CHAPTER NINE
The house would not cool down.
Connor lay on his back with one arm across his eyes, listening to the ceiling fan turn above him with a tired click in every rotation. The sheets had twisted around his legs sometime after two, then become another thing to fight. By four in the morning, sleep had given up on him entirely.
Heat pressed against the walls. It sat in the mattress, in the floorboards, in his skin. The whole bedroom felt as if the day had crawled inside and refused to leave.
Connor threw the sheet aside and sat up.
A dog barked somewhere down the road. Farther off, a truck moved along the highway, its engine fading through the open window.
He crossed to the window unit.
The air conditioner was old, square, and ugly, bought in a hurry five summers ago when his mother had complained that his house felt like a feed shed. Connor turned the dial. The unit grumbled to life, blew one thin breath of cooler air, then coughed twice and stopped.
Connor stared at it.
The machine made a faint ticking sound, as if offended by the request.
He hit the side with the heel of his hand.
Nothing.
“Machines are the bane of my life,” he muttered.
The bedroom returned to silence, broken only by the ceiling fan’s useless click.
Connor rubbed a hand over his face and turned toward the hall cupboard.
He had an electric fan somewhere, probably behind a box of winter gloves, fishing gear, and items his mother had insisted were too useful to throw away.
The cupboard door creaked when he opened it.
Inside, stacked shelves leaned under old towels, a toolkit, spare light bulbs, folded blankets, and a shoebox with a cracked lid. The fan sat on the top shelf, wedged near the back. Connor reached for the handle and pulled.
The fan came down.
So did the shoebox.
It struck his shoulder, flipped, and burst open across the hallway floor.
Papers slid over the boards. Photographs scattered under his feet. A key chain skidded against the wall. Two cinema ticket stubs floated down last and came to rest face up, their print faded almost unreadable.
Connor stood there holding the fan.
He should have gathered everything and shoved it back. No good came from opening certain parts of the past at four in the morning.
Instead, he crouched.
A photograph lay closest. Selena, at seventeen, was sitting on the hood of his first truck, one hand raised to block him from taking the picture. Another showed Jessie between them at Hank's, pulling a face while Connor stole fries from Selena's plate.
More items lay around the box. A pressed flower Selena had given him when they were 18.
A cheap silver bracelet from a fair stall, another gift, but a returned one.
A matchbook from the roadside inn where he and Selena had stayed after getting married because they had no money for a proper honeymoon.
Then the letter.
Folded once. Yellowed at the edges. His name was nowhere on it, but he knew the paper before his fingers touched it.
Connor sat back against the hallway wall.
The date at the top put him there at once.
The day before the divorce was finalized.
Selena,
I don’t know if you’ll read this. I don’t know if you’ll tear it up before the second line. Maybe I deserve that. Maybe I deserve a lot of things. But I need one last chance to tell you I didn’t betray you...
He stopped reading.
The rest was burned into memory anyway.
He had written it at the kitchen table of their old place, crossing out lines until the page looked wounded. One last plea. One last attempt to stop the machinery before it carried them to the end.
The next morning, he had driven toward Robert Raven’s house with the letter in his hand.
Selena had been staying there while the paperwork moved through.
Connor remembered the steering wheel slick under his palms, the envelope on the passenger seat, the way he had rehearsed what he would say and hated every version.
Robert had been near the mailbox when Connor arrived.
Her father had looked older even then, though strong as an ox. Work coat, cap low, hands rough from years of stubborn land. He saw the envelope before Connor had stepped fully from the truck.
“That for Lena?” Robert had asked.
Connor had tried to pass him. “I need to talk to her.”
“She isn’t here.”
“Then I’ll wait.”
Robert moved in front of him, not aggressive, not exactly. Firm. “No.”
Connor still remembered the anger that came up fast. “You don’t get to decide that.”
“Maybe not. But I get to tell you something before you go making this harder on her.”
“She’s my wife.”
“For one more day, Son.”
The words struck him like ice.
“There’s something you don’t know… She got accepted,” Robert said.
Connor gripped the envelope until it bent. “What?”
“For the Academy. FBI training. She got the letter two days ago.”
The yard had gone too quiet. Selena’s future opening while his fell apart in his hands.
Through all of the havoc, all of the fighting and arguing as their marriage ended, Connor had forgotten about Selena’s application to join the FBI.
He had never been happy about the idea. He didn’t want her to get hurt.
And now here it was. The answer he had dreaded.
“She didn’t tell me.”
“She wasn’t sure how.”
Connor had laughed then. A short, bitter sound. “That’s perfect.”
“It’s a chance for her to spread her wings.”
“She could have spread them with me.”
"Maybe." Robert stepped closer and put one hand on Connor's shoulder. "Son, I don't know if you did or didn't have the affair. That doesn't matter now."
“It matters to me. I tried to explain. I know it looked bad. But it wasn’t what she thought.”
“Selena doesn’t trust you anymore. Once trust is gone, that’s it. Sometimes you have to let go of the person you love most, if you really do love her.”
Connor had hated him in that moment.
Not forever. Not even properly. But enough that his throat had closed and his hand had curled around the letter like it was a weapon he would never use.
He had driven home without giving it to her.
The letter had gone into the shoebox that night. After that, the box had followed him from one house to another, always on a shelf, always out of sight, never far enough away.
Connor refolded the paper and placed it back with the photographs.
Back in the bedroom, the bed waited in a room that had grown emptier with each passing year. No second lamp. No hair tie on the dresser. No voice from the bathroom asking where he had put something both of them knew he had moved.
Work had filled the gaps because work knew what it wanted. Calls came in. Forms needed signing. People needed calming down, arresting, warning, helping.
Connor put the shoebox back on the shelf and took the fan.
The fan rattled when he plugged it in, then pushed cooler air across the bed. Not much, but enough. He pointed it toward the mattress and climbed back under the sheet.
His eyes closed.
The phone rang.
Nothing good came from a call at that hour.
Sweat glistened on his hand as he reached for the phone on the nightstand, his heart racing.
Connor answered.
Arnold's voice was unlike anything Connor had heard before.
"Chief..."
Maple Street...
Early light had barely reached the rooftops when Connor pulled up outside a small house on Maple Street.
It was a place he had visited many times.
This time, the sight of it made him sick with grief.
A pain he had not felt for a long time. It was in him now like a jagged blade, cutting through his mind.
The old anger. The old rage was seeping through the slits.
The neighborhood looked too quiet for what waited inside. Neat yards. Mailboxes. A child’s bicycle lying near a porch. At the curb, Arnold Shaw stood beside his cruiser, face pale under the brim of his hat.
Connor parked fast and got out. He tried to compose himself.
“Is it true?”
Arnold swallowed. “I… I’m sorry, Sheriff. Victor’s dead.”
For a second, Connor looked at the house instead of the deputy.
Victor Schmidt had lived in Harlan County for ten years and somehow made everyone feel as if he had been there longer. Three kids. Big laugh. Golf on Sundays when Connor could spare the time. A true friend through the years. Perhaps the closest person to him outside of his sister.
And now he was dead.
Connor removed his hat and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. Sweat returned almost immediately. His mouth was dry.
“Who’s inside?”
“Agent Raven. Matt Price. One of the other deputies, Chuck Danner, got here before me.”
“Chuck?”
“He heard the call and came in... Chief maybe we can handle this...
“No.”
“I told Selena how close you were, she’d understand. There’s no shame in…”
“Arnold, you mean well. But out of my way.”
Connor rushed through the yard.
The front door stood open. Inside, the house carried the residue of family life. Shoes near the mat. Backpacks by the stairs. Somewhere deeper in the house, a television blared gunfire and galloping horses.
Selena met him in the hall.
Her face told him enough before she spoke.
“Connor.”
He looked over her shoulder.
Victor sat in an armchair in the living room, head bowed, one hand hanging loose near the cushion. Blood covered the front of his shirt and had run in a dark sheet down the chair. His skin had the waxen cast of death under the morning light filtering through the curtains.
Connor’s heartbeat kicked hard.
Selena touched his arm. “Are you okay?”
“Vic… He was one of my best friends.” His voice sounded wrong to him, too flat and too rough at once. “Moved here about ten years ago. His wife, Marlene, used to invite me to every family barbecue. His kids…”
The rest caught.
In the corner, Matt Price had stopped taking photographs. Camera lowered, eyes fixed on Connor with concern he did not try to hide.
An older deputy stepped in from the kitchen doorway. Chuck Danner, fifty-something, solid through the middle, gray at the temples. Connor had trusted him from the day he took office.
“Sheriff,” Chuck said. “You okay?”
Connor took a breath and forced it down. “Yeah.”