Authors: Meg Muldoon
I’d been so elated about the possibility of him visiting, that I’d missed a few things in the conversation.
Like the fact that he hadn’t asked about his grandfather, Lawrence.
Or the fact that he hadn’t asked about me or my life at all.
But I probably just caught him at a bad time. Or so I’d been trying to tell myself. He was at work. He was tired and busy, and didn’t have much time to talk.
It wasn’t that he didn’t care. Because I knew that he did.
I had to believe that he did.
He was just caught up in other things. And I couldn’t blame him for being busy and having a life.
I poked the fire, watching embers float up into the chimney.
After I met Jacob in the parking lot of The Cupid all those years ago, he’d convinced me to leave town with him and run away to Texas. Jacob didn’t get along much with his father, and I suppose I didn’t get along all that well with my family either. And being an impulsive girl, it didn’t take much convincing before we drove his old Chevy all the way to Austin. For more than a decade, he’d tried his hand at the local music scene while I tended bar and soaked up some of the best live music in the world.
But after a while of living there, we both decided to move back to Broken Hearts Junction. Lawrence had his stroke, and then Jacob’s father died shortly after of cancer, and Jacob felt the need to come back home.
And frankly, I’d been a little homesick myself. Tired of city life, missing my juniper canyons and the cottonwood groves. Of the peace and solitude of my home’s landscape.
But there was also another reason we moved back to Broken Hearts Junction.
We had wanted to start a family.
Jacob and I never got married. He had always said he didn’t believe in marriage. And that if two people loved each other the way we did, then they should be together, and that the state approving that didn’t mean a damn thing.
I used to agree with him. But these days, I wasn’t so sure.
The family thing didn’t work out, obviously. He left before we got around to it.
Things had become rocky between us before he took off. He’d stopped looking for a job, and my meager wages at The Stupid Cupid Saloon were barely keeping the two of us afloat. We had a lot of fights about money.
Maybe I expected too much from him. Maybe I drove him away.
One day he came back from seeing Lawrence, and he was fuming. I never knew the reason for it, and we got into a fight when I asked him what was wrong.
The next morning, I woke up to a note on the kitchen counter, and an empty driveway. He was going back to Austin to go find a job, the note said. He said we’d be together again soon, but that a man had to work, and that he would come back to Broken Hearts Junction when the economy got better here.
But it didn’t take long for me to realize that he was lying: the bad job market was just an excuse.
He hadn’t gone back to Austin so much to make a living as he did to get away from me.
Jacob had left me. That’s what his note said between the lines. He was moving away to make his life somewhere else.
Without me in it.
But despite all that, despite him giving up on us, I still believed.
Being the helpless, hopeless fool that I was, I still believed that he was my soulmate.
And despite all the signs pointing to the contrary, I still believed that he would find his way back home. One of these days, he’d show up on the porch with a bouquet of roses and a bottle of wine and an apology.
And he’d never leave me again.
All I had to do was wait him out.
Hank, who had been lying next to me by the fire, rolled over on his back and growled. I gave in to his demands and started rubbing his soft belly.
Jacob had given me Hank for Valentine’s Day a few weeks before he left. And looking back on it, I think he must have known what he was going to do. He must have been planning on leaving me for weeks, maybe months. Hank had been a parting gift.
But that was three years ago, and this was now. And despite him not asking about me or Lawrence, I took some solace in what he had said about coming back home for a visit. Maybe he was having a change of heart. Maybe he was beginning to see that we were meant for each other.
Maybe things weren’t as dire as they seemed after—
I jumped as there was a knock at the door. Hank rolled over and got to his feet, scrambling against the hardwood and running for the door, barking and howling.
A sense of dread pulled at my chest as I considered whether or not to open it.
Most likely, it was Lyle on the other side, coming around to collect rent money that I didn’t have before scolding me and walking off down the steps in a huff.
“Shoot,” I muttered.
Lyle would know that I was home, what with my car sitting out in front and smoke coming from the chimney.
I was just going to have to buck up and deal with him. I rolled up off the floor and opened the door, preparing for the worst.
Finding out shortly after that there was no need to.
Chapter 29
“I’m afraid you might have the wrong impression of me,” I said, nodding to the whiskey bottle he was holding in his hands.
“I’m not implying nothin’,” he said. “I just thought you might need something after finding your boss dead this morning.”
“
Former boss
,” I said.
“Former boss,” the stranger said, correcting himself. “Still, you probably cared for the man.”
“
Cared
might be too strong of a word,” I said. “But I am sorry he’s dead.”
“Let me buy you a drink?” he said.
I thought about it for a few moments, assessing the situation.
Inviting men I didn’t know into my humble abode was not something I did—for safety reasons, gossip reasons, and general moral reasons. But it was a cold and snowy night, and it had been one hell of a week already. And should the stranger be a psychotic serial killer, he’d have Hank to contend with, and I’d put my money on Hank to win that one any day of the week.
Plus, the stranger wasn’t exactly a stranger anymore.
I knew his name now.
“All right, Fletcher Hart,” I said, holding the door open. “Come in out of the snow. But I’m warning you that I’m fresh out of orange soda, grape soda, and basically about any fruity flavor there is.”
He smiled.
“That’s okay,” he said. “I wasn’t that thirsty anyway, Bitters.”
He walked in, and I stood silently in surprise for a few moments.
I hadn’t ever told him it, but he knew my name too.
He went right over to Hank.
Hank hit the ground and rolled over on his back for belly pets, like the two of them were old, old friends.
Chapter 30
“That’s one hell of a way to die,” he said, looking down and shaking his head. “Death by a mounted ox. My lord.”
I sighed, betting Dale never gave two thoughts to Old Velma sitting above the bar.
All these years, death had been looking down on him, just waiting for the right moment to strike.
The thought sent shivers down my spine.
“I never knew Old Velma had it in her…” I said, trailing off.
I took another sip of whiskey. It went down smooth and filled me with a pleasant warmth. The stranger had brought over some really high-end, expensive stuff. The kind that we didn’t even stock at
The Cupid
these days because locals never ordered it, and Dale wasn’t about to stock something that—
I shuddered, the thought of his dead, lifeless body flashing into my mind like a strobe light.
I bit my lip and rocked slowly back in forth in the old, rustic rocking chair that Lawrence had given me when he’d moved into the nursing home after his stroke. The stranger was sitting on the other side of the small room, in the chair closest to the fire. He had his feet stretched out in front of him, his cowboy hat sitting on the arm rest next to him. He wasn’t drinking.
We sat for a few moments in silence, but it wasn’t that awkward silence that so often accompanies conversation with a stranger. It was an easy silence, one that held no expectations. It just kind of floated like a cloud.
“I like your place here,” he said, glancing around the walls. “It’s real pleasant.”
“Thanks.”
“You’ve got a lot of friends,” he said, his eyes taking in all the happy, smiling couples in the photo frames.
“Not really,” I said.
I cleared my throat.
“So what were you doing at The Cupid this morning?” I said, meeting his eyes. “Seems early to be at a bar. Especially for someone who only drinks fruity soda.”
“I was meeting someone there,” he said.
“Oh?” I asked.
“Yeah.A business-related meeting.”
“What kind of business are you in?” I asked.
“I’m not in anything right now,” he said. “But I’m looking to be.”
My heart sank a little. He was dodging the question, and when people did that, it usually meant that whatever they did wasn’t above board.
“Something illegal?” I asked.
He smirked.
“Now I think you’re the one with the wrong impression of me, Bitters,” he said.
I shrugged.
“Sounds mysterious, is all,” I said. “Which in my experience, usually means illegal.”
“It’s not,” he said.
“I’m not sure if I believe you. This whiskey isn’t cheap. It’s something a drug dealer might drink.”
“Well, pardon me saying so, but I think a gal like you should only be drinking the best.”
I nearly snorted.
“And now I know you’re a schmoozer,” I said. “My mother always said to watch out for those types.”
“That’s a good piece of advice right there,” the stranger said.
I smiled.
“What kind of name is Bitters anyway?” he asked.
I shrugged.
“One that stuck a long time ago when I started bartending.”
“Hmm,” he said, rubbing his chin. “You know, I don’t think the name fits.”
“Maybe you just don’t know me well enough,” I said.
He shrugged.
“Maybe,” he said. “But I got a sense about these things.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. And when I look at you, I just don’t see a
Bitters
.”
“Well, what
do
you see?”
“I don’t know yet,” he said. “But I’ll tell you when I do.”
Another silence settled in over the conversation. We both stared at the crackling fire. I took another sip of the whiskey.
Damn, this was some mighty fine stuff.
“So where’s home, Fletcher?” I asked.
“All over,” he said, without missing a beat. “Mostly Tennessee, but I’ve never really put stakes down anywhere. You get used to a certain way of living, you know?”
There weren’t too many jobs that you could do that with, I thought.
Dealing drugs might have been one of them.
“But if you want to know the truth, I don’t care much for talking about myself. I’d rather hear about you,” he said. “What do you do for fun in a town like this?”
I lifted my eyebrows up in surprise, and then looked back at the fire.
Fun. I didn’t know the meaning of the word lately.
“Not much to do in a town this size,” I said. “The Cupid was the best thing about Broken Hearts Junction. When I was a kid, I used to go there all the time just to listen to the music. That place used to be magic.”
I felt a sour expression settling in over my face.
“Now it’s just a rundown joint in the middle of nowhere.”
“Well, what else do you do for fun?”
I thought about my matchmaking for a second.
That used to be what I did for fun. Nothing made me happier than the thrill of making a match, of bringing two people together who otherwise might have missed each other without me intervening.
But things had changed. When I thought about Beth Lynn and helping her find her mystery soulmate, I felt dread, not excitement.
The truth was, I didn’t really like making people happy anymore.
I didn’t have much fun these days.
I shrugged.
“Maybe I’m just a serious person,” I said, staring into my nearly empty drink.
He got up, grabbed the bottle and poured me another.
“I don’t see anything wrong with that,” he said.
He sat back down in the chair and stared at me a few moments.
“You were saying something the other night,” he said. “When I dropped you off. Something about some sort of super power you have.”
My cheeks flushed, and it wasn’t because of the spirits.
“I really shouldn’t drink so much,” I said. “I was saying a lot of nonsense the other night.”
“You were saying that you can see a person’s soulmate,” he said, leaning forward in his chair. “Wasn’t that it?”
I looked away. Me and my big mouth.
“And as I recall, you looked at me like I was insane,” I said.
“I don’t think you’re insane,” he said. “You were a little tipsy, maybe. A little crazy. But not insane.”
I didn’t see any reason to keep on lying.
Any harm I’d done to myself I’d already done. And Fletcher Hart was either going to think I was a nutcase, or he was going to have an open mind about it.
“Well, I won’t lie to you then. Everything I said the other night is true,” I said. “I’ve got a gift for helping people find their soulmates.”
He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth.
“You’re pulling my leg,” he said, looking more interested than skeptical.
I nodded to the wall of photos.
“Not a bit. All those people can attest to, uh, my
gift
,” I said. “I helped each and every one of them find their true loves. And you know what? They’re all still together. Each and every one of—”
He followed my gaze, back up to my monument to madness, and I noticed his eyes fell upon one photo in particular.
The one of Jacob and me.
“Is that him?” he said, looking back at me.
I bit my lip, nodded, and took another long sip of whiskey.
“I mean, just about all of them are still togeth…”
I trailed off.