Chapter 6 #2
She glided the doors open, pushing the heavy slabs into their wall pockets. Wyatt stepped aside as she burst into the hall.
He followed her out the front door and down the steps without saying a word. Was he going to do this the whole time she was here? She wanted to turn around and tell him to back off. But she didn’t. Instead, she climbed into the SUV and let her fury recede enough to regain her composure.
“Why did he ask you if Prescott was blond?”
“I don’t know. Maybe to freak me out. He’s an asshole like that.”
“I called Tony Laughlin. He’ll take care of repairing or replacing your tires.” Wyatt glanced at her as he guided his SUV down the long gravel drive. “The county will pay for the damages.”
“I have insurance.” Adeline pulled her seat belt into place. “You don’t need to do me any favors.”
He didn’t respond for a moment, just drove. Finally, he spilled what was on his mind. “So this is the way it’s going to be.”
What did he expect? “I’m here for the investigation, Wyatt, not to mend fences.
” She stared out into the darkness. She didn’t want to look at him.
Didn’t want to hear his voice, especially not in the dark.
After nine years that shouldn’t have bothered her, but it did.
It bothered her a lot. The sooner she was at the motel and away from him the happier she would be.
The five miles back into town were driven in total silence.
There was nothing else to say. Even now, after all this time, she understood what Wyatt wanted.
He wanted forgiveness. For the first year after she’d left, he had tried to make things right.
But he didn’t understand. There was no way to make what happened right.
Nothing he could say or do would change the choice he had made any more than it could the choice she had made.
She didn’t belong here. Whatever they’d once shared had died as surely as Gage Cooper had that day nine years, three months, and four days ago.
A final turn off Delmas Avenue and they were at their destination.
An antiquated neon sign proclaiming the establishment as the Shady Oaks Motel stood proudly in a seriously neglected lake of cracked and faded asphalt.
The rundown row of rooms was dark, but a dim glow beamed from the office window.
Hourly rates were written by hand and posted beneath the window.
Not exactly a welcoming sight. The Chevy pickup parked in the lot likely belonged to the manager.
Trees, naked for the winter, towered behind the rooms, but there wasn’t a shrub or sprig of grass in front. Just the disintegrating asphalt and a narrow band of sidewalk lining the row of equally decrepit rooms.
Definitely worse than she remembered.
“This is a bad idea.” Wyatt shoved the gearshift into park and shut off the engine. “Anyone who drives through will see your Bronco in the lot while you’re here. It’s not like you can miss it.”
“I’ll be fine.” She hopped out, opened the back passenger door and reached for her bag. “You don’t need to worry about me. I can take care of myself.”
“Like you did nine years ago.”
Adeline pushed the SUV door closed and headed for the office. She wasn’t going to discuss nine years ago with him. Not tonight. Not ever.
Wyatt didn’t drive away until Adeline had gotten her room key and gone inside room number 10. She watched from the window as he pulled out of the parking lot. When his taillights had disappeared, she closed her eyes and let go a weary, disgusted breath.
She was not going to let him get to her.
How the hell could she still be susceptible to him on any level after all this time? It didn’t make sense. Nothing about this situation did.
She tossed her bag onto the bed and surveyed her digs.
Definitely the lowest of low rent. Same wallpaper with the big gold flowers that had been here when she was a wild and fearless teenager and had partied with friends in this dump.
At the time, they hadn’t cared. Privacy away from the parents was all they had been looking for.
A whole group of friends would rent a room to party.
At the time there had been a different manager but he’d had the same attitude—as long as the law didn’t show up he didn’t care what happened.
The thinning green-and-blue shag carpet needed a serious shot of Rogaine. She wasn’t sure she wanted to see the bathroom. One peek past the door and she confirmed her worst fears.
“There should be a biohazard warning.” But for a few nights it would do.
She plopped down on the bed and dug the file Wyatt had given her from her bag. Twenty-six interviews had been conducted with friends, family, and colleagues. Adeline read each one. The shared themes were “no problems” and “loved by everyone who knows her.”
Adeline picked up a candid shot of Cherry Prescott with her family. “Someone didn’t love you, Cherry. Who was it?” The husband? A lover? What had brought her to the Moss Point area? No one seemed to have a clue why she was down this way.
According to her colleagues, Prescott hadn’t been working on a case that might have lured her to the area. No known friends or family lived here.
But there had to be a reason for her visit.
A reason someone wasn’t happy about.
The husband and closest friends didn’t have a clue why she had received the princess letter. Unlike Adeline, her birthday was months away. No known enemies. Nothing.
Adeline’s cell vibrated. She pulled it from her pocket and accepted the call. “Cooper.”
“Addy, you were supposed to call me when you got here.”
“Hey, Mom. Sorry. I got distracted.” The idea that Adeline’s baby was sitting in some garage awaiting new tires pissed her off all over again. Telling her mom about the incident was out of the question.
“I hope you’re being careful,” Irene fussed. “I’m very worried about your being here.”
“I’m fine.” How many times did she have to say that? “I carry a big-ass gun, Mom. No one’s going to mess with me.” Not and live through it anyway.
“It’s Clay that concerns me.”
“I warned Cyrus to keep his offspring off my back.”
“You talked to Cyrus?”
There was something in her mother’s voice. “Yes, I did.” Adeline turned over the inflection she’d heard . . . fear, maybe? “He told me about the cancer.” And you didn’t, she thought but didn’t say.
“You and I never talk about him. In the past when I’ve brought up anyone or anything around here you didn’t want to hear about it.”
That was true. Adeline could scarcely blame her for not mentioning Cyrus’s health issues.
“If I have time we’ll have lunch tomorrow, okay?” The last thing she wanted was her mom fretting over every step she took.
“You could come here,” her mother ventured.
Adeline considered the idea for a moment. She hadn’t set foot in her childhood home in more than nine years. Staying there was out of the question but dropping by for lunch . . . maybe. It would make her mom happy. “We’ll see,” she hedged.
“Please be careful, Addy. Your father . . . worried so about you being in law enforcement. I worry about you.”
“I’m always careful, Mom.” Not exactly true but her mother did not need to know that.
After another minute or two of awkward conversation, they said good night.
Adeline stared at her phone a long moment after the call ended. She was home. And it felt acutely weird. She’d gone to school a few miles from here. Her father was buried in a cemetery just down the road.
And the man she had loved with her whole heart still lived here. He didn’t wear a wedding ring. Hadn’t really changed that much.
Adeline pushed up from the bed and walked over to the mirror on the back of the closet door. She hadn’t changed, either, not really. Still thin. Her hair was exactly the same. Long. Wild and thick. Drove her nuts most days.
What did he see when he looked at her?
The same wild girl who’d loved him so madly?
Or this older, jaded woman who knew him for what he was?
A man fully capable of betrayal.
The man who had betrayed her.