Chapter 28 Lennon
TWENTY-EIGHT
LENNON
I want to cry as I see the two of them standing there. They carry around a lot of heaviness between them. It’s evident in the set of their shoulders, in the air around them. “It’s so nice to meet both of you.”
“No,” Claire says, reaching in to give me a hug.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you. I hear that we have you to thank for what’s going to be our permanent escape.
” She brushes a piece of hair back from her cheek.
“I have to say, when Shawn told me what you’d found out, there was a part of me that wasn’t exactly surprised.
I knew pretty early on that things weren’t what they seemed, but we were a family.
” She shrugs, and I know it’s something she’s used to doing.
“You don’t have to explain anything to me. You two are the ones who’ve been living it.”
I can imagine how difficult it’s been for the two of them. I know how hard life was for me with my parents, and it wasn’t nearly as bad as what the pictures we saw of them were.
“What happens now?” Claire asks.
Shawn rocks back on his heels, putting his hands in his pockets. “We can go watch the perp walk if you want. It’s happening in a few minutes. We can see it from here.”
There’s nothing I want more. “We can do it from the side porch. It can keep us hidden, and we can still watch it.”
The side porch is narrow and half-hidden behind a row of overgrown juniper bushes that nobody has gotten around to trimming since last fall.
Tommy stands between his mother and me. At some point in the last twenty minutes, he’d decided I was safe, and I’m not sure when exactly it happened, but it seems as if it did.
Kids do that. They make a quiet decision about you, and then they just lean into it.
His shoulder is pressed against my arm, and I don’t move away from it.
“There,” Carson says, low and even.
The state trooper SUV pulls to the curb, and I hold my breath as I watch the scene play out in front of me. Two troopers get out first, moving with the kind of practiced calm that means they’ve done this before and they intend to do it right. Then the back door opens.
Ethan Fury steps out into the winter afternoon.
My breath leaves me all at once.
I’ve seen him before, obviously. But now he looks very different from the man I’ve seen in uniform.
This time he’s in civilian clothes. I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed him wearing a pair of jeans.
The shackles on his wrists catch the light.
The ones around his ankles make him take short, shuffling steps.
It’s humiliating for him, and I feel that in my chest.
Not that I feel sorry for him. I don’t. Not even a little.
But there’s a difference between knowing something and watching it happen in real time, and right now I’m learning that difference firsthand.
“Oh my god,” Claire breathes beside me. It’s barely a sound at all.
Her hand comes up to cover her mouth, and she stands there watching with eyes that are wide and wet, and I don’t think she’s sad.
I think she’s finally exhaling something she’s been holding in for years.
This man was her husband and the father of her child.
It more than likely feels good and awful at the same time.
A small crowd has gathered on the courthouse steps. Word travels fast in a town like this, and it travels fastest when it’s a story nobody saw coming. I can see phones going up. People leaning toward each other. The low buzzing sound of a community in shock, finding its voice.
“He hates that,” Claire says quietly, and there’s something in her voice that might be the very beginning of satisfaction. “Being looked at like that. Being the one people are pointing at.” She pauses. “He’s spent his whole career being the one doing the looking.”
Tommy is very still beside me. I glance down at him, and he’s watching his father cross the courthouse steps with an expression I’ve seen on my own face.
I hate it because no eight-year-old should have to have an expression like that.
It’s too complicated. Too many things living in the same small face at the same time.
I reach down without thinking and take his hand.
He lets me.
We stand there and watch until Ethan Fury disappears through the courthouse doors, and then the crowd on the steps starts to break apart, people drifting away in twos and threes, already pulling up their phones to share what they just saw. By evening, every person in this county will know.
Shawn lets out a long breath. “That’s done,” he says. It’s not triumphant. It’s just final.
None of this is triumphant. It’s all just so fucking sad.
We go back inside, and the warmth of the office hits me all at once.
I hadn’t realized how cold I’d gotten standing out there.
Tommy drops my hand and moves back to his mother’s side, tucking himself under her arm, and she pulls him in without looking down, the automatic reflex of a woman who has made a habit of keeping her child close.
Shawn steps away to take a call, and Carson drifts toward the window, giving Claire and me a few feet of space the way good men do when they understand that certain conversations don’t need an audience.
Claire looks at me for a long moment. Her eyes are dry now, and there’s a strength in her face that wasn’t there when she first walked in this morning.
“I don’t know how to say this properly,” she starts.
“You don’t have to say anything.”
“I do.” She shakes her head. “I’ve been trying to find a way out for a long time.
Longer than I want to admit. And every time I thought I found a way, it disappeared, or I got scared, or I looked at Tommy and I couldn’t risk being wrong.
” Her voice catches just slightly, and she steadies it.
“You did it, though. You didn’t even know us, and you did it anyway. ”
My throat gets tight. “It’s nothing. I wish someone would have protected me like that when I was his age.”
“Don’t do that,” she says softly. “Don’t make it smaller than it is.
” She steps forward and wraps her arms around me, and I hug her back, this woman I hadn’t met before this morning, who has been surviving fucking hell while the rest of us went about our lives.
“We couldn’t have done any of this without you. I need you to hear that.”
I hold on for an extra second before I let go.
“What are you going to do now?” I ask her.
Something that might be the first real smile I’ve seen from her moves across her face. “My sister lives in Bozeman. Tommy and I are going there tonight.” She glances down at her son. “We’re going to figure out what normal looks like.”
“That sounds like the best thing the two of you can do right now,” I tell her.
Shawn pulls me over to the side for a quick second. “I just wanted you to know, they found the person who shot that day. You know when you thought someone was shooting at you?”
“I’d almost completely forgotten about that because so much stuff has happened.”
He chuckles. “It was another rancher putting down a wounded animal, and they got spooked. No one was shooting at you.”
I open my mouth, then close it, because I’m so surprised. “That’s the whole reason I’ve been with Carson,” I breathe out.
“Then I guess I’d say it was a blessing in disguise. Wouldn’t you?”
Carson is quiet as we walk to the truck.
He opens my door, waits until I’m settled, and closes it.
Then he goes around to his side and starts the engine.
We pull out of the parking lot, and for a few minutes neither of us says anything.
I think we’re both trying to figure out what the hell actually went on today.
The town moves past the windows. Everything looks the same as it did this morning, and nothing is the same as it was this morning.
“You okay?” Carson asks.
“Yeah.” I lean my head back against the seat. “Surprisingly, yeah.”
He reaches over and takes my hand, threading his fingers through mine, and rests them on his thigh. I look out the window and let the miles start to unwind the tension that’s been living in my shoulders for weeks.
After a while, Carson says, “You can drive yourself to work tomorrow.”
I turn to look at him. He’s watching the road, but there’s a looseness to his jaw that hasn’t been there in a while, and the hand on the wheel is easy. He’s relaxed. I haven’t seen him like this since this started.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He glances over, and the corner of his mouth lifts. “I think we can safely say the danger has been escorted into the courthouse in shackles.”
A laugh moves through me, the real kind, the kind that comes up from deep within your belly and catches you by surprise. It feels so good, I almost don’t know what to do with it. “I wasn’t expecting you to say that.”
“Don’t get used to it. Next time someone corrupt sets their sights on you, I’m driving again.”
“Noted.” I look out the window and watch the town give way to open road, the fields stretching out flat and wide on either side of us.
“Maybe I should go back to my apartment,” I say, and I’m not entirely sure why I say it.
It’s a reflex. Some old habit of building the walls back up the moment the immediate threat is over.
The truck doesn’t slow down, but Carson’s hand tightens around mine.
“Like hell you will.”
I look over at him.
His jaw is set, but his eyes, when they cut to mine, are warm, not hard. “You’re not going back to that apartment, Lennon. I don’t want to hear it.”
“Carson, I can’t just—”
“Live with the man who loves you?” He raises an eyebrow. “Can’t just do that?”
“It’s your family’s ranch.”
“It’s your home.” He says it like it’s already been decided, like the paperwork has been filed and the argument is closed.
“Has been since about thirty-six hours after you got there, if we’re being honest.” He brings our joined hands up and presses his mouth to my knuckles, brief and warm.
“The apartment will be there if you ever need it. But you won’t need it. ”
I look at him for a long moment. This man, who told me he’d catch me every time.
Who sat in that office with me this morning and talked about his parents like they were a precious memory he’s been carrying for years.
Who reached for my hand in a parking lot before the world changed and held on through all of it.
The independent part of me is very quiet right now.
“Okay,” I say.
He glances over. “Okay?”
“Don’t make me say it again.”
That smile breaks across his face, slow and full, the one that does something to my chest every single time. “Yes, ma’am,” he says, and turns his eyes back to the road.
And I let him drive us home.