Authors: Meg Muldoon
“Nonsense,” she said, grabbing my plate and heaping on another serving of potatoes.
“Mom, let Loretta decide if she wants another helping,” Molly said, looking at me. “She knows what’s best.”
Which, I knew well by now, as being Molly’s code for
You’re looking chubby. You shouldn’t eat so much.
I took a large bite of the potatoes and glared at her from across the table.
All I wanted was for this dinner to be over.
Chapter 39
“Remember?” he said, holding open the door to my truck. “You said we could talk tonight.”
“Well, you showing up to my family’s dinner kind of overrode that,” I said.
We were standing outside of my mom’s house in the frosty high desert air. I was about to get in the truck and pull away from one of the worst evenings in recent memory.
But Raymond had caught me before leaving, wanting to have that talk that I didn’t want to have.
“I hope that I wasn’t intruding there,” he said, digging his hands in his khaki pockets and looking down at the ground. “It’s just that, well, I like your family a lot. I’ve missed those dinners.”
He’d been to only one of them while we were dating, but I didn’t correct him. Not with the way that he was looking, which was like a whimpering pit bull with his head hung low.
I started feeling guilty.
“You didn’t… it’s fine,” I said. “It’s not your fault. My mom’s the one that invited you.”
He lifted his head.
“And, well, honestly, I was glad to have you at the table,” I said. “You know how my mom and sister can be. It was nice having someone in my corner.”
He cleared his throat.
“I was happy to be at the table too,” he said. “That’s the first home-cooked meal I’ve had in quite a while.”
We stood looking at each other for a spell.
I sighed.
Hell. The night was already a lost cause anyway.
“Fine,” I said, getting into the truck. “Just remember what I said about raising your voice. The conversation ends the moment you do.”
“Understood,” he said.
He walked to his car with a pep in his step and followed me as I pulled away down my childhood street.
Raymond wasn’t all that bad of a guy, I thought, glancing up in the rearview mirror at him.
He’d gotten all dressed up for tonight, and even though I didn’t really want to admit it, he looked good in his suit and tie.
Maybe he’d been right. Maybe I’d never really given him a shot to begin with.
Not that it really mattered anymore.
I thought about Jacob and what he’d said about coming home for a visit.
Wondering if it meant what I hoped it meant.
Wondering if I’d get my heart trampled all over again.
I wasn’t sure if I could survive a second go around.
I glanced back up in the rearview mirror at Raymond again.
Chapter 40
I fixed us up a couple mugs of tea. Though I would have much rather gone for something a little harder, I didn’t think it was a good idea. I didn’t want him getting the wrong impression about what this was about. And besides, drink only seemed to bring out his temper.
“Thank you,” he said, taking the mug of peppermint tea from me and setting it on the coffee table. I sat down across from him in my rocking chair, purposefully not sitting on the sofa with him. Hank came over and stretched out at my feet. He rested his head on the ground, but he kept one eye glued on Raymond.
He didn’t much care for him. Hank had seen him when he got angry and raised his voice at me, and Hank had jumped up on him a couple of times during those episodes.
“So, uh, I’ve been meaning to ask you about Dale,” I said, warming my hands on the mug.
Raymond straightened up in his seat.
“I know that, uh, that it wasn’t an accident,” I continued. “Not like everyone’s been saying. I know that there’s more to it.”
He rubbed his face.
“There’s not a lot I can tell you about it,” he said. “It’s an open investigation.”
“Which sounds like it wasn’t an accident,” I said.
“I can’t talk about it, Loretta,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
I bit my lip and nodded.
“Well, say that Dale had been murdered, who could have done it?” I asked.
He massaged his temples as he spoke.
“Well, hypothetically, looking at what Dale did for a living and the way he carried his person, I might be overwhelmed by the many motives.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Really?”
“You know how the man liked to gamble?” he said. “Problem is, he wasn’t very good at it.”
He took a sip of his tea and made a bitter face.
“Was he in deep?” I asked.
“Deep enough,” he said. “But the gambling’s only one possibility. There are others.”
“Like what?”
He shrugged.
“Well, there’s Courtney,” he said. “And you know, the boys at the station say you could have done it.”
I nearly spit out my tea.
“They think I…?”
He started laughing.
“Relax, Loretta,” he said. “I wouldn’t be sitting here with you right now if we really thought you might be a suspect. The only reason they’re saying that is because you found the body. Plus, you’ve got motive that others don’t.”
“You mean because Dale fired me?” I asked.
“Well, everyone knows how much you care about that bar. Some of the boys say you could’ve snapped.”
I leaned back and crossed my arms.
“Well, you tell the boys that they can go to hell,” I said. “Where do they get off making such groundless accusations in the first place?”
Raymond chuckled.
“Okay, I’ll tell them you said that.”
He leaned forward, putting the mug back down on the table.
“Hey, I thought I was here tonight to talk about something else,” he said, looking across at me with a serious expression.
My stomach started knotting up when he looked at me like that.
“Okay, fine,” I said. “Tell me what you came here to tell me.”
He looked down dramatically, like he was trying to gather up his thoughts and find the right way to express himself. He started saying something a few times, but then stopped after the false starts.
I shifted uncomfortably in my chair.
“I don’t think you really know me,” he said, finally.
I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to respond to the statement, but I did what I could.
“You’re probably right,” I said.
He furrowed his brow.
“You see, I think you’ve got this wrong idea about me. And it’s not all your fault. I sometimes… I sometimes don’t let the real me shine through because I’m afraid of not looking strong. I think that’s why I get angry sometimes, you know? I’m just afraid of people seeing me as anything other than the tough guy that I want them to see.”
He wiped his hands nervously on his khakis.
“I just wish… I wish you’d give me a chance to show you the real me.”
I stared at the floor.
Raymond was trying. Really trying. I could hear it in his voice.
“You see, I think you and me could really be something, Loretta,” he said. “You deserve somebody who’ll take care of you, treat you right. And I know… I mean, I just know that that person’s me.”
He sighed.
“I mean, you don’t have to work at a bar anymore. I’d take care of you. You could go back to school, or do your matchmaking fulltime. Whatever you want to do, you can do.”
He was trying. The only problem was, I didn’t know if his trying would be enough for the both of us.
He must have read it on my face.
“I know you believe in all this soulmate nonsense,” he said. “But you know what? That son of a bitch, the one you keep up there on the wall? He left. He’s not here anymore. But I am. And I’m telling you that I can be the one who—”
He stopped mid-sentence as his eyes narrowed and focused on the counter behind me.
He furrowed his brow, and I knew something was wrong.
I saw a storm brewing in his eyes.
“That sure is some expensive whiskey, there,” he said, looking past me at the bottle on the counter.
It was the one the stranger had brought over the night before.
Raymond may have not always been the brightest crayon in the box, but there was a reason he was a cop.
He had a way of noticing things and connecting the dots.
“That it is,” I said. “You want some?”
Being nonchalant about it didn’t help stop where the conversation was headed.
“You get another job or something?” he asked. “Something that lets you afford something like that?”
And just like that, the nice, kind, gentle side of Raymond Rollins started to fade.
And the jealous, arrogant, possessive side reared its ugly head.
The side of him that I hated.
“You came here to talk,” I said. “Talk.”
His face started to redden.
“Where’d you get it from?” he asked. “I know it ain’t from the saloon because it’s too good for that dump.”
“Raymond,” I said, disappointingly, shaking my head.
“Tell me,” he said, his neck muscles bulging.
He got up, walked over to the counter, picked the bottle up and looked hard at the label.
I put my mug down on the coffee table and leaned forward.
“This is exactly why I broke up with you, Raymond,” I said. “You get angry at me over stupid things that don’t matter a damn.”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“I don’t need to,” I said. “I haven’t done a thing wrong.”
He balled his free hand up into a fist at his side, the way he always did when the anger inside was too much for him to take.
“Nevermind. I know who it is anyway,” he said.
Hank got to his feet and started growling at him, hearing a tone in his voice that he didn’t like.
“It’s that Fletcher son of a bitch, isn’t it? Fletcher Hart.”
I was getting angry now.
I had let him into my house to hear him out.
And now all I wanted was for him to get out.
“You oughta stay away from him, Loretta,” he said, pacing the floor. “That guy isn’t who you think he is.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
He stopped pacing and looked up at me, looking like he’d just caught me in a lie.
He smirked.
“So he
was
here?” he said.
“I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”
His neck muscles looked like they were going to burst from the strain.
“I came over here thinking that I could save what we had,” he said, throwing his jacket on. “Now I know different.”
I stood up.
“I might not know the real you, Raymond. But that street goes both ways. You don’t know the first thing about me either.”
He rubbed the top of his head and looked at me one last time. The kind of look that he thought was supposed to make me regret him leaving my home and my life forever.
Which I didn’t, and which I wouldn’t.
“You know,” he said, shaking his head. “Jacob’s not coming back. He fell out of love with you, and he’s moved on. And until you move on too, you’ll never be able to love another man, me or this fool you’ve found.”
He put his beanie on.
“I almost feel sorry for him.”
He slammed the door behind him.
Hank started barking, but stopped once we heard the engine of his car start up.
I sat alone in the silence, his words reverberating in the air like the last chords of a guitar at the end of the night.
Raymond could have said just about anything else to me, and I wouldn’t have cared one bit about it.
But this… this hurt me more than I expected it to.
Mostly because there was some truth to it.
Chapter 41
After a night like that, I couldn’t just sit at home and wait around.
And when I got Beth Lynn’s text message, badgering me again about the soulmate search, I decided that I might as well make the most of a bad night.
I grabbed my sheep fleece-lined jacket, and called Hank along.
He rolled over and got to his feet, looking up at me with big, tired dog eyes.
I was sure there was nothing he’d rather do but stay right there by the heater and sleep.
“C’mon,” I said, patting the top of his massive head. “You can stay in the truck if you want.”
Chapter 42
I pulled up in the parking lot of The Black Bear Roadside Bar. It was crowded for a week night. Just about every one of the spots in the gravel parking lot was taken.
But my impression was that this was the way The Black Bear
always was lately. It was the up-and-coming bar in Broken Hearts Junction. A sports bar with the occasional live music act, it was the kind of place that kids with fake IDs frequented.
The kind of place that was now running The Cupid out of town.
But things were rougher here than they ever had been at The Cupid in the old days. It wasn’t just kids with fake IDs. There were plenty of folks who frequented The Black Bear. Folks that you wouldn’t want to run into should there be an emergency, or say, should the apocalypse hit.
I left Hank behind in the truck and walked up to the large wooden front doors, past a couple of leather clad bikers whose eyes took a walk up and down me. I shivered, dug my hands deeper into my pockets, and walked into the crowded and noisy bar.
I hoped that Beth Lynn’s mystery man wasn’t in here, and that instead, I’d find him volunteering at the local soup kitchen or something. But I figured a bar always offered a good chance of finding a soulmate. Lonely, even if they were attached, they often ended up at a bar looking for some company.
It was as good a place to look as any.
The place smelled of cheap sour beer and cigarettes. People weren’t supposed to smoke inside anymore, but nobody enforced that law at The Black Bear. Most laws, in fact, weren’t ever enforced at the The Black Bear.
TV screens in every corner flashed brightly, and The Doors’
Alabama Song
droned from the stereo.
The energy of the place had a rowdy, dangerous feel. The air was full of a dark static electricity.