Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Dixon
Shit.
“Shit. Shit. Shit.”
Walking in the opposite direction, I was lost. Something about AJ was my compass. Hurting her, owing her amends was unacceptable. For her and for me. She had no idea how much she’d shaped my recovery. And now, here she was, all perfect and pristine, a petite wonder.
She didn’t deserve the confusion I’d just caused her.
“Shit.”
I rounded the end of the block and headed back the way I’d just come, and when I got to the Darbys’ fence, I walked faster, trying to avoid the sleepy, prying eyes of neighbors.
I still remembered where AJ’s Gran had lived when we were in middle school, after AJ’s granddad died and they sold their farm.
AJ and her mom had moved in with Gran in her downtown bi-level soon after that, and it had put an end to my nightly wandering, when I’d curl up in her grandpa’s barn and wait for her to find me.
Three generations of Harlowe women in one square block? The world better look out ’cause that was enough power to fuel a rocket. I wasn’t at all surprised that AJ had taken over the flower shop, and I wasn’t surprised that it was successful and thriving.
Standing outside her Gran’s gate, I used a breathing technique to slow my heart.
AJ said she lived out back in the guest house, but I felt like a prowler walking back there uninvited. Her family probably wouldn’t recognize me in the dark if they woke up and spotted my ass in their yard.
But this was too important, so I opened the gate, walked quietly to the path that led to the backyard, and followed the worn stones.
An orange and white cat peeked its head out of some kind of low bramble bush, and as I walked, she followed carefully, but every time I turned to get a look at her, she darted back into the leaves.
Quietly, I asked, “Is this your mama’s house?”
She peeked out again and then emerged, but she kept a careful distance and stayed low to the ground, ready to run if she needed to.
“C’mon then. Follow me home, kitty kitty. That bush can’t be comfortable. Look at all its spikes.”
The garden alongside AJ’s cottage was a thing of whimsical dreams, especially in the dark and bathed in moonlight.
I had no idea the names of the flowers blooming there, but they were delicate and beautiful, and Kitty rubbed against them as she followed me down the path.
The greenery looked lush and healthy, and a flashback of AJ and me in this yard when we were ten or eleven came at me so fast, it left me flat-out gasping:
“Do you know my dad?” AJ had asked me.
I shook my head as I crouched by the fir tree behind her gran’s house and fiddled with my shoelace, which had come undone again.
No matter how many times I tied the dang thing, it always unraveled.
Mama would be mad if I was late when she came to pick me up at the library, and if I had to stop twenty times to tie my shoes, I’d be late for sure.
“He’s gone,” AJ said, “but I thought you might’ve met him before he left.”
“I don’t think so.”
She shrugged, and tendrils of her golden hair bounced on her shoulders.
Centering myself in front of her door, the memory dissipated, Kitty rubbed against my boot, and I knocked softly. When AJ opened it slowly, looking like a spooked lamb, Kitty slipped inside and disappeared.
“Please forgive me,” I said, but my eyes were already scanning the inside of her cottage behind her, and the scared look on her face told me something more was wrong than it had been earlier. Very wrong. “What happened here?”
Glancing over her shoulder, she shrugged just like that day all those years ago.
“Has someone been in here?” I asked.
“I’m not sure. It could’ve been the wind.”
“Did you leave your windows open?” I asked as I stepped forward over the threshold, and AJ stepped back to allow me in.
“No. The air’s on.”
“So then how did that vase end up on your floor?” I said, pointing at a crystal vase that had fallen off AJ’s hall table and splintered into chunks that now lay in a pool of water on the hardwood.
The bushy, yellow flowers that had sat in the vase looked like they’d been ripped apart and strewn all over the place, which led my eyes to a four-seater dining table that had been upended.
“And why is your dinner table layin’ on its side? ”
She chewed the inside of her lip and focused on the door behind me.
“AJ?”
Sighing, she turned to walk into her living room, and I followed and watched her kick off her shoes, plop onto her couch, and tuck her feet beneath her. “I think it’s that guy I told you about. Cody.”
“You think he broke in?”
She shrugged again.
“AJ, say somethin’. Stop shruggin’. It tells me nothin’.”
“Yes, I think he might’ve been in here. He’s mad that I broke things off with him. Well, not mad exactly, more like unhinged.”
“What does that mean?”
She shook her head and pointed to the opposite end of the couch.
“Hold on,” I said. “Have you checked the rest of your house?”
“Of course I did. There’s no one else here but you and me.”
“Okay, good.”
Awareness of how much I didn’t fit into her beautiful home itched under my skin as I sat.
Except for the vase and upended table, her place was clean and organized.
The six-year-old AJ I remembered had left her mark all around me in sweet colors and light wood tones, framed photos of wildflowers on her walls, and accents of plush, soft pillows and fabrics.
It didn’t feel expensive exactly, more like homey and girly.
I sat, but I couldn’t relax. By just sitting on her overstuffed, light-colored couch, it felt like I was painting her world with my dark influence.
“We dated for a couple years,” she said, “but I broke it off because things were goin’ nowhere between us.
He wasn’t invested in our relationship. He acted like I was just a fill-in girlfriend until the woman he really wanted to marry came along.
His parents are rich, and he told me once that they expect him to marry a rich woman.
I don’t know. It all seemed so stupid to me.
You love who you love. Who cares if they’re rich or poor?
“Anyway, after a while, it seemed like maybe he’d bought into all that stupidity. He was always lookin’ at other women. He even flirted with them when we went out. Like, right in front of me. So finally, I broke up with him.”
Hearing her talk about this douchebag pissed me off, but I was still confused. “So then why would you think he was here?”
“I told you I blocked his number, but every time I do, he gets a new number, and then the calls start up again. Gran and your sister think I should get a restraining order against him.”
“Wait. Abey knows about this guy?”
“Yeah. I called her the last time things escalated with Cody. He showed up here and wouldn’t leave, so I locked the door and called the station, and your sister and Deputy Roxi came out.
He was gone by the time they got here, and until tonight, I didn’t think he’d been around. But now I’m not so sure.”
“You have your phone on you now?” I asked.
“Yeah, of course.”
“Call my sister right now.”
“It’s so late, Dixon. I don’t wanna bother her, and Cody’s not here now. What’s the point?”
“AJ, the point is that someone else needs to know he was here. All this stuff adds up. The calls, the mess,” I said, swinging my arm out in the direction of the broken vase.
“Abey will want to know he was here. And if she can prove it was him somehow, then you can get that restraining order easy. Call her, please.”
I’d been holding out on getting my own damn phone, but now I knew I needed one. If I’d had one tonight, I would’ve already called Abey.
“Fine.” AJ sighed again heavily, then lifted up on her knees to reach her cell phone in her back pocket. She tapped it a few times as she settled on the couch again, moving inches closer to me. I scooted over, too, until we were shoulder to shoulder as she waited for Abey to answer her phone.
Abey must’ve been dead asleep because she didn’t answer, so AJ left a message.
“Hi, Sheriff. Um, it’s Avery Jane… from the flower shop?
Anyway, your brother’s at my house and he said I should call you.
That guy, you remember from last time, Cody Mahone?
I think he’s been in my house. I’m totally fine.
There’s just a broken vase, but Dixon said you should know so… now you do. Thanks. Okay, bye.”
“It’s not just a vase, AJ,” I said when she hung up and set her phone on the coffee table in front of us. “We should check the rest of your house.”
“Why? I think he broke in and figured out I wasn’t home and then he left.”
“Yeah,” I said, a little overly dramatic, but she didn’t seem to be getting the severity of the situation, “but he might’ve stolen somethin’, and if he didn’t, then what the hell were his intentions for breakin’ in?
Have you thought about that?” But then something occurred to me.
“You were angry earlier outside Mrs. Ellison’s. Why?”
She waved her hand in front of her chest, like she could wave this jerk out of her life. “Oh, he called. I didn’t answer ’cause I figured it was him, but he kept callin’. I blocked that number, but then immediately, my phone rang again, and it was a different number. It could be totally random.”
“Look at me.”
She did. Her wary but beautiful hazel eyes focused on mine as she leaned her head on the back of the couch and looked up at me.
She must’ve recognized the seriousness on my face because she whispered, “I know, Dixon. It was him. You’re right.
It’s just that I don’t know what to do about it. I just want him to go away.”
That can be arranged.
AJ’s phone rang, and we both jumped. “Sheriff Lee” flashed on the lit screen, and for a split second, I thought my sister had heard my silent vow to kill a man I’d never even met.
Okay, maybe kill was a little dramatic, but I was ready to fuck the guy up if he came back.
Probably not my best idea, considering my history, but this was AJ.
She was innocent. She didn’t deserve this bullshit.
She answered the phone, and I stood and looked around, hoping she didn’t notice my nosiness as the overprotectiveness that it was.
Quietly, I checked inside closets. I poked my head in her kitchen, then her bedroom and the bathroom across the hall, looking for anything out of place.
Her sheets were messed up, and her happy wildflower scent was palpable in her bedroom.
I wanted to go in there and coat myself in it so I could carry it with me when I went back to my empty, bleak room at the boarding house.
“No, I didn’t see him,” she said to Abey, and she listened as my sister asked questions.
I couldn’t hear what she was asking AJ, but I thought I could read the tone of Abey’s voice, and it was very sheriff-y and all business.
“Oh, um, I went for a walk,” AJ said, “’cause my phone kept ringin’.
The same number’s been callin’, three days in a row now.
I couldn’t go back to sleep tonight, so I went for a walk and ran into Dixon by Mrs. Ellison’s house.
We, eh, talked for a few minutes, and then I came home.
But Dixon forgot to tell me somethin’ so he followed me home, and that was when he saw the mess on the floor.
Whoever was here knocked my dinner table on its side. ”
Abey talked for a minute, and then AJ sounded anxious when she said, “That’s really not necessary. I’m fine.”
Flipping on her bathroom light, I checked in there, looked behind the dark-green shower curtain with white daisies all over it and opened the lighted medicine cabinet over the sink. Everything looked normal, or at least what I imagined was normal for AJ.
As I closed the cabinet, it occurred to me that there were two orange bottles of medication in there, but I hadn’t read the labels.
In my old life, that was the first thing I would’ve done, and if the medications were for pain or anxiety, no matter what they were or why they had been prescribed, I would’ve pocketed them.
When I walked back to the couch, AJ looked uneasy. “Your sister’s on her way. I told her she didn’t need to come, but she insisted.”
“Good. Everything else looks okay,” I said, “but you should check, too, in case I missed somethin’. And you should ask your mama and gran if they saw anything.”
AJ stood. “No. I’m not wakin’ them up. I’ll ask in the mornin’.”
“Too late for that,” a female voice said from the doorway. AJ’s gran smiled at me, and she and AJ’s mama walked into the house, their heads swiveling back and forth as they took in the mess.
AJ’s mama, Miss Belinda, rushed past me and hugged AJ close. “Are you okay, Avery Jane? Why on earth did you take off your shoes? There’s glass everywhere.”
When Belinda said it, I felt like an idiot because I hadn’t thought of it first. What kind of dad could I ever be if I couldn’t even warn a grown woman to keep her shoes on so she didn’t cut her feet?
“Oh.” AJ glanced at her feet, but then she looked up so she could try to pacify her family. “I’m fine, Mama. I promise. I’m sorry I woke you.”
“You didn’t wake us. Gran and I were already up because we heard a car peel out in front of the house about twenty minutes ago. I wanted to call the sheriff, but Gran said we didn’t really have anything to report except some noise.”
Gran Harlowe sighed in the doorway. She’d aged, but she was still beautiful to me. The sound of her voice held kindness like it always had. “Obviously I was wrong about that,” she said. “Dixon, it’s nice to see you again. I thought that was you the other mornin’, but you’re all grown up now.”
“Yes, ma’am. Nice to see you too.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re here. I feel better knowin’ Avery Jane has a friend around in case that asshole comes back.”
Miss Belinda scoffed at the curse, which was true to my memory of her.
She’d always been harder to win over. Trust didn’t come as easy to her as it had to AJ’s gran.
But I was in complete agreement. Just as it crossed my mind that I wasn’t AJ’s protector, that I couldn’t be, her mama looked back at me, and in her eyes, I saw doubt.
She didn’t think I was AJ’s best choice for a protector either.
“I’ll wait on the porch for the sheriff,” I said. “’Scuse me.”