Chapter 3
Joel couldn’t believe it when he saw Chelsea standing on the porch, as if nothing were wrong.
For him it had been a heart attack the entire way here, phoning constantly and driving like a maniac.
He couldn’t even explain the panic he felt, but he certainly couldn’t ignore it.
Now here he was, holding her close and wondering how the hell to get her to understand they could not have that happen again.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, looking up at him. “I wasn’t thinking about you trying to call.”
“No, I get it.” He took a step back, looked down at her, and repeated, “As long as you’re safe.” She frowned up at him, obviously unsettled, and he nodded. “When I knew about your near miss and that the farm was deserted when you got here, and then couldn’t contact you again, I panicked.”
“I know. I know,” she muttered. “I was intent on getting home, off the road, that’s all.”
“Good, that’s great.”
“And you cut me off, by the way,” she accused.
“Hardly. I told you that I was on the way.”
“Exactly, so I didn’t worry about it because you were on the way,” she noted, with a hopeful smile.
He groaned and looked over at Sterling, who sat there with a smile on his face, looking from one to the other.
Sterling asked, “So, are you guys good?”
“I think we’re good,” Joel replied, with a shrug. “At least I hope we are.”
Sterling turned to her. Chelsea smiled. “I’m fine. … He just didn’t like that whole shutting my phone off thing.”
“No, I don’t imagine he would,” Sterling confirmed. “I wouldn’t have either.”
She groaned. “Fine. I just turned off the ringer so I didn’t get in more trouble at work,” she muttered. “Then, when I called Joel and we talked while I drove here, the lack of a ringer didn’t seem like an issue … until he tried to call me.”
Sterling sighed. “So I passed Richard in town, and he didn’t look happy.”
“Yes,” she agreed, her tone bitter. “He’s another one who’s not happy.” Joel eyed her in surprise, and she shrugged. “I don’t know that he’s mad at me, just not happy with the whole situation.”
“No, of course not. That’s to be expected.” She looked at him, and he nodded. “We are worried about you. Let’s not forget that an awful lot of people are in your life now.”
“Is there anybody we should be looking at?” Joel asked them both. “Did you recognize the driver or the truck in that parking lot incident?” he asked her specifically.
“No.” She shook her head. “You seem to think I have this whole group of people who hate me.”
Joel shook his head. “That’s not what I’m saying. Yet we’ve just come from one ugly scenario with your mother, and I don’t want us to assume we have nothing else out there to worry about. We’ve solved that one, and now we have a motive for this one.”
“That’s a very good point,” Sterling declared, as he looked over at her. “I get that it’s been bad enough for everybody to deal with your mother, but is there a reason to suspect anybody else in your life might hate you?”
She winced. “Wow. No, I don’t think so. It’s got to be related to the killer of that man in the rug.”
“Maybe or maybe not,” Sterling added, staring at her intently. “We need to keep an open mind on this.”
“I can’t think of anything.”
“Good,” Joel interjected, with a smile. “If there is anything else, please let us know so we don’t make the mistake of assuming it’s this one guy and find out some other predator is in your life who’s trying to even some score.”
“Even just saying that …” Sterling began, now frowning at him.
“I know. Sounds awful, doesn’t it?” Joel wandered toward the kitchen, following Chelsea deeper inside the house. “Yet it doesn’t change the fact that it could easily be that.”
“Right,” she muttered, and she walked into the kitchen. “Did you have any plans for dinner yet?”
“Nope. Why?” He smiled at her. “Do you feel like cooking?”
“No,” she declared, with a chuckle. “I feel like having a piece of toast and going to bed.” He immediately frowned, and she looked over at him. “You’re the lucky one who has Dwight and Toby cooking every meal for you and the guys.”
“And a great job they do too,” he noted, with a smile.
She told Sterling, “Timber apparently suggested I go back to his place.” She laughed.
“Yeah, more than suggested,” Joel corrected. “He tried to get her to go there so that she would be safe, but then she reminded me that she wasn’t living solo in her apartment anymore and was living here with you and Grandpa and the guys. That kind of changed things.”
“But it’s not a bad idea though,” Sterling conceded, turning to her.
“But it’s not a good idea,” she pointed out, “and I’m only interested in really good ideas at this point.”
Sterling groaned. “You’ll be stubborn, won’t you?”
“I feel like I’m finally coming into myself, and, if that means being stubborn, then I guess that’s what it means,” she declared, with a nod.
Joel winced. “Yeah, that sounds definitely like being stubborn.”
She gave a half-laugh. “I’m really not trying to be difficult, but I’ve got a whole new lease on life, and I don’t want to let anybody, anyone, any asshole of any kind, take one bit of that away from me.”
“Good, I don’t want it to happen either,” Joel declared, “but let’s not be foolish here, and let’s not assume that all of this is related just because you don’t want to think any wider.”
“Wider?” she muttered. “I haven’t had a life in a long time.
I’ve been in nursing school and working, trying to pay bills while not letting my mother and/or her boyfriend get their hands on my money,” she shared, with a headshake.
“I haven’t had any time to do much of anything, be it good, bad, or otherwise. ”
“And maybe that’s a good thing,” he noted. “Maybe it kept you out of trouble.”
She laughed. “Well, maybe it kept me out of trouble, though I’m not out of trouble right now, am I? … Yet I’m here, and I’m doing okay though, so whatever.”
Sterling just smiled, gave her a quick hug, and added, “Give me a few minutes, and I’ll get some pasta on.”
“Yeah, but that’ll take time to cook.”
He groaned. “Yes, but not very much time, and you’ll sit here and visit with Joel anyway.”
She looked over at Joel and smiled. “He’s just as bossy as you are.”
Sterling laughed. “I’m probably bossier. I finally find some family, and she’s just determined to get herself killed.”
She gasped. “I’m really not, you know?”
He stared back at her. “Good, because that would be very heartbreaking.”
“It would, wouldn’t it?” she muttered. “I can’t imagine how any of this got to this point.”
“Nope, me neither, but I am more than happy to see you doing so well,” Sterling shared. “Plus, you’re almost done with school, so remember that.”
“I can hardly forget that.”
“What’s that about?” Sterling asked.
Joel explained, “Apparently she has a bossy unsympathetic supervisor on top of all this other mess. Gladys got really pissed off when Chelsea was late today.”
Chelsea interjected, “Well, she had a right to be pissed off. I just thought she would be a little more understanding about it all.”
“Yeah, as excuses go, talking to the cops about a dead body seems like a pretty good one,” Joel declared, shaking his head at her.
She shrugged. “I’m almost done, so I’m just trying to get through it with a good reference from her and not rock the boat.”
“I get it,” Joel said, “and I’m happy that you’re almost done.”
“Me too,” she murmured, “and I’m getting there, just not very quickly.”
Sterling laughed. “No speed requirement needed here. This is about taking your time and making sure you get all the training you can possibly get, and then we’ll go on from there.”
“And there will always be more trainings, more upgrades that you need to do as a nurse anyway,” Joel added.
“That’s true.” She frowned. “I’ll have to take continuing education courses, new trainings to update and the like.”
“Yeah, I would imagine so. There will always be a certain level of professional upgrades in whatever profession you end up in,” Sterling added, with a smile.
“And what about you?” she asked Joel.
“We did that, too, in the military for sure.”
“You were in the military too?”
“Yeah, I was with Sterling and a couple other guys from the Haven,” he shared. “I mean, not all the time I was enlisted because that’s not how it works, but, yeah, I was a military man.”
“What did you do over there?”
He laughed. “Heavy-duty mechanic.”
She stared at him. “Seriously?”
He nodded. “Yeah, seriously, but that doesn’t mean that’s what I want to do now that I’m out.”
“Sure. You get to choose a new career, if you want, something that you enjoy better maybe.”
“Maybe,” he acknowledged. “Keeping the field trucks on the road wasn’t exactly the highlight of my day, but it was certainly honest work.”
“Right,” she muttered, “I can’t even imagine life in the military.”
He smiled. “It’s not an issue anyway.”
She looked at Sterling. “And you never talk about it either.”
“Nope. You’ll find most of us choose not to talk about it.”
“It was that bad, huh?”
“Yeah, it was that bad,” he confirmed with a nod. “Some things are just not meant to be talked about, and some of that is what we went through.”
“Okay,” she said amiably. “Not trying to push any buttons here.”
Sterling smiled. “Maybe one day I’ll tell you what it was like,” he offered, “but I hope by then it won’t matter to you or to me.”
She smiled, walked over, gave him a hug, and whispered, “I’m just glad to have you back.”
“Life has certainly changed,” he agreed, with a big smile.
“Well, it has for me and in all kinds of good ways,” she replied. “I’m just really happy that you’re here and that you’re doing okay. Plus, we got Grandpa out of that old folks’ home, and he is so much happier.”
“Yep, Grandpa’s much better off here. Plus, I’m doing okay,” he declared, looking at her. “How about you?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “My super’s kind of a B but whatever. It is what it is.”
He laughed. “As long as you can treat it that way, it’s all good,” he began, “but if she gets to be too much—”