12. Eric
ERIC
Ilost forty-three dollars.
I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. Forty-three dollars wasn’t exactly life-changing money. But that wasn’t the point. If I’d actually been paying attention instead of mentally replaying the last two days, I probably would’ve noticed when I was folding decent hands.
The point was I’d spent half the night thinking about a woman I hardly knew. A woman who seemed to create havoc wherever she went. That threw me off my game.
“Drive safely,” Mike called as I stepped out through the garage side door.
“I always do.” Occupational hazard. The last thing I needed was to get a speeding ticket when I was the one who usually handed them out.
Dave pointed a beer bottle at me. “Don’t let the mysterious woman keep you up.”
“There isn’t a mysterious woman.” There wasn’t. There was just a woman who seemed determined to occupy entirely too much space in my thoughts for someone I’d known less than forty-eight hours.
“There it is again.” Dylan laughed. “The denial.”
I shook my head, climbed into my truck, and pulled away before they could invent another theory. Given another five minutes, they’d probably have us engaged, arguing over baby names, and jointly renovating a farmhouse we’d never bought.
The streets of Maplewood Falls were nearly empty now. Storefronts sat dark and quiet beneath old-fashioned streetlamps, and the little town had settled into the comfortable silence that always came after the tourists went back to their hotels or the inn and the locals finally called it a night.
Most porch lights had gone dark. The cafés were closed.
Even the boardwalk had quieted down, save for one young couple walking hand in hand beneath the streetlamps.
They moved slowly, completely unconcerned with the time, stopping every few feet like they had nowhere else they’d rather be.
I remembered what that felt like once. Or at least I remembered thinking it would last forever.
I turned toward home. My house. My porch. My quiet.
Or at least I intended to.
Ten seconds later, I found myself slowing at the intersection that led toward downtown. My hands stayed loose on the steering wheel, but my eyes drifted toward the left-turn lane before I consciously realized they had. I frowned at the windshield.
“What the hell am I doing?”
I let out a slow breath. I should go home.
Take a shower. Get some sleep. Tomorrow was festival day, which meant I’d probably spend twelve straight hours dealing with parking complaints, lost children, noise complaints, and at least one person convinced somebody else had stolen their lawn chair.
If history was any indication, I’d also get at least three questions that had absolutely nothing to do with law enforcement.
Where’s the nearest ATM? Did anyone turn in my sunglasses?
Can you settle an argument about whether alpacas spit because they’re happy?
Small towns had a way of making the sheriff responsible for everything except the weather. Even that was occasionally negotiable.
Instead, my turn signal clicked.
Left.
I looked at it, surprised. “When did that happen?” My hand was still resting on the steering wheel exactly where it’d been five seconds earlier, which meant I’d made an executive decision without inviting the rest of me to the meeting.
That was the story I was going with. It was either that or admit I was voluntarily driving toward the woman my poker buddies had spent two hours teasing me about, and I wasn’t giving them the satisfaction.
Even if they weren’t there to witness it, somehow they’d still know.
Middle-aged men had an unsettling instinct for these things.
Three minutes later I rolled slowly down Main Road.
The tires hummed softly over familiar pavement, storefronts reflecting across the windshield as I passed the bakery, the bookstore, and the little barber shop that still closed every Thursday because Frank insisted fishing was good for business, somehow.
The café lights Hartwell and the volunteers had hung glowed warmly above the empty square, swaying gently in the breeze.
They cast soft pools of golden light across the sidewalks, making the whole place look less like a construction zone and more like the postcard Maplewood Falls liked to pretend it always was.
It looked… good. Better than I expected. Better than it had any right to after the last two days. Somehow the scattered ladders, tangled extension cords, panicked volunteers, and wandering livestock had transformed into something people would actually want to visit.
The food trucks sat where they belonged. Barricades were stacked neatly. Vendor tents waited for morning. Even the flower pots looked better.
I wasn’t about to spend time figuring out why.
She’d done it.
Or at least she’d gotten a whole lot closer than I’d expected forty-eight hours ago.
She hadn’t quit. I respected that.
I smiled to myself. It wasn’t a big smile. Just enough to surprise me when I caught my reflection in the windshield.
That needed to stop.
Then movement caught my eye behind the community center.
The animal pen.
I eased my foot off the accelerator out of instinct, habit, or curiosity. Probably all three. Anything moving around temporary fencing the night before a festival automatically earned a second look.
A figure sat on a hay bale inside the enclosure.
Blonde hair. Surrounded by animals. Talking to them like they were old friends.
It should’ve seemed odd. Instead, it seemed... about right.
I pulled the truck against the curb and shut off the engine. The silence settled around me almost immediately, broken only by the breeze stirring the leaves and the soft ticking of the cooling engine.
What was she doing there? Probably checking the animals. Responsible.
Good.
I climbed out, closing the door carefully behind me. Years on patrol had taught me how to move without announcing myself.
The evening air carried salt water, fresh-cut grass, and hay from the temporary pens. A light breeze moved through the square. It was quiet. Finally.
I walked toward the fencing. Not because of Hartwell.
Because the sheriff checked on things. Temporary animal enclosures.
Gates. Fencing. Public safety. If that inspection happened to include one slightly chaotic event planner sitting in the middle of a petting zoo after dark…
well, that was purely coincidental. Or at least that was the explanation I intended to stick with.
Especially temporary animal enclosures. That was all.
Halfway there, I overheard her talking in that easy, conversational way people usually reserved for dogs.
“I’m still pretending,” I heard her say.
I stopped and listened. My first instinct was to announce myself. My second instinct was to leave.
Instead, I stopped just outside the pen. Her back was to me, and the animals had her full attention.
I suddenly felt like I’d wandered into a conversation that wasn’t meant for me.
An alpaca rested his head against her shoulder while she scratched behind his ears. A goat sat nearby, his head angled toward Hartwell. A smaller alpaca stayed back along with a miniature donkey, both eating hay contently.
“I’ve had a lot of jobs.”
Her voice carried easily across the quiet grounds, soft enough that she clearly wasn’t talking to be heard but loud enough that the words drifted through the night all the same. There wasn’t any performance in them now. Just honesty.
“Receptionist.” She held up one finger. “Travel agency.” A second finger. “Dental office.” A third.
I leaned one shoulder against the fence post without thinking. The rough wood pressed against my sleeve, grounding me there while I listened to a conversation I probably shouldn’t have been hearing.
“I even worked in a candle store.” She sighed dramatically. “Turns out scented wax isn’t really a long-term career path.”
I smiled before I could stop myself. She had a way of making even failure sound oddly entertaining, like she’d already decided she might as well laugh because the alternative wasn’t improving anybody’s day.
She turned her head just enough that I caught the smile on her face.
Then it faded.
“Nobody ever says they’re going to grow up and become professionally unemployed.” The joke landed with a little more weight than she’d intended. I could hear it in her voice. She probably could too.
The goat wandered over and started chewing on her shoelace.
She pulled her foot away. “Hey. Stop that.”
The rest of her words were lost as she moved around. Then she leaned back and scratched the alpaca absentmindedly again.
“You would’ve liked my old bosses.” There was humor in her voice, but not much of it. “You all would’ve gotten along. They were very good at nibbling away at my confidence one little bite at a time.”
Something about the way she said it wasn’t funny. I’d heard that tone before. People used it when the truth hurt too much to tell it straight.
Witnesses making jokes after bad accidents. Victims smiling through statements because they weren’t ready to admit how much something had hurt. It was easier to laugh than say the words out loud.
The alpaca leaned harder against her. Like somehow he understood she needed the extra weight keeping her anchored.
The rest of her words were mumbled again. And then her voice carried over to me.
“I wasn’t always fired.” She laughed, like people tended to when nobody else was around to hear it—not because the joke was funny but because people laughed when they didn’t know what else to do.
I didn’t.
I’d spent two days assuming she lied because she was overconfident. Because she thought she could bluff her way through anything. That she’d walked into town believing charm could solve logistics and optimism could replace experience.
I’d been wrong.
She wasn’t bluffing because she believed she could do it.
She was bluffing because she was terrified she couldn’t.
Big difference.