Chapter 2
Emery
Present day, October
“If I were getting out of prison, the absolute last place I’d go is back to the town where everyone knows who I am,” Isla declares.
Standing at the kitchen window in her buffalo-plaid robe, strawberry-blond hair piled in a messy bun, coffee mug poised between her palms, my sixteen-year-old daughter is the quintessential nosy neighbor.
I can’t judge too harshly, though, given I’ve joined her to gawk at the black farm truck rolling up the kilometer-long Landry driveway, its headlights a dull glow in the misty morning.
Kingston is a solid seven-hour drive from Cold River without stops.
Holt left before dawn yesterday to get his son, with plans to return last night.
There must have been complications along the way.
“Where else is Logan supposed to go? He’s spent twenty years behind bars.
He has a criminal record he’ll never escape.
Who’s gonna hire him? Besides, imagine how much the world has changed.
” Logan was eighteen when he went away. I remember it well.
Netflix streaming didn’t exist. I had a flip phone, an iPod, and a shattered heart.
“The way I see it, coming home is his only option.”
Isla shakes her head, my attempt at inspiring empathy lost on her. “Cold River is too small. It’s all anyone’s going to talk about. I’m going to be asked a billion questions at school about the cop killer next door.”
“He didn’t kill anyone. And tell them to mind their damn business,” I mutter through a sip of my coffee.
She’s not wrong about the inevitable gossip, though.
The days are getting shorter. Frost-tipped grass and crisp air permeate the mornings these days.
In a few weeks, we’ll be living in single-digit daily high territory, which means the long, blistering cold months are around the corner.
The area’s social media pages will be bustling with complaints and chatter inspired by boredom, more so than usual.
With just under seven thousand people living in Cold River and the surrounding cluster of small towns, that’s a whole lot of bullshit swirling around.
“What if people are mean to the Landrys?” Isla pouts.
The ranchers have been a constant in her life, plying her with apple tarts and hay rides as a young child, inviting her to roam through their lives as freely as their actual grandchildren do.
This kid knows more about bison than I ever had any interest in learning in my youth.
She was helping to seed the fields behind the wheel of Holt’s tractor at twelve.
She works every weekend at their family-run farmer’s market.
“I’ll arrest anyone who’s mean to them. How about that?” I wink.
Blue eyes the color of forget-me-nots graze over my uniform. “Can you tase them while you’re at it?”
“I may lose my job, but for you, darling daughter, anything.” I smooth my hand over her back affectionately.
“And don’t worry. Holt and Annie can handle talk.
They’ve been handlin’ it for years.” When your two sons are caught with a truckload of contraband and the bust turns deadly, it’s not something you can escape, and especially not when you’re a Landry.
That family has lived in Cold River since the day the town was born in the early 1900s, settling as farmers in an area known for its glacially deposited rich clay soils.
Some say they are Cold River, so one son landing in prison and another in a casket was a shock to the entire community that has never quite settled.
Isla’s attention veers back out the window. Both our houses were built a good distance from the road—a plus for privacy but a pain in the snowy months when Holt literally digs us out with his plow. “Annie seems really excited.”
“She’s been waiting a long time for this day.” There’s no sign of her or the collies on the front porch yet. She probably fell asleep in the La-Z-Boy while watching the driveway.
“She has all his letters in a big box.” Isla emphasizes her words with wide eyes.
“I’ll bet.” I only ever got one letter from Logan. It was short and to the point:
Forget about me. Move on.
A tiny sting pricks my chest, but I shove the feeling aside and scold myself for my fleeting jealousy. If Logan was to keep in touch with any person, of course it should be his mother, the one person who refused to give up on him when everyone else did.
Even his own father wrote him off. As far as Holt was concerned, two sons died that night. He and Logan haven’t communicated much over the years, Holt too busy scrubbing bloodstains out of the Landry name.
But Annie? She wrote letters. Every Sunday, she would sit at her kitchen table with a cup of Earl Grey to jot down a rose-colored update about the goings-on at home, and then she’d drive to the post office on Monday morning to send it out.
The letters went unanswered for years, but Annie never wavered in her determination to keep a lifeline open for her surviving son.
Or for herself, perhaps. And then Logan finally wrote back.
Since then, they’ve exchanged regular updates about life on the ranch and life in the penitentiary—surely sanitized for a mother’s benefit.
Isla hesitates. “I asked her if she’s worried about, you know, how much prison has changed him.”
Leave it to my teenage daughter to broach the subject the rest of us have been avoiding like an open flame at a gasoline spill. “And?”
“She said she’s praying she’ll get some version of the boy she once knew.” Her brow furrows. “Do you think that’s possible?”
“Honestly, I don’t know.” What happens to a person after that many years behind bars? But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wish for the same thing, because that boy we all knew?
I was madly in love with him.
We watch the black truck approach the garage, and I wonder about the man it carries. Has Annie been hanging on to an impossible dream?
“I hope she’s not too disappointed,” Isla says through a pensive stare out the window, echoing my thoughts.
“Either way, that ranch is a lot of work, and it sounds like he’s ready to put in the effort.
” That’s what Annie told me when she confirmed his statutory release date a few months ago.
The Landrys have spent that time preparing the apartment above the garage where his sister Sarah and her husband Jon used to live so Logan can have some semblance of independence as a thirty-eight-year-old man who has spent more than half his life with none.
The truck comes to a stop.
Isla sets her mug down and, collecting my binoculars from the counter, presses them to her eyes to watch the spectacle.
“What on earth are you doing?” I say through a laugh. We’re not that far away.
“I’ve never seen a convict before.” She adjusts the focus on the lenses.
You’ve seen a few, I want to say, but that’s a can I’d rather not open. Besides, I know why she’s so curious. “Why are you so interested in him? Is this because of that picture of Logan on Annie’s mantel?”
She pauses her spying to flash me a grimace. “Ew.”
“What? He was hot. All the girls thought so.” Including your mother.
“Yeah, and now he’s, like, old. And a criminal. He’s an old criminal.”
“Fair enough.” To most sixteen-year-old girls, a man nearing forty may as well be geriatric. “So … how does he look? Besides old.” How has Logan aged, having spent two decades behind bars? Annie last made the trip to visit him six months ago. She said he seemed good—healthy and strong.
“I can’t tell. He’s got a baseball cap on.” She fiddles with the knobs. “Why are these so shitty?”
I bite my tongue against the urge to scold her for her language. She’s emerged from the emotional I-have-no-friends-and-my-life-sucks awkward teenager stage, and I’d rather she keep talking openly to me than go silent because I’ve pulled the mom card. “Because you dropped them.”
“Oh. Right.” She plays with the knobs some more. “Do you think he hooked up with a dude?”
“What?”
“In prison. You know, because of the sausage fest? Maybe he had a boyfriend.”
“Uh …,” I falter on my response.
“’Cause there aren’t any women to—”
“I get it.” It’s far too early for these kinds of questions. “If he did, good for him. That’s his business, not ours.”
Logan’s restrictions are standard: Check in with his parole officer, a curfew, and no drugs or alcohol.
I’m sure he’ll find his way to the Bale House—the popular local watering hole and pickup joint—to make up for all those years of forced abstinence.
I just hope he doesn’t break any rules while he’s at it because, as Cold River’s Ontario Provincial Police detachment commander, it puts me in a tough spot.
“Yeah, I know. I’m just—” Isla gasps and jumps back.
“What’s wrong?” Panic laces my voice.
“He looked right over here,” she hisses.
Shaking my head, I chastise, “All right, let them be. That family has a lot of catching up to do, and they don’t need an audience.”
Isla tosses the binoculars onto the counter, earning my glare of exasperation—it’s a wonder the lenses aren’t smashed. “Aren’t you going over there?”
“Now? No.” My pulse races with the idea of seeing Logan again after all these years. Isla’s inquisitive gaze bores into me.
I school my expression. “What time’s your game?”
“Two.”
“So, you need to leave here by eleven to make it for warm-up. Your dad knows this?” As Cold River’s mayor, Dillon gets caught up talking to people whenever he leaves his house and often loses track of time.
It’s a good thing he loves watching his daughter on the ice, so he’s usually reliable when it comes to her.
“Yes,” Isla says with forced patience, pouring herself another cup of coffee. “Donna’s taking me. She’s letting me drive too.”
“Well, that’s … good practice.” I smile, trying my best to sound positive. For all the things I dislike about Dillon’s new wife, I will admit she is a good stepmother.
“Only six more months until I get my G2 and then I can go wherever I want, whenever I want, without a babysitter.”
“With whose car?” If I had my way, Isla would keep her G1 learner’s designation for two more years before having that kind of freedom.
“Dad said I can have Grandpa’s.” She smiles smugly as she stoops to scratch Duke’s head. The retired K9 German shepherd spends his days commuting between the kitchen’s heat grate and the woodstove when it’s burning.
My expression sours. Why am I not surprised that Dillon would make that offer without discussing it with me first? I already know how the conversation will go. I supplied the car so you can pay for her insurance. It costs him nothing. Meanwhile, I have a new monthly bill.
Isla fills her fist with Cheerios before sauntering off with a haphazard “Love you!” tossed over her shoulder, the ties of her robe dragging along the weathered hardwood.
I watch her go with a mixture of awe and trepidation.
Six months until my baby is alone behind the wheel and my worries grow tenfold.
Less than two years before she’s packing her bags for university.
She’s made no secret of the schools she’s considering—York, Queen’s, Waterloo. All so far from home.
Only yesterday, she was a rambunctious seven-year-old, racing her bike down the driveway as fast as her feet could pedal. How did the years evaporate so quickly?
Maybe it’s because I spent so many of them “moving on.”
My attention veers out the window and across the field again, the itch to reach for those binoculars hard to ignore as I watch the silhouette in the distance.
Logan Landry still permeates all my earliest memories. He was quiet with strangers, kind of shy. Smart, but he hated school. Loved engines and horses and the wide open but couldn’t wait to get away from life on a ranch. And he idolized his idiot of an older brother.
As children, we rode the bus to school together and spent our summer days riding across the vast expanse of Landry land that surrounds us—and then some, much to the farmers’ annoyance. He was my sidekick, my companion, my twin in mischief. Eventually, he became my rock.
When we were thirteen, a coyote spooked my horse, and it tossed me from my saddle.
Logan, so much bigger than me already, cradled me in his arms as we rode home, his heart a steady, fast drumbeat against my cheek as he told me over and over in a voice that was deepening that I’d be okay, that my leg would mend, and the scrapes and bruises would vanish like they never existed.
That was the day I realized I was in love with my best friend.
I didn’t say a word about it—to him or anyone.
Things changed in high school. We were still best friends, but it didn’t feel the same.
Logan started chasing girls like Millie Crawford, who’d developed early and generously.
God, I hated her, and for no other reason than that she held his attention.
It wasn’t until the eleventh grade that Logan finally showed an interest in me that wasn’t platonic.
But all that was a lifetime ago. A distant memory, blurred by marriage and a baby, by divorce and death. All that’s left now are thoughts of what could have been.
With a sigh, I collect my keys and head for my SUV, focused on the day ahead.