8. Cheese and Consequences
CHEESE AND CONSEQUENCES
COLE
It shouldn’t bother me that Junie left her grilled cheese on the table. It’s a sandwich, for Christ’s sake. Bread and cheese and a stupid pickle I had to barter with Dollie for, and now I’m on the line for three more S&S meetings.
It would’ve been worth it if Junie ate the fucking thing. It’s my fault she didn’t.
Now she’s sending a message.
I toss the sandwich and wash the plate, then sit at the island and open my laptop. Her email is the only one I open.
From: Juniper Mercer
To: Mr. Whittaker
She has me listed in her contacts as Mr. fucking Whittaker.
Subject Line: Haven Financial Records—For Your Review.
I’m such a dick. She’s organized the entire mess into a language so clean and precise a jury could follow it.
It’s the separate tab with LLC structure and the screenshots of forged signatures next to my own that makes me pause. She doesn’t know I didn’t sign these, but somehow, she still believes in my innocence.
Juniper Mercer is finding the evidence I hadn’t been able to.
And she’s creating a timeline even I can follow.
She put this file together in the two hours between our argument and now. While angry. Probably hurt. Most likely hungry. She has no idea that I’ve been sitting on the little information I had because, without proof that Devin is the thief, I’ll be the one to take the fall.
And I’m too chicken shit to say that to her face. To see her reaction. To witness the moment she might lose all faith in me.
I close the laptop and rest my forehead against the top of it while my hands grip the granite so hard my knuckles ache.
Junie’s right about everything.
It’s how I know the past and present are going to collide. Not today. But soon.
And it’s not something she’ll ever understand. Not really. Even if she does, the look of betrayal in her eyes will be so much worse than it was today.
The urge to fix shit rises in me until I can no longer sit still. I need to get my hands on something that makes sense because the expression on Junie’s face when I shut her down isn’t something I can fix and it’s not something I can file away and it’s not something I can run from forever.
So I grab my tool belt and go.
The Haven has a help request list that lives on a clipboard in the clubhouse kitchen.
It’s different from the list for the actual maintenance we have staff for.
This one is so I can get shit done around here without the need for long conversations about cost or time or repayment.
It’s supposed to be organized by priority.
Instead, it’s organized by whoever’s annoyed me the least.
Today’s list has Frank’s gutters. Again. The man has three oak trees within spitting distance of his roofline, and he refuses to let me cut a single branch because, and I quote, they were here first and he doesn’t believe in gutter guards.
There’s a porch light out at Marley’s place. She’s filed four written complaints in two weeks. The first three were formal warnings. The fourth included a diagram.
A loose railing on the clubhouse deck that Stanley’s been monitoring with his GoPro because he thinks someone is tampering with it so they can fake an injury which would increase everyone’s insurance if the invisible culprit filed a lawsuit.
I start with Frank’s gutters because they require a ladder and enough physical effort to shut my brain up.
It almost works. For twenty minutes, the only thing in my head is leaf rot and downspout angles while my hands do what they’re good at. They grip and pull and clear and measure and for a little bit, I’m not the guy who keeps finding new ways to break Junie’s spirit.
Then Frank comes outside with two glasses of bourbon and sits in his lawn chair to supervise.
I thought I was safe, since they rarely come outside after dinner except on S&S nights. This is why I typically work on anything I can after 10 p.m. Junie didn’t give me a choice tonight.
“Dollie says your girl didn’t eat her lunch.”
I nearly lose my grip on my ladder. “She’s not my girl, Frank.”
“Right.” He sips his bourbon. I only know because he makes a slurping noise just to be a pain in the ass. “Dollie also says you cut her grilled cheese diagonally with a pickle you had to work for.”
How the hell does Dollie know how I cut Junie’s sandwich? Then again, how does anyone know anything around here? I live in a surveillance bubble run by retirees with nothing better to do than monitor my emotional collapse as if it’s an episode for S&S to rate.
“Frank,” I bark. “The gutters.”
“I’m just saying.” He lifts his hands in surrender. “When Dollie’s mad at me, she won’t eat what I cook either. It’s a sign.”
“It’s a sandwich.”
Frank chuckles from somewhere deep in his chest. “It’s never just a sandwich, son.”
I climb down the ladder, chug Frank’s offered ounce of bourbon, and then move on to Marley’s before Frank can impart any more relational wisdom I never asked for.
Stanley intercepts me on the path between Marley’s house and unit 12 that hasn’t sold yet. He’s in his golf cart that’s now fitted with aftermarket headlights bright enough to land an aircraft, and one of them is aimed directly at my face.
“Jesus, Stanley. Turn down your headlights. It’s eight o’clock at night. If you flash those things into Marley’s place, I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“Evening patrol.” He adjusts his vest. It’s new. This one is fluorescent yellow and says Enforcer across the front.
“Stanley, putting on a vest does not give you any authority. We’ve been over this.”
“I noticed some suspicious activity near the garage apartment.”
My pulse quickens. “My garage apartment?” I pick up my pace, with Stanley tailing me. “What kind of activity?”
“Bea said the lights have been off all evening. Usually, your girl’s up there working till at least midnight, so I did a couple’a rounds.” He taps his dashcam. “I’ve got the data right here.”
The data. For fuck’s sake. Stanley has footage of Junie’s light patterns. I’m not even the most obsessive person monitoring her movements in this community, and that’s a thought I’m going to bury immediately.
“She’s fine, Stanley. Go home.”
“I’ll do another loop. Just to be safe.”
He putters away before I can argue, his headlights sweeping across properties like this is a tactical hostage situation. We need to find him a new hobby that has him hitting up Home Depot less.
By ten o’clock, I’ve burned through the resident’s wish list and have started inventing problems to solve, like Bea’s rocking chairs that squeak too loudly and give Dollie headaches, and the hedge by the pool that always grows a straggler branch that refuses to conform to The Haven’s neatly ordered shrubbery.
The thing about fixing shit to avoid other shit is that it works until it doesn’t.
You can replace every bulb, tighten every railing, and clear every gutter in the community, and when you’re done, the woman upstairs still hasn’t turned on her light, and you still don’t know how to explain things in a way that won’t hurt her more.
I’m washing my hands in the kitchen when I hear Nana Mae’s slippers on the tile.
“Mail came later than normal today.” She sets a small stack on the counter and continues past me to the kettle. “Something for you on top.”
Natalie must be more paranoid than normal because she’s upping her tactics. But I take the envelope, and my hand remains steady through sheer force of will.
The second my skin touches it, my gaze drifts to the driveway, to Junie, feeling like even holding this piece of paper is somehow a betrayal.
“Nana Mae, what the hell are you doing wandering around The Haven at ten at night?”
“How’s Natalie doing?” Nana Mae asks, ignoring me but turning her back to fill the kettle. She’s casual in her questioning, but there’s always a bite to it when Natalie’s involved.
Nana Mae doesn’t know what the letters really are. She thinks they’re updates from a former girlfriend who became a friend. She thinks the letters about Marcus are exactly as they appear to be—a woman keeping her ex informed about her brother’s health because I’m the kind of man who cares.
She’s only half right. I do care about Marcus. He’s as innocent in all of this as I am. That part has never been the lie.
It’s everything else.
It’s not his fault that his father’s gambling debt is what made Natalie his guardian. It’s not his fault that his sister chose blackmail because her ego wouldn’t allow for anything else.
“I’ll read it later.” I pocket the envelope and force myself to lean against the counter, pretending the paper isn’t burning a hole through my heart.
Nana Mae’s quiet as she waits for her water to heat, then she turns with two mugs, and I lift a brow. She’s always done this—anticipated the crisis before it arrives. This time, she uses tea as the method to have a conversation.
Respect for my grandmother is the only reason I sit next to her at the same table where she didn’t ask me why I left Boston, just handed me a deed to her portion of the land and said, “Build something, Cole. That’s what you’re good at.”
She doesn’t know about the giant loan I took out against my five acres. The most important acreage to us both. The land that sits undisturbed except for the fishing dock my grandfather built fifty years ago.
“Juniper found some…things in the books today.” Talking about Devin is easier than thinking about the letter in my pocket.
Her mug pauses halfway to her lips. “What kind of things?”
“The kind that confirm my suspicions.” I choose my words the way I choose building materials—carefully, structurally, knowing what they have to support.
“Devin was…strategic, not careless as I originally hoped.” And that’s the truth.
I hoped that he was just a fucknut, not an active thief. “Junie’s good at collecting evidence.”
Mae sets down her tea. Her index finger traces her thumbnail, and she won’t meet my eye.
Which means she’s about to drop a bomb of her own, and I won’t like what she has to say.