Chapter 55
SATURDAY
Eight hours later, I slip my hand around my coffee mug.
The inch or so of cool brown liquid ripples inside.
I shouldn’t have drunk the acidic brew on an empty stomach and certainly shouldn’t have had two refills.
But I have no appetite. None of us do. My fingers itch to pick up Clint’s phone, lying on the Formica table next to me. I’ll check it again soon.
“So, you’re certain Dave had nothing to do with this?” I ask across the booth.
“Dave is in the dark. You have to understand, I never intended for any of this to happen.” Candace speaks just above a whisper.
“We don’t have to understand anything about you, Candy.” Clint spits his words.
We agreed to meet this morning. The four of us. Clint seems to keep forgetting that we just need to get the information and leave.
“Please, call me Candace.” This is not the first time she’s made this request. Each time with the same measure of patience.
Clint scoffs.
Candace tries something different this time.
“I know, Clint. I was a wounded creature when we knew each other. I won’t pile it on, but my home was not a safe place for a small girl.
I learned quickly to eat or be eaten. My dad and brothers were proud of the rough, take-no-prisoners young woman I grew into.
My one rebellion was joining the Air Force instead of the Marines. ”
Clint’s face is hard, but he’s not interrupting her.
“Remember that mutt that followed me around the end of our senior year?”
Clint’s eyes squint as if he’s looking deep into his past. “Squirrel?”
“Yeah, Squirrel. Stupid name for a dog, but he was a stupid dog. I told my dad that I did everything I could to get rid of him, but I was secretly feeding him behind the old Chevy. When I got home from graduation, Squirrel failed to meet me at the end of the drive. No one had come to see me toss my square hat and now, not even my stupid dog wanted me. As I got closer to the house, I could somehow hear her cries through all the shouting. They’d set up a dogfight in the backyard.
Squirrel was a pit bull with as much aggression as a stuffed koala.
I shoved those idiots out of my way, scooped her up, and walked her to the animal hospital on Ward, near the high school. ”
Lucas murmurs something, but Candace continues.
“I knew the vet thought I’d sanctioned the fight.
I also knew nothing I could say would change his mind.
He saw the person he wanted to see, but he also saved my dog.
Anyway, I told him to adopt her out. I enlisted in the Air Force and was on a bus to San Antonio before the ink was dry.
I’ve been back home only once since then. ”
“Got more joe for y’all.” Our waitress, her hair scraped back into a bun, fills up our coffees yet again. “Still able to resist the call of the bacon and the smell of the sausage?”
“Can I get an ice water?” I slide my mug away.
“You know, I will take an egg, bacon, and toast platter,” Clint announces as if proposing a peace deal with a rogue nation. Perhaps that’s what it is.
“I’ll have the same.” Lucas shuts the menu he snagged from the wire holder in front of the window.
Candace and I order as well.
The waitress nods as she scribbles on her pad. “Back in a jiff.”
“Honestly, Candy, Candace, whatever, you can tell us anything you want. I’m always going to remember the girl who stole Kimmie’s new lunch box, the only new thing we ever saw her with. And when you were forced to return it, you set it on fire with a Roman candle.”
Candace’s eyes glisten in the harsh fluorescent lighting.
“I don’t care if you’ve become a Missionary of Charity; I need to know how to keep my family safe from online predators, nasty people with spray paint, and bad actors at Garman Straub.
So, unless you can tell us more about what is happening and how you’re involved, I’m not interested in either one of you.
” A ropy vein pulses down the left side of my husband’s temple.
As sure as he sounds, this meeting with the two of them is taking a toll.
“I want to tell you everything I know, but I’m certain you don’t trust me.” Candace leans over her crossed arms on the table.
Clint widens his eyes at her blunt logic.
“Lucas mentioned that you know about my arrest in the Air Force—”
“I. Don’t. Care.” Clint glances toward his phone and then at me. He’s ready to leave.
I lean back in the booth and find Clint’s hand with mine.
“Two more minutes, and then I’ll answer anything. First, you saw the article in the Windham Eagle?” Candace asks.
“Erika found it,” I say.
Candace winces.
“I never lied to you, Meredith. The story I told at dinner was the truth. But the other story is that my brothers came to visit when I got back, and I ended up defending those drunk imbeciles. A couple of civilians got hurt, and there was damage to a local bar. The investigation dragged on, and I went home. Kimmie wrote that article before I was cleared. Clint was right, blowing up her lunch box was a boneheaded thing to do, and she’s never forgotten it.
“The Air Force taught me a lot of things. Most good. I learned the importance of truth. I learned chain of command. And I thought I learned discernment in the lending of my power.”
In barely a whisper, I repeat her last words: “Discernment in the lending of my power.”
“Yeah, I learned we all have a currency. What motivates us and how we want to be paid. People say it’s money, but it rarely is.
It’s often what money can procure—power, safety, appearance, fame .
. . My commanding officer worked with me to harness my ability to lead and set me free from my more caustic traits that you remember, Clint. ”
“Then tell me this.” Clint lets go of my hand and leans both his arms on the table. “Why’d you get involved in all of this? If you learned all these amazing things and turned your life around, why did you do it? To my wife.”
“I . . . I thought I could reinvent myself. Lucas recommended me for the head of security job at Garman Straub.” She looks over at me with such sadness.
“I—we—didn’t initially know you worked there.
When I met you, I was stunned. At first, I thought maybe this would be our way back into Clint’s life.
Lucas was excited when he reached out to you. ” She smiles tightly at me.
“How’s that for fast? These plates are hot.” Our waitress slides our breakfasts in front of us. “Syrups, ketchup, and hot sauce are in the wire holder at the window. Anything else I can get you?”
We all glance around and then murmur our thanks.
I breathe in the smell. I would have sworn I wasn’t hungry, but my stomach growls for the thick slices of sweet cinnamon French toast and crispy slabs of bacon.
In between delicious bites, I flip over the phone and check for any word from Rob.
He came out to the cabin, armed with both a gun and donuts, at six this morning.
We woke the kids briefly to tell them goodbye, but I asked Rob to let us know when they got out of bed.
It’s 8:15, and Rob has once again confirmed that they’re still sleeping.
He’s been nothing but patient with my frequent check-ins.
Lucas scrapes his fork across his plate. “I changed my name to Anderson a couple decades ago. The creditors had gotten bad, and I just needed a fresh start.”
I don’t look over at Clint, but in my periphery I can see he’s stopped eating.
“Candace had reinvented herself as well when we met up again. We’ve been married for five years. And it has been over a decade since she left the Air Force.” Lucas is trying, but Clint won’t be willing to hear it until he knows his family is safe.
As if she senses the same, Candace uses her fork to cut off the end of her breakfast sausage but doesn’t eat it. “I was protecting you.”
“Me,” I say. This is when we will find out if the four of us have a way back from this, because me also means us.
Candace moves her napkin from her lap onto her plate. “I’d never do anything to harm or—”
“What about our daughter? What did you do to her?” The anger in Clint’s questions has not dissipated.
“Nothing.” She glances at Clint and then back to me. “I had nothing to do with—”
“With what? What do you know?” Clint asks.
Lucas almost imperceptibly moves closer to his wife. “We know something happened at school. We know Erika was harassed online. And we know about your car and garage.”
“And how do you know these things?” Clint almost spits the question.
Candace glances at me. “I meant to watch over you. Make sure you were safe. Betsey had lost it. She was stalking you and . . .” She speaks steadily. “I’d never do anything to harm any of you.”
“You keep saying that.” Clint leans back hard in the booth, and it creaks. “Means nothing.”
“Are you thinking about reporting this to the police?” Lucas asks me.
“For certain,” I say. “They’re waiting to hear from us this morning.”
“But why our family? Erika was threatened.” Clint’s jaw turns to granite.
“We know. Any way we can help, we will.” Lucas nudges Candace, who is pecking out something on her phone.
“We’re on your side. Both of us. We thought we had the chance to start new with our relationships and our careers.
” Lucas puts down his fork and knife on the side of his plate.
“But he found out about Candace’s trouble in Arizona.
She hadn’t disclosed the arrest, and even though she was completely cleared, it was a fireable offense.
Instead of letting her go, she was encouraged to take side jobs. Nothing illegal. Nothing like that.”
Candace jumps in. “Some scouting jobs, private security. Occasionally an interesting character that needed to be picked up or dropped off. I was always paid through this app—off-the-books, of course.” I stop chewing.
Suddenly I know who. Of course he found out.
His expertise is reading people. He made up the story of my office trashing at the perfect time to make me sign the restraining order.
When Betsey showed up at our house desperate on Sunday, he must have unleashed his hounds on Erika. My heart slams against my ribs.
“The only thing is—right now, we don’t have anything concrete tying anyone criminally to the things that have happened to your family.” Lucas’s cheeks grow round as he blows air out. “I just wonder if there might be another way.”
“No.” Clint’s voice is raised, his body rigid. “We aren’t getting sucked into your messed-up schemes.”
The older guys in the booth behind Lucas and Candace peer over at us. They wait a few beats before continuing their conversation, probably now lending one ear to ours.
Lucas’s eyes, so blue, so reminiscent of Erika’s, blink a few times. “Just hear me out. We probably have enough for the SEC to show how our firm was misled into leveraging those securities against the prospectus, but we don’t know if there are other firms involved.”
While they chat about how much we still don’t know, I pick up Clint’s phone and text Rob a question for Erika, asking him to wake her up.
“That’s enough. We’re going to the police, and we’ll let the SEC investigate the rest. I’m protecting my family,” Clint growls.
Lucas shakes his head. “We need more.”
Clint starts to argue.
But I talk over him. “Clint is right—we need to protect our family—but hear me out. I might have an idea.”