Chapter 38 Callum
THIRTY-EIGHT
Callum
I paced around the waiting area at the station, nearly going out of my mind while Zandra was in that room with Leo.
Finally, I heard a door open. Voices. I went to the mouth of the hallway, just barely holding myself back from racing to Zandra as she murmured with Chief Nichols.
“Mr. O’Neal,” the front desk officer warned. “You can’t go back there.”
“Yeah, I know.” Even though it seemed ridiculous to be so formal. Give me a break with this Mr. O’Neal shit. Like I hadn’t known that guy forever and served him at Hearthstone plenty of times.
I’d also been texting with the Lonely Harts club, keeping them updated on the latest. Both Ashford and Grace had offered to come here and wait with me.
But Zandra had already instructed her mom not to follow us here, so she probably didn’t want other people showing up.
This had to be rough for her, and she didn’t need an audience.
Right now, I would be here for her. In any way she needed. I had every intention of supporting her through this, even if I hadn’t been thrilled about her talking to Leo in the first place.
Should’ve known I couldn’t stop her. My Zandra was brave as hell.
Zandra came down the hall, looking shell-shocked. “I’m ready to go.”
I glanced over her head at Chief Nichols, who’d already disappeared into her office. Then another officer walked down the hall and into the chief’s office too. Something was definitely up. A palpable new buzz of tension filled the station.
“What happened? What did he say?”
“I’ll tell you everything. But not here. I just want to get out of here.” She blinked a few times, then looked up at me. “Can we go see the sunflowers?”
I took her hand. “Of course, baby. We’ll go straight there.”
I drove my truck out to my friend’s property. Didn’t clear this visit beforehand this time, but I had no doubt it wouldn’t be a big deal.
It was the middle of the day, the sun shining brilliantly from a clear blue sky. We sat on the tailgate. It was warm out, but I still got a blanket from my backseat. I wrapped it around the both of us, and we sat on the tailgate as we watched the small sunflowers dance in the breeze.
“It was Jess and Leo’s mother,” Zandra whispered. “Paula.”
For a moment, I couldn’t track what she meant. “What do you mean, baby? What did Paula do?”
“She’s the one who harassed me. She thought I was responsible for Jessa’s death. That I was a…murderer.” Her voice cracked on the last word.
That made no sense. But I pulled Zandra close and held her while she fought back tears.
“Leo told me his mom got worse and worse after Jessa died. Then Paula must’ve heard the rumors from somewhere—that I was the one who pushed Jessa because we were fighting about a boy.”
“But she didn’t say anything to you. Why wouldn’t she confront you?”
“Because she thought I’d already gotten away with it, maybe?
My family owns important businesses around town.
She could’ve thought the police were biased.
But maybe there was no rationale to her behavior at all.
Leo said his mom was falling apart, not thinking clearly.
She still talked about Jessa like she was alive.
Paula even did that in front of me a couple times, like at the funeral. ”
“Leo didn’t go to anyone for help for his mom?” I asked.
“He said he thought about it. Until he found out his mom had been following me around and broke my car window. Left those notes for me. He just tried to keep a better eye on her and convince her I wasn’t responsible, but he thought if anyone knew, she’d either be committed or arrested. He was just a kid then. Seventeen.”
“Yeah, I guess I understand. This is still messed up.”
I’d been through issues with my parents too as a kid, and my siblings and I had been afraid to go to the authorities. Especially after our dad left, and we were basically on our own. At seventeen, Leo had just lost his sister. I had to think he would’ve been scared to lose his mom too.
“But it gets worse,” Zandra said. “Because this is where Tommy Pickering comes in.”
I sat back and gave her a questioning look. A few strands of dark hair blew into her face, and I brushed them away.
“Tommy was blackmailing them. He’d seen Paula break my window. Leo paid him five hundred dollars to keep him quiet.”
I shook my head in disgust. Yet that sounded like Tommy. He’d always been an opportunist.
“After I left town, Paula seemed to get over her fixation and was doing better. Tommy lost interest in blackmailing them, thankfully. Leo stuck around as long as he could, and he said Winnie tried to be there for him even though she had no clue how bad things were. But he felt trapped here. He decided to leave everything behind. Like I had.”
“Did he tell you about his arrest for assault?”
She nodded. “Leo said he came back to Silver Ridge over the years to check on Paula, sent her cards and money, but he couldn’t bring himself to live here.
It was still too painful. Then earlier this summer, he got involved in that bar fight, got arrested.
He claimed he ran because he couldn’t go to prison and leave his mom all alone. ”
“Sounds like a convenient excuse for escaping home to mom when he was in trouble.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. He’s been living in an abandoned cabin in the woods since June. Paula was bringing him food. About a month after Leo came home to Silver Ridge, I came back to town. And that was a lot for his mom to take in when her wellbeing was already so fragile.”
I thought of how the house had seemed wrong when we went there. Like there were things Paula was hiding. She hadn’t seemed outright angry or resentful, though. Mostly tired. Seemed like there was still a missing piece to the story.
“You mentioned you felt like someone had been watching you,” I said. “We thought it was Tommy, but could that have been Paula?”
“Even Leo isn’t sure of everything his mom has been doing. He thinks she threw that brick through the Hearthstone window. Probably left the note on my car too.”
“Wow.” I shook my head. This whole situation was bizarre. Sometimes it felt like everybody knew everyone’s business in Silver Ridge, and then we found out something like this had been going on. Leo Mackenzie hiding out in the woods. Paula targeting Zandra.
Then again, if I was going to hide from the cops, there was plenty of wilderness around here to do it. Incredible that nobody had seen Leo come in or out of town.
Unless…maybe someone had seen him.
“Tommy’s all wrapped up in this,” I said. “He was outside the brewery creeping around the same night you got that note. Outside our place on another night. What else did he do?” The guy was like a cockroach, always turning up when there was bad shit going down.
“Tommy must’ve seen Leo at some point, figured out Paula was helping him hide. So Tommy went to Paula. Said she had to pay up or he’d send the cops after Leo. After that, Tommy was following Paula around, trying to get proof of Leo’s whereabouts.”
I cursed as I made the connection. “And that’s why Tommy kept turning up around you.
Because Paula was already watching you, and Tommy knew all along.
” No wonder he’d been so smug when I questioned him about Z’s harasser.
He’d admitted seeing Zandra at the Pine Cone motel, but when he realized Paula was sneaking around Z again, Tommy saw a new opportunity.
The past repeating itself.
“After Tommy demanded money again, Paula seemed to have a harder and harder time telling the difference between the present and the past. It was like she thought Jessa’s death had just happened.
Leo started watching her more, trying to keep her home so she wouldn’t do something else that would put her in jail or draw attention to him. ”
I could already predict where this was going. “She set the fire.”
Zandra wiped her eyes. “It’s hard to believe. Like some wild plot to a movie.”
“Or a true crime show,” I muttered. “Truth is stranger than fiction, Z. Some of the stuff out there? It’s freaking nuts.”
“And I was in the middle of it.”
I gave her a couple minutes, then asked, “What really happened the night of the fire?”
“Paula wasn’t answering Leo’s calls that night, and he got worried something was up.
He took the risk of coming into town to look for her.
Drove by our place first, since he’d figured out I was living there with you.
When there was no sign of Paula, he went to Hearthstone.
He swears he would’ve stopped her if he could.
But it was too late. He would’ve run inside the building to help, but then you got there. ”
That’s convenient, I thought angrily. “But instead of staying at the scene, Leo took off again. And Pickering was there too. Keeping an eye on Paula, gathering up more blackmail material. He could’ve stopped her, and he didn’t, and you could’ve died.”
“Tommy was also drunk,” she pointed out. “But now that Chief Nichols knows about the blackmail, she promised she’d investigate whether they can charge him with it.”
Sounded like not nearly enough punishment to me. But I waited for her to continue.
“Leo turned himself in because he knew things had gone too far, and his mom needs help. But he wanted a chance to explain everything and apologize. He begged me for mercy for his mom. Leo insists his mom didn’t really know what she was doing.
He wants me to talk to the police and the district attorney and ask for leniency. ”
“Will you?”
“I already did. Chief Nichols promised they’d be careful bringing Paula in. I don’t want anyone else to be hurt. If she needs help, I want her to get it.”
My chest tightened with how much I loved this woman. Even after everything she’d been through, she was showing me what forgiveness looked like.
Zandra leaned against me, her voice thick with sadness. “I’m heartbroken for Jessa’s family. I wish it could’ve somehow been different. It was just a terrible situation, and we’ve all been suffering all these years.” She took a shaky breath. “But now I can see the end of it.”
I tightened my arms around her.
“I’ll always wonder if someone else was there at the creek with Jessa. But I have to let go of that night, and it finally feels like I can.”
“I’m proud of you, Z.”
We sat in comfortable silence, watching the sunflowers sway. The afternoon sun warmed our faces.
“Callum?” Zandra’s voice was soft.
“Yeah?”
“I feel like I haven’t apologized enough for the way I acted the other night. When you emailed my grandfather about the general manager job, basically handing it to me, I got scared you’d change your mind and resent me. I was just scared of losing you.”
“I get it. I won’t go behind your back again though, okay? I understand where you were coming from.”
“But afterward I said, This is why relationships with coworkers are a bad idea. I didn’t mean it. Well, maybe I did, because it’s messy and complicated. But I guess I’m a big fan of messy and complicated. Also a really big fan of annoyingly charming men who won’t leave me alone.”
I grinned. “That works out well for us.”
“It does.”
Then I remembered the other thing we still hadn’t discussed. “Uh, so, I called Grayden the other night.”
She inhaled sharply, sitting back. “What? When?”
“Same night as the fire. I went to see Grace. We talked. Ended up calling Grayden together, and I left him a voicemail. It dropped to low priority with you in the hospital and everything else happening.”
“Has he called you back?”
“Not yet. He sent a quick text, saying he’d really like to chat soon once things calm down.
I guess Grace let him know I had other things going on.
But when he does call, I’d like you to be there with me.
If that’s cool with you. Moral support, I guess.
” I felt sheepish saying that. But how many times had Z opened up and been vulnerable with me? I owed it to her to do the same.
“Of course I will.” Zandra put both hands on my face, pulling me in for a kiss. “Callum, I love you so much. I couldn’t have gone through any of this without you. You’ve been my anchor through everything. I want to be yours too.”
Here in this field of wildflowers, with the worst finally behind us, I could see our future stretching ahead. I assumed Zandra would be general manager of Hearthstone. I’d go back to bar manager. And we’d keep living together. The rest of the details would work themselves out.
From where I was sitting, it looked pretty damn perfect.