I didn’t want to label whatever was happening between Haley and me as a distraction, but in its most basic sense, that was exactly what it wasa beautiful distraction. With each day that passed, each week marching forward, away from the anniversary of my sister’s death, I felt better, and I knew it wasn’t time that helped it was Haley. I loved spending time with her, wherever we happened to be. I liked watching her work her magic at the bar, throwing her head back and laughing at the patrons who tried their best to flirt with her, giving a little wink that was only meant for me across the bar as she balanced a tray of cocktails for another table.
She even joined me ever so often at the shop, which was a delight.
“Your hands are so dirty,” she said, watching me tinker with an engine I was rebuilding. “I’ve never seen them that dirty.”
“This is about average,” I said, working a wrench. “Nothing, really.”
“How do you get clean at the end of the day?”
“Lots of scrubbing.” I paused to flash a smile at her. “Same as you, I’m guessing, when you and Ace have to deep clean the bar before inspections.”
“Yeah, but my hands get so dry from all that product. I have to moisturize like a fiend. Sometimes, I cut some of my aloe vera plants and make a mask for my hands.”
“Does that work?”
“What do you think?”
I laughed as she passed her hands over my sweaty face, suggestive, full of promises. They were soft, and I managed to kiss a few fingers before she drew back.
“I think they are very well taken care of,” I said. “I feel sorry for you.”
“Why in the world would you feel sorry for me?”
“You have to deal with my terrible hands.”
She spluttered for a few moments before settling on something to say. “Your hands are the very opposite of terrible, Chuck. You make magic happen with those hands.”
“With my mechanic work, you mean?” I asked, smirking.
She had a leer of her own to match my smirk. “You know damn well that’s not what I meant. Don’t you dare speak ill of those hands in my presence again. You have the magic touch.”
I knew she was talking about the past few times we’d had sex. I’d been using my fingers to make sure she was readyI couldn’t bear the thought of hurting her because I was too eager to properly prepare her body for me and I’d inadvertently made her come just as a part of foreplay. She had nearly cried with laughter as I apologized, sure that I’d ruined the experience for her by the premature climax. I hadn’t been reassured until she’d come again and again during sex, and from then on, I made it my mission to watch her come apart as many times as I could give it to her, as many times as she could handle it.
“Want to help me change the oil in your SUV?” I asked her, licking my lips, aware of how dry my mouth was, just thinking about being with her.
“You really think I could learn to do something like that?” She frowned. “I still don’t know what all of the buttons mean around my steering wheel.”
I laughed. “Anyone can learn. Come on. You’ll be a good student. I can tell.”
Could I really be held responsible for kissing her long and languidly beneath her car, sheltered from prying eyes, the darkness just for us? She hadn’t even minded the way I’d stained her clothes, pawing at her like something out of control, laughing out the suspicious patches over her breasts, the crotch of her shorts.
“This outfit will be used for all future oil changes,” she said, both of us rolling out from under the SUV, breathless. “How often do I need to change my oil?”
“Every couple of months or so, depending on how much you drive it,” I said, looking around, trying to figure out if anyone had heard us under there. It hadn’t been as discreet as I preferred, but there was something about fooling around out in the open that was a huge turn-on.
“Every couple of months. Okay.” Haley seemed to think for a moment, leaving an adorable grease streak on her face when she rubbed her chin with her fingers. She’d covered my own fingers with that hand, urging them to work harder against the denim keeping me from her bare skin. I’d been able to manage to help her rub one out right under her vehicle, right under the noses of everyone at the shop, and I’d done it while keeping a running commentary of how to change the oil in her SUV. It had been a mechanic’s wet dream.
“What if I wanted to change the oil again?” Haley bit her lip, her green eyes twinkling with mischief.
“Already?” I asked, surprised. “It hasn’t been… We, uh, just did.”
“I think maybe we need to change your oil.” She stared meaningfully at my pants, and I cupped my hands in front of what was probably an enormously obvious erection.
“I think we, uh, could probably talk more about changing oil in my office. In the garage. It’s not much, but it’s private. A good place to discuss all things oil-related.”
And we’d proceeded to have wild sex over a stack of purchase orders, pens tumbling to the floor, Haley so wet from before that I’d been able to slide right in. She drove me crazy in all the right ways.
I felt so happy, so close to Haley, that even the Horizon guys felt like they had to comment. Of course, they weren’t as oblivious as they seemed, and they had always consumed gossip like real sustenance.
“I have to put my foot down,” I confessed one night in the club booth, picking anxiously at the label wrapped around my beer bottle. “You can’t ask me to dish about Haley. It’s not right.”
“We’re not asking you to dish,” Sloan protested. “All I said was that the two of you made a handsome couple. You look good together. It looks like you make each other happy.”
“I bet the sex is dynamite,” Ace commented, relaxing in the booth. It was his day off, and Brody was bartending.
“This is exactly the kind of thing I’m not willing to talk about with you all,” I said, giving Ace a meaningful glare as he laughed.
“And that is exactly the thing we’re not going to ask you,” Jack said, whacking Ace on the back of his head and making him dribble beer down his chin.
“Can’t blame a guy for being curious,” Ace said, coughing.
“Let’s make it official club business, then, not to quiz Chuck about Haley,” Jack said. “Do I have a second?”
“I second,” I said. Ace groaned good-naturedly.
“All in favor?” Jack raised his eyebrows. “Aye.”
“Aye.”
“Aye.” Sloan clinked his bottle against mine in solidarity.
“Aye,” Ace said, rolling his eyes.
“Are we voting on something?” Brody called from across the bar. “I want to vote! What’s the popular vote? Aye? I vote nay!”
I rolled my eyes. “We’re voting about whether any of you all are allowed to ask about my relationship.”
He blanched. “I don’t want to hear about your relationship with my employee.”
“Then vote ‘aye,’” I recommended.
“But but doesn’t ‘aye’ mean that I want to hear about it? Nay!”
“No, ‘aye’ means we’re not allowed to ask about it,” Jack clarified.
“Aye, then,” Brody said, shaking his head. “Appalling that we even have to vote on it.”
“Vote on what?” Haley asked, coming out from the store room armed with a couple of fresh cases of beer.
“You really, really, don’t want to know,” Brody assured her, taking the beer from her.
She turned to me, her eyebrows raised in a question.
“He’s right,” I added. “You don’t.”
“You guys are really weird sometimes,” she said, walking over to greet a group of people who had just settled in at a table.
But Haley had always gotten along with the guys, even from the very beginning. It’s why Brody had given her the jobbecause she’d been so good at disarming people, so instantly charming, that he knew she was going to do well in the bar, where regulars were lovable but often rowdy. Some of the time, us Horizon guys were the wildest of the bunch, but Haley always just rolled with it. It was rare, I believed, to have a girlfriendbecause I definitely considered her to be my girlfriend who got along with her boyfriend’s best friends just as well as he did. It just added a fun dimension to everything.
Everything was perfect especially the dynamite sex none of the guys were allowed to ask me about. Every time I was with Haley it was good. There was never a dull moment in bed, never a moment when we didn’t anticipate what the other wanted or needed or would like to try out. I was having the best sex of my life with her, and I wouldn’t change anything for the world.
It didn’t even worry me that maybe I loved her a little too much.
So there it was. I was in love with Haley. I was in love with her. I hadn’t felt like this toward anyone in my entire life, and at the heart of that was painI had to wonder what Chelsea would’ve thought of Haley, and that hurt. It hurt that I had found someone I loved, and I couldn’t share it with my twin sister, who had been my closest friend. As much as I never approved of Chelsea’s various boyfriends, she had been equally unimpressed with the women I brought around though those incidents were few and far between. I had a feeling, though, that my sister would’ve liked Haley. I think she would’ve liked Haley a lot. I could imagine her laughter, talking to Haley, getting to know her, and goddammit, it hurt to remember that it was never, ever going to happen.
“Chuck, what’s wrong?”
I propped myself up on my elbow to look down at Haley. God, she was beautiful. We’d just finished a marathon session of sex, and the afternoon sun slanted through the window shades, bathing her in a golden light. She didn’t so much as sweat as she gleamed, resplendent in afterglow.
Yeah, I had it pretty bad.
“Not a thing in the world,” I promised her, willing it to be true. I kissed her. “Not a damn thing.”
“You just look like you have something on your mind.”
“Sure, there’s always something going on in here,” I said, tapping my temple. “It would be sad if there wasn’t.”
“Good thoughts, then, I hope?” She captured my hand in hers and raised my fingers to her lips, kissing them softly.
“Good thoughts, yeah. Really good thoughts.”
Her hand closed over mine. “Are you sure? Because the expression on your face doesn’t lead me to believe that.”
“Are you saying I have an ugly face?” A deflection. I didn’t want to talk about this. I wasn’t ready to talk about this. This wasn’t something that would benefit our relationship at all. There was no way I wanted to tell Haley about my sister.
“I’m saying that you can talk to me about things,” she said. “I recognize that we haven’t really done a lot of talking.”
“What do you mean?” I blinked at her. “We talk all the time.”
“Yeah, and I love talking to you.” She threaded each of her fingers through my own, carefully, like she was afraid I might break. “What I mean is that we haven’t had any super serious conversations.”
“I have to disagree,” I said, still trying to use humor to deflect this line of questioning. “Changing your oil is a very serious subject.”
“I seem to remember us fooling around under my SUV,” she said, laughing. “Neither of us took that very seriously.”
“I take you seriously.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Uh-huh.”
I leaned toward her and kissed her, smoothing my hand down the line of her waist, over her hip and she stopped the movement with her other hand.
“Chuck, wait.”
I swallowed. “You don’t want to do this right now?”
She laughed again. “Of course I’d do this again right now. But just so you know, I’ve come more times than I can count. I’m a little sore”
“Jesus, Haley, I’m sorry. You have to tell me these things. I’m sorry.”
“Enough,” she said, her voice light. “It’s the good kind of sore. The happy kind. I’d do it again just because I know you’d make me feel good.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You’re not going to hurt me.” She kissed me gently, on the nose. “I know that you wouldn’t.”
“You sound really sure of yourself.” It was something of a wonder to me, how she could be so certain.
“Chuck, you beat the shit out of a stranger just because he got a little rough with me. I feel pretty secure in the knowledge that you have my best interests in mind.”
“Well, I do.” I smiled at her. “I care about you, Haley.”
“I care about you, too,” she said, flicking my nose softly. “And I want you to know that you can talk to me about anything that’s on your mind. The good and the bad.”
My caring for Haley went a lot deeper than just a flippant admission. She didn’t know what she was getting into with this, and maybe she should.
“I want to be honest with you, if we’re really going to be together,” I said. “Are you…are you serious about this?”
“Chuck, I like you a lot,” she said, tracing her fingers down my arm. “We wouldn’t be doing this if I wasn’t.”
“My feelings for you…they’re really strong, Haley,” I said. “I feel like you need to know some things about me, going forward, but I don’t want to burden you if this is just something casual for you.”
“First of all, I need you to know that you can talk to me no matter what we’re doing,” she said, sitting up a little and drawing the sheet to her chest. “Do you understand me? No matter what happens between us, we’ll always be friends, right?”
I swallowed. “Are you…is this you putting me in the friend zone?”
“Chuck. We’re naked in bed together, talking about our feelings. This is definitely not the friend zone.”
The tension that had been bunching in my shoulders eased a little, and I laughed.
“Okay. That’s good. Okay.”
“Tell me what’s on your mind,” Haley said. “Please. I’m here for you, whatever it is.”
“What if I’m about to put you in the friend zone?” I asked, one last, pathetic attempt to steer her away from what I was gearing up to reveal.
“I highly doubt that, but I support you in whatever you want to do,” she said, putting her nose in the air.
“Well, I guess I should start by saying that the reason I beat up that guy who disrespected you at the bar is because I have a personal issue with that kind of behavior.”
Haley stared at me for a second before cracking up. “Chuck, if the thing you’re trying to tell me is that you used to be a cop, you don’t need to bother. It’s not like it’s a secret or anything. I already know. I think it’s hot. I don’t know why you’re not a cop anymore, but you’re a hell of a mechanic, and I know that makes you happy.”
I smiled, pushed some of that silken hair behind her ear. “The personal issue I’m referring to is the case of my twin sister.”
Haley’s eyes widened. “I didn’t know you have a twin.”
“That’s the thing, sweetheart. I don’t. Not anymore.”
I hadn’t liked any of Chelsea’s boyfriends because they were lowlifes. They weren’t good enough for her, and that was made glaringly clear to me time and time again. Honestly, I was hard on them all because I just felt protective for my sister. She was my best friend. I cared about her. I would do anything for her, and I hated to see guys take advantage of just how kind she was.
I hadn’t liked Rob Shepard, either, but by that time, Chelsea had been at the end of her rope with me.
“You can’t just keep doing this, Chuck,” she groused, pacing back and forth, the new boyfriend she’d just introduced to meRobalready ducking outside, making excuses about having somewhere he needed to be within the first few minutes of speaking with me. He was just like the others, to me shifty and rotten and not worth the dirt beneath my sister’s feet.
“Doing what?” I asked, spreading my hands at her. “All I do is show up. You’re the one who keeps introducing me to loser after loser.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Maybe the problem is me. Maybe I should just stop introducing you to them. Maybe then I’d actually have a chance at a fulfilling relationship.”
“I’ve told you before and I’ll tell you again. Men who can’t keep it together in front of someone wearing a uniform aren’t worth your time. They have something to hide. This guy is like all the other guys who go crawling and skittering and slithering away from you once they see me. You’re better than him. You’re better than all of them.”
She pushed her hair away from her face, and it stood standing like that, crazed, like I knew I was making her feel.
“I haven’t resigned myself yet to living the rest of my life alone,” she spat at me. “I’m not going to be like you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you’re not even trying. You’re still living at home, with Mom and Dad. You’re not even trying to live your life, Chuck.”
I puffed out my chest at that, indignant and defensive. “I pay rent. I help them out around the house. They’d tell me if they minded that I was still staying there.”
“No, they wouldn’t. They’re your parents. You’re their baby boy.”
“Well, they’re your parents, too.” It was a lame comeback, but it was the only thing I could think of and true besides. “And you’re their baby girl. They’d love it if you stayed with them.”
“They might love it, but I wouldn’t love it.” She folded her arms across her chest.
“What’s so bad about Mom and Dad? You could save money. You wouldn’t have to worry about keeping up with rent and chores and another job while you’re getting your degree. It’s the smart move to make.”
“I want to be my own woman,” she said, thumping herself on the chest, angling toward me like she was leaning into the wind. “I want to be independent of them. I want to live my life. I want to help people. I want to find love.”
I snorted a laugh at her. “You’re looking for love in all the wrong places, girl, if you think that creature that just disappeared from here is going to bring you any happiness.”
“Well, I’ll never find out now, will I?” She was livid, and I regretted that I was the one who made her feel that way. “You think you’re doing me some kind of favor by shitting on everyone I introduce you to. It makes me fucking miserable, Chuck.”
“I just want you to be happy, Chelsea.”
“Look at me. Look at me!” Her eyes were wild, wide, and filled with tears, and her lips trembled in barely contained rage. “Do I look fucking happy to you?”
“No. You don’t.”
“A gold star for Chuck. Good job, Chuck. You got that one right.”
“I worry about the kind of men you attract,” I said, my voice hoarse.
She cackled. “And what in the fresh hell is that supposed to mean? Is that supposed to make me feel any better?”
“No. It’s just an observation.”
“Just an observation. My twin brother is observing my life and deciding I’m a magnet for assholes. What does that make me?”
“It doesn’t make you anything, Chelsea.” I tried to switch tack. This was the opposite of what I’d wanted to do. “You’re such a good person. You’re so open and giving and I think that there are certain men who try to take advantage of that.”
“So you’re telling me that you’ll start respecting the guys I’m trying to date if I act more like a bitch,” she scoffed, pressing her hands against her hips. “Unbelievable. Even for you.”
“I’m just trying to look out for you.”
“Go look out for someone else. Please. For my sake. Be done with me. I can’t take your torture anymore.”
“I’m not”
“Chuck. Seriously. Just go.”
I was scrambling to find something that would resonate with her, something that would prove to my sister that I was just trying to take care of her.
“If it’s a matter of money, Chelsea, maybe we could rent a place together,” I said. “That would be fun, right? The two of us living together again. You wouldn’t have to deal with Mom and Dad, if you didn’t want to, and you could save money on rent. I’d even do all the chores, so you could have more time to study.”
“You’re going to need to explain yourself,” she said, her eyes narrowed. She nearly slapped her own cheek in her haste to wipe a tear away. “Carefully.”
“I’m trying to say that you don’t have to be with guys you don’t like. You could live with me.”
Her jaw dropped open before she gritted her teeth together. “I’m leaving now.”
“Chelsea, I’m just saying”
“I know what you’re saying,” she said with a vicious slash to the air. “You think I’m just dating to try to get some kind of sugar daddy situation set up in my life. So that I can afford my apartment without having to work as many hours.”
“Well, are you?” Because how else could she be associating with such jerks? Chelsea was such a beautiful person, inside and out, that there was no reason she should have to tolerate the kinds of fools I met.
“Have a good life, Chuck,” she said, spinning on her foot and stalking away.
I’d revisited that evening time and time again, knowing that I was the one who had fucked up, aware of the sneaking suspicion that if I had been better that night, if I had successfully conveyed what I’d wanted to share with my sister, she would’ve still been alive.
Because even if I had been hard on some of the scumbags she’d introduced to me, Rob Shepard was the real monster, and I’d driven her right into his arms.
Chelsea cut contact with meand our parents by extensionover the next few weeks. It wasn’t as abruptly as she’d left me after our fight, but it was a steady decline of contact, until even phone calls became something we knew we couldn’t expect. I kept casual tabs on her just because I was helpless not to. I was her twin brother, and a police officer. Plus, in our small town, people would mention to me that they’d seen her all the time, and I could make a rudimentary map and timeline of her movements in my mind. Really, it was more of a surprise that I never ran into her not on my rounds, not at our parents’ house, and not even when I was just out and about, off duty. I knew, though, that it probably just meant she was avoiding me. I missed her, but I knew through the grapevine that she was still going to class, still substitute teaching and tutoring when she could, and still seeing Rob Shepard.
I made another mistake with that one in a string of many, even if I couldn’t be sure it was toward the beginning of the string or the end. I could’ve searched the name, Rob Shepard, even if it was a reasonably common one. I could’ve run it through the system anyway, just to see what it turned up, and paged through any mugshots I might come across. I’d done it before, when the rare guy had stuck around after our initial meeting. And if I’d come up for a record for them, I informed Chelsea and the guys made themselves scarce after that. I usually got yelled at for it, but I didn’t have any regrets.
Now, though, with the way things were, the extended absence of my twin sister a physical pain, a constant reminder of just how badly I’d screwed up, I resisted the urge to look into her boyfriend of the moment. Doing that could be the first step to being reunited with her. I could wait a while, until this all sort of blew over, then visit her, ask her how she and Rob were doing, assure her, if she asked, that I didn’t misuse department resources to research her love interests. It wasn’t a lot, but it was a start.
A start and a grave error.
Because if I would’ve run Rob Shepard’s name and come up with the right records, I would’ve known right away what we were dealing with.
It was late one nightI’d had nothing better to do than to patrol during the graveyard shift when everything came crashing down. I didn’t mind graveyard shift, even if it was a little lonely. The town was, minus its requisite drunks, fairly peaceful at night, and I thought a lot about all manner of things when I was out in the darkness, alone, ready to be needed for whatever purpose. Up until that night, my biggest law enforcement achievements had been responding to car wrecks.
But when the dispatcher’s panicked voice over the radio crackled into my reverie, I knew that something serious was happening.
“Rogers, what end of town are you in?” she demanded, breaking the protocols, all the numbered codes I’d taken such care to memorize and learn how to use.
“East end,” I said, restarting the engine of the cruiser. “What do you have?”
“Head west,” she said. “Fast as you can.”
“I need some specifics, here. What am I looking at? Where, exactly, am I going?”
“Neighbors reported screaming and shouting, the sounds of things being thrown around, being broken,” the dispatcher said, her breath fast and audible and distracting over the radio. “Sounds like a domestic.”
Domestic violence could get really ugly. Much of the time, the people actually involved in the incident never called us. It was the neighbors who heard the altercation who got the police in. But once officers arrived, both parties in the incident would often unite against the uniforms, saying that it was a private matter, that they didn’t want the police involved, that they were working things out in their own way.
Of course, it was usually the husband or boyfriend who was exerting his will over the battered woman, but there was little we could do if she refused to press charges, and even less if she yelled at us to get off their property right alongside the man who’d just been using her as a punching bag physically or verbally.
“I need an address, here, please,” I said. “The roads are clear. I’m making short work of it.”
“Rogers…”
“Do you want me to do my job, or not?” I snapped, irritated and confused. “You called for me. There’s a case going on I need to respond to, and I need the address right now.”
Then she gave me my sister’s address.
“Repeat.”
She gave it to me again, her voice wavering, and I knew this wasn’t just some kind of mistake. I was too shocked, too frightened to think I’d misheard the dispatcher two times in a row. I flicked on the cruiser’s lights and siren, even if there was no need to in the quiet streets, and pushed the gas pedal flush with the floor. Strangely, mundane things cycled through my mind as I pulled into the parking lot of the apartment building how long it had been since I’d visited, how much I had missed my sister, the things I was going to tell her to make sure she was caught up on the gossip.
I had a fleeting thought, as I slammed out of the cruiser and dashed up the stairs toward Chelsea’s apartment, that this had to be some kind of mistake. The dispatcher had the address wrong, or the neighbors misheard the altercation. It couldn’t be Chelsea’s apartment. She was too self-possessed, too strong to ever fall victim to something like domestic violence. I’d respond to this problem, then I’d go over to Chelsea’s apartment and laugh it off with her. Laugh everything off. Apologize, if that was what she needed me to do to let me back in her life. Promise I wouldn’t intrude again, that I wouldn’t intimidate any of her boyfriends, or look them up. Prove to her that I didn’t know a damn thing about Rob Shepard, the man she’d been attached to recently. Try to wriggle my way back into her life again. Be a better brother for her.
But the truth was that I knew it was Chelsea’s apartment. The dispatcher didn’t get things wrong. I knew the kinds of guys my sister attracted. I knew this call was for her.
I just didn’t know how bad it was going to be.
The door was open, or else I would’ve broken it down without bothering to identify myself as a member of the police department. But when it bounced off the wall and revealed to me what had actually happened, I just snapped. There wasn’t a lowering of a red veil, or a warning that I could do something that I might regret. There was just the door, popping back against the wall, Rob Shepard kneeling over my sister’s shape, red on his fists, the strange, vacant, vulnerable gap between my sister’s lips, parted, slack, the stillness of her chest.
Then, pain.
Only pain.
Forever pain.
Pain in my heart. In my eyes. In my knuckles. In my stomach.
Pain I couldn’t explain or understand.
I knew, much later, that I had entered the apartment and proceeded to beat the shit out of Rob Shepard, who had beat the life out of my sister, who was lying dead on the floor when I made my appearance. I knew through third parties that I’d had to be pulled off Rob Shepard, my fists as red as his, his face as crushed as Chelsea’s, the juxtaposition of the two of us too much for the police department to handle. I was spared criminal charges thanks to my connections in the police department, and Rob Shepard, with his broken face, made the odd choice of not pressing civil charges against me. But I couldn’t remain as an officer. Not with that department. Not with that town.
We put my sister in the ground and I drifted home, intent on finding out if my parents had survived it from afar. I was without an anchor. Without a purpose. I didn’t have my sister, I didn’t have a job, and my parents didn’t know how to handle this terrible development in our lives.
It wasn’t their fault.
It wasn’t.
At least, that’s what I told myself.
But when my mother approached me, roughly a month into my funk, it didn’t mean it hurt any less.
“What are you still doing here?” she demanded.
I’d been watching terrible daytime television, and that was no excuse. I was well aware that I needed to get on with it, to move away, find some other career that didn’t involve violence and intervening, and serving, and protecting, and I just hadn’t gotten it figured out yet. It was maybe past time for me to figure it out, but I was still here, living with my parents, trying to figure out how I could stay here and keep helping them and not have to do anything else.
“What do you mean?” I asked my mother, knowing damn well what she meant. Knowing and wanting it for myself. Hating it all the same.
“I mean, why are you still here?” my mother asked. “I gave birth to two of you. One of you died. Why are you still here when she’s not?”
The question made me choke on my breath because it had been a question I’d craved an answer for. But at the same time, it hurt me, coming from my mother, that she expected me dead alongside my sister. Except maybe I wanted to be. Maybe it felt unnatural to be alive when my twin wasn’t. Maybe my mother wasn’t just spouting nonsense.
“I did the best I could, Mom,” I told her, not even believing myself.
“Bullshit,” she said, her tone lacking heat. “She was your sister, and you should’ve tried harder.”
“I know. I know I should’ve. I should’ve figured this out before it happened.” I should’ve discarded my sister’s wishes and run Rob Shepard through the system. There would’ve been some clue, some red flag that would’ve alerted me to the situation on time. If I hadn’t pissed Chelsea off so badly in the first place, then maybe she could’ve trusted me enough to tell me something bad was going on in her relationship.
“Yes. Yes, you should have.” My mother turned around and walked away, and that was the last thing she said to me. We just didn’t talk anymore. She couldn’t stand to look at me and know that the other child who had shared her womb was gone. And I couldn’t stand to look at her because I hadn’t protected my sister like I should have.
It became clear to me that I couldn’t stay in my hometown. My parents’ home held too many memories, and there weren’t any opportunities for me to make a living in a place where I had lost everything. So I struck out blindly, spending weeks on the road, only to end up just an hour away in Rio Seco.
There was solace to be had in Rio Seco. Friends. A new career, working with my hands as a mechanic. The beginning of finding my way back.
And Haley.
Love.