by Lucy Score
“What if it wasn’t murder?” Dad asked, picking up his mug of now cold coffee.
“An accident?” That seemed a hell of a lot more likely to me than Jonah Sr. running out and committing cold-blooded murder.
Dad’s shoulder hitched. “The man liked to drink. Occasionally he drove.”
I walked through it in my head. Callie leaving the lake, walking in the direction of town, of home. The roads were windy and dark. Someone could have hit her.
“Hit and run. Under the influence. The charges would have added up to some serious jail time.”
Dad nodded. “He was the primary breadwinner for a big family. They would have lost everything.”
“What did he do with the body?” I asked, considering. “Would he have driven the corpse of a teenage girl to New York state where he didn’t know every inch of the woods, every mountain road?” That didn’t make a lick of sense to me. He’d be too exposed.
“Let’s back up from this. Besides Jonah Bodine. There are two theories that everyone keeps comin’ back to,” Dad said, leaning back in his chair. “One.”
“That she harmed herself somehow,” I answered by rote. It was the official family line. The fact that there’d been no body was really what had punctured the faith in the theory. That and now a bloody sweater. “Judge and Mrs. Kendall still maintain that their daughter suffered from mental issues and hurt herself regularly.”
Dad’s head bobbed. “And two?”
“That there was a boy. He either ran off with her or he killed her,” I filled in.
“You ever see her with someone special?” Dad asked. We’d been through this on our own a few thousand times since Callie’s disappearance. I’d known her. And I wanted answers just like everyone else. But somewhere deep inside, I was scared that I had a key that would unlock everything. That I had forgotten something that would answer every question.
I shook my head. “No more than usual. She was sixteen. But didn’t seem overly interested in any boys, summertimers or otherwise.”
“Where was she when she wasn’t hanging out with y’all?” Dad asked.
I closed my eyes and opened up those mental files from that summer. I felt like the entire season was burned into my brain because of the disappearance, the investigations, the questions never answered. “Home. I assume. We weren’t close. Friendly, but not friends. She was older. A little reserved maybe?”
I thought about those sweaters, that sweater. Always, even in the August swelter.
“Did her parents ever have any proof that she was hurting herself?” I asked.
“Gave us the name of Callie’s therapist, as I recall,” my dad said, stroking a hand over his mustache.
I decided I’d take the case files home for another review over the next few days. Anything to keep my mind off the man next door.
“I hate having all these questions,” I admitted.
“The answers are there,” Dad said. “Maybe we haven’t asked the right questions yet.”
“Speaking of, I need to ask you something,” I said.
“If it’s why your grandmother is a hellion hell-bent on driving me insane, I don’t have an answer for you,” he told me, taking off his glasses and stuffing them in his shirt pocket. “Thank you again for taking care of her last night.”
“It’s about Bowie.”
I watched his face carefully looking for some hint of something. But my dad just looked perplexed.
“Is he all right?”
Genuine concern. Huh. Had Bowie been messing with me? Was this just another fake lead, a red herring, in the dissection of why Bowie Bodine didn’t want me?
“We had a…moment last night.”
“Ah, come on, Cass. You know I hate it when you and your sister talk about your ‘moments.’”
June spoke only in very clinical terms of her sex life. And I only mentioned things in front of Dad to annoy him.
“Anyway, after this moment he said we couldn’t have any more moments.”
Dad looked puzzled. “Why in the hell not? You two are perfect for each other.”
“He said to ask you.”
I waited a beat.
Dad’s brows furrowed and then his wispy eyebrows winged up his forehead. “Uh-oh.”
“Dad, what did you do?”
28
Bowie
Eight years earlier
The knuckles on my right hand stung, and my jaw ached where that Blaine asshole had gotten in a lucky shot with his elbow. I was still vibrating with barely controlled rage. The dumbass was howling about lawsuits and holding paper towels to his still bleeding nose while the bonfire crowd had thinned to just lookie-loos.
Cassidy was standing near the fire, rubbing her arms with her hands and talking with Scarlett and June. I wanted to go check on her. Make sure she was okay. But Sheriff Tucker was headed in my direction and he didn’t look too happy.
“Bowie,” he said.
“Sir.”
“Things get a little out of hand tonight?” he asked.
We had a nice little arrangement going. We partiers kept our bonfires civil and made everyone walk home. Then the police didn’t have to get involved with checking everyone’s IDs and arresting people. Now I’d gone and ruined it. Technically, the jackwagon with the busted nose had ruined it. But he’d get to go home to his regular life, and I’d be stuck here in Bootleg.
Would this mess cost me my job in the fall? Had I disappointed Sheriff Tucker?
Why was it that I couldn’t keep my head on straight around Cassidy Tucker? It was not an appropriate question to ask her father.
“A little, sir,” I agreed.
“You wanna tell me your side of it or should I go with his version where you jumped out of the dark at him and tried to mug him?”
I smirked, and it hurt my lip. “He was getting handsy with one of the girls, threatening to throw her in the lake. She said no. He didn’t listen.”
“One of the girls?” the sheriff asked.
We both knew who I was talking about, but he was going to make me say her name anyway.
“Cassidy, sir.”
He stroked his finger and thumb over the corners of his mustache. “Am I going to have to give my daughter a refresher course on self-defense?”
I shook my head, covering a smile. “No, sir. I think she can handle herself.”
“But you stepped in.”
The man had me there. Why did I have the feeling the confession he was trying to get out of me wasn’t about an assault?
“I was…angry that he wasn’t being respectful.”
Sheriff Tucker nodded in understanding. “I appreciate you looking out for my daughter. I really do. You’re a good man, Bowie.”
Something warmed inside me. “Thank you, sir.”
He wiped his palms over the knees of his pants and sighed like he had the weight of the world sitting on his chest. “Son, I hate to do this. But I’m gonna need to ask you to give Cassidy some space. She doesn’t seem to be capable of giving you any. So it falls to you. She’s young. She’s still in school. You’ve got your hands full with your family and now your job. I don’t want something derailing you both.”
The something warm iced over into a chunk of ice in my gut.
“Sir, I didn’t mean to be disrespectful—”
“Bowie, you’re the most respectful person in this whole damn town. I know you’ve got strong feelings for her. And I know it’s not fair, but I’m asking you not to act on those feelings. Things happen. People make mistakes. They get hitched up to the wrong people at the wrong time—”
“I understand,” I said, cutting him off. My heart limped in my chest. The man I’d spent my entire life looking up to, the one who’d driven me to take my driver’s license test and taken me out for pizza to celebrate afterward because my own father had been too drunk to do it, didn’t think I was good enough for his daughter.
Something hot and hard lodged itself in my throat. Despair. An anger so white
-hot I wondered why it didn’t burn its way out.
No matter what degree I had, no matter how hard I worked, I was still Jonah Bodine’s son.
29
Bowie
Johnny Johnson kicked back in the chair across from me, arms crossed defiantly over his skinny chest. He was Bootleg’s version of a punk. Black, ripped jeans, white t-shirt despite the thirty-degree temperatures outside. Eyebrow ring. A haircut that made him look like his little brother had cut it with safety scissors.
Troubled family, his file said.
We all handled our troubled families differently. I’d gone off and tried to distance myself from my unhappy upbringing with education and good deeds.
Johnny here was heading down the Gibson path of acting out. By the time Gibs had graduated high school, he’d had a desk dedicated to him in detention. He’d carved his initials into it with a knife that got confiscated and landed him another week of detention.
“I get the whole discipline problem thing,” I told Johnny. “You’re not a terrible human being. You’re just in a terrible situation.” Johnny’s dad had gone off to serve his second stint in jail for identity theft, and his mother had moved in a new boyfriend over the weekend.
His eyes flicked to the photos on top of my army green filing cabinet. Front and center was a shot of me, my dad, and Cassidy’s dad. They had their arms slung over my shoulders, grins on all our faces. It had been taken after I threw the last strike in the state championships. “That’s my son,” my dad had bellowed at the top of his lungs pushing his way through the crowd to get to me. He’d stayed sober for my games, the ones we’d won, giving me a few precious hours of having a real father. But Sheriff Tucker was as constant and dependable as they come. He was there for me, win or lose.
“No offense, man, but why should I take any advice from you? Your dad’s a murderer.”
Punk-ass kid.
“That’s exactly why you should take advice from me,” I said, fighting the urge to defend my father. “I’ve been where you are. And I don’t want you to make a choice that will stick with you for the rest of your life. Don’t do something stupid when you’re this close to being an actual adult and making your own decisions. You don’t have to be happy about what’s going on with your parents,” I reminded him. “But don’t let you being pissed off at them ruin the rest of your life.”
Johnny dropped his head back against the chair. “God, you sound like an after school-special.”
If only slapping students weren’t illegal. “Let’s cut to the chase. You’re fishin’ for detention so you don’t have to go home and make nice with your mom’s boyfriend.” I’d had sports and jobs to fill my time after school. Johnny here had nothing to keep him out of the house or juvie.
He lifted a shoulder to his ear, dropped it. The smirk faded from his face.
“How about we do this instead. You apologize sincerely to Mrs. Plunkett and I’ll set you up as the student rep on the 3D printer lab. We’d need you an hour or two every afternoon. Maybe even some time on the weekends when we’re closer to opening the lab.”
He perked up. The kid might have been a punk, but he was a tech nerd punk.
“Yeah?” he asked.
“Yeah. But that apology has to convince her,” I reminded him.
Johnny snorted, but the hope remained in his eyes. “I’m like totally convincing.”
“We’ll see,” I said dryly. “Go on. Get out of here.”
I shooed him out the door and turned my attention to the inbox of new emails when someone else crossed my threshold.
“Mornin’, Bowie,” Sheriff Tucker said, rocking back on his heels, hands in his pockets.
“Mornin’, sheriff.” There were only two reasons why he’d be in my office during the school day. Either there was a break in the Callie Kendall case or he’d somehow found out that I’d had my hands and every other body part all over his daughter last night.
“I talked to Cassidy this morning,” he began.
Fuck.
“Mind if I sit down?” he asked, gesturing to the chair still warm from Johnny’s punk-ass.
“Sure,” I said, trying not to freak the fuck out. It was ridiculous. I was just shy of thirty-one years of age and I was still scared to death of losing this man’s approval.
“Y’all got any coffee around here?” he asked, taking a seat.
“Yeah, sure,” I said getting up and punching buttons on the coffeemaker. I was making the man a triple espresso for all I knew. Panic was stampeding through my system.
“Think we’ll see snow again this weekend,” he predicted.
“Uh-huh. Maybe,” I agreed. Was I having a heart attack? Or a panic attack? I needed to calm the hell down. I was an adult, and for all I knew the sheriff here was stopping by to talk about Thanksgiving.
“I think you and I may have had a miscommunication,” he said when I handed over the coffee and sat back down.
Fuck. This was definitely not holiday chat. It had nothing to do with my father being a murder suspect. This was about Cassidy and me.
“It was a momentary lapse, sir,” I blurted out my confession. “It won’t happen again.”
Sheriff Tucker set his mug on the desk and rubbed his hands over his face. “Christ, son, why the hell not? Do you know how horrific it is to watch my daughter date jackass after jackass? It’s like she’s picking dumbasses just to drive me into my grave early. For the love of all that’s holy, when are you going to ask her out?”
I blinked. “Wait. What?”
“You two have had feelings for each other since forever,” he pointed out.
I heard a weird buzzing in my ears and wondered if I was hallucinating or having a stroke. I reached up and felt my mouth. “Is my mouth drooping?” I asked him.
“Huh?”
“Which arm goes numb in a stroke? Or is that a heart attack?” I demanded, flapping both my arms up and down, testing for weakness.
“Are you tryin’ to take flight, son?” Sheriff Tucker asked incredulously.
“I’m tryin’ to figure out if I’m having some kind of medical emergency. You told me to stay away from Cassidy. You told me people get hitched up to the wrong people.”
“Ah, hell. Bowie! I didn’t mean forever and I was talking about your parents. I didn’t want you and Cassidy gettin’ together when she was too young to be smart. Y’all would have gotten knocked up or she would have hated being apart from you and dropped out of school. Or you would have given up the job you wanted so bad to be close to her at college.”
He wasn’t speaking English. The words weren’t recognizable.
“I never meant for you to stay away from her forever. I just wanted her to have a chance to grow up first. I’ve been waitin’ on you to finally make your damn move for years, son.”
“You think I’m good enough for Cassidy?” I asked, trying desperately to clarify exactly what he was trying to tell me.
“Yes!” he bellowed.
“But you told me to stay away from her!”
“Bowie, I’m not the best communicator in the world. So maybe the words didn’t come out right. I wanted you two to get yourselves where you needed to be before diving into those big feelings.”
He’d been trying to protect me. He didn’t think I was a bad seed or not good enough for his daughter.
I pressed my fingers to my eyes. “All this time I thought you were telling me I wasn’t good enough.”
“Ah, hell. Nadine is gonna kill me deader than a hammer over this,” he groaned. “Bowie, I never, ever meant to make you feel that way. You’re one of the good ones. Always have been. Even your daddy said so.”
My eyes flicked to the picture on the file cabinet.
“So if I want to court Cassidy?” I began, wanting it spelled out loud and clear. No misunderstandings this time.
“You have my blessing. Hell, I’m begging you. You want to put a ring on the girl? I’m a thousand percent in favor. For the love of God, Bowie. Don’t let m
e sit down at my dinner table with an asshole from one of them there dating applications!”
A weight I’d been carrying for eight long years lifted right off my chest.
I stood up, my chair smacking into the wall behind me.
“Before you go runnin’ off,” Sheriff Tucker said, “I should warn you that she’s madder than a puffed toad. Some of that might spill over on you.”
“I can handle it,” I promised. There was nothing in this world that was going to stand between me and Cassidy Tucker now.
30
Cassidy
Eddie didn’t care that I was good and pissed off or that he’d just had breakfast two hours ago. He wanted food now. He expressed this desire by winding his way in and out of my feet as I warmed up a bowl of stew that I was too mad to eat.
“You want more food? Well, I wanted my dad to keep his big fat nose out of my life. Guess neither one of us is gettin’ what we want,” I told the cat. He was young. But he needed to learn that life wasn’t always fair.
I couldn’t believe my father had sabotaged my chances with Bowie back then. Bowie had felt something for me, and I’d spent the last thousand years questioning my instincts and wondering what was wrong with me. I slammed the utensil drawer shut.
George padded into the kitchen to add his two cents to the lack of food issue.
“You’re already borderline overweight,” I told him.
I’d stormed out of the station, middle fingers mentally flying, and decided to take a little PTO to stew in my rage. Better to do it at home than anywhere near Connelly should he come back to the station. I wished I could be like Scarlett and throw a fit, get it out of my system. But I had the icier kind of temper, freezing people out with my chilly politeness.
My phone rang on the counter. I planned to ignore it, but I saw Scarlett on the screen and picked up.
“Okay, it’s tomorrow,” she said by way of a greeting. “I need to know how you may or may not have had sex with Bowie and why the whole town’s talking about you screaming at your daddy and then him showing up in Bowie’s office, hat in hand.”