Chapter 22 Good Big Spoon
GOOD BIG SPOON
“This is becoming a habit,” Clay said the next morning when Ford knocked on his front door.
It was six thirty and he was getting ready to head to the mill.
Meredith left a few minutes ago. She had ninety minutes before school started and he’d told her not to even think of going back to her house.
She’d explained she was meeting her mother for breakfast.
News to him, but he couldn’t stop her. They both had a job to do.
“I noticed Meredith’s car here last night.”
“Spying on me again?”
“Just being there for my brother like he was for me,” Ford said.
“Yeah and it pissed you off. Didn’t you learn from that?”
Ford grinned and moved into the house. There was no way to stop it. Maybe he didn’t want to.
The last thing he wanted was to put his mark on Meredith, but she had branded herself into his soul, so why not do the same to her?
All he did was delay the inevitable by sitting in the living room together in tense silence for hours.
He knew where her mind was going. You couldn’t push a train off the tracks when it was speeding down.
Not without a crash.
What they had last night was a collision of epic proportions.
They both survived and walked away unscathed.
What should have been uncomfortable this morning, actually wasn’t.
Not even holding her in his arms all night.
Or her joke that she knew he’d be a good big spoon.
He grunted over her comment, but still held on tight until he heard her drift off to sleep.
He thought for sure his mind would race the rest of the night, but he’d slept good and hard.
Something he hadn’t done in years.
“You can’t push us away forever,” Ford said. “Just like you can’t with Meredith.”
“She’s tougher than she looks.”
“So she’s holding up?”
“Yeah. She held it in for most of the night and then it just broke.”
He’d expected her to have a few tears before bed, but nothing.
When he heard moving in the house, he didn’t think it was her. She made way too much noise every other time.
His first thought was whoever was doing this to her, knew where she was.
He couldn’t control that his mind always went to that place, forcing the gun he kept under his pillow into his hand, while he yanked on shorts.
Seeing her in his kitchen with a shirt that barely covered her ass was his undoing.
He’d tried everything he had to get her to run away.
But she ran toward him.
Even being rough in bed last night hadn’t turned her off.
She’d held on and conquered it with him. Then asked if he was okay.
He’d been completely wrong about her.
Did trouble follow her everywhere? It seemed it.
Did she find some impossible way to hurt herself? Almost always.
Did she break the ropes around his heart? She was damn well getting close to it.
And that was scarier than anything he’d experienced in the past decade.
“Understandable with everything she’s going through,” Ford said. “I talked with her ex last night. He was at work all day. Gave me the names of three people to vouch for it.”
“Did you call those people?” he asked.
“I’ll do it today. He’s pissed. Doesn’t want more talk at work, but I told him his previous actions and admissions put him in this position.”
“He admitted to the other things he’d done?”
“Yep. Everything Meredith said he’d done, he fessed up without prompting. Threw her under the bus just as hard. She’s not at fault here.”
“Come on, Ford,” he said. “He was fucking cheating on her under her nose for months. Then came home after she found out and wanted to have sex with her. Did he tell you that?”
Ford snorted. “No.”
“He wouldn’t. She wouldn’t either, but she told me. She’d found out and he came in acting like he missed her and wanted to get naked with her for round two. For someone who wears her emotions on her face, she somehow kept it in until she could figure out what she was going to do.”
“I’m not sure I could do that. Reenie could have. I think women are stronger than we give them credit for.”
“That’s right. Meredith is emotional, but she can be rational.” He thought for a moment. “Yeah, no, what she did wasn’t rational, but I think she was justified and plenty of women would applaud her for it.”
“He probably deserved it. What he shouldn’t have done was continue it for weeks after when it was a one-day thing for her.”
“Exactly,” he said. “What about Lana? The woman Fredrick was sleeping with.”
“She didn’t return my call yesterday. I’ll reach out again and let her know if she doesn’t, I’ll be paying her a visit at work.”
Clay smirked. “That gets people talking. My guess is she was trying to figure out what was going on and worried she’d be in trouble over the letter that she lied about.”
“There is no proof who wrote it, but I’ll find out if she admits it.
Even if Fredrick hadn’t had an alibi all day, why admit to everything else he’s done so freely and not this?
I wouldn’t have put it on him. Other than the dead fish, everything was just as petty.
In his mind, that was too. He bought a fish and tossed it on the front porch for flies.
He could have easily thrown any rotten food there.
He said the only reason he got the fish was because it was the first thing he could think of that stunk to attract the flies. ”
His shoulders dropped. “I don’t like this. If it’s not Lana, then Meredith is right and there is someone else out there doing this.”
“She has no idea who?” Ford asked.
“We didn’t talk much about it last night. I think she needed a break.”
“How was she this morning?”
“Fine,” he said. “But she thinks she’s better at hiding her emotions than me. She was going to meet her mother for breakfast. Guess her parents know nothing that is going on. Until the window is fixed, I don’t want her going back there.”
“So she’s going to stay with her parents?”
“We haven’t gotten that far. I’ll talk to her after school today. She’ll need clothes regardless for the weekend and I’ll meet her to get them with her.”
“Is she afraid to go back to her place alone?”
“No. She didn’t seem it.” She wasn’t acting that way, but he saw through it. “I’m torn between wanting her to not be afraid so she isn’t upset and wanting her to be a little afraid so she’s aware.”
“You can’t control those things,” Ford said.
He didn’t need the reminder.
“I’ll control what I can. Don’t you have to get to work?”
“I’m going.”
“Let me know what you find out from Lana,” he said.
“I will. I’ll follow up with Meredith after. You can let her know about Fredrick. She told me yesterday I can keep you informed.”
He narrowed his eyes. “So if she hadn’t said that, you wouldn’t tell me?”
“No,” Ford said. “I play by the rules, unlike you.”
He grabbed his keys to leave with Ford.
His brother drove by the gates to get out. He’d unlocked them from his phone for Meredith to leave, then had them shut and locked again.
Everyone else in the family and on the property could take care of it themselves.
Rather than go to the mill, he detoured to the cafe. It wasn’t open, but his mother and Reenie would be in the back baking for the day.
“Morning,” his mother said. “Here you go.”
She’d handed him a triple fudge brownie that was on a napkin.
“Did you see me pull in?”
“I did. I thought you’d need a treat this morning. I expected you to drop in.”
There were no secrets in his family.
He’d rushed out to get the plywood and repair the window at Meredith’s. His father was in the barn when he was grabbing things and he’d told them what happened.
When he’d left Meredith’s to drive home, he called them from his truck to explain more.
He’d never put them in harm’s way.
Just like when Reenie was living on the property in the cabin next to him, he was watching her and his family at the same time.
They stuck together through thick and thin.
Even if he found their advice intrusive, he knew they’d always be there for him.
“My favorite,” he said.
“I know my children. Do you want to talk?”
Reenie was at the other end of the kitchen. He nodded his head toward the door and his mother walked out with him.
“Ford won’t leave me alone.”
“Stop it. You sound like you’re ten again and he’s bugging you.”
“He is.”
His mother gave him a slight shove on the arm. “I’m glad to see you joking. It’s been a while.”
“I wasn’t joking. He really won’t.”
The eye roll he received with his smirk helped some. He didn’t need his parents worried about him.
“Clay. Ford is only doing what you did for him.”
“That’s what he said.”
“This thing with Meredith, is it more than you feeling as if you’ve got to protect her?”
“If it wasn’t, she could have stayed anywhere other than here. She would have called anyone other than me too.”
The fact she came to him first said that this wasn’t just a passing thing in her mind.
At least he hoped not.
“I always liked her as a child. I think you watched her more than you wanted to let on.”
He shrugged. “That was a long time ago.”
His mother nodded. “Any idea who could be doing this?”
“She can’t think of anyone other than her ex and it wasn’t him. At least not the rock. He admitted to the other things, but she knew that.”
“I hope it’s over soon. I want to say I wish it was some kids playing a prank.”
“No,” he said. “Maybe the damage to her car, sure. But not this. This was personal.”
A rock with nothing on it? That could be a prank gone wrong.
Painting “BITCH” on it was more.
How much more, that was the question.