Prologue
The sun shot daggers into Jo’s eyes as she opened the door of Zoe’s home. It was already noon, but she and her best friends couldn’t be bothered to wake up early on the day after their high school graduation. The bottle of tequila they’d managed to put a pretty good dent in twelve hours prior resided in her duffel bag for later use.
“It burns,” Jo said with a laugh as she covered her eyes.
“You dork.” Mel, the third part of their trio, brushed past her and opened the door of her car before tossing her yearbook in the backseat.
Zoe hovered in the doorway of the double-wide.
The three of them had stayed up most the night talking about their futures.
Well, Zoe and Mel had been the ones predicting the next year of their lives while Jo listened and drank Jose Cuervo until her head swam.
Mel had another seven weeks of life in River Bend before she was off to California to fulfill the River Bend High’s class prediction about her future. Being voted most likely to succeed was about the highest praise a gaggle of eighteen-year-olds could manage.
Jo tossed her bag into the back along with Mel’s yearbook and turned to Zoe.
“When are you going to talk to Luke?”
“I don’t know.”
Zoe had told the two of them that she needed to break up with her boyfriend of two years in order to get away from River Bend. From the looks of the broken-down dump of the Brown family home . . . and the graduates’ predictions that Zoe was most likely to never leave River Bend . . . it was no wonder Zoe wanted to flee.
Making matters worse, Zoe’s father was the well-known felon in their small town. He was serving a sentence of fifteen-plus years for armed robbery, but that didn’t stop the kids of River Bend from giving Zoe crap anytime they could. As if it was Zoe’s fault her dad was a complete lowlife.
“Please don’t say anything to him,” Zoe pleaded.
Jo and Mel exchanged glances. “We wouldn’t dream of it.”
“I’m going to miss this place,” Mel said with a sigh.
Jo’s eyes shifted to Zoe.
“That will make one of us,” Zoe said.
Zoe wouldn’t miss the family home where when her father wasn’t in jail, he did a fair amount of drinking and beating up his family. Mel would miss it because she’d only known the Brown home as a place to crash in the last couple of years. And Jo wouldn’t miss it at all because she had no plans to leave.
A higher education would consist of something at the community college level at best, along with a lot more partying while she was still young enough to enjoy it. She considered a move to Waterville, a town only an hour away with a lot more going for it, but she doubted her father would foot the bill.
She had the summer to figure it out. Who knew, maybe she and Zoe could find a place together?
“I’ll be back at eight to pick you up for tonight’s bonfire,” Mel told Zoe.
“You’re coming, right, Jo?” Zoe asked.
Jo slid around the passenger door. “Someone has to bring the booze.”
Zoe closed the front door behind her a little more. “Shh!”
“See ya later.” Jo didn’t bother with a seat belt, even after Mel pulled out of the driveway.
The short drive into town and down the street where Jo lived was met with silence. “You sure you don’t want a ride to Grayson’s farm tonight?”
“I’m going to con my dad into giving me back the keys to the Jeep. I did manage a B average this year.”
“I don’t think it was your grades that worried him.”
No, Jo’s dad was River Bend’s sheriff. Jo hated the label of cop’s daughter from day one. Everyone expected her to be Little Miss Perfect, be a stupid pillar of the community. All she wanted was to be herself, a teenager out to have fun and live life every day. Unfortunately that collided with being the cop’s kid. Most of the teens in town drank, many of them smoked a little pot, and occasionally someone would bring something stronger into town. Her dad called her on every indiscretion. Made her run cross-country in the summer and had her running sprints every spring for the track team.
But no more. High school was officially over. She planned on tossing her running shoes in the bonfire later that night.
Mel pulled into the driveway of the home Jo had grown up in. Her dad’s squad car wasn’t blocking the garage door. She sighed with relief. Twenty questions about what she and the girls had done the night before wasn’t something she wanted to face. Not with the slight hangover she’d been nursing since she woke up.
“See you tonight,” Jo said as she stepped out of the car, dragging her duffel bag with her.
She peered into the car after closing the door.
Mel gripped the steering wheel as she looked down the street toward where she lived. “My parents suck.”
Jo tried to make her friend feel better. “All parents suck. It’s in their job description.”
“Yeah, but they couldn’t even wait until I was off to college before telling me about the divorce. Now that’s all I’m going to think about all summer.”
“We’re going to party all summer, Mel Bel. You won’t have time to spend on your parents’ screwed-up world.”
Mel pointed a finger in Jo’s direction. “I’m depending on you to distract me.”
“I got ya covered.”
Mel gave her a half-assed smile and pulled out of the drive.
Jo stepped into the empty house, dropped her bag on the kitchen table, and headed toward the bathroom. She pulled her dead cell phone from her back pocket and plugged it in to charge. After digging into the bottom of her personal drawer, the one filled with tampons and pads, she found the birth control pills her father didn’t know she took and popped the tiny orange contraceptive into her mouth.
Much as she wanted to crawl back into bed, she opted for a shower in case her father came home early. The man had the uncanny ability to smell alcohol on her skin after a night of drinking.
Fifteen minutes later, with her hair wrapped in a towel and her bathrobe tied around her waist, she left her bathroom for the short walk down the hall to her bedroom.
The outline of her father standing in the hall, holding a half-empty bottle of tequila, caused her to stumble to a stop.
“Care to explain this?” His even, controlled voice always unnerved her.
Jo’s breath caught in her chest.
Her dad wasn’t a small man. Six two with a good 220 pounds of muscled bulk made him look like he needed to be a linebacker playing for the Ducks. Only instead of shoulder pads and a helmet, he wore a gun, a badge, and a hat on his head.
She wanted to lie, somehow convince her dad the bottle wasn’t hers. But he had been the one to drop her off at Zoe’s the night before, and Jo didn’t want to rat her friends out.
Instead of playing stupid, she stuck her chin a little higher in the air. “It was my graduation night.”
“You’re eighteen.”
“I didn’t drive.”
“You don’t have a car.”
“None of us drove.”
He stood silent for the space of a breath; his eyes bore down on hers. “None of you . . . you mean Zoe and Mel?”
It was Jo’s turn to play quiet.
“Where did you get the liquor?” His voice was calm, almost too much so.
“I’m not ratting out my friends.”
“Zoe?”
“No.”
“Mel?”
“No, Dad, stop. It’s not the end of the world. It’s just a little alcohol.” She moved past him and grabbed the duffel bag he’d rifled through to find her stash.
“That Julian guy in Waterville?”
The guy she needed the birth control pills for supplied her with more than booze.
“Let it go, Dad. I’m an adult now.”
She tried to move around him but he blocked her way.
“Did you steal it?”
Jo looked at the floor before remembering to make eye contact.
Her hesitation was all her dad needed to sniff out the truth.
“Damn it, JoAnne.”
“I didn’t steal it,” she lied.
“Bullshit.” His voice edged higher.
“You never believe me.”
“You’re always lying to me. Now tell me where you got this.” He waved Jose in the air.
“No.”
His jaw twitched. “I can’t have my daughter running around town stealing liquor from our neighbors.”
“I didn’t—”
“Do I need to put you in handcuffs before you’re going to learn to keep your nose clean?”
She shot both hands toward him, her wrists close together. “Go ahead, Dad. Arrest me for having a bottle of alcohol, something just about every kid in this town my age has access to.”
Joseph slammed the bottle on the table. “That isn’t the point. You’re my daughter. I can’t have you breaking the law.”
“Because you’re a cop.”
“I’m the cop!”
Something she’d always hated. “And because you play sheriff, I have to wear a fucking halo and pretend I’m prim and innocent.”
“No one is expecting you to be a Disney character.”
“Good. I’m glad we understand each other.”
She tried to move around him again.
He didn’t budge.
“No more of this, JoAnne.”
The noose of his presence, his uniform, started to cut off the air in the room.
“I hate that you’re the sheriff.”
Her words did nothing to him. She’d said them before.
“I’m going to find out who this belongs to, and you’re going to face them, apologize, and hope they don’t want to press charges.”
“No one presses charges against you, Dad.”
“This isn’t about me. One of these days I’m not going to be able to stop you from sitting in that jail cell.”
She glared at him. “So you believe what all those assholes at the school said about me, too?” Voted most likely to end up in jail had been her sentence from the graduating class at River Bend. And obviously her father had read that in her yearbook.
“I believe that if you don’t start having a little humility, a little respect, you’re going to hate life.”
“I already hate my life.”
Her father visibly winced. “I’m not a perfect father, I know I’ve made mistakes, but you don’t have it that bad.”
Her teenage hormones wanted to scream. “I’m a cop’s kid. I’ve always had to be something I’m not. Right now half the graduating class is waking up with a hangover, and I bet their parents are yelling at them.”
“We’ve been through this—”
“We have, and you know what? I don’t give a shit what you think.”
“That’s enough!” He yelled loud enough to rattle the china in her late mother’s cabinet. “You will respect me in my home.”
“What are you going to do, kick me out?”
“If I have to.”
He wouldn’t.
Only his eyes said he meant business.
“Is that what I have to do, JoAnne? Does something tragic have to happen in order for you to get your crap together?”
She’d lost her mother to a car accident when she was just a kid, which helped prompt her rebellion.
“High school is over,” he said as if she didn’t know. “You’re eighteen now. You get caught stealing, even liquor, and I have no choice but to put you behind bars. That doesn’t go off your record.”
“You’re worried about how it will make you look.”
“I’m worried about my kid screwing up her life for something as stupid as this.” He pointed to the bottle. “I think you should join the military.”
She shook her head, the towel holding her hair started to come undone. “I’m not joining the military!”
He lifted his hands in the air. “Well, you’re not doing this all summer. You’re getting a job if you’re living here.”
“I help out at Sam’s.”
“A real job. To keep you out of trouble.”
“Where do you suggest I get one in this one-crap town?”
Her dad stared her down. “I don’t know if you can get a job in this one-crap town since you can’t be trusted.”
The image of the words in her yearbook scrolled in her mind: JoAnne Ward, most likely to end up in jail.
Instead of saying anything else, she grabbed her bag from the table and shoved past her dad into her bedroom. She slammed the door and took less than two minutes pulling on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. With wet hair, she charged into her bathroom, grabbed the cell phone and the charging cable, and went ahead and shoved her birth control pills into her bag. A few changes of clothes made it into her duffel before she stormed out of her childhood bedroom.
Her father sat at the kitchen table, the half-empty bottle of tequila was winning a staring match.
When he heard her, he glanced up.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“To find a job,” she told him, having no intention of actually looking.
He sighed. “Sit down, JoAnne. Let’s try and talk about this.”
“Why? So you can tell me what a crappy kid I am? How I disgrace you and your position in this town? I don’t think so.” She ran out of the house and half jogged the five miles of back roads and shortcuts to Miss Gina’s Bed-and-Breakfast.
Once on the steps of the inn, she dropped her bag and caught her breath.
She hated her dad, hated this town.
It choked her every damn day.
The screen door to the inn opened, and Miss Gina, with her gray-speckled long hair, sixties throwback skirt, and flowing blouse plopped down beside Jo on the steps. “Well, look what the wind blew in.”
“I hate him, Miss Gina.”
Miss Gina wrapped an arm over Jo’s shoulders. “You don’t hate him.”
“He doesn’t understand.”
It took a lot to make Jo want to cry, but she was fighting back tears.
“C’mon inside and you can tell me all about what Sheriff Ward doesn’t understand.”