4. Reed
Reed saluted his good friends, Dustin and Sara, and joined them at the bar of their favorite local watering hole.
“Well, look at this suit walking in here. You’re way overdressed for this place,” Dustin said before throwing back the last of the bourbon in his glass.
“Stop it,” Sara warned with a nudge to his arm. “It looks good on you, Reed. Much better than that ugly brown uniform you used to wear.”
She had made no secret over the years how grateful she was that, as a firefighter, she got to wear navy and gray instead of the drab beige and brown he wore at the sheriff’s department. And as for Dustin, as a mechanic at Reed’s father’s body shop, anything more than coveralls was fancy to him.
“Hey stranger!” Willa smiled brightly as she returned to her spot behind the bar after dropping off a round of drinks at the table in the corner. “Dev!”
Her husband popped his head out from the service window behind the bar, probably expecting her to call in an order to the kitchen, but he looked pleasantly surprised to see his best friend sitting down at the bar instead of a new check hanging on the rack.
“Good evenin’, everybody.” Reed hung his gray suit coat over the back of his bar stool and loosened the tie around his neck as he sat.
Dev joined Willa behind the bar. His Braves hat was turned backwards and his white apron was pristine since it was early in the evening. “How’s the city treating you, man?”
“It’s been interesting so far,” Reed answered distractedly, his attention focused on Dustin’s face as he slipped his loosened tie over his head and attempted to slide the knot up to tighten it.
“Get that damn thing off me.” Dustin batted Reed away and immediately went to work undoing the tie from his neck. “I still don’t get why you’re doing all this.”
“He’s doing this so he can come back here and clean this town up,” Willa said pointedly. “For us, for sweet Gracie and Lily, and for all of our future babies.”
Willa glanced at Dev as she placed a drink in front of Reed and refilled Dustin’s empty glass with her best bottle of bourbon. Her regular patrons were too cheap to pay for top shelf booze, so she always ended up giving it away to them rather than let it collect dust, hence why Dev and Willa’s bar was their favorite…even if it was the only one in town.
“Don’t you get any ideas with that baby talk now,” Dustin said to Sara.
“Stop.” She swatted at her boyfriend’s arm again. “You are coming back, Reed, aren’t you?”
“Oh, I’m definitely coming back,” he assured her after taking his first sip. “This is home.”
Sitting there with his closest friends, the top button of his dress shirt undone, and sleeves rolled up, he finally felt like himself for the first time this week. In fact, he had never felt more certain about who he was or where he belonged in his life.
This was a scene he hoped would play out a few times a week for the rest of his years once this associateship and then his last year of law school were over. After working as a sheriff’s deputy for three years, he grew accustomed to life as a full-fledged adult, so going back to school felt like going backwards, but he kept reminding himself it would be worth it. Twenty-eight would be a good year.
“Good.” Willa leaned in, resting her arms on the bar. “So now that I know we’re not gonna lose you, I wanna hear all about your fancy office.”
“It’s…” Reed chuckled to himself as he struggled to find a way to describe the new digs that he found a bit soulless compared to the old brick buildings that lined Main Street in Clayville. “Shiny? I don’t know. There’s a lot of glass and steel around there. I’m on a high floor overlooking the city, so I can see Stone Mountain on a clear day which is kinda cool. There’s a coffee machine in the breakroom that I still haven’t figured out how to work yet.”
“And the people?” Dev asked.
“They’re nice enough.”
“Well, that’s a ringing endorsement if I ever heard one,” Dustin observed.
“She’s—” He stopped himself. He didn’t even know how he felt about Maya because she had her guard up around him despite his best efforts to get to know her. “It’s just a different world. I’m gonna take the experience and the sorely needed cash, and never look back. But enough about that. I wanna hear what I’ve been missing around here.”
“Nothing,” Sara said. “Same old shit as always.”
Her response was met with a grunt from Dustin and crickets from Willa and Dev. There was a certain charm in things staying the same while his world was barely recognizable lately.
“I’m working on some stuff for the new menu,” Dev offered. “I haven’t perfected the recipes yet, but I’d be happy to make you something.”
“I’m good,” Reed answered, bringing his hand to his belly. It wasn’t Dev’s cooking that was in question since he was a classically trained chef with high hopes of making the town’s local bar and grill into a destination restaurant for locals and tourists alike. “I had a big lunch today. Still full.”
“Whatever, skinny. Let him make you something,” Willa insisted.
“Willa, you heard the man, he’s full. All that caviar and fwar grar,” Dustin teased in his terrible attempt at a French accent. “Right, Reed?”
Reed remained tight-lipped and shook his head.
“You did not.”
“I might have. They were just puttin’ things in front of me, and I had no clue what half of it was. The only things I could make out were the steak and potatoes.”
Willa dropped her head into her hands. “He’s not coming back.”
“He’s coming back!” Dev placed a comforting hand on his wife’s back. “Right, Reed?”
“I am. I swear.”
* * *
After saying his goodbyes, Reed walked a few blocks off Main Street to a small white bungalow with green shutters that had been his second home growing up. He peered through the glass panel on the side door, catching the eye of the willowy brunette in the kitchen. She smiled and waved him in.
“Hey Reed.” She opened her arms and greeted him with a hug.
“Hey Cammie.” He glanced around the kitchen that looked in more disarray than the usual post-dinner mess. All of the cabinets were open and a pile of old newspapers and a couple open cardboard boxes sat on the dining table. “How are you?”
She shrugged as her eyes followed his to the boxes. “I’ve been better. I don’t think I realized how hard this part would be.”
“I’m sorry.” It was woefully inadequate, but it’s all he could think to say. He was sorry to see his brother and Cammie splitting up after so many years together. He hated seeing the woman who he loved like an older sister looking sad. He hated seeing the beloved brother he had looked up to his entire life looking like a shell of himself. And most of all, his heart was broken for his nieces.
“I know,” Cammie said with a sigh. She grabbed another mug from the cabinet and started wrapping it in newspaper.
“Are Gracie and Lily here?”
“No, they’re with your parents for the night. I didn’t want them seeing all of this.”
Reed agreed. It was hard enough for him to see the dismantling of their family home, he couldn’t imagine how it would be for the girls. He lifted the white paper bag in hand and offered it to her. “Well, Willa sent over some cookies for them.”
“That Willa.” Cammie took the bag from him and shook her head. “She gave the girls chocolate milk and cake when we stopped by for lunch the other day. It took me an extra hour to get them to bed that night. When she and Dev have babies, she better watch out. I’ll spoil those kids rotten like she does mine.”
The thought earned a small smile. “That’ll be a site to see…is Emmett here?”
“Yeah, he’s back in the bedroom.”
Reed patted Cammie’s shoulder as he left the kitchen and walked toward the hallway that led to the bedrooms. The family pictures that lined the walls were still in place, thank goodness. He made a mental note to make sure that Emmett had a similar gallery wall at his new place. As he came to the door of the primary suite, he found his brother in front of his dresser, drawers all ajar, some emptied and some still full. The bed had a few open suitcases and duffel bags on it.
Emmett was ten years older than him, but their resemblance was strong. It was clear that they were brothers, even though Emmett’s light brown curls were now peppered with gray hairs and the plump cheeks of his twenties had given way to sharper lines and angles in his late thirties. Emmett’s life had always seemed ideal to him. A hometown boy getting it right by sticking around, serving his community, and having a beautiful family. Reed always felt like there was something wrong with him that he couldn’t make that same life work for himself, but now the illusion was shattered because even Emmett couldn’t make it work.
“Hey.”
Emmett glanced up and caught him in the mirror before turning. “Hey. Lookin’ like a lawyer if I’ve ever seen one.”
Reed looked down at his now creased slacks and tieless white dress shirt. It was a far cry from this morning’s buttoned-up look, but still not his typical attire. “Fake it ‘til you make it, right?”
“Don’t I know it,” Emmett huffed.
Reed walked into the room and now saw the full mess with cardboard boxes lining the floor on the other side of the bed. “How’s packing going?”
“Good.” It didn’t ring true coming from his mouth. “I’ll take a few small loads over to the new place this week, and then if you could still help me move the big stuff with your truck this weekend, I should be moved out by Sunday.”
“Of course. Anything you need.”
“Thank you,” Emmett said as he moved a pile of clothes from the dresser to the nearest suitcase. “It never fails to amaze me that it’s the baby of the family who has his shit together.”
If circumstances were different, Reed would crack open a beer and plop down on his couch to tell him how this new internship had him feeling outclassed and questioning whether he actually had what it took to be the kind of district attorney this town needed, but he’d save that for another day. “Yeah, I don’t know about that, but I was fortunate to learn a lot from my big brother.”
“Speaking of big brothers, Nate called me the other night. Did he reach out to you?”
Nathaniel was the oldest of the three Stanton brothers, and still something of a legend in the town. Valedictorian of his high school class, quarterback of the state championship winning high school football team, prom king, and an Eagle Scout to top it off. There wasn’t a day that went by that somebody didn’t ask how Nate was doing, and Reed always had to give a generic “well, thanks for asking” because he simply didn’t know.
Nate left for college in Illinois when Reed was just five years old. After that he was on to medical school in Oregon where he stayed to practice emergency medicine, so he never made it home for holidays because of his work schedule. Since he was only a few years older than Emmett, they had time to form some kind of relationship, but Reed hardly knew his older brother at all.
“He’s thinking about moving home.”
“Seriously?”
“That’s what he said. Apparently one of the big hospitals in Atlanta wants to reopen the old Carter County General Hospital that shuttered a few years ago, and they need an ER doc. I’m havin’ trouble believing it myself.”
“That’d be somethin’.” Reed had pretty much written off any chance of having a relationship with his oldest brother at this point, never mind having all three of them in the same town together again. He’d welcome it, of course, but it would almost be like starting from scratch. Last his brother knew, Reed was commandeering the TV to watch Thomas the Tank Engine and playing T-ball every Saturday morning. “I bet mom and dad are thrilled.”
“I’m not sure if they know, so just keep it between you and me. It’d crush them if it fell through.”
“I won’t say a word,” Reed promised.
Reed stuck around for another hour to help Emmett and Cammie finish up the bulk of the packing before heading home to brush up on criminal law before tomorrow morning. He wanted to start day three on the best foot possible.