“So what are you doing back here?” I asked. Few people had been more serious about getting out of this place than I had, and the Good brothers were in that select few. I think each of them had hitched a ride out of town the day they’d graduated. If I remembered right, the older ones might have ditched out before graduation.
Before Will could reply, a crashing sound came from inside the Goods’ trailer. It was so loud it made me jolt, but Will barely flinched.
“Ma? You okay?” He stopped working on the car long enough to wait for an answer.
“I’m okay, Will. I just saw another one of those tiny pink elephants running across the kitchen floor.”
I might have imagined it, but when Will glanced my way, it looked like a partial wince was on his face. It was a look I was familiar with, one of embarrassment that his family’s “dirty laundry” was on display. Really, if he knew the shit that had gone down in the Bennett trailer, he wouldn’t be embarrassed about his mom seeing tiny pink elephants.
“Did you get that pink little bastard?” he called.
“I don’t know. I threw a few recipe books at it, so it might be trapped under those.”
“Nice job, Ma. I’ll check it out when I finish up out here. Why don’t you take your medicine and go to bed? I’ll bring your ice water to you in a few.”
“You’re my sweet boy. What would I do without you?” It sounded like Mrs. Goods blew a kiss before the trailer went quiet.
“You came back to take care of your mom,” I stated. The guy could prove to be more of a challenge than I thought. Of course the one time I needed to really prove to my sister that local boys were to be avoided at all costs, I’d come across the one who’d moved home to take care of his mentally ill mother.
Will glanced at the trailer and sighed. “Something like that, yeah.”
I recognized something else in his expression: duty. Reluctant duty. He was the responsible one. He was the one who’d come back to take care of his own . . . kind of like me. I was supposed to feel vindication from this conversation with him, and instead I just felt more and more conflicted.
“What did you do before this?” I asked.
Will grabbed another wrench and slid back under the hood. “I was in the Army. I enlisted the day after I turned eighteen and shipped out the day after I graduated. It was the quickest and easiest way to get the hell out of here.”
“Are you on leave then?” I wasn’t making small talk anymore. I was genuinely interested.
Will chuckled. “Yeah, I’m on leave.”
I nodded and considered what to say next. Will didn’t seem put out by my presence or questions, but he wasn’t especially chatty either. “You like working on cars?”
Chalk up another one in the Lame Questions column.
Will chuckled again, louder this time. “You’re certainly full of questions, aren’t you?”
His laugh made me smile. Nothing about him should have made me come close to smiling. “You’re certainly full of vague answers, aren’t you?”
Will peeked back at me, a wide smile stretched across his face. “Yes, I like to work on cars, but mainly, I just like staying busy. I don’t like sitting around with nothing to do. I like my hands working on something.”
At the mention of them, I couldn’t help but notice his hands. They were slicked in grease and likely rough and calloused beneath that layer of grime, but they were appealing in a way I didn’t know hands could be. From his back to his hands—my iron resolve was crumbling one body part at a time. That wasn’t good, especially as I’d barely seen his face . . . although I had a good idea what it looked like. Even though I was still in elementary school when they were all teenagers, I’d noticed the way the four Goods brothers turned heads when they walked down the sidewalk, or walked anywhere for that matter. Good DNA ran in the Goods boys’ blood.
“I started fixing up my dad’s old Chevy last fall, and now I’m running a thrown-together auto repair shop out of the ancient shed my older brothers used to take girls to,” he said.
“Your older brothers?” I lifted my eyebrows. The Goods boys had earned a few reputations other than just being good looking.
Will chuckled. “I might have snuck one or two in here myself.”
The topic, or my mind playing out the topic, was becoming a tad uncomfortable. I didn’t like the way I felt around Will, like my guard was coming down. I didn’t let my guard down—ever. It was time to get to the reason why I’d gone up there in the first place. Well, one of the reasons.
“So if you’re in the auto repair business now, could I hire you to fix that thing?” I waved at the old Suburban practically growing weeds from sitting in our “lawn” for so long. It had become a twisted form of yard art.
“What do you need fixed?” Will leaned so far inside the hood of the car he was working on that it looked like it would swallow him up.
“It’s an old Suburban.” I didn’t know how he could have missed that eyesore, but maybe it had become more a part of the weeds and earth than I’d realized.
“What needs fixed?”
Besides me and whatever wires you’ve tripped, Will Goods? “I don’t really know. I’m hoping not everything, but I’m guessing a lot. I don’t know if it even runs anymore, but I do know we don’t have a working set of keys to be found.” I hated being vulnerable, especially in front of a stranger, but my pride would have to take a hike. I had a couple of sisters to think about now. “I don’t have much I can pay you up front, but would you consider some kind of payment plan or something?”
Will didn’t pause before giving his answer. “If there’s one thing I’ve been doing longer than fixing cars, it’s been getting cars to start without a key.” He tilted his head just enough that I could see his lop-sided smile. “I’ll take a look and get it fixed for you. Don’t worry about the money. We’ll figure something out.”
Yeah, that was exactly what I was worried about. “Thank you, but really, I insist on paying you.” I didn’t know what we’ll figure something out entailed, and I didn’t want to find out. “I can see you’re busy, so I’ll leave you alone.” I’d gone up there to kill two birds with one stone—prove my local-boy theory right and see about getting the Suburban fixed—but as I backed away, I wasn’t so sure I’d killed either bird.
“Is everything all right, Liv?”
The sincerity in Will’s tone froze me in place. He’d barely looked at me, but I would swear it was like he had seen everything inside me. “What do you mean?” My voice sounded almost as small as Reese’s had last night on the phone.
“Down at your place? It’s been so quiet lately. I just wanted to make sure everything’s okay.” He hadn’t stopped working on the car, but his pace had slowed.
I breathed again when I realized he wasn’t referring to me personally. “Is quiet a bad thing?”
“No, it’s never a bad thing. But when it has to do with Kitty Bennett’s place, it’s . . . different.”
It’s quiet because Kitty Bennett—aka Mom—hightailed it out of town weeks ago, leaving two underage daughters alone and me strapped with the burden of making sure they don’t get sucked into the same sinkhole she did years ago. “Thanks for asking, but everything’s fine. We’ve been practicing the whole ‘Silence is golden’ thing lately.”
When Will inclined his head my way again, his smile wasn’t lop-sided. In fact, it was one hell of a smile—even to a girl like myself who’d believed, up until very recently, that the Goods boys were quite possibly the spawn of Satan. “Good to know.”
I tried to repress it, but damn, my smile wouldn’t be stifled. “Nice to meet you, Will Goods.”
“And it was even nicer to meet you, Liv Bennett.” His smile stretched a bit wider before he returned to his work.
I’d made it part way back to our place before I heard a few footsteps on the gravel behind me.
“Hey, Liv? If there’s anything you all need down there, give me a shout, okay? I’m around.”
&nb
sp; I was thrown, yet again, by Will’s words. One part of me was certain his helpfulness was tied to ulterior motives. He was a Goods brother and a guy from Death Valley after all. But another part of me, small as it was, couldn’t ignore the way his words bled with sincerity. That scared me. Well, it terrified me. If he really was the one boy to be worth a damn around there, I couldn’t be the girl to find out. I already had two bricks tied to my ankles keeping me underwater; I didn’t need a third. I didn’t want to be stuck there permanently. I didn’t want to drown there like so many had before me.
Will Goods may very well have been the best man to have ever walked the planet, but I wouldn’t be the woman to find out. I might have needed to prove my point with Reese about this guy, and I might have needed to get that Suburban up and running again, but one thing was more important than either of those things: I needed to protect myself.
When I turned my back this time, I promised myself my back would stay that way as far as Will was concerned. “Bye, Will.”
IN TWO WEEKS, I’d run out of a lot of things.
Money. Thankfully, the cup of coffee I was sipping at the old diner in town was a freebie. I’d sent my last few dollars with Reese this morning so she could pick up some toilet paper from the gas station where the bus dropped her off after school.
I was out of patience with Paige. I’d been right about the antibiotics kicking in within twenty-four hours, and she’d been hell on wheels ever since. She’d always been hard to deal with, but now she was impossible to deal with. I didn’t know why she thought I was the enemy, but from the way she’d been treating me and making it her mission to disobey my every word, I clearly was enemy number one.
Lastly, I was out of hope. This town had sucked every last drop out of me in a mere fourteen days. I’d never been full of it—hope, that is—but while making my own way for the past three years, I’d acquired some. Whatever mediocre amount it was, one thing was clear: it had vanished.
I was doing the right thing, I knew that, but I’d learned years ago that the right thing didn’t always feel so . . . right. Kitty was still MIA, and the only reason I’d been able to appease my sisters’ high school was by lying about Kitty being out of town to take care of her sick, elderly mother and me stepping in to watch the girls why she was away. This town knew the same Kitty Bennett I did, and the principal knew I was selling a bold-faced lie, but the school system followed the same motto as the rest of this god forsaken place: go with the path of least resistance. Since buying the lie was a hundred times easier than further investigation, the principal let the girls go back to school, and C.P.S. stayed out of the picture.
“Refill, honey?” Mabel, the waitress who’d been working at the diner since the day it had opened forty years ago, asked me.
I slid my empty cup across the counter toward her. “Thank you.”
She filled it just shy of the brim before placing the coffee pot back on the warmer. “So I talked with Earl.”
I sighed to myself. I’d worked at that diner for six years, and I’d learned that whenever Mabel started a sentence with So, what followed wouldn’t be good news.
“He said that with yet another plant closing and even fewer people having money to eat out, he’s barely able to keep me on the payroll.” Mabel shared another sigh with me. “I’m sorry, honey. I know trying to find a job around here is like trying to find the end of the rainbow. And even if you do manage to find it, there sure ain’t no pot of gold waiting for you.”
I tore open a couple packets of sugar and stirred them into my coffee. Normally I didn’t take anything in my coffee, but as the last thing of substance I’d consumed had been a bowl of chicken broth for lunch yesterday, I’d take whatever calories I could get. “Thanks for checking. I appreciate it.”
“Wish I could have been more helpful, but you know this town about as well as I do. It’s so bad you can’t even call it a dead end because there was never a path leading this way in the first place. It’s more like a black hole.”
“I’ll drink to that.” I lifted the cup to my lips and took a sip. The coffee at Earl’s Diner had always been watered down and a tad bitter, but it was warm and free and loaded with sugar. I would savor each sip.
Mabel started making her way to a new table that had just walked in, but she paused. “Honey, what are you doing back here?” Frown lines etched deep into her face as she studied me with a mixture of pity and disappointment. “You, of all the ones who talked about leaving, would have been the last one I’d imagine seeing around these parts again.”
I took another sip. That one I couldn’t savor. “I came back because I had to.”
“That’s a cop out if I’ve ever heard one. You don’t have to do anything.”
I’d always liked Mabel—she was one tough cookie who’d managed to keep her eyes bright and her will strong while living a lifetime in this place—but she was throwing a little too much tough love in my face. “I came back because I chose to.” Though half the time, I forgot why. The other half the time, I was too busy trying to keep Paige out of trouble and Reese out of her mind that I forgot the other half. Which only made me feel guilty when I did have a moment of quiet to remember why I was floundering in the very place I’d vowed never to return to. Guilt and circumstance . . . The story of my life.
“That’s right, you did. But you know what the great thing is about choice?” Mabel lifted an eyebrow. “It goes both ways.” I must have lifted my own eyebrow, because she went on, “You chose to come back. You can choose to leave anytime you want. Just make sure you don’t wait too long to get out.”
The smile I formed was for Mabel, to assure her I’d gotten her message and taken it to heart. That smile wasn’t for me, because I already knew I’d waited too long. In two weeks, this place had manacled me to a fixed chain. I might have been able to walk, but I couldn’t run. I may have been able to move, but I couldn’t fly. I could live, but I couldn’t thrive.
Two weeks. Fourteen days. A carton of eggs wouldn’t spoil in that timeframe, yet a human being apparently could. I’d lived through plenty of them, but that reality might have been the most sobering.
“Hey, smile. It’s Friday, and the sun’s out.” A guy slid onto the stool beside me and gave me a smile of his own. He looked to be a bit older than me. He was a bit taller too, and from his watch alone, I knew he was a hell of a lot better off than me.
“You see the sun. I see skin cancer.” I wrapped my hands around the coffee cup, hoping the warmth from it would pass through me. No such luck.
“Oh, so you’re one of those”—he snapped his fingers, squinting his eyes—“don’t tell me . . . wait for it”—one more snap before that smile returned—“glass half empty, ‘I hate life’ pessimist people.”
Why? Why did I have to be harassed by one of the five customers in the whole diner? All I wanted to do was enjoy my free cup of sugary coffee, lick my wounds, and figure out what the hell to do next. “No, I’m a realist. And what the hell does a glass and how much or how little’s in it have to do with anything?”
“Damn. I don’t normally see a woman this hardened until she’s developed crow’s feet and saddle bags. I bet you’re the kind of chick who would bite my head off right after we mated, right?”
I laughed. I don’t know what was responsible for making me laugh—his words or his animated expression or that I’d just gone too long without doing so—but it was a small relief. If I could still laugh, I wasn’t completely hopeless.
“What’s this? The hardened, sour-faced woman laughs? Say it isn’t so.” The guy laughed a few notes with me before extending his hand. “I’m Jake. It’s nice to make your ‘realist’ ehem pessimist acquaintance.”
I shook his hand as Mabel slid a cup of coffee in front of him. “Liv. And I’m not so sure it’s nice to make your sun-worshipping, optimist acquaintance.”
He feigned a look of insult. “Why not?”
“Because you can’t trust a guy who can smile this late in the d
ay.”
“Spoken like a true pessimist,” he muttered before taking a drink of his coffee. “Just in case you’ve forgotten, or never heard it in the first place, there’s always something to smile about.”
“You obviously weren’t born, raised, or have spent too much time around here.”
Before I could stop her, Mabel refilled my half-empty cup and slid a fresh caddy of sugar packets my way. I thanked her with another smile as that was all I had.
“You want your usual, Jake?” she asked.
“Unless Earl’s added steak and eggs to the menu, yes, I’ll have my usual,” he replied.
“Ha. Earl change the menu? Keep dreaming.” Mabel scratched an order on her pad, tore it off, and passed it to the kitchen.
“I always do.” Jake lifted his cup at her and took another drink. He twisted in his seat to face me. “To set the record straight, you’re wrong.”
My eyebrows came together. “Wrong about what?” That was a list so long I didn’t want to think about it.
“I was, in fact, born here, raised here, and since I own a business here, I spend so much time here I could be nominated the official city mascot. If they had one. Which they don’t. Thankfully.”
“About the only applicable mascot for this place would be a turkey vulture,” I muttered, stirring a couple more packets of sugar into my fresh coffee.
“Ouch. You’ve got it bad. I’ve got to know who or what’s to blame for this hopeless act you’ve got going on.”
I met his gaze just long enough to reply. “It’s not an act.”
“A man?”
I almost snorted. No man, none, would ever be responsible for ruining my life. It had only been two weeks since I’d walked in on my boyfriend screwing some other woman, and I’d been so “devastated” I hadn’t cried a single tear over it. In fact, if I continued to keep my mind off of him the way I had been, I would forget his name in a few more months.
“A woman?” Jake wagged his eyebrows as a devilish smile slid into place.