Chapter 27
Twenty-Seven
I want a man to tell me to shut up and obey him. I won’t do it, but I reckon it’ll turn me on.
—Mable to Romeo
Romeo
“Two things,” Apollo said when he came strolling through the door. “One, you’re allowed to go home. The threat’s been eliminated.”
“Really?” I asked, standing up.
“Two, you are going to have more groveling to do than you thought, thanks to that text you sent today.” Apollo snorted. “What the hell were you thinking?”
I frowned. “What text?”
“What text?” Apollo rolled his eyes. “I literally told you multiple times to just leave it alone. I would handle it. And I almost had it handled, but then I got that bulletin from the local media in Sawtooth. But no, you couldn’t trust me.”
“We have no idea what you’re talking about, darling,” Dru said to Apollo.
“Well, this should give you a reminder.” He tossed his phone at me.
I frowned when I read the text. “Who sent that?”
Apollo sighed. “You did, buddy.”
I was already shaking my head. “I most certainly did not.”
“You did,” Apollo replied, more forcefully this time. “Don’t believe me, check your phone.”
I looked at my phone and said, “It’s dead.”
“Well, undead it.” Apollo pointed at the charger.
I plugged it in, and for two agonizing minutes, I waited for it to boot up and allow me to check my messages.
When I saw that I had, indeed, sent the message, my stomach dropped.
“I didn’t mean to send that.”
“It was sent with Siri,” Dru pointed out.
“Was it?” Apollo looked. “Huh. Who did you call crazy then?”
I thought back to our day and… “I called her crazy when she tried to take my sandwich earlier.”
“Ah,” Apollo said. “Well, you can head back home. I think you might need to do damage control. We’ll be along tomorrow.”
I didn’t ask him twice.
I also didn’t bother to gather any of my things other than my phone.
I was halfway down the driveway to the SUV we’d rented when Dru called, “Tell her I want to meet her!”
I looked at her over my shoulder as I reached for the door handle of the SUV. “I have to convince her not to hate me first.”
I spent six solid hours battling snow and closed highways by the time I made it back home.
Home.
If you’d asked me six months ago, I would’ve said those words would never grace my lips when it came to Sawtooth. Home was Texas. Always would be.
Yet, here I was, thinking about it as the one place I wanted to be.
I pulled up into Mable’s yard and noted two vehicles that had to belong to Cody and Birdee.
I only knew they belonged to them due to the fact that the three women were now peering out the window staring at me in shock.
An alert sounded from my phone, and I absentmindedly hit the button that would read the message to me.
“One message from Apollo,” the electronic voice droned. “Read message?”
“Read message,” I said as I watched as the three women all scrambled backward.
“From Apollo,” the car read. “So do you want the good news or the bad news?”
The curtains pulled closed, and I forgot that I was going to listen to a message.
Not thinking much about anything but getting inside, I shut off the SUV and bailed out of the truck, my feet sinking into two feet of snow that immediately went into my boots.
I ignored it and the car as I slammed it closed, keys still inside.
I trudged up to the house, very aware that I could see the three women peeking through the curtains at me.
My lips were twitching by the time I started knocking at the door.
No one answered.
“I didn’t send that message!” I called out.
There was some movement from inside, but the door didn’t open.
“I was fighting with my sister about a peanut butter and jelly sandwich,” I called out. “I called her the creep. Not you! I swear to Christ.”
More movement, but still no door opening.
“I had your messages open because I’ve done nothing but stare at them for a week now.”
That got the door open.
Two angry women stared at me, but not the one that my eyes were so desperate to see.
“Why were you reading her messages and not replying?” Birdee asked.
“And why were you gone in the first place? Why leave without saying goodbye?” Cody pushed.
Both of them were swaying on their feet and looked like a swift wind would knock them over if they weren’t careful.
I couldn’t tell them everything, but I could say, “I’ll tell Mable everything. But I’m sorry, I can’t tell you.”
Birdee leaned in conspiratorially and whispered, overly loud, “We know you killed a guy.”
My lips quirked. “She told you.”
“No,” Birdee continued in her non-whisper. “She didn’t tell us. We found it on my mother’s computer.”
My brows rose.
“You did?” I wondered.
“We did,” Cody nodded, clutching onto the door handle as she started to sway when her head was no longer sitting still. “We saw everything. There’s not a single thing you’ve done that we don’t know about.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
“You don’t know everything,” Mable called out, looking at me through the windows but not coming to the door.
“We know enough to know that you were put in jail for a life sentence and you didn’t serve that life sentence,” Cody chirped. “We’re probably going to jail, too. So that’s okay.”
I frowned. “What?”
“We killed someone,” Birdee slurred, as she reached for the wine bottle that was dangling precariously from Cody’s hand. “It wasn’t our fault.”
My lips quirked at that ‘it wasn’t our fault.’
Everyone says that.
“But really, it wasn’t,” Mable called.
I looked at her and allowed my eyes to take her in.
She was wearing my sweatshirt.
She also had on my socks.
How did I know this? She was sitting on the back of the couch like a cat, her feet pressed between the couch and the glass window.
“How about you let me in so I can apologize profusely,” I begged.
She scrunched up her nose. “I don’t think that’ll work.”
“Why won’t it?” I asked.
“Because we’re just too different,” she called out. “You’re you. So handsome and you fit in at the country club. And I’m a boring woman that thinks mascara makes my eyes stick together.”
“You could never wear makeup again, and I’d still want you, Mable,” I pointed out.
“I didn’t fall in love with the makeup. I fell in love with the woman.
What your makeup looks like is beyond me.
You’re beautiful, whether you’re fully decked out or getting out of the shower with not a stitch of eyeliner or mascara or whatever the fuck else women put on their face. ”
Mable pressed her forehead to the glass window, and I moved so that I was talking directly to her face. “Let me in, baby. I promise that I’ll never leave like that again. I’ll always take you with me.”
That’s when Brawny had enough of the back and forth and came outside to bark at me and ask, “What’s taking you so long to come in?”
“Can I please come in?” I begged.
She scrunched up her nose. “I guess.”
I blew out a sigh of relief and walked into Mable’s house.
When I got there, I noted the empty wine glasses and wine bottles.
They’d gone to town on the alcohol if the four bottles—not including the one in Cody’s hands still—were to go by.
“Can we talk in private?” I asked to the woman who was still sitting with her back to me, facing out the window.
Brawny bumped me with his huge head, and I gave him a good rubdown before walking to the couch.
Cody and Birdee whispered something quietly, and then they were slipping into the kitchen, taking Brawny with them.
“Mable, please?”
Mable didn’t move.
“How drunk are you right now?”
Her shoulders hunched. “I did something bad.”
So they’d said.
“What did you do?” I asked.
She pressed her forehead to the window hard enough to make a sound. “I think if I admit it, it might be really bad. I think I need a lawyer.”
That had my belly tightening. “What happened?”
She twisted her head and made eye contact with me, causing my belly to clench at the raw sadness there.
I never should have left like that.
God, I hated myself.
My first marriage I didn’t have this kind of all-consuming love.
Did I enjoy my ex’s company? Yes. But I didn’t think about her day and night like I did Mable.
“Talk to me, baby,” I urged, feathering one finger over the length of her exposed shoulder.
She leaned into my touch, and I took that as all the sign that I needed to reach for her and pull her into my arms.
She’d lost some weight since I’d held her last, and that only added to the anger that I harbored.
“What happened?” I asked once I had her settled in the curve of my arms.
“What didn’t?” she mumbled into my chest.
I rested my chin on her head, then just waited.
She’d talk when she was ready.
But before she could, Cody and Birdee came into the room with a bowl of popcorn and some more wine.
“We killed my mother,” Birdee blurted.
I blinked. “You what?”
Then the words Apollo had shared finally made sense.
Whitney was dead, all right. And these three were behind it.
“Tell me exactly what happened, right now,” I ordered the three of them.
So they did, leaving not a single thing out.
I pinched the bridge of my nose and counted to ten before saying, “Who saw y’all going there?”
“No one,” Cody said. “Well, no one but me. But I acted like I was going on a run. Which I totally do a lot. Everyone thinks I’m batshit crazy because I snap on my snow and ice shoes and go for runs all the time.
The cops that saw me only assumed that this was one of those times.
I circled back around to the parking lot.
It happened within like three seconds of me being in the lot. We left almost just as fast.”
“Shit,” I hesitated, then reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone.
Just as I was about to call Apollo, it rang in my hand, so I answered.
Before I could get a word in edgewise, he started talking.