Chapter 16
Tyler
Tyler arrived at Irma Brew ten minutes before closing time, parking down the street so his truck wouldn’t make it obvious which shop he was going into. The last thing either of them needed was more fuel for the town gossip mill.
He stayed in his truck for a few minutes, waiting and replaying the day. Sue and Robert had gone to Sheila’s funeral, as they said they would. They came in afterward and told him all about it.
“Adam Boverman was there,” Robert had said with a tilt to his eyebrows. “In uniform.”
“That was just weird,” Sue said. “It made people uncomfortable. I was actually surprised more people didn’t go.
There were a few people from the bank and others I recognized from around town, but really not that many.
Her ex-husband was there. The most recent one—at least that’s what people said. Randy or something.”
“Rusty,” Robert corrected. “We’ve done work for him before. You know him?”
Tyler had shaken his head, unable to put the name with the face.
“Has that old Trans Am.”
“Oh, yeah. Him. Works at that new factory on the edge of town.”
“Yup, he’s the one,” Sue said. “If you ask me, they should be looking at him for her murder. You know who else was there? The game warden. The one that came up to the trailhead that day. What was his name?”
“Henry,” Robert said, his tone clipped.
Sue gave him a questioning look, to which he shrugged. “What? His name is Henry.”
“Anyway,” Sue said. “Someone told me they dated.”
“Sheila and the game warden?”
“Yup.” Robert’s nod said more than the single word.
Tyler wondered if Adam Boverman was harassing Henry the same way he was harassing him.
After all, he, too, had been on the mountain that same day, a man who had dated Sheila and answered the call of a dead body.
That sounded suspicious to him, but somehow he knew Boverman would explain it away.
As far as he was concerned, Tyler was his man.
He checked his watch. Two minutes to six. He took a breath and headed for the door.
Through the front window, he could see Brooke moving around inside, clearing tables and wiping down surfaces. The shop was empty of customers, but she had yet to turn off the open sign.
The bell chimed as he entered. Brooke looked up from where she was arranging chairs, and her expression softened when she saw him. Not fear. Not wariness. Something warmer that made his chest tight.
“Hi,” she said, moving to the open sign and switching it off.
“Hi.” Tyler felt suddenly awkward, standing near the doorway of her business like a teenager picking someone up for a first date. “I can come back if you need more time to close up.”
“No, you’re fine. I let my staff go home early. I’m almost finished, but . . . ” She gestured at the chairs she’d been stacking. “Want to help? It’ll go faster with two people.”
The request caught him off guard. He’d expected to sit and talk, not to help close her shop. But there was something appealing about the idea of working alongside her in her space.
“Sure.”
They fell into an easy rhythm. Tyler stacked chairs while Brooke wiped down tables. She showed him where supplies were kept when he offered to sweep. The movements were practiced and comfortable, like they’d done it dozens of times instead of this being their first.
“You’re good at this,” Brooke observed, watching him maneuver the broom.
“Worked in the student union during college.”
“I didn’t know you went to college.”
“Community. Did one year, taking business classes. I married Jen and started working at the gypsum factory. Didn’t take long to realize I liked working on cars a lot better than dealing with numbers.” Tyler paused. “Seems like a different lifetime now.”
Brooke nodded, understanding in her eyes. “A lot can change over the years.”
They finished the main dining area and moved to the kitchen. Brooke offered to make them cappuccinos.
“Not necessary. I usually just drink the stuff from a canister.”
“How about an Americano?”
“Sure, I guess.” He wasn’t sure what that was, but he was willing to try something different.
She went back to the counter area. As the machine fired up, Tyler rinsed the few dishes left in the sink and loaded the dishwasher.
“You don’t have to do that,” she said, coming back with a mug in each hand.
“I don’t mind. Tell me where the soap is, and I’ll start it.”
With the dishwasher providing a quiet background hum, they took chairs at a small table tucked in the corner of the kitchen.
This wasn’t the public dining area but her private workspace, where she probably sat to do paperwork and plan menus.
The lighting was dim, just the overhead fixtures turned low for closing.
It felt intimate in a way that made Tyler’s pulse quicken.
They sat across from each other, coffee mugs between them.
“Can I ask you something?” Brooke said after a moment.
“Anything.”
“What was it like? After they died. How did you . . . how did you keep going?”
The question caught Tyler off guard. Not because it was inappropriate, but because no one had asked him that in years. People avoided the topic, uncomfortable with his grief.
“Honestly?” Tyler stared into his coffee. “I’m not sure I did keep going. Not really. I existed. Went through the motions. But actually living? That took a long time to figure out again.”
“What changed?” She leaned forward, and Tyler caught a whiff of her perfume, or maybe it was her shampoo. Whatever it was, he liked it.
“Nothing dramatic. Just . . . eventually the pain wasn’t quite so sharp. I could think about them without feeling like I was drowning. Could remember the good times instead of just the end.”
He looked up at her. “Being away was good. Necessary. And then it wasn’t. For the last three or four years, all I could think about was being here. In Irma. Around the mountains. Being home. But now . . . ” He shook his head as his shoulders sagged.
Brooke was quiet for a moment. “I’m terrified of losing people,” she said softly. “My mom died three years ago. Just went to sleep one night and didn’t wake up. I found her when I went to pick her up for church.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It broke something in me. Made me realize how fragile everything is. How quickly someone can just . . . be gone.” She wrapped her hands around her mug. “That’s part of why I struggle with trust. With letting people in. Because what if they leave? What if I lose them?”
“Trust isn’t easy,” he admitted.
“You’re telling me. You know about my friend Kelsey? About what she did?”
“I read the paper and heard people talk about it. It must have been pretty terrible.”
“That day was terrible, but losing Kelsey as a friend . . . I trusted her, and look how that turned out.”
They were quiet for several minutes, each sipping their coffee. Finally, Brooke said, “If I can’t even pick my friends properly, how am I ever going to pick out a boyfriend? A husband? I’m totally afraid I’m going to mess that up and then be alone for the rest of my life.”
Tyler understood that fear intimately. “I get it. It’s hard to date. Much easier to stay single, isn’t it?”
“That and Basin County isn’t exactly overflowing with options.” She gave him a small smile, then quickly glanced at her mug. “Until recently.”
Tyler’s own smile grew. Was she saying what he thought she was saying? He was going to ask, but she changed the subject.
“I’m sorry I don’t remember Phil bringing you over to the house.”
“I don’t think I was very memorable then.” He laughed. “Tall and skinny. Awkward.”
“Nothing wrong with being tall.”
Her smile came again, and with it, warmth spread through his chest. He could like Brooke. He could like her a lot. He already did.
They talked about Phil for a while, about his steadfast loyalty and blunt honesty. “That’s not always easy,” she said with a laugh. “Having a brother who rarely sugar-coats things is challenging.”
Then the conversation shifted to the case against Tyler, to Sheila and what she’d been like in high school.
“Phil said she was a mean girl,” Brooke said. “That she never really outgrew it.”
“Yeah. I was thinking about that last night. He’s right. They’d pick a target and make that person’s life miserable for weeks or months.” Tyler took a sip of coffee. “I’d sort of forgotten how bad it was until Phil mentioned it. No one was safe from Sheila and her gang.”
Brooke nodded. “I was looking at one of those websites last night that people set up for their class reunions. Some of her friends from high school still live in Irma. I know them. They come into the coffee shop.”
“Yeah. I’ve seen a few people from high school in passing. There’s a girl who works at the craft store across from the auto shop.”
“Monique. Her aunt owns the place. I saw pictures of her and Sheila.”
“Monique.” He nodded. “Pretty sure that’s her. Sheila had mentioned some of us getting together for drinks and live music.”
“I don’t go to bars much,” Brooke said. “So, I miss out on some of the juicier gossip. But Phil sure seemed to know things about Sheila and how she wasn’t always as sweet as she seemed at work.”
“Nobody’s perfect. But that doesn’t mean she deserved to die.”
“No,” Brooke agreed softly. “She didn’t.”
The conversation deepened from there. Tyler found himself opening up about things he hadn’t talked about in years.
The grief over losing Jen and Garrett. The guilt that still plagued him, wondering if he could have prevented the fire somehow.
He still didn’t understand what had caused the gas line to fail.
To cause the entire system to ignite and the house to explode.
And he shared with her the loneliness of the past twelve years, moving from place to place without ever feeling like he belonged.
About how he would imagine what Garrett would be like now.
Nearly sixteen. He liked to think they’d be working on a car together.
Something they bought and could fix up for him.