Tell me why we’re doing this again? I had a lot of important things on my schedule today, like taking a nap,” Rylan complains as I pull my new black Ford truck into the drive along the side of the stables.
“I didn’t force you to come with me. You’re the one who jumped in the truck without asking where I was going,” I remind him, shutting off the engine and glancing around the property, hoping to catch a glimpse of Shelby.
I’ve been sneaking into the stables every night for the last week after the workers have gone home, hoping to talk to her, but she’s been a no-show. I know she’s avoiding me after what went down in the tack room the other night, and I knew it would happen, but I’m still pissed about it. I’ve had plenty of things to do that should have kept me too busy to think about her, but she’s been the sole focus of my thoughts for six years. Now that I’ve touched her, tasted her, and held her in my arms, there’s no way I can push her out of my mind, no matter what I have going on.
“I only got in your truck because I needed a break from being your bitch. I’m glad you finally rented your own place and I don’t have to suffer through judgy looks from your sister anymore, but unpacking all your shit was exhausting,” Rylan complains.
“You didn’t unpack anything. You sat on your ass and told me where everything should go.”
Rylan shrugs as I pocket my keys and get out of the truck, meeting him around the front of the vehicle. “And you can thank me anytime for making sure your place is now feng shui.”
The best part about finding out I have a shit ton of money in the bank is being able to finally take control of my life instead of having to rely on my sister for everything. I bought my own truck so I didn’t have to keep borrowing Kat’s SUV, and I rented a townhouse in downtown Charleston so I didn’t have to impose on her and Daniel any longer. She put up a good fight when I told her I was moving out, and I felt a little guilty about the worry that was written all over her face when I reassured her that I wouldn’t be alone since Rylan was coming with me. I promised to keep going to see the military shrink and call her if I needed to talk, and spent the last few days moving in. Being able to pay a hefty deposit and a year’s worth of rent up front in cash made the paperwork go through a lot faster than normal, and before I knew it, I had a place to call my own where I wouldn’t have to worry about waking Kat up in the middle of the night if I had another fucking nightmare.
Not that I’d had any of those damn things since that night with Shelby, but I knew they were still in there, waiting to wreak havoc on my brain. My shrink wasn’t too happy when I told him I’d settled on the hobby of getting Shelby back, especially when I told him about her accident and how much she’d changed since the last time I saw her. He didn’t think it was good for me to put all my focus on someone who might be just as damaged as I am. He wanted me to concentrate on fixing myself, not someone else, but I didn’t give a fuck. Just because I’m required to talk to him every week, and he’s the one with the fancy degree, doesn’t mean he knows what’s best for me and my fucked-up brain. The only thing that got him to shut up about how bad this all was for me was the fact that he was intrigued about the whole no nightmares or flashbacks since the night in the tack room.
“I can’t believe you’re making me see Paul. That guy hates me,” Rylan complains again as we walk into the huge open door of the stables.
“It’s been six years since we worked for him. I doubt he hates you anymore. And he only hated you because he always had to yell at you for not doing work.”
Paul Walden has been the property and stable manager for the Eubanks Plantation for as long as I can remember. He’s in his late sixties by now, and even though I haven’t seen him around the few times I’ve snuck over here, he’s the type of man who will never stop working. He told me on more than one occasion that they’d have to drag his dead carcass out of the stables before he’d even think about retiring. As gruff and old-school as he’d been, he was like a second father to me when I worked here. Scratch that. He was like an only father to me since mine never gave a shit about what I did.
Paul always took care of Kat and me in his stern, no-nonsense way. He let me borrow an extra car of his when mine took a shit and I needed to get Kat to school or doctors’ appointments or make it in to work. When our parents were alive, he gave my sister and me a place to crash when we needed to get away from their excessive partying, and after they died, he had us over for dinner at least one night a week to make sure we were okay and slip money into Kat’s hand when I wasn’t looking, since he knew I was too proud to take a handout. He didn’t hover and he didn’t make me feel like I was too young or stupid to handle everything on my own. He stood back and let me take care of my own responsibilities, but he was always there to help, even when I was too pigheaded to ask for it.
“How could I possibly concentrate on shoveling horse shit when there were always hot chicks coming in and out of the stables?” Rylan questions as we continue moving down the long main hallway of the barn and I finally spot Paul talking to another worker at the end of the row of horse stalls. “You were too busy with your head up Shelby’s ass to notice back then, but there were some fine specimens who boarded their horses here or stopped by for a look at one of them that was up for sale.”
I ignore Rylan’s rambling when Paul’s head comes up as I get a few feet away from him and stop. I stand here quietly, listening to him give the worker a few orders before slapping him on the back and telling him to, “Get that shit done before I die of old age, boy.”
The worker, not much older than I was when I first started working here, nods his head and runs away with wide, nervous eyes to do his duties.
“Still scaring the hired help, I see,” I tell him with a smile as he walks up to me.
Even though it’s been six years since I last saw Paul, he hasn’t changed a bit. He still stands just as tall as me with just as many muscles hidden under layers of wrinkled and age-spotted skin from chucking hay bales. He still looks like Clint Eastwood with his salt-and-pepper hair and tanned, weathered face from working outside in the sun all day, including the permanent scowl that’s always in place.
“Scaring those young pups is the only way to get their asses moving so they don’t stand around on their phones doing the Twitter and sending pictures of their privates to all of creation,” Paul replies as I pull my hand out of the pocket of my jeans and reach it out to him.
He grabs it in a firm grip, shaking it once and giving me a nod.
“Good to see you again, son. Been watching what happened all over the TV since the news broke,” he tells me in a low, gruff voice as he drops my hand. “Damn shame what happened to you boys over there, but I’m glad you made it home.”
My heart starts thumping nervously in my chest and I have to take a couple of deep breaths to calm it before memories overwhelm me.
“What about me? Are you glad I’m home, too, old man?” Rylan jokes.
Both of us ignore him this time, and Paul takes a step back to lean his elbow on top of the wooden gate closing off the stall next to him. “You doin’ okay, son?”
I copy his pose, resting my own elbow on top of the gate, swallowing back the vomit that’s threatening to come right up into my mouth whenever someone brings up what happened.
“I’m getting there. Trying to do normal shit and forget about it, but the shrink they’re making me talk to every week wants to keep dredging it up.”
He takes one of the toothpicks he always keeps in the right front pocket of his flannel shirt and sticks it in the side of his mouth.
“I don’t believe in all that therapy bullshit, but maybe if they’d had that for us when we came back from Nam instead of just throwing us back into civilization without so much as a how-do-you-do, more of us wouldn’t have been so fucked in the head,” he says, moving the toothpick around in his mouth as he speaks. “I don’t know many men who could have made it through what you did. Lost a few of my own buddies in the war. Wasn’t near as bad as what you went through, but if you ever get tired of the headshrinker and need to talk, my door’s always open.”
A few minutes of silence settle between us, and the bond we’d always shared strengthens with the knowledge that we both went off to war, saw some pretty bad shit, and came home to try and put the pieces of our life back together.
Paul pulls the toothpick out of his mouth and points it at me. “I know you didn’t come here for a job, seein’ as all people in this town can talk about is that fancy new truck you’re drivin’ and the big house you rented in town. And you sure as shit got better things to do than standin’ around bullshittin’ with me, so spit it out, son.”
“Jesus, is nothing a secret in this town?” I ask with a shake of my head, irritated that no one has anything better to do around here than talk about me, and a little freaked out that Paul still knows me so well and knew I didn’t come here just to shoot the shit with him.
“Only the things people want to keep a secret, you should know that by now. The missus was gettin’ her hair done at the beauty parlor across from your house and all the gossips in Charleston were in there that day watchin’ you move your stuff in. It’s good you’re settlin’ in, doin’ normal things normal people do. Folks’ll stop talkin’ about ya if you keep that up and don’t do anything stupid to give them a reason to gossip.”
I blow out a frustrated breath of air, knowing without a doubt that my reason for coming here is something stupid that the gossip mill would cut off their own arms to get a piece of. Even with that knowledge, I still have to try. I still need answers. Deciding to just get it over with, I do as Paul demanded and spit it out as fast as possible before losing my nerve.
“A week before I was deployed, someone anonymously sent a copy of the police report from my parents’ accident to my apartment. Funny thing was, it wasn’t the same report they gave me when it happened that I needed for the insurance company. In the report they gave me, it was a single car accident, my father was driving, and they both had blood alcohol levels well above the legal limit. In the one someone sent me, neither one of them had a trace of alcohol in their system, but the driver of the second car, who it claimed was at fault, sure as hell did.”
I finally stop rambling and take a deep breath to calm my nerves. I’d never been intimidated by Paul, even when he was chewing my ass out in front of all the other workers for showing up to work a few minutes late when I’d been preoccupied with Shelby. As he stands here glaring at me silently, I’m scared as hell about what he’ll say or do. This isn’t just me being young and irresponsible. What I’m eluding to, and his possible connection to it, could ruin a lot of lives, and if what I believe is true, it would definitely cost him his job. I’m sure he’s wondering why I didn’t come to him with this when I first got the report, but I honestly never thought about him being the one who sent it until I had five years of nothing but time to think about it and dwell on it between beatings, and came to the conclusion that he was the only person in my life who could have done it.
“Why you telling me this, son?” he asks quietly.
“I think he might actually hate you now more than me,” Rylan whispers from behind me. “I told you this was a bad idea.”
Sliding my elbow off the gate, I cross my arms in front of me and stand tall. I spent too many years being kicked around and not being able to fight back or take a stand. As much as I love Paul and I appreciate everything he ever did for me, I can’t let this go. That police report was the catalyst to everything that fucked up mine and Shelby’s lives. It made me question everything I thought I knew about my parents. I have to know the truth.
“You know why I’m telling you this, Paul,” I answer in a low voice. “And I think you already know what I’m asking. I know your son-in-law just graduated from the academy and had been hired in at the station a few weeks before my parents’ accident. You knew the kind of life I had with them growing up. You saw how pissed I was and how much I hated them for doing something so stupid and leaving Kat and I to fend for ourselves.”
Paul narrows his eyes at me, but I keep going, even as Rylan whispers in my ear, telling me to shut up before the old man takes a swing at me.
“You and Rylan were the only ones who knew about me and Shelby. That report I got in the mail had the license plate number of the other vehicle, but we both know it’s not that hard to look something like that up and find out who the owner was,” I finish.
The silence stretches out between us, much more uncomfortable than a few minutes before when we were bonding over war. Paul finally sticks the toothpick back in his mouth, shoving his hands in the front pockets of his jeans as he pushes away from the gate with his elbow.
“That was a long time ago, son. I’m thinkin’ at this point, after what you’ve been through, some things are best left alone,” he states.
“I don’t give a fuck if it was a hundred years ago!” I shout angrily. “People still refer to my parents as the town drunks who got what was coming to them. Kat and I were treated like the scum of the earth for YEARS because of that shit. That woman…”
I trail off and count to ten in my head to get my anger under control. At least I’ve gotten something useful out of all those fucking hours with the shrink.
“That woman,” I continue, unclenching my fists and managing not to yell, “threatened me, my sister, and her own goddamn daughter when I confronted her. She got my deployment moved up an entire fucking year just to make sure I got the hell away from here and kept my mouth shut. Like I said, I don’t give a shit how long ago it was. When you spend five years in hell, you’ve got nothing but time to think about this shit and it’s about fucking time I get some answers and make the right person pay for all the damage she’s done. Did you send me that report? Have you known all this time that my parents weren’t responsible for that accident?”
Rylan whistles softly when I finally finish, and Paul starts rocking back and forth on the heels of his cowboy boots.
“I know you want answers, son, and I don’t blame ya one bit. But you need to think about what this could do to the people you care about. The people you kept breathin’ during those five years and the people you made it home to,” he tells me softly. “I’m gonna say this one more time, some things are best left alone. I’m also gonna say, there’s a woman livin’ in the guest house a few hundred yards away who could use a little more happy in her life and a lot less livin’ in the past that’s filled with nothin’ but heartache.”
The traces of anger still flowing through my veins that Paul sat on this information for all these years slowly fade away as soon as he brings up Shelby. I think about the kind of life she’s been living the last few years, thinking I never loved her, getting into her accident and having all of her dreams ripped from her hands, on top of being stuck under her mother’s thumb. As much as I want to know the truth, I know it won’t set me free. It will only bring up a whole shitload of more problems, not just for me, but Shelby as well. I can’t do that to her. Not now. Not after I’ve seen how broken she is and want nothing more than to take away all of her pain and make her happy again.
“I’m working on giving her a little more happy,” I finally tell him with a sigh, realizing I’m not going to get the answers from Paul that I’m looking for.
“Well, work on it a little harder for shit’s sake,” Paul tells me, dropping the soft, concerned voice and going right back to being his crotchety old self. “I always liked that girl. She had so much sweet in her it’s a wonder that pain in the ass mother of hers actually birthed her. Girl don’t smile much anymore when I see her around the grounds. Don’t laugh none either. It’s not right, sweet girl like that with nothin’ to smile about.”
He raises his eyebrow pointedly.
“Now is when you should tell him how you made her smile when you diddled her a few feet away from where we’re standing the other night,” Rylan says under his breath with a laugh.
I growl at him and Paul lets out a long, suffering sigh as he jingles some things around in his pocket before pulling out a key attached to a rabbit’s foot keychain. Grabbing it from him, I give him a questioning look. He takes the half-chewed toothpick out of his mouth and points it at me again.
“No sense in you picking that damn lock again. Maybe with that thing, you can come up with a way to make her smile again.”
“How did you—”
Paul lets out a gravelly laugh. “I’ve known about that room since the day her daddy had it built for her.”
He takes a step toward me and lowers his voice.
“Ain’t nothin’ goin’ on around here that I don’t know about. I see everything and I hear everything. At my age, I’ve learned when to pick my battles and when to realize I might have jumped the gun about certain things in anger, without thinking about the repercussions. Life’s too short to fight a war you can’t win, son, no matter how wrong it is or how angry you are. Pick one you can win. She’s one you can win if you do it right, and nothing else will matter after that.”
Saying everything and nothing all at once, Paul gave me what I needed in a roundabout way. I give him a nod of understanding as he slaps me on the back, turns, and walks away, shouting at the top of his lungs for one of the stable hands to “Get your head out of your ass and feed the damn horses!”
Smiling to myself, I watch him go until he disappears around the corner.
“What the fuck did that even mean? I’m more confused now than I was when we got here,” Rylan complains.
I stare down at the key in my hand, rubbing the rabbit’s foot for good luck as I turn around and smile at my friend.
“Don’t worry, I got what I came here for,” I tell him, pocketing the key and heading back down the hallway to the barn door.
“So, what are you going to do now?” he asks, running to catch up with me.
“I’m going make the pretty girl who lives in the guest house remember how to smile and laugh again.”
Rylan throws his hands up in the air and shouts a “Hallelujah” to the sky when we get outside.
“What’s the plan? Woo her with flowers, hire a hit man to take out her mother, tell her I’m single and available?” Rylan asks when we get inside my truck.
“No, no, and no. The first part of the plan is getting a new cell phone, then plugging in my old one and hoping all of my contact information is still in it,” I inform him as I pull out of the drive and head toward town.
“That doesn’t sound like anything that will end in smiles, or sex. I’m living vicariously through you, so I’m gonna need you to come up with another plan.”
I give him the middle finger and turn on the radio. Raising the volume, I roll down the windows and take a deep breath of warm Southern air, knowing exactly what I need to do to get Shelby to smile again.