Chapter 4
Liam
I Will Not Say Goodbye – Danny Gokey
Istared at my phone for the third time in ten minutes, Charity’s contact info glowing on the screen.
I’d promised to call her. Yesterday in the flower shop, after she’d witnessed me getting Ezra’s rose, after I’d agreed to host the damn dinner.
But every time I started to dial, I found another excuse.
My breath fogged in front of me in the dim light as I sat on the steps of the deck.
A hint of purple lifted in the distance as the sun began to rise.
The morning air was springtime cool, the heat of summer not yet quite ready to show itself.
The anniversary was behind me now. The weight of what I’d committed to, though, sat heavy in my chest.
A door clicked shut behind me. I turned to see Cole, his eyes heavy with sleep and a long night. His hands were wrapped tight around a steaming mug of coffee, its rich aroma wafting toward me, delicious and enticing.
“Christ, you look rough,” I said.
“Long day yesterday. I had soccer practice with the under-16s after a three-hour project meeting and then, as you know, I went to Tally and Wilder’s for dinner.
Wilder made steaks.” He stretched and yawned.
“Tally said thanks for the flowers, by the way, and she gets why you didn’t take them yourself. ”
Ignoring the comment, I looked back to the sunrise. “What time did you get home?” I asked. “I heard your truck fire up at one this morning.”
He smirked, wiggling his deep auburn brows.
“I may have picked a friend up on the way back and then saw her safely home.”
“Wow, real busy night then.”
I struggled to keep track of his conquests most of the time.
The guy gave more love than anyone I knew.
When our folks moved to Florida, we bought the house from them and added on a den and a bedroom downstairs for me so that Cole could use Mom and Dad’s old room as a living room and mine as a guest room.
Tally’s bedroom was sacrosanct and not to be touched—Mom’s stipulation when we bought the place—even though my sister was clearly never moving back home.
The set of stairs and couple of walls between us meant that I didn’t have to listen to exactly how much love he gave, but it also didn’t mean I was unaware of the pairs of high-heeled pumps and sparkly sandals left at our front door.
“I’m a gentleman. As if I’d let them go home in an Uber.”
“And does she have a name? Do I know her?” Standing, I moved past him for one of the chairs on the deck.
It looked out across the yard and to the small acreage we had which used to be a fruit farm.
One of the two old barns had been converted into an office for both me and Cole.
The other now only housed yard equipment, hay, donkey feed, and Denver—an old donkey Cole had rescued that a couple of the neighborhood kids helped take care of.
One time we had four horses, a couple of hens, two dairy cows and three cats, but over the years Dad never replaced any of the animals as they passed away.
It seemed like living in the sunshine was always in the back of his mind.
Memories and secrets creaked under Cole’s bare feet as he walked across the deck to sit in the chair next to me. “Her name is April, and she lives in one of the houses in Nate’s development. In fact…” he paused to take a sip of his coffee “…she lives across the street from Charity Dawson.”
My heart dropped at the mention of her name as I recalled the previous day’s encounter. How Charity had looked at me when she realized what the blue rose meant. The way her voice had gone soft, careful.
“Speaking of Charity,” Cole continued, “Stella from over the way mentioned seeing some blonde woman shoving papers under the door yesterday morning. Said it wasn’t the first time. My guess is it was our local, persistent, event planner.”
“Yeah, it was her, and I spoke to her about the dinner yesterday.”
“Ah.” Cole’s grin was knowing. “Finally wore you down, did she?”
“Something like that.” I looked down at my phone again. “Agreed to host the damn thing.”
Cole nearly choked on his coffee. “You what? After two years of dodging it?”
“Don’t make a big deal of it.”
“Big deal! This is fucking huge. What changed?”
Everything. Nothing. The way she’d looked at me with understanding instead of pity. The way she backed off when she saw the rose, giving me space instead of pushing.
“Just tired of running from it,” I said finally.
“And this has nothing to do with the fact that she’s beautiful and probably the only woman in town who doesn’t know to give you a wide berth.”
I shot him a warning look. “It’s just business.”
“Riiight.” Cole extended the word, grinning as he kicked his feet up. “So, when’s the first planning meeting? It’s got to be soon if you want to pull this off.”
The question hit like a punch. The dinner was in a few weeks. A few weeks to plan something that I’d been avoiding for years, with a woman who made me feel things I wasn’t ready to feel.
I should call her. I needed to call her.
“I should get to the site,” I said instead, standing abruptly. “That’s enough small talk for one day, especially after only one cup of coffee.”
Cole’s knowing look followed me as I headed inside. “Can’t run forever, big brother. And call Tally.”
Walking away, I looked out across the yard to the snow-capped mountains. A lone eagle cut the sky, rising into the clouds with effortless grace. That kind of freedom, unshackled by the past or grief, felt as distant to me as the sun he soared toward.
I gave myself a mental shake, feeling the familiar weight settle in my chest. I was always like this around his birthday—the date of his passing. The grief sat heavy in my stomach like cold stone. Morose. Wistful. Self-absorbed...but Cole was right, I should call my sister.
A crude spray-painted dick and balls on my new wall. Exactly what I didn’t need. The acrid smell of fresh paint hung in the morning air as my fingers ran over the rough concrete where the paint had dried in thick, ugly ridges.
“Can you get it off?” I asked James.
“Sent the new kid to get some paint strippers from the material suppliers. Obviously we have some, but we need something stronger.” He hung his head, his chin almost meeting his chest. “This job kinda feels cursed. You know what I mean?”
Kicking a stone, I watched it as it bounced along the ground until it hit an old oil drum that we kept offcuts of wood in.
“The owner is coming out here today,” I snapped. “This is the last thing that they need to see.”
“If we can’t get it off, I’ll get Larson to park the truck in front of it and pile some oil drums in the bed. That should do it.”
I slapped his back. “Thanks, James. Just get the new kid to do his best.”
“Sure thing.”
“I’ll be over at the dig. I wanted to be there when they broke ground, but I guess I’ve missed that now.”
Leaving James to deal with the vandalism, I headed over to the leisure facility where we were on target to begin digging.
The familiar stench of wet mud and generator diesel, punctuated by the deep rumble of an engine, usually settled something in me like nothing else did. Today they felt like noise.
My phone buzzed. Charity’s name flashed on the screen.
I let it go to voicemail.
Closer to the digger, I frowned. We’d fucked up.
Not only did it look wrong, but it felt wrong too.
The way the earth was shifting made the hair rise on the back of my neck.
Something felt off and it wasn’t just that we’d got the wrong stretch of dirt, but I had no idea what it was.
My throat tightening, I gripped my work gloves until my knuckles went white, taking long strides to Mack who was already yelling and gesticulating to Boone, the digger operator, to cut the engine.
“Stop now!” He made a slicing motion across his throat.
Walking up beside him, my heart lurched. I had the plans etched in my brain and already knew what Mack had clearly realized. My palms went slick, and I could taste the metallic tang of adrenaline.
“How the fuck did this happen?” I stabbed a finger at the boundary line. “He’s digging at least fifteen feet too far over.” I looked up to the cab. “Boone, stop fucking digging, now!”
The engine cut and he leaned out, looking down at us with a shrug. “What’s the problem?”
“You’re too far over. That’s the damn problem.
” Running a hand through my hair, I looked at the huge hole he’d already dug.
There were two broken fence posts, the barbed wire between them twisted and gnarled.
Despair and frustration battled in my head.
“Did you not think that the fence was a huge fucking clue?”
Boone jumped down from the cab. “It was pegged out.”
Stalking away from him, I moved to the front of the digger. He was right—it was pegged out, in the wrong damn place. Swinging back around to Mack, I pointed behind me.
“Who pegged this?”
Mack’s chin dropped to his chest as he scratched the back of his head, clearing his throat.
“For fuck’s sake, Mack. How on earth did you get this so wrong?” I threw my hands in the air, frustrated. “It was clear when I got here that you’d seen the mistake, so why’d you make it in the first place?”
“I don’t know, it was going dark, and I knew you wanted to start first thing today and—”
“Don't blame me for this.” I pointed a shaking finger at him. Truth was, I should have checked his work yesterday. But I'd been too buried in my own grief to focus. “Just once I’d like to start the day without a big fuck up. It’s not too much to ask.”
Boone’s boots squelched in the mud as he moved to the front of the digger. “I can sort it, boss. It won’t take me long to fill it, like a half…” he trailed off and turned to me, his face drained of color, ashen as morning frost.
“What now?” Shaking my head, I walked closer to him, sighing with frustration.
When I glanced at where he was looking, my stomach bottomed out and my hands began to shake.
The air felt thick as the smell of disturbed earth mixed with something else, something wrong.
Every vertebra in my spine cracked to attention.
“Mack,” I said, my voice croaking as I gave him a quick glance over my shoulder. “You’d better call the cops.”
“Why? What’s the problem?” He looked down. “Holy shit. Are they what I think they are?”
“I’d say so, since it has a pelvis, two legs, two arms and a head.”
“Damn.”
Sucking in a breath, I stared down at the human remains lying in a pool of mud and slush. Human remains which, if I knew right, were on the family land that belonged to our mayor.
Suddenly, hosting a dinner felt like the least of my problems.