10. Eric
ERIC
My SUV rolled slowly down Cedar Lane before turning into a long gravel driveway flanked by towering pine trees. At the very end sat a weathered two-story farmhouse with a detached garage big enough to hold three pickup trucks and half the town’s bad decisions.
Tonight it held four.
The garage door stood open despite the cool evening air, warm yellow light spilling across the driveway. The muted sound of a Bruins game drifted outside, followed by laughter and somebody insisting the Bruins hadn’t had a decent power play in years.
Some things never changed.
Every Thursday night, we ended up here. Didn’t matter if we’d had a quiet week or one that kept us working until two in the morning. Didn’t matter if someone had gotten married, divorced, promoted, or had retired.
Thursday was poker.
The rules were simple. Bring cash. Bring beer if you drank it. Don’t whine when you lost.
I climbed out of the SUV, grabbed the six-pack I’d promised Mike, and headed toward the side entrance of the garage.
The smell hit me before I even reached the door.
Pizza. Motor oil. Fresh-cut lumber. And whatever air freshener Mike’s wife insisted on hanging in here every few months to convince herself the place didn’t permanently smell like forty years of men hanging out.
It never worked.
I opened the side door without knocking. “You boys behaving yourselves?”
Four heads turned.
“There goes the neighborhood,” Dave said, tossing another poker chip into the pot.
The retired firefighter still looked like he could carry someone out of a burning building if he had to.
He was broad through the shoulders with cropped silver hair, permanent gray stubble, and the comfortable stomach of a man who’d traded a six-pack for beer without giving up an ounce of strength.
Mike grinned from behind his cards. “Took you long enough, Sheriff.” At six-foot-four, the owner of the garage had to angle his knees sideways beneath the poker table, his grease-stained hands making even a deck of cards look undersized.
His thick dark beard had picked up more gray over the last few years, and laugh lines fanned from the corners of his eyes whenever he smiled, which was often.
I set the six-pack on the old workbench, stained with decades of oil, paint, and whatever Dave insisted was character. “Brought a peace offering.”
Mike reached over and snagged one before I’d even taken off my jacket. “Accepted.”
The garage looked exactly the way it always did—half workshop, half man cave.
Pegboards lined one wall with enough tools to rebuild a small country while an ancient beer fridge hummed.
Somebody had left the big garage door open to let the cool evening air drift through, carrying the smell of fresh rain and cut grass inside.
The muted hockey game flickered on an old television bolted high in one corner, though nobody appeared to be watching it.
Dylan pointed toward the empty chair. At twenty-eight, he was the youngest guy at the table by a good decade.
His faded Maplewood Falls Volunteer Fire Department T-shirt still had sawdust on it, and a fresh scrape crossed one knuckle.
He looked like he’d come straight from a job site. “Buy-in’s fifty.”
“You boys trying to rob me?”
Dave snorted. “You make sheriff money.”
“I make government money.”
“Worse,” said Curt, nodding. “I get it.” The principal of Maplewood Falls High pushed his reading glasses onto the top of his thinning salt-and-pepper hair.
His plaid shirt was as neatly pressed as ever, despite the streak of pizza grease on one cuff.
Twenty years of dealing with teenagers had given him the patience of a saint.
I pulled out my wallet and tossed my cash into the middle before settling into the chair.
Mike shuffled with a practiced ease, likely born from cheating since high school.
Or at least he wanted everyone to think he was.
He never looked at the cards while he shuffled, carrying on conversations the entire time like his hands had long ago decided they no longer required supervision.
“I don’t cheat,” he said without looking up.
I watched him. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking it.”
“I was.” After twenty years of poker nights, we both knew exactly how this conversation went.
The cards slapped against the table. Beer bottles hissed open.
Somebody reached for another slice of pizza before Dave could claim it first, earning himself a well-deserved glare.
Normal. Exactly what I needed after the last two days.
Familiar voices. Familiar insults. Familiar routines.
Usually they managed to drown out whatever had happened during the week.
Mike dealt.
I glanced down. Ace. King. Nice. Any other night, the hand would’ve practically played itself.
Dave tossed in five dollars confidently, as though he’d never once believed folding was an acceptable life choice.
Dylan matched it without hesitation, absently wiping pizza grease off his fingers onto a paper napkin before reaching for his beer.
Curt raised, his expression never changing. The man had the same face whether he was announcing school closures, handing out detention, or bluffing everyone at the table.
I sighed and folded, tossing my cards faceup onto the table.
Nobody said anything.
At first.
Mike stopped halfway through taking a drink, the beer bottle hovering an inch from his mouth.
Dave slowly lowered his cards onto the table like he was afraid any sudden movement might spook me.
Dylan frowned, looking from me to my discarded hand and back again.
Curt blinked once behind his reading glasses.
The entire table went strangely quiet, the kind that usually preceded someone confessing to backing a truck into a mailbox.
“What?” I asked.
Mike leaned back in his chair, studying me over the top of his cards like I was evidence in an ongoing investigation. “You folded ace-king.”
“I did.”
“You always play ace-king.”
“I didn’t feel like it.” It sounded reasonable to me. I was the only one.
Nobody moved.
Dave looked at the others before slowly shaking his head. “I don’t like this.”
Dylan nodded solemnly, like we’d just received troubling medical news. “Me neither.” He looked genuinely concerned. “Should we be taking his temperature?”
Curt rubbed his chin, his principal face settling into place. “Maybe he’s sick.”
“I’m not sick.” At least I didn’t think I was. The looks around the table suggested nobody believed me.
Dave pointed his beer at me, his expression growing more suspicious by the second. “Did you hit your head?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sitting right here.”
“Could’ve happened earlier.” Dave shrugged like he was presenting a perfectly reasonable medical diagnosis. “Head injuries are sneaky.”
Mike studied me another second before dealing the flop, his eyes narrowing the way they always did when he was trying to figure out whether an engine was making a real noise or the customer was imagining things. “I’ve known you for twenty years.”
“Congratulations.” I reached for my beer. “Should I get you a card?”
“You don’t fold ace-king.”
“I just did.”
“Exactly.” Mike pointed a card at me as though he’d uncovered the missing piece of a criminal investigation. “That’s what’s bothering me.”
Another silence settled over the table. The kind only old friends could create, comfortable and dangerous. That sort of silence didn’t need filling because everybody already knew where it was heading. I’d seen juries deliberate faster.
Everybody was thinking the same thing. I could practically hear the gears turning. Folding ace-king wasn’t the problem anymore. It was evidence. They were simply trying to determine what crime had been committed.
Dave finally looked at Mike. “Woman.”
Mike nodded once, far too confidently. “Gotta be a woman.”
Dylan looked at me with exaggerated sympathy, shaking his head. “Poor bastard.”
I sighed, already regretting coming. Somewhere along the way, poker night had turned into everyone sticking their noses into everyone else’s business.
Curt threw a chip into the pot quietly, as though he’d somehow managed to win just often enough that everyone suspected him of cheating, despite the complete lack of evidence. “It’s definitely a woman.”
“There isn’t a woman.” I took another drink of beer, hoping the conversation would die a natural death. It didn’t. Conversations like this never did.
Dave grinned, like he’d just smelled blood in the water. “There it is.”
I exhaled through my nose. “What?”
“The denial.” He pointed his bottle at me like a prosecutor presenting Exhibit A.
“I wasn’t denying anything.”
“You literally said, ‘There isn’t a woman.’” Dave looked around the table for support. “Textbook denial.”
“Because there isn’t.” I was beginning to understand why suspects often asked for lawyers even when they were innocent.
Mike folded his hands on the table, his fingers disappearing beneath forearms thick enough to rebuild an engine block. “So…” He let the word hang there just long enough to become irritating. “Who is she?”
“There isn’t a she.” I already didn’t like where this was going. Mostly because I’d completely lost control of where it had already gone.
Dave scratched at his beard and settled back in his chair. “Let’s narrow it down.”
I rubbed a hand across the back of my neck. “No.”
Dave didn’t miss a beat. “She passing through town?”
“No.”
He reached for his beer. “Tourist?”
“No.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Divorced?”
“No.”
Dave leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “From here?”
I looked up before I could stop myself.
Dave’s grin widened another inch.
Damn. “I didn’t answer because there isn’t—”
Mike held up a hand before I could finish. “Notice he didn’t say no that time.”
Dylan pointed toward me. “Oh, this is fun.” He leaned back with a grin. “Finally. Something besides Dave’s fishing stories.”
I rubbed a hand across my jaw. “You boys done?” I knew they weren’t. I asked anyway. Sometimes optimism slipped through the cracks.