She waited for him to turn and look at her.
"I knew you wouldn't help. That's all you've said you wanted to do, ever since we both rolled into town, but I knew you wouldn't, not with this. Good thing I didn't expect any better of you, because I'd be sorely disappointed right now."
She walked out.
~ * ~
Two hours later, Sterling felt worse than he had when he'd been fighting with Paige. Worse even than when Grady Fogarty had taken a round out of him. The very last thing he wanted to do was drive out to the lake house.
But here he was with more ibuprofen than alcohol in him, feeling every single bump in the road.
The rain eased and he turned off the wipers, able to quit worrying if the plastic sheet he'd used to cover his kitchen window would hold since he'd barely got it nailed on before his mother had shown up with her antibiotic ointment, her brown bag meal, and her impossible to refuse request.
At least this errand took him away from her ‘I told you those Fogartys were no good' lecture.
Fogartys. Jesus, he was so mad at Paige. Making him feel like a heel, cooking up re-hiring conspiracies with his father, going to the lawyer. Of course she had consulted one. Of course she had known he would fire Lyle. Of course she had known he wouldn't help.
It shouldn't gnaw at him that she had anticipated his letting her down, that he had lived up to her lowest expectations, but it did.
He sighed as deeply as his sore ribs would allow, dismayed because he didn't want to feel like a heel. He wanted to stay mad at her and her idiot brother.
And that was another thing. Where did Lyle get off acting like he was capable of honesty? Damn it, if he started believing things like Lyle being innocent of sending Grady after him, he'd have to take seriously some of the other stuff Lyle had said. He'd take bamboo up the fingernails before he'd admit he'd ever been lovesick.
Slowing and tightening his grip on the wheel, he negotiated a pothole full of water. The dip and rock of the Bronco jiggled him enough that he grunted against the pain.
This was like driving into the pit of hell itself. He knew the road had been allowed to deteriorate to discourage traffic out to the reservoir, but this was ridiculous.
Finally he broke through the encroaching woods into the clearing.
He hadn't been up here since the last time his mother had sent him chasing his father, about eleven years ago, but the one-time logging camp hadn't changed much. The sixty-year-old two-room box cabins, with their tiny gabled porches, were still in various states of repair. His father's, white with green trim, had pansies fluttering in a flower box beneath the side window, but the place two doors down had a blue tarp over it, and the one beyond that was weathered and mossy, ready for a match.
Sterling parked beside his father's Lincoln and gave himself a moment to gather not just his physical energy, but his mental strength. His father and mother were fighting. This was hardly the first time, but he hated when they put him in the middle of it. It was the main reason he had such an aversion to coming home.
He especially hated seeing how his mother was capable of hurting his father. She was strong-willed and highly opinionated. He didn't know why his father took that so deeply to heart. On the other hand, he completely understood why his father took refuge up here. Sometimes couples needed a break, so why did his mother have to act like the world was coming to an end? Why push Sterling to rush up here and persuade his father to come home?
He might have wormed his way out of this if he didn't suspect, deep down, that he was the reason his father had come up here to lick his wounds.
With a heavy sigh, he stepped into the still gusting wind and walked between the cabins to the lakeshore.
His dad liked to make out like he was a character from A River Runs Through It, floating a fly out to the middle of the water with a deft sway and launch. In reality, he showed all the grace of a spider on amphetamines and had thrown his rod in with the line more often than he liked to admit.
Sterling waited well back, until he was sure the chance of taking a hook in the face-not for the first time-was minimal before he approached.
"Hey, Dad. What's biting?"
"Nothing. I just like the peace." His father's eyes were rimmed in red.
The nausea Sterling had been fighting settled in. Crying? Shit no. It wasn't that bad, was it?
Sterling cleared his throat and concentrated hard on a deadhead poking up from the water at the far side of the lake, wished he was back at the house, killing his knees with tile work, or back in the Carolinas, accepting a contract in freakin' northern Alaska if that's all he could get. But no. He'd gone and claimed ownership of his father's company, wrestled it from the pack leader and everything.
"It's quiet this time of year," Sterling murmured, recalling how it had been when he'd been a kid. He and his friends had torn up the beach with every possible flotation device, every family dog, every stick, ball, or Frisbee they could find. And every one of them had been smeared with the white stink of Noxzema to cool the sunburn.
His father didn't say anything.
"Mom said she wasn't sure when you were coming back. She's worried how it will look for the campaign."
"She thinks I still have a shot at that? She does have a remarkable view of the way things work." His father gave his line a slight yank.
Sterling chewed his inner lip, thinking that sounded like his dad was mad at his mom, not him.
"But you are going back, right, Dad?"
No answer.
"Mom says she doesn't feel safe in the house alone. She's threatening to move in with me. I'd appreciate you heading back tonight." Sterling's words fell flat. Humor wouldn't do the job. Not at all.
His father sniffed and fought the downward pull at the corners of his lips.
Oh, Christ. Seriously. Don't.
He knew things got bad sometimes. When he'd been a kid, he'd thought he'd caught his dad crying in the garage once, but he'd convinced himself he'd misinterpreted something. Now he wondered. Worried.
It was nearing dark, the wind biting if the fish weren't, heavy clouds held up by the spiked tops of fir and cedar, soundless but for the rustle of tree boughs.
Sterling didn't want to be here. He felt like a bag of shit, wanted nothing more than to be horizontal, watching CNN, nursing a beer and, well, not heartache. No, that's what his mother did to his father. He was immune to that sort of thing.
He glanced at his father.
"Mom wouldn't tell me why you left. Was it because of our argument?" Maybe it wasn't too late to take back his insistence on taking over. He'd been flexing angry muscles like a gorilla whacking a branch on the ground. It was posturing, Dad, really.
"I couldn't take it back now if I wanted to, son. You've made your mother too happy." He sounded bitter.
Sterling shifted, uncomfortable because his mother had already been planning to order a cake, talking about the position she'd hold in the community. "I'll be Dowager Countess of the factory." Whatever the hell that was.
"It wasn't you, son." His father's voice was heavy with the weight of the world. "It's me. I try to make her happy, but it's never enough." His father's chin quivered. "Everyone will know it this time."
"What everyone? That's not true, Dad. You make her happy. She already misses you."
"No, she has ideas. I never live up to them."
Good thing I didn't expect any better of you, because I'd be sorely disappointed right now.
"Mom has high standards, sure, but she picked you, didn't she?"
His father's rod trembled. He began reeling in with sharp jerks on the tip.
"She sent supper." Sterling showed him the brown bag. "It's chicken salad. With mayonnaise, even though you're not supposed to have it." Feel the love, Dad.
Beside him, his father made a pained, tortured noise.
Sterling stood paralyzed, horrified not just that his father looked about to openly sob, but that any man could be reduced to tears by a woman.
"What am I going to do, son? I'm a one woman man, always have been."
"That's good, Dad," he reassured. "She wants you to come home. She loves you, too."
"I can't." His shoulders began to shake.
Why don't you want to get married, Sterling? Don't you want to be like us?
"I always thought it was something to be proud of," his father choked. "Loving only one woman. But it's hell, son. It's hell."
"I know, Dad," Sterling murmured, holding the bag a little higher, just wanting his father to take it and stop crying, go home.
"I suppose you do," his father said, dropping his rod, and blowing his nose. "Being built the same."
Chapter Twenty-Five
Paige had heard all the town gossip about the terrible waste of money renovating the new police station had been. When she'd gone in there to thank the deputy who'd checked out the house after the break in, she'd thought the naysayers had been wrong. The clean lines of high-security, the fresh earthy beiges and pale yellows, the glimpses of natural light from the narrow row of windows on the slanted ceiling, had all seemed to make the cop-shop a more pleasing atmosphere than it used to be.