Chapter 48
J ericho
I went by the diner to try to find Nora, but Roman said she wasn’t there. My knuckles are white on the steering wheel, tension climbing up my arms and into my shoulders until my neck feels like concrete.
When I pull back into my driveway, I sit there with the engine running, staring at nothing.
“Goddammit.” I slam my palm against the steering wheel, the sharp pain a welcome distraction.
I’d prepared for her anger, her disappointment. What I wasn’t ready for was the fear in her eyes. Like I was suddenly dangerous. A threat.
The same look they all gave me when I came back home.
I kill the engine and head inside, not bothering with the porch light. The darkness suits me fine. Inside, I strip off my wet jacket, toss my keys onto the counter where they skid and fall to the floor. I don’t pick them up .
A beer from the fridge. The cap twisted off with more force than necessary. Half of it gone in one long pull.
The house feels emptier than usual. Like something’s been taken from it. From me.
I thought I could outrun it. The whispers. The sideways glances. The assumptions. Four years inside taught me a lot of things, but apparently not that.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I ignore it.
Probably Jethro checking in like he’s been doing every day since he left.
Like I’m something fragile that might break if not watched carefully.
Now I can’t face him even more than before because he was right; I should have told Nora everything myself.
She should have heard it from me and not someone else, especially not Dick.
Another buzz. Then another.
With a curse, I pull it out, ready to tell him to back off. But it’s not Jethro.
It’s Cheryl.
We need to talk. Now.
Followed by:
I know you’re reading this. Don’t make me come find you and pull you out of your house in handcuffs.
And finally:
Off The Road. 30 minutes. Don’t make me use my badge.
Great. Just what I need. Big Love’s finest coming after me now. And she wants to meet at a bar, far from here. Probably scared to be seen with me but still needing to kick my ass, and I don’t blame her .
I consider ignoring her, but Cheryl’s not the type to bluff. And the last thing I need is her showing up here with her hand on her baton, giving Nora something new to be worried about.
Off The Road is the kind of place that doesn’t ask questions. Dark enough to hide in, loud enough to cover conversations. It sits on the edge of town, where Big Love has a long road bleeding directly into Little Hope, serving both towns’ need for anonymity.
Cheryl’s already there when I arrive, tucked into a corner booth, nursing something amber in a rocks glass. Her uniform is gone, replaced by jeans and a faded Bruins sweatshirt, but the way she scans the room as I enter is pure cop.
“Sit,” she says when I reach her table, not bothering with pleasantries. Her expression is unreadable, which is never a good sign.
I slide into the booth across from her, signaling the bartender for a beer. “This about Nora?”
“What else would it be about? Your charming personality?” She takes a sip of her drink, watching me over the rim. “You’ve upset my sister.”
“I’m aware.”
“She cried all day.” Cheryl’s voice is matter-of-fact, not accusatory, which somehow makes it worse. “Grandma said she could hear her through the walls.”
The guilt twists deeper. I stare at the scarred tabletop, at the rings left by countless drinks. “I didn’t mean to hurt her.”
“But you did.” She sets her glass down with precision. “By lying.”
“I didn’t lie.” The defense feels hollow even to my own ears. “I just… didn’t tell her everything.”
“A lie of omission is still a lie, Jericho.”
The bartender brings my beer, and I take a long pull, grateful for the moment to collect myself. “Why am I here, Cheryl? You want to threaten me? Tell me to stay away from her?”
She leans back, studying me. “Actually, I want to know your side of the story.”
I blink, surprised. “What?”
“Your side. Why you did it.” She gestures vaguely. “The whole prison thing.”
“Did Nora ask you to find out?”
“No. She specifically asked me not to get involved.” A small smile tugs at her lips as she gives me a pointed look. “But the last time I stayed out of my sister’s business, some asshole lied to her about his past.”
I take another drink, considering. “Why should I tell you?”
“Because I pulled your record, dipshit.”
“Then you know everything.” I feel the muscles on my jaw starting to move.
“This is where it gets interesting.” She pushes her glass around. “There’re gaps in that story.”
I wait for her to continue.
“And despite what you might think, I’m not automatically against you.” She leans forward, elbows on the table. “Look, I ran your record after Nora told me. No priors. No history of violence. Just that one incident. That’s not the pattern we usually see with assaults of that level.”
I study her face, looking for the trap. But all I see is a cop’s practiced neutrality and something else—a sister’s concern.
“It wasn’t my fault,” I finally say, the words coming out rougher than I intended.
“Whose was it?”
I hesitate, the old instinct to protect still strong. “Someone else’s.”
Her eyebrows lift slightly. “You took the fall for someone else ?”
I nod once, sharply .
“And?” she nudges me.
I shrug.
“Is there anything else you want to share?”
A shake of my head.
“C’mon, Jericho.” She rubs her eyes with the heels of her palms. “You gotta give me something else.”
I stare at the table, weighing how much to reveal. The old habits of silence, of protection, are hard to break. But I’m tired of carrying this alone.
“It stays here?” I point my index finger in the middle of the table between us and wait for her to nod before continuing. “It was my brother,” I finally say, my voice low. “Jethro.”
Cheryl’s expression doesn’t change, but she goes still, waiting.
“He was in a bad place. Drinking too much. Got into it with some guy at a bar who recognized him from his hockey days. Things escalated.” The memories flood back—the frantic phone call, finding Jethro standing over the man, blood on his knuckles, panic in his eyes.
“By the time I got there, the damage was done.”
“So you… what? Confessed to it?” Her tone is carefully neutral.
“Told Jethro to leave. Waited for the cops.” I take another pull from my beer. “He had a career. A future. A daughter. I had nothing to lose.”
“Except your freedom.”
I shrug. “Four years seemed like a fair trade for his daughter’s life.”
Cheryl watches me, her cop eyes assessing. “Why didn’t you tell Nora this?”
“Would it have mattered?” The bitterness seeps into my voice. “In her eyes, I’m still the ex-con who beat a man half to death.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I saw her face, Cheryl.” The memory of Nora’s fear cuts fresh. “The way she looked at me… like I was suddenly someone else. Someone dangerous.” I rub the ache in the middle of my chest. “And that fucking hurt. She judged me right there, just like everyone else, without even listening.”
Cheryl sighs, leaning back. “You did fuck up when you didn’t tell her this little detail about yourself. But Nora… She has issues with violence. Because of our dad.”
“I know about her father.”
“Do you?” She tilts her head. “Did she tell you everything?”
The question makes me pause. “He was attacked. Died from complications.”
“That’s the short version.” Cheryl traces the rim of her glass with one finger.
“The long one is that she was there with Grandma when our father was wheeled into the hospital.” She winces, probably recalling the time.
“Nora never said anything, but Grandma said he was barely recognizable. The damage that was done to his face—” She pauses and throws the rest of the liquid in her glass into her mouth.
“It was bad, Jericho. Really bad. And the story that Nora knows is that the man attacked our father for no reason. As a random act of pure violence. And our mom died in a car crash on the way to the hospital.”
“Is there another story?” I ask carefully, feeling my heart breaking for the girls.
She nods. “What Grandma and I never told Nora was that Dad wasn’t just some random victim. He had a temper. The night before he was attacked, he got into a bar fight himself. It went downhill from there for our family.”
I stare at her, processing this. “The man who attacked him…”
“Was connected to the fight the night before. Revenge, basically.” She meets my eyes directly. “Nora doesn’t know this. She’s built her whole life around avoiding violence, avoiding people who can’t control themselves. It’s why she ran from Boston after that mugging. Why she came back here.”
“Mugging?” I ask, confused. This is the first time I’m hearing about that.
Cheryl clicks her tongue. “Not mugging, but—” She cuts herself off and pinches the bridge of her nose. “It’s not my story to tell. I can’t.”
“Then why are you telling me all of this?”
She finds my eyes and holds them. “Because I don’t think you’re a violent man, Jericho. I think you’re a man who made a choice to protect someone he loves. And I think my sister deserves to know that.”
“She doesn’t want to hear it from me.”
“Maybe not yet. But she will.” Cheryl stands, tossing bills on the table. “Give her time.”
I stay seated, watching her gather her coat. “Why are you helping me?”
She pauses, considering. “I’m not. I’m helping my sister. And maybe myself a little.”
“How’s that?”
“Because I’m tired of watching her run from anything that might hurt her.” She shrugs. “And because I’ve been a cop long enough to know that good people sometimes do bad things for the right reasons.”
With that, she leaves, the door swinging shut behind her with a soft thud that echoes in the now-quiet bar. I sit there for a long time, turning my beer bottle between my palms, watching the condensation leave more rings on the table.
Time. That’s what Cheryl said Nora needs. But time is the one thing I’ve never been good at giving. Prison taught me patience in some ways, made me restless in others. The need to fix things, to make them right, to control what I can—it runs deep.
And I’ve never wanted to fix anything as badly as I want to fix this .
The bar has emptied by the time I finally leave, the parking lot dark except for a single flickering streetlight. My truck sits alone, dusted with the first flakes of a fresh snowfall. It feels fitting somehow—clean, silent, covering everything in a blank slate.
I drive home slowly, the roads slick with new snow. The house is dark when I pull in, no welcoming lights, no sign of life. For the first time in years, I don’t immediately flip every switch, chase away every shadow. Instead, I sit in the darkness, letting it settle around me like an old friend.
Maybe it’s time to stop running from my own shadows. Maybe it’s time to face them, name them, own them. Not just for Nora’s sake, but for mine.
I pick up my phone, staring at the screen for a long moment before typing out a message.
I hit send before I can second-guess myself, then set the phone aside. Whether she reads it or not, whether she believes me or not—that’s out of my control now.
All I can do is wait. And hope that when she’s ready, she’ll listen.
The snow falls harder outside, covering the world in silence. For once, I welcome it.