She flinched slightly at my use of her given name. “I’m only looking out for you,” she said weakly. “What happened wasn’t fair and—”
“It was fair, Mom. And more than that, Archer’s good at running the town. Pelion is thriving. The citizens are happy. I wouldn’t take it away from him—or from them—even if there was a foolproof way to do it.”
She waved the folder around, looking confused and flustered. “You can’t be happy living on a public servant’s salary alone, Travis, deprived of the things we used to have, privileges that I believe are rightfully yours.”
I was suddenly weary. She did that. She made me feel tired to my marrow. She obviously saw that I had no intention of answering her questions and so she thrust the folder at me. “Here. Along with the bylaws regarding town ownership and legal paraphernalia I just discovered, there are all kinds of things in here that belonged to your father…certificates, awards he won. As far as the legal documents, they’re all original. Just look it all over. When you see what I’ve highlighted, I think you’ll understand the line of my thought. See if you agree.”
All kinds of things in here that belonged to your father.
I took the photo albums and the file folder of my father’s papers when she held them out to me, unable to resist that which my father had once touched. Something, anything, that I might have a right to even as second best. His handwriting…I couldn’t even remember what his handwriting looked like. A scrawled note. A photograph I’d never seen. Something. I held it tightly to me as though a part of him might live inside these dusty pages. “Goodbye, Mom,” I said, walking out and closing the door behind me. And for God’s sake, drop this, I wanted to say, but I had a well-earned feeling that it wouldn’t make a difference what I said. Tori Hale still felt wronged. It wasn’t about me at all.
It never had been.
Chapter Nineteen
Travis
The air was still and muggy, not a whisper of breeze off the lake. I rolled the cold beer bottle across my forehead, sighing at the momentary relief. The porch swing creaked under my weight as I used one foot to move it idly, taking a sip of the cheap beer, the only kind Betty offered. It was still welcomed, as was the peace of this front porch, away from the hooch-drunk revelers joined together for social hour. It sounded like they were involved in a rowdy game of charades, although that couldn’t be right, because they’d never leave Burt out and blind men wouldn’t be a team asset when it came to charades. Whatever it was, there were lots of distant hoots and hollers.
I used my toe to give myself another small push. A fish jumped in the water beyond, its small splash leaving ripples on the deep blue surface of the water.
“Lonely, mister?”
My lips tipped and I turned my head slightly. I didn’t need to see her to know who it was. She pushed the screen door open, stepping forward into the dim light of the covered porch. She leaned a hip on one of the columns near the steps and turned my way. “And you look like you’re thinking very hard about something,” she noted.
I gave a half-hearted smile. “I went to see my mother today. She inspires reflection.” I held up my beer. “And alcohol.”
“Hmm,” she hummed, studying me. After a moment, she looked away, seeming to be wrestling with something. “I…uh”—she picked at a splinter on the wooden railing—“I looked up the town today…read more about the Hale family history.” She paused, finally meeting my gaze. “I hope you don’t consider it a breach of privacy.”
I looked back out to the lake. “No. It’s all public knowledge.”
“I overheard a couple of girls mentioning your family at the club today and it…it… Well, I should have asked you…I just…I wasn’t sure, you know, if you would want to talk about your family with—”
“My friend?”
She let out a breathy laugh. “Yes.” Her fingers found that splinter again. “Yes, your…temporary friend. Well, or anyone.”
Temporary friend repeated in my head. With benefits went unsaid. Then again, I wasn’t sure if she’d allow anything physical to happen between us again. At the thought of never kissing her, never touching her body, something opened inside me. Something empty and hollow.
She’d overheard a couple of girls gossiping about the Hales at the club today. It was very possible the conversation was less than positive. My family garnered mixed reviews when it came to the citizens of Calliope. But whatever she’d heard hadn’t caused her to judge me harshly. Because she was kind.
I watched her for a minute. By the way she was fidgeting, I could tell she felt awkward and off-balance. We were straddling so many lines, and I had the sense that Haven needed to keep me firmly placed in the box she’d designated. I also had the sense that there were deeper reasons for that than just because she was only passing through town and didn’t want to make connections that would be difficult to sever when she left.
Call it intuition. Call it being a cop whose job it was to be suspicious of people.
Call it that my mind moved in her direction more often than I gave it permission to, but it’d been slowly attempting to form the full picture that was Haven Torres with the small puzzle pieces she’d been throwing my way.
I knew so little about her life. Just the few details she’d dispensed, seemingly randomly. She’d grown up poor. She’d been rescued, in some sense anyway, by a kindly couple who owned a rooftop garden. She’d worked at a grocery store so she could bring home healthy food. She had a reckless brother who I could only assume had grown up just like she had, only perhaps without the benefit of a rooftop garden to tend. Or the emotional benefits that that garden had obviously provided to Haven. Responsibility. The gift of trust.
And now she knew a few things about me. I didn’t know what the gossips had said, but I did know that what was online barely scratched the surface and definitely wouldn’t have given her the full picture.
“You’re a hero,” she said softly. “You took down a gunman who might have killed so many others.”
Case in point.
I had done that. But oh, I’d done plenty more too. Past actions that kept interrupting my thoughts lately and I didn’t know why.
I was quiet for a good minute. Haven waited, not saying a word.
“I used to swim way over there,” I said, pointing across the lake, squinting one eye slightly as I tried to see the small public beach on the edge of what had been my uncle Nathan’s land and now belonged to Archer. It had been public as far as ownership, but not very many people had known about it, and so for all intents and purposes, it had been a private area my friends and I had all to ourselves. “Archer lives on the edge of that beach,” I explained, “and he has most of his life, at least since the time of…the accident. When he lost his voice. I used to make noise so he would hear me and my friends, and then I’d mock him when he came to watch us from the trees.”
I felt Haven’s gaze on me but didn’t raise my eyes to look at her.
“Why?” she asked softly, and I heard the quiet edge of surprised disapproval in her voice.