CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
MURDER OF ONE
Me: Hey, babe. I didn’t want to call and wake you up, but I'm leaving Aunt Stormy’s now. I’ll be home in a few hours. Love you.
I sent the text, then buckled up. Charlie was already in his truck, waiting to lead the way to the gate and send me off.
I couldn’t wait to be back home.
I’d only been away for a couple of days, yet it felt like weeks had passed since I’d slept in my bed. I guessed what people said was true—distance makes the heart grow fonder, or whatever. I was eager as hell to close the gap between myself and the woman waiting for me at home.
She wasn’t the only one struggling with the idea of me working a job that pulled me away from her. The moment she had told me she was pregnant with our baby, something had changed. A shift in the universe. A realignment of the planets or something.
Suddenly, I no longer wanted to stop the bad guys and put them away.
I wanted to patrol my house and keep them from infiltrating the cozy, happy bubble we’d built.
I wanted to make sure that, even though the world was full of villains, the place where I’d raise my kids was protected by heroes.
Maybe that meant I should find detective work inside Connecticut. There were bigger cities not far from River Canyon. I could handle a short commute if it meant I came home every night to my wife and kids.
I just didn’t want to leave.
Not again.
I slowly followed Charlie through the winding roads until we were at the cemetery entrance.
He parked his truck while I kept mine running, and I got out to ask, “Want some help?”
“I won’t say no,” he replied with a smile, climbing out of the cab of his pickup.
I followed his dark, lanky frame through the morning gloom toward the heavy chains hanging from the joined sides of the monstrous iron gate. He pulled a ring full of keys from his pocket and flipped through them until he found what he was looking for.
“I feel like a castle prison guard, walking around with this thing,” he muttered sardonically with a shake of his head, fitting the key inside the large padlock on this side of the gate.
“Nah, you need one of those gigantic rings,” I said, making awkward conversation as I peered up through the fog and toward the outstretched limbs of barely visible trees. “And, uh … those old fancy-looking keys. Whatever they're called.”
“Skeleton keys?”
I shrugged stupidly. “Sure. Sounds right.”
Charlie lifted one side of his mouth in a smile as he unwound the chains from one side of the gate.
I didn't offer to help with the task and instead marveled at how quickly he maneuvered the length of heavy-duty steel.
I guessed he would, considering he'd been doing this every single day for the past …
God, I didn't even know how long. Well over a decade at least. But, man, as I watched him work with nimble dexterity, my mind traveled toward wondering what drove someone to do this.
The different paths of life each of us went on to eventually guard cemeteries or protect cities or manage grocery stores.
The unfortunate twists and turns that caused some of us to fall into lives of crime.
It wasn't all by choice—I knew that—and I wondered if Charlie had chosen this …
or if it had chosen him. If life had forced this world of seclusion and death on him in one way or another or if he'd sought it himself, but I didn't think now was the time to ask.
Not when I wanted to be home with Meg, back to the life that had chosen me.
Charlie gave one side of the double gate a push and nudged his bearded chin toward the other. “Just push it until it stops.”
“You got it,” I replied and gave the cold iron a shove, surprised to find just how heavy it was. “Whoa …”
He had already swung the gate halfway when he glanced in my direction with a chuckle. “Hey, if you can't handle it—”
I held a hand up, stopping his words in their tracks. “I didn't say that. I just wasn't expecting it to weigh more than a fuckin' car. I'm good.”
Charlie snorted. “A car,” he muttered, shaking his head. “And here I thought, the force kept you in shape.”
“Oh,” I said with a grunt, swinging the gate across the driveway with startling effort, “it's not the force that keeps me in shape. That's all on me, man.”
“Oh, yeah?”
In all the years I'd known Charlie Corbin, I had never seen him so interested in conversation with someone other than my aunt. I wished he hadn't waited until now, when I was leaving, but I'd take what I could get.
“There's this one guy I work with—Mike. You know those cops you see on TV? The ones who live on coffee and doughnuts?”
Charlie replied with a nod, then called across the driveway to instruct me on how to secure the gate open.
“Well”—I crouched to the sidewalk and used the gate stop to hold it open—“that's this dude.
He sits at a desk all day and almost always has a doughnut in his hand—not even joking.
There isn't a doughnut in the world this guy doesn't love.
He has a whole friggin' spreadsheet on the best doughnuts from all these different places he's been to—”
I looked up as Charlie walked over, an amused smirk on his face.
“What?” I asked, standing up and brushing my hands on my jeans.
He shook his head and huffed a light chuckle. “Nothing. I was just thinking … you're so much like your dad.”
“My dad?” I snapped.
The comment instantly had me reeling, and I reared my head back, furrowing my brow with a thousand protests sitting at the tip of my tongue.
I'd rather be dead than remind anyone of that man.
And then …
Holy fuck, he isn't talking about Seth.
Of course he wasn't. Charlie hadn't known Seth. Charlie came into the picture years after he'd been shot dead in the living room at 1111 Daffodil Lane.
“You meant Dad,” I thought aloud, steeling my nerves and calming my frenzied heart. “Sorry.”
Charlie lifted his head and eyed me studiously for a moment, like he'd only just now realized something. Something eye-opening and alarming. That look on his face made me swallow, made me glance away and want to run toward my car and get the hell out of Salem. Out of Massachusetts and away from all memories of that night twenty years ago. Away from the remaining pieces of whatever life I’d had with the father I hated the thought of and back to the life I had with the one I reminded people of.
The one I'd choose again and again and again until all memory of the bogeyman was erased.
“The past only haunts us as long as we allow it to, Noah,” Charlie said in a low voice, heavy with intent and sincerity. “Trust me on that. Don't just run away from it. Let that shit go.”
My narrowed gaze met his, and I tipped my head with question. “Is that what you did?”
He pursed his lips as his deep brown eyes looked to the ground at our feet. “It's a work in progress,” he muttered quietly, his tone laced with a lingering sadness. “But that doesn't mean I'm not trying.”
“I try too,” I said. “I thought I was doing a good job actually. But recently …”
I let the words unsaid drift out into the street toward the hotel across the way. Charlie nodded as if he understood though, and you know what? I truly believed he did.
“The ghosts find us, no matter how well we think we're hiding,” he said, offering another line of sage wisdom.
“The key is to face them, look them in the eye, and tell them to go fuck themselves.
Show them you aren't scared, and they'll lose their ability to choke the life out of you when you least expect it.”
“Hmm,” I grumbled, nodding slowly.
Maybe I should tell Mom and Dad about Tommy. About his son. About that night.
Maybe that's what this is all about. Maybe I've been hiding the past for so long that I don't know how to face the truth.
Maybe … the secret to peace wasn’t to tell my fiancée or find Tommy's orphaned son.
Maybe I just need to go home and have a talk with my parents.
But first …
I sighed, imagining my warm, soft bed and the woman waiting for me. “I should get going,” I said, swinging my gaze toward Charlie's.
“Yeah,” he replied, clapping a hand against my shoulder. “I just—”
Caw! Caw!
Our attentions were drawn toward a crow in flight, bursting from between the branches of a tree overhead and into the sky, only beginning to show the first traces of sunlight from behind inky-black clouds.
My eyes were trained on its wings, beating against the wind, and a memory erupted from somewhere far away.
Going fishing with Dad.
Asking if he loved Mom.
The crow that hung around us that whole day.
Days before …
A sour churning sensation rolled in my stomach, somersaulting and cartwheeling and stirring up the cup of coffee I'd drained before leaving the cottage on the hill.
Charlie's throat worked with an audible swallow. “You want to try and beat traffic,” he said tentatively, his voice gravelly. “But …”
I turned at his hesitation, my eyes boring into his. “Yeah?”
He held my gaze as his brows pinched with something I could only define as worry, and then he said, “Be careful out there, all right?”
“I will,” I promised, unable to look away from the sincere concern in his eyes.
He swallowed another time, then licked his lips before saying, “I hope so. Please.”
***
I'd been driving for half an hour when the caffeine began to lose its effect. My eyelids felt heavy, my brain felt foggy, and I couldn't keep myself from yawning every other minute.
This was what I got for being unable to sleep last night, having nothing to think about but Meg and the baby we'd made. The one nestled deep in her belly right now.
Anxiety. Amazement. Gratitude. Excitement. Fear.
God, there were so many emotions to process, and my mind seemed to want to do it all at once instead of compartmentalizing and working on each individually at a reasonable pace.
But, fuck, there wasn't time to do that, was there?