Halfway through the afternoon, dark clouds had begun to pour into the valley, and nothing about them looked friendly. A brisk wind had ridden along with the storm clouds, cutting short my time on the ladder. I took a quick tour around the entire pavilion. The sanding was nearly finished. A few of the wooden slats needed replacing. then it was ready for paint.

Ella surprised me when I circled back around. She was already sitting on the steps with Boone curled up against her for a belly rub.

"Did you float over here on winged shoes? I didn't even hear you walk up." I sat next to her.

"I'm just like a butterfly." I could tell something was off in her tone.

"Bad day?"

"Patty is apparently working on her Scrooge impression. She's monstrously grumpy. She actually docked me five minutes of pay because I was late today. It will take her way longer than five minutes just to calculate how much that is. But I'm done with my work day so on to better topics. I was going to whip up some macaroni and cheese."

"That sounds amazing. Especially because it's getting pretty damn cold out here."

Ella looked up at the sky. "You should call it quits soon. When these early summer storms roll in, they are fast and brutal." She hopped up. "In fact, I'm going to start pedaling before the first drop falls."

I took hold of her hand and kissed it. "I'll be there in the next hour. I just need to put stuff away."

"I'll be waiting." She winked and wiggled her ass a few times as she walked away.

I was packing up my tools and collecting the used sandpaper as Richard walked up with a man with a slight hunch in his shoulders. "Hey, Fynn, this is Carl. He owns Harrold's Market."

"Nice to meet you."

Carl obviously had back problems. He had to awkwardly move his whole body to look around at the park. "She sure looks beautiful. Brings back memories." A sad smile followed.

Richard patted Carl's shoulder. "I think it's going to help the wounds. Especially since the town never really got closure."

With the word closure, my mind shifted to the impeccably kept cemetery and the question popped out. "How is that?" I asked, unaware that I was stepping into a land mine.

Carl was quick to answer. "We never got closure because that lousy drunken bus driver was never charged with murder."

Boom.

I'd driven into Butterfield with every possible motive for doing so in my head. I had wanted to see the people of the town, to see who they were and find out what the hell drove them. But when I'd discovered a town, not filled with angry, reactive people but a town filled with genuine souls who had suffered enough to let everything in their town fade to gray, I'd let some of my own anger go. Then Ella stepped into the picture, and my rage had been smothered. All I wanted to do was help give the town a few rays of light. And, up until now, that had all been made easier by avoiding the one topic that I knew would rekindle the anger I'd felt since that day when I walked into the garage and found my dad sitting dead in the front seat of his car.

I wasn't going to slip up. I didn't want Ella to find out. I would find the right time to tell her, but that time wasn't now. Unfortunately, I knew I couldn't just smile and return to my task.

"The police must have had good reason not to charge him." My unexpected comment earned a sharp scowl from Carl and a wide-eyed, stunned look from Richard.

"The police didn't do a thorough job," Carl snapped back. "If they had, they would have hauled the drunken murderer off to jail and thrown away the key."

Richard placed his hand on Carl's shoulder again. "With all due respect, Fynn, this just isn't your business. The town has been through a lot, and you're an outsider who doesn't understand the depth of our pain. The police were careless with evidence. The man wasn't charged, but that doesn't make him any less guilty. And if he wasn't drunk, he had decided to kill himself with a bus full of kids because there were no visible tire marks on the road, which meant he drove straight off the cliff. Ironically, he survived because he was thrown from the bus."

"The coward took his own life a few years later because he couldn't live with the guilt." Carl's face was as red as the glow of rage in my chest.

I needed to step away. If I didn't want to lose Ella, I had to turn away and leave. I kept that reminder in my head as I pulled myself away from the two men. There had always been so many unanswered questions. Even my dad had no explanation for what happened that day. His lack of memory had haunted him for his last days. The only thing he knew for sure was that he wasn't drunk. He was allergic to the stuff. I never remembered him taking even a sip of beer.

All the shit was coming back at me like the storm hovering in the distance. Fixing things in the park and spending so much time with Ella in the past few weeks had made it easy to forget the fractured, tragic history behind the accident.

I shoved my tools into the toolbox. While Richard seemed to sense something was wrong, Carl, who had only just met me, seemed oblivious.

"Fran mentioned the painters will be adding a nice coat of paint to the pavilion." Richard spoke to me even though my back was turned.

I nodded. "Yep. Well, I want to avoid the rain, so I'll catch you later." I whistled for Boone and left a puzzled Richard standing outside of the pavilion.

I gripped the handle of the toolbox hard enough to feel the plastic crack under my palm. I tossed it into the back of the van. The tools clanked inside as the tin box bounced over the floor of the van.

Boone sensed my anger and decided to climb into the back instead of sitting up front with me. I patted him once to assure him he wasn't in trouble. Then I climbed into the van and drove down Main Street. I had a fleeting urge to just keep driving and not ever look back at this place. But I couldn't. It wasn't Butterfield anymore. It wasn't the town filled with broken, rage-filled people who skewered my dad with baseless assaults on his character, the media naturally siding with them to amplify the attacks. It wasn't that town anymore. It was Butterfield, the hometown of Ella, the girl who had stolen my heart.

I turned sharply around the corner, and Boone chirped in protest as he was thrown off balance. I slammed the brakes on in front of her house, no longer giving a damn about who saw me pull up or how long my van would sit there. Boone curled up in his bed and bid me a silent goodbye, letting me know he was staying in the van.

The first drops of rain fell on my head as I walked across the small front lawn. Lightning lit the sky behind me as I climbed the front steps. The raging storm was an all too perfect background for my mood. I briefly considered turning back around, giving myself time to cool down before I saw Ella but then she opened the door and greeted me with those eyes that I could no longer erase from my mind.

Her dark brows pushed together when she saw my face. "Fynn? Is everything all right?"

I stepped inside and pulled her into my arms. "It is now."