her the guest room, their home office, the bathroom and another powder room, the dining room, and then led her out onto the lanai.

  “And, of course, the pool and hot tub. This was last year’s major revamp project.” They’d stamped the concrete deck with a random leaf pattern that looked lovely. Built-in planters lushly separated the hot tub from the pool, as well as screened it from view by anyone outside the lanai. “Kind of our portfolio, he said.”

  “I wondered. The front looks beautiful, too.”

  He grinned. “Thanks. Would you please tell Pete that? He said I didn’t use enough plants.” He hooked his thumb toward the hot tub. “He won the coin toss to do the lanai.”

  “How come my dad knows you guys so well, but we never really hung out?”

  “He’s in the car club with our dads,” he said, leading her back into the house. “We used to go all the time when we were younger.”

  Pete walked into the kitchen, also wearing shorts, but in a Margaritaville T-shirt that sported a parrot and some of the lyrics to Jimmy Buffet’s famous song. “Oh, hey, Sarah.”

  “Hi.” There was a definite family resemblance between the men, but they were both decidedly hunky in an understated, non-assholish kind of way.

  S
he didn’t know if having hunky bosses was a good thing or not.

  “Can we get you anything to drink before we get started?” Sam offered.

  “No, I’m okay, thanks.”

  He led her back to the office, with Pete following them. “We went ahead and made you a manual,” Sam explained as he pulled another chair over to the desk so she could sit next to him. He logged into the online accounting software, showed her in the stapled printouts where the information was located, and then began the tour.

  Pete brought in a chair from the dining room and sat behind them, saying little.

  After an hour, she realized she was totally focused on what they were doing, and not on Sam’s delicious voice.

  “Any questions?” he asked when he wrapped things up.

  “I’m sure I’ll have plenty of questions,” she said, “but I’ll do my best not to pester you with them every time you turn around.”

  “Our cell phones, and the office and house phones, are on the front of the manual,” Pete said from behind them. “Don’t hesitate to call us, day or night. You can text us on our cells, too.”

  She looked over her shoulder at him. He had sweet, deep brown eyes and apparently had no problem holding her gaze.

  It struck her that Michael had rarely made eye contact with her over the past several years.

  Now I know why.

  Those kind of thoughts didn’t belong here and now, however. She didn’t want to screw this up.

  What she really wanted to do was lighten the mood. “Won’t annoy your girlfriends if I do that, will it?” she attempted to joke.

  Pete kindly smiled. “That’d be kind of hard to do considering we’re both single.”

  She swallowed hard. Yikes, that had backfired on her in a bad way. She’d naturally assumed the handsome guys would be taken.

  “We’re both divorced,” Sam said. “That’s one of the reasons we decided to go in together and buy the house. Fix it up.”

  “Oh.” She didn’t know what else to say and didn’t want to dig herself an uncomfortable hole. “That’s nice.”

  “It’s all right,” Sam said. “I think we’re both happier this way. We’ve really built up the business the past few years. Doubled our crews and added several high-profile commercial customers. We finally get to focus more on the design aspect than we used to.”

  “In fact,” Pete added, “we’ve been talking about updating our logo and redoing our brochures and website and stuff. We wanted to talk to you about that, see if that’s something you’d be interested in taking on as well.”

  “We’ll pay you extra for that, obviously,” Sam clarified. “We don’t expect you to do that for free. Whatever your normal rate is, we’ll gladly pay it.”

  “Oh.” It was like karma finally working overtime to make up for running a bus over her life. “Sure. I’d be happy to.”

  “We can talk about that in a few days,” Pete said. “Once you’re settled in with all of the bookkeeping.”

  “Why don’t you have a bookkeeper on staff?” she asked.

  Sam smiled. “We do.” He pointed at her.

  “I meant in your office.”

  Both men shrugged. Pete answered. “We did it ourselves for several years. We’re both control freaks. We’d rather have someone we trust handling that for us.”

  “But you barely know me.”

  “That’s okay,” Sam said. “We know Walt. And we know he’s a good man. Besides, we do know you.”

  Wait, why am I asking all this? Shut. Up. “Thank you,” she said.

  Their manual had been extremely clear, well laid out. All the log-in information for the online credit card processing, their time sheet information, everything was computerized and accessible from a web browser. All she had to do was follow the instructions, now that they’d walked her through it, and plug in numbers.

  It truly was easy. And she’d start tomorrow, handling the daily tasks. It would probably take her less than an hour a day as long as she kept up with everything.

  It was almost dark by the time they saw her to the door.

  “Hey,” Pete said, “listen. How about you and your dad and Jason come over Saturday evening for a cookout? We’ve been wanting to have you all over.”

  A chance to spend more time with the guys? “Sure. That sounds nice.” After agreeing on a time and what she should bring, as well as them extending the invitation to include Betty and Dana and her kids, Sarah headed home.

  She was almost to her front door when she realized that, for the first time in a while, she’d gone over an hour without thinking about Michael or Isabella or the mess she left behind in New York.

  And for the first time since returning home to Florida, she felt really good about her future.

  Chapter Ten

  Sarah was home alone and working in her office Friday morning when she heard a weird noise. Looking up from her computer, she glanced outside, but didn’t see anything. It had stopped, though, so she went back to work.

  A few minutes later, she heard it again. An odd, irregular, light thumping kind of sound. And while she couldn’t be sure, she thought it was coming from above her.

  She walked into the house and looked around. “Dad? Jason?” No, her dad’s truck was still gone and she was home alone.

  The noise happened again, sounding like it came directly from overhead. She looked up at the living room ceiling.

  It couldn’t be in the attic, whatever it was. It sounded like something…

  “No,” she whispered to herself, remembering Sam’s admonishment. “It can’t be.”

  She raced out the front door, moving back enough she could see the roof. Sure enough, one of the goats, a smaller one, stood on the roof. When it saw her, it let out a bleat.

  “Son of a bitch!” she screamed. “What the hell are you… How the hell did you get up there?”

  It bleated at her again.

  She opened her mouth to yell at it and nothing came out.

  It bleated.

  She jabbed a finger at it. “Fuck you!” she screamed before heading back inside and slamming the front door behind her hard enough to rattle the windows.

  As she stood there, breathing heavily, she realized she couldn’t let the damn thing stay up there. It was only ten o’clock in the morning, and it was already ninety degrees outside.

  On the roof, it would be hotter.

  She heard it walk down to the other end of the house before it returned.

  “Fuck!”

  She stormed outside to look at it again. Walking around the house, she realized it must have somehow climbed the oak tree on the northern end of the house and gotten up there that way.

  “Dammit.” She went to the shed next to the pig and goat pen. Bacon and Hammy, as well as the other goats, all crowded at the gate and made assorted noises at her.

  “Shut up. It’s not dinner time yet.” How the little goat had escaped the enclosure baffled her. Unless it’d climbed on top of one of the pigs and jumped out that way.

  Not her immediate problem. She went to the shed attached to the pen, grabbed a coffee can and filled it full of goat chow, then picked up one of the old leashes her dad used to move the goats to the big pasture and headed back to the base of the tree.

  Standing at the bottom, she whistled at it. “Here, goat. Come here, goat. Good goat.”

  It appeared at the edge of the roof. She smiled, relieved to know this would be far easier than her run-in with Big Mac. “Good goat!” She shook the can of feed at it. “Come here. Snack time.”

  It bleated at her before disappearing.

  “No! Goat, come!”

  I’m really going to have to learn all their names.

  She shook the can some more, listening as the goat bleated at her from somewhere on the roof. It finally reappeared at the edge of the roof. “Good goat! Come here. You got up, you can get down.”

  It stared at her.

  Frustration set in. “Goddammit!” she screamed as she threw
the leash on the ground. “Come here!”

  It fell over on its side and lay still, its head near the edge of the roof.

  “No! Nononono, oh, crap, no!” Panic set in. She’d feel terrible if one of the goats died. Her dad loved the damn things. If it’d just been hit with heat stroke or something, she had to get it down immediately and call her dad to get the vet’s information.

  She dropped the can and ran for the big barn, where she knew her dad kept his tools and several ladders. She found the tall extension ladder hanging on the wall and somehow muscled it off the hooks holding it. Then she almost dropped it on her foot once she had the full weight of it in her arms.

  She put it down, got a different grip on it, and despite pulling muscles in her back she half carried, half dragged it over to the end of the house. It took her a moment to get it extended and figure out how to lock it into place, but once she did, she muscled it up and into position against the eaves and started climbing.

  Please be okay…please be okay! She would get the hose turned onto the goat and cool it off. It had to be heat stroke. That was the only thing she could think of, unless it’d had a heart attack or something.

  She was halfway up the ladder when the goat raised its head and looked at her.

  Sarah nearly sobbed with relief. It wasn’t dead! “Oh, thank god.” By the time she neared the top of the ladder, the goat had already scrambled to its feet.

  “Good goat!” Carefully, she climbed onto the roof. Fortunately, it was shingles and not tile. “Come here, goat.”

  It looked at her and then bolted for the other end of the roof.

  “No! Dammit, stay!”

  The goat fell over on its side again and lay still.

  “Fuck! Oh, nononono!” She hurried over to it. It was still breathing. She hauled it into her arms and as fast as she dared, headed back for the ladder.

  At first she wasn’t sure how to deal with getting onto the ladder. She laid the goat down next to the ladder and swung a foot over onto a rung. Carefully, she maneuvered the goat into a position similar to how she’d carry Jason sometimes, in front of her, its head slung over her shoulder, its legs straddling her body while she kept one arm around its rump and holding it against her.