Chapter Twenty-Two
After Ted dropped Meredith at Carol Allen’s house—he knew he was going to regret giving in, but Meredith’s good heart was one of the reasons he loved her—he drove slowly down Myra
Road. He wasn’t in a hurry to get where he was going, and the patches of snow gave him a reason to creep along. He dreaded
what he had to do. He didn’t have a choice, but still, basically admitting to Kilgore that he’d been a fool wasn’t going to
be easy.
Finding the Kilgore house was easy: Mike’s truck with Kilgore Plumbing on the side, the one he’d been driving the day Ted had stopped him on the road, was parked in the driveway.
Ted pulled to the curb, turned off the engine, and sat for a moment, looking around and postponing the inevitable. The Kilgore
house was small but neat, a simply designed blue-gray ranch-style with a decent-sized front porch. There were two rocking
chairs on that porch, arranged on either side of a small table with a clay pot and a dead plant sitting on it. In better times,
that plant would be well tended. There might be cups of coffee or iced tea, maybe a beer or two, sitting on that table. These
were not better times.
The dusting of snow on the ground kind of made him homesick for Ohio, though he was glad he was here and not there. There
wasn’t enough snow for snowmen, but likely more than a few snowballs would be thrown. The little bit of snow that had fallen
was pretty, though. He always looked forward to coming here in the winter, and often hoped to be snowed in.
It snowed plenty in Ohio, but it was never as pretty as it was here, in the mountains and in the valley.
He knew what he had to do, but that didn’t make it any less embarrassing. Maybe in the past couple of months he’d pushed too
hard, at times—in the name of survival, in an effort to make sure he and Meredith made it through this crisis. His frustration
had gotten the best of him more than once, but his intentions had always been good.
The road to hell . . . Yeah. Exactly.
Ted took a deep breath and opened the car door. This wasn’t going to get any easier while he sat, so he might as well get
it over with. Damn it, not everything he’d done had been wrong! Still, the mistake he’d made—trusting someone like Lawrence—was
a doozy.
Mike opened his front door and came out on the porch when Ted was halfway across the yard. The expression on the plumber’s
face was one of thinly veiled annoyance, likely because of the altercation with Sela Gordon yesterday. Ted imagined she’d
have to commit murder or something like that before any of the valley people would take his side over hers. Mike likely expected
him to raise hell and cause trouble—and trouble was exactly what Ted was bringing, just not the way Mike expected.
“Kilgore,” Ted said in way of greeting, as he walked up the porch steps.
“Parsons,” Mike responded.
Ted stopped a couple of feet from the door, planting his feet and steeling his resolve. He didn’t much like the taste of crow.
“I have some important information, and I wasn’t sure who to take it to.”
Mike’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “And I won?”
It was tempting to give up here and now, to turn around and walk away. He and Meredith could hole up in their house for a
while, if they had to. He didn’t have to participate in the community patrol or in Lawrence’s less-than-legal attempts at
forming an alternate organization. Alternate, hell, make that criminal organization. There were lots of folks in the area, and elsewhere, who kept to themselves and focused on one thing: getting
by. He could do the same.
But it was too late for that. If Lawrence and his gang of meth heads had their way, no one in Wears Valley would be safe.
Ted sighed and met Mike’s gaze. “We have a problem.”
It was midmorning, and Ben was still there. Sela was beginning to feel guilty for not getting something done, but just sitting in front of the fire with him and talking was so deeply satisfying she couldn’t make herself call a
halt to it. Not that he was a chatterbox—anything he said was said with a purpose, and he was as efficient in his use of words
as if he had a set allotment for each day and didn’t want to use them all up. She didn’t care. She was a quiet person herself,
so she was comfortable with not talking. He could be completely silent if he wanted, and she’d still be happy simply being
with him.
Reality said they would soon have to leave the house, though; Barb and Olivia could probably use a break from Carol duty,
and Ben would have things to do with the community patrol—and he had his own place to see to, his own chores. She didn’t ask,
but she imagined he might go by the Livingstons’ to take them more food and check on the dog.
To hang on to the last minute, though, she made more hot chocolate for them and they settled at her table with their mugs.
As she sipped she had the sudden odd feeling that she might never sit here again, that she was a stranger in her own home.
Her life had changed, shifted; she didn’t know what was coming, only that things were different now. She had changed. More than anything she hoped that Ben would be a part of that difference—
Her thoughts were interrupted by footsteps on the back deck. The curtains had all been pulled closed to help keep out the
cold, so she couldn’t see who the visitor was. Ben was on his feet and her .22 rifle, which she had stood in a corner, was
in his hand before she could push back her chair.
There was a knock on the French door and a woman’s voice called, “Sela!”
Sela pushed the edge of the curtain aside and peeked out. “It’s Mike’s wife,” she said to Ben, and opened the door. “Leigh!
Is anything wrong?” She and Leigh were friendly but not close, ruling out a neighborly visit.
Leigh took a half step inside, spotted Ben with the rifle in his hand. She halted, surprise widening her eyes. “Ah . . . yes,
but no one’s sick or hurt. Ted Parsons showed up a few minutes ago and Mike wants you to come hear what he has to say. It’s
important, he said. I can’t tell you more, because I was busy in the back and didn’t hear what they were talking about.”
Sela bit back a groan. She didn’t want to deal with Ted, particularly now. She wanted to be alone with Ben, to explore this
thing between them; she was happy and content, in a world that was increasingly dangerous and happiness could be precarious
and rare. Just thinking about Ted could ruin her mood. The worst of it was, she felt guilty for giving him the finger.
Likely he’d gone to Mike to complain about her behavior. Maybe he was trying to file an official complaint, though the idea
of anything “official” these days was ludicrous. What sort of violation would he be thinking of? “Conduct unbecoming,” she
supposed, and at this point, she could only hope that she’d be found guilty and forcibly removed from her volunteer position.
There was always so much to be done, and now she had Ben and while she didn’t know for sure where this was going he would
definitely require some time and commitment, which she was more than happy to give. She was not only willing but anxious to
step aside.
If, that is, there was someone competent to step into her shoes. That wasn’t Ted Parsons, and Carol was far from ready to
jump back in.
She supposed she’d have to face the music, and stand her ground, and any other cliché she could think of.
“Let’s go,” Ben said, reaching for their coats. She noticed that he kept the rifle in his hand. “We’ll take my truck.”
“Through the back is quicker,” Sela said, and they went out the deck door with Leigh. The route took them through the backyards
of their neighbors, none of whom seemed to be watching because no one hailed them as they walked past. When they reached the
Kilgore house they went up the steps of a deck Mike had built himself just last year, to the Kilgore back door, similar to
the way Sela’s back deck was situated. Ben held her rifle in one hand and her arm with the other, making sure she didn’t slip
on the thin layer of snow, which was melting and turning slick. She loved the feel of that big rough hand, the strength with
which he safeguarded her. Glancing quickly at his expression, which was set and cold, she realized that he, too, expected
trouble from Ted, and from the way he looked he was ready to handle it so she wouldn’t have to.
If Ted had any sense, he’d take one look at Ben and keep his mouth shut.
Leigh opened the door and led them inside. The situation Sela had been imagining wasn’t anything like what they found. Instead
of an angry Ted, an exasperated and annoyed Mike, what she saw when they walked into the kitchen was the two men sitting at
the table over cups of what looked to be weak coffee. Like Leigh, they were surprised to see Ben with her, but that didn’t
last long. They had other things on their minds.
“Ted has some important information,” Mike said, indicating they take the empty chairs. The table sat six, so there was room
for Leigh, too. She took the seat next to Ted, while Sela and Ben sat on the other side of the table facing them.
“What is it?” she asked Ted, her concern evident. Whatever had happened, this wasn’t about yesterday. As much as he disliked
them, it had to be serious for him to come to them like this.
Ted didn’t look at her. He shook his head a little, then looked at Mike. “You tell them.”
“All right. Seems as if Lawrence Dietrich went to Ted with a cockamamie story about setting up an alternate community patrol
because they didn’t like the way things are being done. I guess that’s to be expected, nothing is ever going to make everybody
happy. But they met yesterday, and Ted noticed some things.”
Mike ran through it all, the guy who seemed to be wounded and was limping, what might have been a bullet hole in a bumper,
the fact that none of them seemed to be upstanding citizens, and—most important—what Dietrich seemed to want most of all was
for Ted to spy on the community patrol and keep him informed of what was going on.