Chapter 31 #2
“Too late,” Elizabeth called from the back without turning around. “I’ve already witnessed the crime scene. You’re both on probation.”
Harper grinned through the mess of her face. “See? We’re fine. We’re great.” She reached up, thumbed a stray tear from under my eye with surprising gentleness. “You’re really okay?”
I nodded. “Getting there. Thanks to you.”
“I’m always here for you. Always,” she said simply, and the word carried nineteen years of history behind it.
Bella, still perched on her stool, watched the whole exchange with patient interest. “Mom’s mascara is ruined,” she observed calmly.
Harper groaned. “Thanks for the update, kiddo.”
“You’re welcome,” Bella said, as casual as could be. She tilted her head, regarding me with calm, seven-and-a-half-year-old certainty. “I knew it was you,” she said.
I blinked. “Did you?”
“From the first episode I heard. The voice was just your voice, but lower. And you always say ‘the thing is’ before something important. You did it every time.” She shrugged one small shoulder.
“I always knew. I don’t know how everyone else didn’t figure it out.
You talk the same way when you’re telling me stories.
You pause in the same places. It was so obvious. ”
I stared at her. “You knew? This whole time?”
Bella gave a small, sheepish shrug, still wiping at her eyes. “Pretty much. I didn’t even tell my mom. We listened together sometimes, and she never figured it out.”
“Why didn’t you ever say anything?” My voice came out quieter than I meant it to.
Bella met my gaze, soft and steady. “Because if you’d wanted anyone to know, you would have said so. I liked your stories. I can keep a secret.”
I swallowed hard, throat tight again. “I wasn’t ready for anyone to know. You were right. Thank you.”
“I’m proud of you, Becca,” Harper said, then hugged Bella. “You too, my little secret keeper.”
“Thank you.” I breathed deeply, trying not to cry again.
Bella looked pleased with herself. “Can I have hot chocolate?”
“I’ll get it,” Elizabeth called, already moving.
She slid a hot chocolate in front of Bella with a grin.
Bella cradled her cup with both hands and took a solemn sip. “Little marshmallows. The good ones. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Elizabeth called back, already at the back of the store.
Harper and I shared a look—the silent language of childhood besties, now wet-eyed and brighter than it had been in a long time.
They gathered their things to leave. Bella paused at the door and then announced, “I’m telling my class about the podcast for show-and-tell.
I’ll describe it accurately, so make the next one good. ”
“No pressure,” Harper said, voice still rough.
“Some pressure,” Bella added, and followed Harper out the door.
The shift continued in fragments. A campground woman bought me a foil-wrapped banana bread and quietly told me, “I heard it. I wanted you to know I appreciate you,” then left. A Gazette reporter called; Elizabeth took the message like my unofficial gatekeeper. Matt texted me.
Matt: Attorney General inquiry is in full gear now. It’s working. You should be proud of yourself. I am.
I read it twice.
My brother—terse by nature, who had said “I’m proud” maybe twice in our lives—had typed it deliberately.
I showed Elizabeth.
She read and set the phone down. “Print it. Frame it. That Matt is a tough nut to crack, and believe me, I’ve been trying.”
Uncle Harold had cared.
Aunt Aggie cared.
Matt cared.
Elizabeth had hugged me like a malfunctioning robot and meant every awkward second of it.
Harper had hugged me like she’d never let go.
Something old and knotted in my chest began to loosen. This time, I let it. I was ready for it to be gone.
At the end of my shift, the door chimed. It was Levi. Jacket on, unhurried, eyes finding me like always across the length of the store, and even after everything—after last night, after this morning, after all of it—the warmth in his face still caught me off guard. Probably always would.
“Hey. How was your shift?”
“A lot,” I said. “Good, I think. Hard to tell yet. People kept mentioning it all day, and I kept not knowing what to do with my face.” I set the apron on the counter and pushed my hair back.
“Matt texted me,” he said, a small smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. “He’s proud of you. He said, and I quote, ‘Tell her I meant it and make sure she believes it.’”
I looked down at the counter.
“Becca,” he said, low and patient, in the tone that meant he was not going to let me deflect this.
“I know,” I said. “I’m trying to let it in. I really am.”
Elizabeth appeared from the back before I could say anything else, already untying her own apron with the energy of someone wrapping up a successful operation. She looked at Levi, then at me, then back at Levi with the expression of a woman who had opinions and wasn’t keeping them to herself.
“She did good today,” she said to him, like I wasn’t standing right there. “Real good. People were coming in just to talk to her.” Then, to me, pointing two fingers in my direction. “You’re relieved. Aunt Donna’s on her way. Go. Celebrate. And let him take you somewhere nice for once.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Levi said, and the smile he turned on Elizabeth was the easy, unhurried one that did things to my concentration.
“You. Damn, girl.” She pointed at me one more time for emphasis and disappeared into the back.
Outside, the evening air met us clean and cold, carrying the sharp green smell of pine and the faint mineral bite of the river. Levi fell into step beside me, close enough that our arms brushed with every other step.
“I thought we could eat outside,” he said. “There was a fire out in Willowmist Falls this morning, and I’ve had smoke in my lungs all day. I could use the air, and I figured you could too after being inside.”
His hand found mine somewhere along the first block, fingers lacing through without comment, like it was just the obvious thing to do.
The last of the daylight was sitting low and gold over the tree line, and by the time the food trucks came into view, their lights were already on, warm and amber against the coming dusk.
I waited until we’d joined the short line at the taco truck before I turned to look at him properly.
There was something around his eyes that I’d learned to read—a tiredness that wasn’t quite physical, a day that had asked something of him. I reached up without thinking and cupped his cheek in my palm.
“Tell me about the fire,” I murmured. “Actually, tell me. Not the version where you say it went fine, so I don’t worry about you.”
He looked down at me with something soft moving through his expression, like he was still getting used to being asked. “Old farmhouse on the county road out past Willowmist,” he said. “Been vacant a while, but someone had been staying in it. We got there, and the back half was already gone.”
I felt my stomach turn over. “Was anyone inside?”
“No.” He said it quickly, his hand squeezing mine.
“Nobody home. That part we got lucky on.” He paused, looking out toward the river for a moment.
“The bigger concern was the tree line. It’s been dry out there, Becca—drier than it should be this time of year.
The kind of dry where one bad afternoon could take a lot more than a farmhouse.
We got it contained, but it was closer than I’d have liked. ”
Something in the way he said it made me look at him more carefully. He wasn’t catastrophizing—Levi didn’t catastrophize—but there was a weight behind the words, a professional’s quiet acknowledgment that the land itself was waiting for something. I filed it away without quite knowing why.
“Those old structures go fast,” he said, turning back to me. “You think you know what you’re walking into, and then the floor’s not where it’s supposed to be. But it went fine,” he said. “It all went fine. We put it out.”
I tightened my hand around his and stepped closer, close enough that my shoulder pressed against his arm.
“I hate that,” I said quietly. “I know it’s your job, and I know you’re good at it.
I just—I hate imagining you in a building that’s coming apart.
The thought of you getting hurt is terrifying. ”
He looked down at me then, really looked, and something in the tired lines of his face eased all at once. “I’m here,” he said.
“You’re here,” I said back. “And I’m thankful.”
He lifted our joined hands and pressed his lips to my knuckles, brief and warm, and I felt it all the way up my arm.
We ordered—carnitas for him, a quesadilla for me, because it was always going to be the quesadilla, the cheese alone was reason enough to be alive—and carried the paper trays across to the park that ran along the river, finding a bench that faced the water.
The evening light was doing something lovely to its surface, breaking into long, pale shards where the current ran fastest. We ate with our shoulders touching, and I told him about my day.
About the people who came to see me. About Harper’s hug.
About Elizabeth’s face when the third person in a row came in asking for me.
“She looked like a proud mother hen,” I said. “It was genuinely alarming.”
Levi laughed—a real one, low and warm—and I felt it settle something in me that had been wound tight all day.
“Matt’s proud of you, too,” he said. “You know that.”
“He said so. Apparently twice.” I turned my tray over in my hands. “It still feels strange. Someone being proud of me for doing the thing I actually wanted to do, rather than the safe version that didn’t cost anything.”
“You’re going to have to get used to it,” he said. He reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, fingers brushing my jaw on the way back, light and deliberate. “There’s going to be more of it.”
I looked down at my tray. One triangle of quesadilla left, golden and crisp at the edges, cheese still pulling away in strings when I lifted it. I knew without looking that he’d clocked it. He always did.
“Here,” I said, and held it out to him.
He took it from my fingers without a word, that small private smile on his mouth, and ate it in two bites, and I watched him with a feeling in my chest I didn’t bother trying to describe anymore.
“I’m glad you told me,” I said. “About the fire.” I paused, looking at the water. “I want to know everything about your days. The hard ones, especially. I want to know all of it.”
He was quiet for a moment. When I glanced over, he was looking at me with an expression I felt swirling low in my belly.
“Okay,” he said simply. Like it was a promise. Like it was easy.
We sat there until the light had gone soft and violet over the water and the riverfront had quieted around us, and neither of us suggested moving for a long time.