Chapter 16 Willa
WILLA
The campground felt different once the chairs were gone.
Willa worked alongside Margo at the food tables, stacking empty platters and folding the white linen covers that had been pressed and arranged so carefully that morning.
Around them, a small team of volunteers was dismantling the seating rows and returning the grounds to their ordinary state.
The sound of it, the scrape of chairs and the low voices alongside the occasional burst of laughter from the teenagers still gathered near the treeline, was the particular sound of a community that had done something hard together and was finding its way back to the ordinary afternoon on the other side of it.
Willa glanced toward where Grace was helping Harvey coil extension cords with the focused, methodical attention she brought to practical tasks.
Beside Harvey, Penny was handing him cable ties from an open box, and the two of them were talking with an ease that Willa hadn’t noticed between them before today.
She frowned slightly.
Mina had said something at one of the earlier meetings to Harvey about Penny being a far more suitable match for him than Sienna.
Willa hadn’t thought much of it at the time.
She filed it away now, intending to speak to Mina when the opportunity arose.
Mina didn’t say things like that without a reason, and Willa wanted to know why she didn’t like or trust Sienna.
“You’ve gone quiet,” Margo observed from beside her, folding a linen cover into thirds with practiced efficiency.
“I’m thinking,” Willa replied.
“About Ace,” Margo said. It wasn’t a question.
Willa didn’t answer immediately. She stacked another platter and looked across the emptying campground to the spot where the table had been, where they’d all sat together after the ceremony with pie, coffee, and the particular, fragile relief of a day that had gone the way it was supposed to go.
Ace had come back from the phone call he’d mysteriously taken as a different person.
Willa had noticed the difference in him the moment he’d returned to the table.
There was a shift in Ace, the way he’d settled back into his chair with a quality of distance that hadn’t been there before.
He’d said the right things and responded when spoken to, but he’d been elsewhere in some way she couldn’t quite put a finger on.
When Willa asked him to come to dinner that evening, after mentioning that Margo was bringing the leftovers and everyone was coming back to hers, he had turned her down.
Quite abruptly, and it had cut through her as he’d so carelessly said he had other plans.
After that, he’d left without the usual, I’ll call you later.
Ace had just gotten up, said thanks for the ceremony, and didn’t even check if she had a lift back, as he’d brought her to the memorial. He’d just left!
Ginny had wondered aloud whether Ace might have gotten some bad news about his grandmother in Miami.
Margo had suggested an unexpected air cargo run.
Both of them had offered their theories with the careful kindness of people who understood that something had shifted and weren’t sure how to account for it, while being mindful of Willa’s feelings.
She had said nothing. All Willa had done was fake-smile, hoping it looked real, and agree with both possibilities.
She’d been so relieved when it was time to clean up the grounds, she’d nearly knocked her chair over to get up and start working.
Anything to keep Willa’s mind off why Ace had suddenly just gone so cold.
He’d never in all the years she’d known him done that.
Even after she’d abruptly walked away from him when Ace had admitted he had feelings for her in the cave, he had never been so cold and aloof.
Willa was helping Margo pack up the leftover food, pies, and snacks when Sienna appeared at the end of the refreshments table.
Sienna looked at the remaining pies, then at Margo, with the expression of someone who had decided in advance how this interaction would go.
“Do you have a caramel pie left?” Sienna asked Margo pleasantly, knowing full well there were three left and were right there in front of her. “I’d love to buy one. Ace is coming over for dinner tonight, and it’s his favorite.”
The words were aimed at Willa as directly as a thrown object, and Sienna made no effort to disguise it. Her eyes moved to Willa’s face the moment she’d finished speaking, then stayed there with the patience of someone waiting to observe the impact of something they’d just said.
Margo’s posture changed beside Willa. It was subtle, but Willa felt it as her friend stiffened.
“I’m sorry,” Margo replied, her voice entirely pleasant and what Willa knew to be just as fake. “I don’t have any available.”
Sienna looked at the table. “There are three right there.” She pointed to the pies.
“They’re not for sale,” Margo told her, standing her ground.
“They have price tags on them,” Sienna noted. “Right there on the packaging.”
“They’ve been sold,” Willa said, before she’d made a conscious decision to speak. “I bought them.”
Sienna’s eyes moved back to Willa with a slow, uncomplimentary, deliberate sweep.
“Should you really be eating such sweet things?” Sienna asked, her voice laced with a soft viciousness while her eyes blazed with their cruel intent.
Willa opened her mouth to speak, but Margo got there first.
“Should you be wanting caramel pie, Sienna?” Margo replied with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“Your mother always worried about you taking after your father’s side of the family.
Something about the heavier genes on that side.
” She gave Sienna the same sweeping look she’d just given Margo.
“You are looking a little bloated. I guess you’re able to eat what you want now that your mother is out of town and not here to stop you. ”
The campground seemed to go quieter around them.
Willa pressed her lips together. Part of her wanted to laugh, and part of her was aware that the two of them had just reverted to a mode of interaction she hadn’t engaged in since she was seventeen years old. She was about to say something that would end it cleanly when Sienna spoke again.
“Fine.” Sienna straightened up with the practiced ease of someone reclaiming the high ground.
“I’ll find one at the grocery store.” She smiled, and the smile had nothing warm in it whatsoever.
“Or maybe I’ll pick one up in Gainesville tomorrow night after the concert.
” Her eyes moved between Willa and Margo.
“Ace and I have been looking forward to it all week, and we’ll be having a romantic picnic dinner after it. ”
She turned and walked away with the unhurried confidence of someone who knew the words would land and didn’t need to stay to watch.
Margo watched her go.
Then she turned to Willa with an expression that was equal parts fury and regret.
“I’m sorry,” Margo said quietly. “I shouldn’t have said what I said. That was beneath both of us.” She paused. “But now we know why Ace acted so strangely after that phone call.”
“Yes,” Willa agreed. “He was preoccupied with his dates.”
She picked up the nearest platter, carried it to the supply box where Willa stood with her back to the table for a moment, letting the quiet sit in her chest, where the pain was trying to make itself at home.
Willa drew in a deep breath, squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, deciding that she wasn’t going to let this cause her any distress. She and Ace hadn’t committed to anything yet. He was still free to do what he wanted and with whom he wanted. It was none of Willa’s business.
She set the platter down and went back to help Margo finish cleaning and packing up.
Rad
Rad got back to the station at half past four, still in his dress uniform.
He’d kept it on through the cleanup, the goodbyes, and the drive back into town because changing had seemed like an unnecessary detour when there was work waiting as there always was.
Just because it was Memorial Day didn’t mean he didn’t have to report to duty afterward.
Rad sat down at his desk, loosened his collar slightly, and pulled his laptop toward him.
He’d attended a lot of memorials in his career.
They were part of the job in law enforcement, just as difficult conversations and cold coffee were.
It was something you learned to carry properly because the alternative was letting it carry you.
Today had been different. Rad hadn’t known Shaun Parker or the other firefighters personally.
He’d met Gilbert Fry a handful of times when Gilbert had been working a cold case out of New York that had briefly overlapped with Rad’s own caseload.
He’d found Gilbert to be sharp, persistent, and the kind of investigator who didn’t let things go until they’d given him what he needed.
The man deserved to have his name on that stone.
Rad was glad it was there.
He opened his laptop, pulled up his work email, and started moving through the day’s accumulation. Most of it was routine. A report request from the county. A scheduling update. A notification from records.
Then Rad saw it.
The email sat in his inbox with the particular weight of something he’d set in motion himself and had subsequently tried not to think about too directly.
Guilt moved through him the moment he registered it, a clean, uncomfortable wave of it that he didn’t try to deflect because he’d earned it and he knew he’d earned it.
What he’d done had violated at least three departmental policies. Possibly more. If his father found out, the conversation that followed would not be a short one.
Rad stared at the email without opening it.