Rose

  I look down at Greg still squatting nearby. “I don’t ever want to talk to you again.” I walk away, leaving my heart on the ground behind me.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  This is the second time my heart has been broken, only this time it’s much worse. In my first big relationship, I was a young girl with stars in her eyes who fell for a guy because she was in love with the idea of love; but with Greg I was a grown woman falling in love with a real man who I admired and respected, who made my body catch fire and my imagination soar. I had such high hopes for our future together, but now that hope is gone and all I have left is regret.

  Regret sucks. It sucks big, rotten eggs. And all the work I’ve been doing cleaning up what used to be my former clinic is not helping to take my mind off it. All I can think of is Greg . . . how he touched me, spoke to me with kindness, laughed with me, cared about my life. I can’t believe all of it was a ruse to keep track of my thoughts on that damn settlement. There had to be some truth in there somewhere, but it doesn’t matter now. He’s gone, and my life has literally been turned into ashes.

  A truck pulls up behind me, so I stop, standing and wiping the sweat off my forehead. It’s freezing cold outside, but I’m not feeling it. I’ve been working for hours, trying to break my back and forget the fact that I feel like I’m dying inside.

  Smitty gets out of his truck and comes sauntering over, carrying a thermos. “You look like you could use a cup of coffee,” he says.

  I go over and stand in front of him, pulling my gloves out of my coat pocket and sliding them on to my hands. “Sounds like a good idea to me.” I sure wish he had some whiskey to add to it. About a pint would do me just fine.

  He pours me a cup and hands it to me. “What are you doing out here?”

  “Just trying to clean up a little bit.”

  “You should use a bulldozer to do this cleanup.” He looks sad as he surveys the damage.

  “Probably. But I need to do something to keep my mind busy, so I’m using these.” I raise my hand and wiggle my fingers.

  “What’s going on with all your patients?”

  “They’ve all been farmed out to different clinics. I don’t have any left.” I can’t believe how sad this makes me. It’s been years since I’ve been able to say there are no animals in my care. My chin trembles, and I turn away so Smitty won’t see it.

  He comes closer and wraps his arm around my shoulders. “It’s going to be okay. You’ll see.”

  “There’s no fixing this, Smitty. It’s over.”

  “Please don’t say that.”

  He sounds way more upset than it seems like he should be, and I don’t think it’s because he wants to date me. “What’s going on, Smitty?”

  He uses his free arm to wipe his face with his jacket, scrubbing at his forehead. It knocks his hat off-kilter, and it takes him a second to fix it. “Nothing. I’m just worried about you.” He’s staring at the building with such intensity it’s almost freaky. He’s taking this almost as hard as I am.

  “I’m managing . . . one day at a time. I haven’t decided anything yet about where I’ll go from here.”

  He nods silently, staring off into the distance. I get the sense that his mind is far away.

  I jab him in the ribs. “What have you been up to?” I need to move the subject away from my sadness so I don’t start bawling and force Smitty to awkwardly comfort me.

  “Oh, nothing.” He looks down at me and smiles sadly. “Just trying to corral my brother. The never-ending task.”

  “Really? I figured Brian would be busy with school.” Smitty’s brother has been a hell-raiser from the word go . . . a born troublemaker and the exact opposite of Smitty. He’s ten years younger than his older brother, so he’s still in high school. Because their parents have huge problems of their own, the boys have been left to their own devices, with Smitty overseeing his younger brother as much as he can while working here on the farm and at other places in town. We never see Brian at Glenhollow because he considers us lame and goofy, or so Smitty confessed to us years ago. Brian thinks smoking and sleeping around are better ways to spend his time.

  “I’m having trouble with him.” Smitty rolls his eyes and hisses out a sigh of annoyance. “He’s getting messed up in drugs now. I swear, I feel like it’s an uphill battle with him that I’m never gonna win.”

  “I don’t understand why it’s on your shoulders to take care of everything. Why aren’t your parents involved?” I don’t know a lot about them, other than the fact that they never supervised Smitty and are gone most of the time. He spent more time at our house than he did at his own growing up.

  “My parents . . . Don’t even get me started on them.”

  “I’m sorry you’re having to deal with all that. You don’t deserve it.” I look up at him to assure him with a smile, but his expression isn’t what I expect to see after giving him my support; he looks furious. My attempt at good humor falls away. He’s kind of worrying me.

  He moves away and goes over to the stack of wood I was just working on. “Maybe I can give you a hand over here.” He starts moving pieces around, taking the heavier ones I couldn’t manage and putting them on top.

  I sip more of my coffee, watching him work. He’s always helped with chores around our place in exchange for meals or money, even as a kid. On one hand, he’s the same old Smitty . . . pitching in and lending a hand; but on the other, not really. I thought I knew him pretty well, but he’s been acting so strange lately. “I think it’s another one of those never-ending tasks,” I say, hoping the small talk will help ease us past this uncomfortable moment. “I don’t know why I’m even bothering.”

  “It gives you something to do. Helps keep your mind away from things it shouldn’t be on. I get it.” He strips off his jacket and tosses it onto a nearby bush. After throwing around some more wood, he stops to roll up his sleeves.

  Something on his arm catches my eye. What the heck . . . ? I put the coffee cup on the hood of his truck and go over to help him with the stacking. I pretend to be interested in the task, but I’m more focused on his injury than anything else.

  “What did you say happened to your arm again?” I ask casually.

  Smitty looks up at me. “What’d you say?”

  I point. “Your arm.”

  He looks down and quickly shoves his sleeve over it. “Oh. That? Cut myself. Working on my car.”

  He moves more wood as I stand up, searching my memory for an earlier conversation. “I thought you said you cut your arm gardening.”

  His smile falters. “Oh, yeah. It was gardening. Caught it with the clippers.”

  I reach down and grab for the same piece of wood that he’s reaching for. We both stand up with it in our hands. We’re face-to-face and he looks nervous as hell. Something is definitely not adding up here. “How did you cut your arm with a pair of two-handed clippers?”

  He tries to smile, but it comes off as awkward. “They slipped. Slipped and cut me. No big deal.” His face is beet red.

  I drop the wood and grab his wrist, shoving his sleeve up to his elbow. I have time to examine the fresh, pink scar before he yanks his arm away. He steps back two paces, staring at me. “What’s wrong with you?”

  I feel so sick to my stomach I’m ready to vomit. I’ve seen wounds like that before, many times. Hell, I’ve got scars from one myself. My voice comes out shaking. “Smitty, that is not an injury from clippers or from fixing your car, is it?” I glare at him, growing angrier by the second.

  “Yes, it is.” He’s clearly nervous, trying to move away, but I’m not letting him. For every step he takes backward, I take one forward.

  “Tell me the truth.” I move closer to him, anger fueling my movements.

  “Listen, I know you’re upset about what happened with the barn, but I don’t think you should be taking it out on me.” He looks left and right, seeking an escape.

  I pull the phone my sisters and I bought when Amber went to New York out of my
back pocket and start dialing. Thank goodness I thought to shove it in there when I left the house. “I’m calling the police. I know very well you didn’t hurt yourself on your car or while you were gardening. That is a dog bite on your arm.” And there’s only one reason why he’d lie about that . . . it’s a bite from my dog. Now Banana’s behavior toward him makes all the sense in the world. I’m so furious, I can’t cry. I can’t even think straight. He stole my computer! He ran over Banana! He burned down my business and almost killed my patients!

  Smitty grabs the phone out of my hand and holds it above his head.

  I stand there frozen in place and stare up at him in shock. A man I’ve known almost my entire life as the cool guy who lives up the road has revealed his true self to me today—he’s a monster. My heart feels like it’s collapsing in on itself, and my face crumples into tears. “Oh, Smitty. How could you?”

  He holds the phone out at me like a stop sign. “No, no, no! Rose, it’s not what you’re thinking.”

  I’m full-on bawling now. I can’t help it. All the sadness and depression that I was feeling over Greg and the animals comes right to the forefront, and I lose it. I start keening with the pain. My whole world is falling apart around me, figuratively and literally.

  “Please don’t cry. It’s really not what you think, I swear to God.”

  “What else could it be?” I scream at him. “You did this!” My arm sweeps out to include the burned-out husk of my career.

  His eyes bug out. “I didn’t! Rose, I swear to God I didn’t.”

  “Give me back my phone.” I hold my hand out. My fingers are trembling. I’ve never been afraid of Smitty before, but I am now. I cannot let him know that, though, or he’ll use it against me. Who knows what he’s capable of? If he’ll burn down a barn full of innocent animals, the sky is probably the limit . . . and we’re out here on an empty road that no one has any reason to be traveling right now. I need to get my phone back.

  “I don’t want you to call the police,” he says.

  “Too bad. You broke the law. You destroyed everything that means anything to me.” I should probably shine him on, tell him this can stay between us, but he knows me too well for that to work. No way am I going to let this slide. I can’t even fake that I could.

  His face scrunches up as he moves into begging mode. “I swear I didn’t break any laws. Not really. Just hear me out. I’ll tell you the truth. Honestly, I’ll tell you everything.”

  Greg’s words come back to me. Everything is negotiable. I work to calm my voice. “Give me back my phone, and I will give you two minutes to explain yourself.”

  “You promise?” He starts to move the phone toward my hand.

  “I promise.” I’m not telling the whole truth. If he says anything weird or comes at me, I’m hitting 9-1-1 and letting the chips fall where they may. I’ll go down fighting, that’s for sure.

  “I’m trusting you. And I want you to trust me because you’ve known me your whole life and you know I’m not a bad guy.”

  I speak through gritted teeth. “Give me . . . my freaking . . . phone.”

  He hands it over and then seems to cave in on himself. He loses inches off his height and his chin drops to his chest. “Everything got so screwed up. It got so out of control. I didn’t mean for it to get so bad.” He stops and looks up at me, the most pitiful expression I’ve ever seen on his face.

  “I’m listening. But the first thing you have to do is admit that that is a dog bite on your arm. If you try to lie to me again, I’m out of here.”

  He nods. “It’s a dog bite. Banana did it.”

  I take several steps away, stricken. It’s one thing to think I know and another to have it confirmed. “You hit Banana with your car?”

  He looks up suddenly. “No! I did not do that.” He puts his hands out and places them in prayer position. “Please, just listen to me . . . let me explain.”

  I hold my phone up at him so he can see it. “I am dialing 9-1-1, but I’m not going to hit the Send button right now; I’m going to let you talk . . . But if you say anything I don’t like, I’m hitting the Send button, and the cops are going to come.”

  He nods rapidly. “That’s fair. That’s totally fair. I’m cool with that.”

  I point. “Go stand over there. You’re too close.”

  Tears rush to his eyes. “You don’t trust me? You think I’d actually hurt you?”

  “No, I don’t trust you. You hurt my dog.”

  He takes several steps back. “I did not hurt your dog. Let me explain.”

  “Go ahead.” I dial the three numbers that could send this family friend to jail for a really long time and let my finger hover over the Send button. “You have two minutes.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Smitty takes a big breath and begins his explanation. “I told you I was having a problem with Brian. It’s true. I’m having a lot of trouble with him. I have been for a while. I don’t tell you guys about what goes on at my house because it’s so ugly. Whenever I come here, everything is so great, and I just want it to stay that way.” He looks up the road toward the house. “I guess you could say this is my safe place.”

  “That doesn’t explain anything.” What he’s saying is twanging my heartstrings, and it’s probably true, but I don’t care. It doesn’t make hurting my dog or destroying my work-life okay. I’ve heard plenty of rumors in town about his deadbeat parents and his delinquent brother, and I’ve certainly seen things with my own eyes over the years with his brother acting out and causing Smitty strife, but it doesn’t explain to me how my dog ended up with a broken leg and my building ended up burned to the ground.

  “When Em got into that relationship with her new boyfriend, I gave up on the idea of going out with her. And then there was you . . .” He says it like I just appeared out of nowhere once Sam came on the scene. “I’ve always admired you, and you’re beautiful and funny and kind . . . and the more I thought about it, the more I thought I’d like to see if there was something between us that’s mutual . . . that maybe you might want to go out with me. I said something about it at home to my mother, and my brother overheard it.”

  Smitty’s voice and expression go dark. “He got this asinine idea to come out here and mess with you, because he was pissed at me for telling our parents something he’d done that got him in trouble. He’s the one who stole your laptop.”

  “Why would he do that?” It certainly explains why Smitty bought me a new one; I guess he felt guilty.

  “Because. He’s a punk. He’s got a drug problem. He’s got a bone to pick with me for being a goody-two-shoes—that’s what he calls me.”

  “But he doesn’t even know me.”

  Smitty looks ashamed. “He asked me some questions about your clinic, acting like he was interested in you and what you do, but all he was doing was fishing for information. When you told me that your laptop had been stolen, I had a feeling it was him, and then I found it in his room.”

  I cannot believe I was robbed by a neighbor. Smitty’s brother, no less! “I’m sorry, but your brother is a little shit.” And when I get my hands on him, he’s going to be one sorry little shit, too.

  Smitty looks so sad. “He’s a good kid, but he hooked up with the wrong people and got in with a bad crowd. I feel responsible for him, so when he did what he did, I tried to fix it.”

  “But he stole it from me, Smitty. We’re practically family. Buying me a replacement computer doesn’t undo what he did, nor does it undo the fact that you kept that information from me.”

  “I know. But your family is so much better off than mine is. You guys all love each other and now you’ve got Red Hot here probably pouring money all over you. My brother and I have nothing but our freedom. If he goes to jail, he could end up in there for the rest of his life, and he’s just a kid.”

  I’m not totally immune to what Smitty is saying, so I’m going to let him continue beyond his two minutes. My finger is still hovering over the green button of
my telephone, though.

  “I yelled at him for stealing your laptop, and I took it away from him. I still have it, so don’t worry. But I couldn’t give it back to you without telling you about Brian, and I felt terrible that you weren’t able to run your business without it, so I bought you a new one.”

  “That doesn’t make this okay, Smitty.” I look over at the burned building, and he follows my gaze.

  “I had no idea he would go this far.”

  My heart lurches. “It was your brother who did this?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” He looks at the ground. “I know he’s the one who spray-painted your door. I saw the color from the paint can on his hands. I asked him directly if he did it, and he admitted it. He was really proud of himself. I almost decked him, I swear to God.”

  Now my heart is burning with rage. That little shit, Brian. If I could get my hands on him right now, I’d wring his stupid neck. “Maybe you should’ve.”

  He nods sadly. “You’re right. Maybe I should’ve. But I’m not a violent person.”

  He takes a step toward me, but I move back and hold up the phone. “Stay right where you are.”

  He puts his hand on his chest. “You still think I’m a bad guy, don’t you?”

  “You were bitten by Banana the night he got hurt. That means you were here when my laptop was stolen. Explain that to me.”

  “One of Brian’s old friends told me where he was going, worried he was going to make trouble. He still has one or two buddies who haven’t totally deserted him. So I drove out here to stop him, but I was too late. I caught up with him at the main road, and I knew he’d done something he shouldn’t have, but I didn’t want him to get caught. I figured I’d make it right with you all later if he’d done something bad here. I was wrestling him into my car when Banana came out of nowhere and attacked me. So I just shoved my brother and his backpack into the truck and drove away. But I swear to God, Banana was totally fine when I left.”

  I feel so sick. “And you expect me to believe you.” My ears are hot, but the rest of me is chilled to the bone.