Chapter 3
Chapter Three
E than sat in a rocking chair on the front porch, watching the colors of the sky deepen from blue to purple out past the rolling meadows, stunted woods, and the wooden arch over the long dirt drive.
Uncle Garrett sat in the rocker beside his, doin’ the same.
The place had cleared out an hour ago, though Lily and her dad had left early. Ethan had unpacked, and showered up, and then he’d come down, knowing where to find the man who’d raised him. His dad, in every sense of the word.
For a while they just rocked in silence.
Eventually, Garrett said, “You’re home without a holiday or party or weddin’ to attend. Must be somethin’ pretty big goin’ on.”
Garrett was as big as ever, and not a bit softer.
It was only coincidence that Ethan was similarly built.
He wore faded jeans, scuffed-up boots, a western shirt over a T-shirt.
No sheriff’s badge was pinned to his chest, never was on the weekends, unless something happened.
His bark-brown hair looked like it had taken a hard frost, and the laugh lines around his eyes were deeper every time Ethan came home.
“Yeah, I…wanted to talk with you.”
Garrett looked at him, locked eyes. “I knew somethin’ was off. You look troubled, son. Got ghosts in your eyes.”
“I was leavin’ a gig when a lawyer caught up to me in the parkin’ lot. Come to tell me de Lorean’s dead.”
Garrett’s brows rose up high. “An’ here I was expectin’ you to ask about woman problems.”
“Got no woman, so?—”
“Could have, if you were…that-a-way inclined.”
The phrase was from Good Ol’ Boys , a western they’d watched together a dozen times. Ethan sent Garrett a questioning look.
Garrett shrugged. “Accordin’ to my better half, anyway.”
“I still don’t?—”
“Lily Ellen,” Garrett said. “Dang, boy, you’re denser’n I was with your aunt Chelsea.”
So wait, Aunt Chelsea knew about the…thing between him and Lily? How? He’d never so much as kissed her. “What makes Aunt Chelsea think?—”
“She doesn’t think, she knows,” said Aunt Chelsea, coming out onto the porch with a mug in her hands. “What are we discussing?”
“Lily,” Garrett said, at the same moment Ethan said, “Nothin’.”
He pressed two fingers to his forehead and said, “It doesn’t matter. I came home partly cause I wanted to tell you to your face.” He got up from his chair and went to her, put his hands on her shoulders as she gazed up into his eyes. “The man who killed your sister died in prison.”
Chelsea dropped her mug. It split on the porch floor and Garrett jumped up and steered her around the broken ceramic and into his arms.
“Michele,” she whispered. “Oh, Michele.”
“It’s okay, babe. It’s okay. I got you. I got you.” Garrett repeated nonsense phrases like that and wrapped his arms around Chelsea like he was a big cocoon that could hide her from the world.
Ethan got up to retrieve the pieces of the mug, and Garrett led Chelsea to the porch swing, and settled onto it with her. She leaned into him and drew her legs up, curling into a ball. Her cheeks were wet, and after a moment she took a shuddering breath.
Ethan carried the mug bits inside to dispose of them, and to give them a minute. He grabbed a towel, and filled another mug for his aunt, fixing it the way she liked. Then he returned outside, set the mug on the little glass-topped stand in front of the porch swing, and quickly wiped up the spill.
“Thanks, Ethan,” she said. “I’m okay.”
They’d had almost a year to get used to calling him Ethan, but in her and Garrett’s minds, he’d always be Bubba, and he knew it. Then his aunt frowned and said, “How did you find out?”
“A lawyer notified him,” Garrett told her.
She met Garrett’s eyes, then sat up straighter, put her feet down, and looked at Ethan. “He left you something, didn’t he?”
“Yeah. I can disclaim most of it, and intend to?—”
“But Ethan, that could be a fortune,” she said.
“The devil’s money. It has my mother’s blood on it.” He lowered his eyes. “I can disclaim it. All of it except one thing he put in my name before he died. And I don’t know how or why, but somehow he owned Manny’s Cantina. And now I guess I do.”
“How could he—?” Chelsea began, but she glanced at her husband and stopped speaking. Garrett was frowning hard, and she said, “Wait, did you know something about this?”
“Manny was havin’ money troubles—must’ve been long about five years back,” Garrett said. “I remember he couldn’t get a loan from the bank, ’cause he talked about it one night with a few beers in him. A coupl’a months later, he was upgradin’ the restrooms. I never did hear where he got the money.”
“Well, I gotta go see him,” Ethan said. “I got no intention of keepin’ it. I’ll just sign it over to Manny. At least maybe I can right one of that bastard’s wrongs.”
“It’s a good plan,” Garrett said.
“Why don’t you tell Manny tonight?” Aunt Chelsea asked. “The stress of being in debt to a loan shark, if that’s what this was, must’ve contributed to his heart attack, so the sooner he knows it’s over, the better.”
“You think he’s up to it?” Ethan asked.
Chelsea nodded. “It was a minor event, as heart attacks go. He’s been home a couple of weeks, and I understand he even opened the Cantina tonight.”
“How are you so much better informed about what’s goin’ on in Quinn County than I am?” Garrett asked. “I’m the sheriff.”
“And I’m a woman,” she said with a loving smile. “I think the sooner you can ease Manny’s mind about this, the better, Ethan. This news might be the best medicine he could have right now.”
“I think you might be right, about that,” Ethan said.
“Lily’s been helpin’ out at the Cantina, you know,” Chelsea went on, trying to act casual about it. “Said she had some vacation time piled up, so she took it right after Manny’s heart attack.”
“Mighty selfless thing to do,” Garrett said. “That’s a good woman, right there.”
“A good woman,” Chelsea repeated, nodding.
Ethan closed his eyes, lowered his head, and managed not to cuss aloud. They were onto him. Shoot.
Lily sat across the table from Fred Raspin.
He was one of the hospital’s vampires—a phlebotomist. He drew blood from patients for testing.
She had been a nurse, so they’d interacted many times almost every shift.
It had never occurred to her to date him.
There was no spark, no attraction. At least not on her part.
So she’d been totally unprepared when he’d asked her out for dinner on the day she’d given her two weeks’ notice and explained that she’d be taking her two-week vacation during the interim.
She’d blurted “okay” to Fred’s invitation without thinking first, then panicked because she wanted to take it back, and then didn’t take it back because it felt mean.
“Really?” he’d asked, surprise making the word curve upward at the end.
She’d felt she had to follow through. But she could at least keep things light, casual, and be in a place with backup if she needed to make a graceful exit.
As much as she’d been helping out there, Manny’s was becoming her home away from home. Working with her father again, like she had back in Ithaca when she’d been in college, and he’d been a chef trying to manage a diner, when all he wanted to do was cook.
Lily had suggested to Fred that they should go someplace casual and friendly, and asked whether he liked tacos. He’d received the message. Friendly. Okay. She wondered if he’d retract the invitation. He didn’t, maybe because he also felt obligated to go through with it.
Why hadn’t she just said no?
But she hadn’t, and so they were having tacos at a corner table at Manny’s Cantina. The Cantina was her sister-in-law Maria’s favorite place in the world, and it was rapidly becoming Lily’s as well—despite the trauma of having nearly killed the owner.
This was Manny’s first night back at work since his heart attack. He hadn’t been out of the hospital long. But it was hard for him to stay away.
Fred was trying to eat a taco without letting any of the filling spill out and having a heck of a time.
Lily took a careless bite, letting beans squish out the other end and fall onto the plate, dripping salsa onto her chin.
Maybe if she was sloppy it would put him at ease. He seemed so tense he might break.
He was older than she, early thirties, maybe, light-brown hair in a deep side part that might be hiding some thinning. He was taller than her, so she’d never seen the top of his head before, as she did when he bent over his taco.
The kitchen doors swung open, and Manny came through them. “Well, hello there, Miss Lily,” he drawled, in a voice meant to carry. “This here angel saved my life,” he told everyone within earshot.
Not an angel, and I damn near killed him, she thought.
There was a smattering of applause from a few of the other patrons.
Then Manny spoke lower, just for her, not the whole place.
“Thanks, Lily, for that and for your help these past two weeks,” he said.
“I don’t know what Rosa and the girls would’ve done without you and your father.
Though I do admit, I was jealous you weren’t at the hospital taking care of me. ”
He was lucky she hadn’t been at the hospital taking care of him. Aloud, she said, “Well, I still have some more time, so I’ll hang out a little longer.”
Manny’s jet-black waves were streaked with white, and his face had aged years in a couple of weeks. The light in his eyes was still only gleaming at half-power, she thought. He looked…drained.
Fred cleared his throat, reminding her he was still there. “Oh, I’m sorry. Manny, this is my co-worker, Fred.”
“Hello, Fred,” Manny said, deepening his voice a little, as men did, she’d noticed, when speaking to other men.
Fred nodded hello, and then a big red pickup truck rolled into the parking lot just the other side of the wide front windows, and Lily almost lowered her head and closed her eyes. Why was Ethan Brand here, of all places, at this particular moment?