Not in Her Wildest Dreams(42)

"I don't know what you're talking about. This is a stupid conversation." He should hang up on her.

"You remember," she insisted. "I thought it was something in the obits  that made you drink all my gin and decide to tear down my rotten deck in  the middle of a blizzard. You said no, so I asked if it was the wedding  announcement-"

"You're full of shit and we're done." He ended the call and missed the  nightstand, dropping his phone to the floor, but he didn't feel better.

Lovesick. Carrying a torch. Just like his father.

They were all dead wrong. He and Paige had chemistry, sure, and might  have had a future if she'd been honest with him, but she hadn't been, so  it was over. That's it.

Sitting up-slowly-he decided it was a good day to tear out the rotted wood from the closet in the small bedroom.

~ * ~

The house was empty. Bloody empty.

Paige walked into the scent of stale cigarettes, and that hint of oil  that came from the garage, and the peculiar musty smell that clung to  the coveralls Lyle hung beside his door downstairs, and all she could  think about was her brother, sitting in the police station, bruised and  definitely not sober, telling her to go forth and multiply.

What a mess. A great big freaking mess.

She should probably eat something, since a cookie and a coffee didn't exactly make up for skipping breakfast and lunch.

Her stomach didn't get excited about the promise of food so she sipped a  glass of water, standing at the door of the deck, breathing much-needed  fresh air, squinting at the too-bright overcast sky. Feeling the weight  of embarrassment when she noticed the plastic over Sterling's kitchen  window.

She ought to apologize for that. Offer to pay.

Beg him to take her back.

Like she hadn't suffered enough rejection today.

When she took her glass back to the kitchen counter, she saw the cash  Lyle had told her to take out of his tin downstairs, not for bail  either, telling her it wasn't worth calling their Dad about any of this.

"You want to put him back in the hospital?" he'd warned. "Just take  whatever you need to square it up," he'd insisted in a hard tone.

She scooped up the cash, then made her way across the too long grass to  the trail behind the cedars. Maybe if she explained. Maybe if she and  Sterling talked it out, she'd understand it herself.

As she neared the house, she could hear the bash of a hammer and Kid  Rock bragging about being a cowboy, bay-bee. The back door was open, but  she waited for a break in the sound of hammering before she knocked,  hard.

The music lowered, and she heard him call, "Yeah."

"It's Paige." She entered the cold house. The front door was wide open as well. "Where are you?"

"Down here."

She followed the carpet runner down the hall to the room his mother used  for storage. He'd pushed all the boxes and excess furniture against the  far wall. In the middle of the room was a pile of broken wood and torn  strips of faded wallpaper.

Sterling's T-shirt was wet with sweat from his collar to the middle of  his chest. The swelling had gone down around his eye, but he still  looked like a basket of overripe fruit. His silence held all the welcome  of a ‘Trespassers will be shot' sign.

"Lyle paid back the value of the invoices." She showed him the cash.

He shrugged and turned back to the closet.

"Look, there are some things about Lyle you probably don't know."

He held up his hand. "Don't even bother."

"No, listen."

He turned away, reached into the closet.

"He's at the police station right now."

There was a screech of pulled nails then he emerged with a flaking  length of wood spiked with bent nails. "Sounds like he's where he  belongs." He tossed the wood onto the pile.         

     



 

"Are you aware that everyone in town knows you called him a thief?"

"He didn't deny it." He stepped back into the closet.

"Yeah, well, Zack heard about it and figured he'd take the heat."

Sterling half stepped out, yanking on something, but frowning at the same time.

"Seems he was worried his father wouldn't be able to support his little brother or sister, if he was in jail."

Sterling's scowl deepened. "What brother or sister? Who's pregnant?"

"Britta. Zack noticed she hadn't bought tampons in a while, knew she was  mad at Lyle, and put two and two together. He's a very smart kid. Cam  was thrilled." She swallowed, aching for her friend, recalling both  men's shock, Lyle's stunned, Are you sure it's mine?

What a sorry, nasty mess. If only she'd dealt with things differently.  Sooner. Better. But no. She'd wanted to keep things going with this man.

"Lyle kind of lost it at that point. He went through something last year  with his girlfriend at the time. It was bad. She was pregnant and they  lost the baby. He was really upset that Britta had kept this pregnancy  from him. He said some stuff. Cam didn't like the way he was reacting  and overreacted himself, threw him in a cell." Paige pressed where her  eyebrow was pulsing with a tick. "Even Britta could see the charges  weren't kosher. She called her father to get a decent lawyer for him."

"That reminds me, you owe me some evidence."

"Whatever those invoices are about, he wasn't stealing, Sterling. If  you'd seen the way he looked at me for even thinking it." She turned her  face away, ashamed.

Lyle had looked at her with contempt. Like he'd expected better of her. Like she had let him down.

"You're so soft-headed where he's concerned." He went back into the closet.

"Damn it, Sterling." She took a few steps forward, wanting him to  understand. Wanting him to care enough to try to understand. But he  didn't and he wouldn't.

She was better off without him since this wouldn't be such a disaster if  she hadn't been so scared of losing what little she had with him.

"I'm supposed to be doing things right. Handling things better than Dad,  not running around destroying people's lives, accusing them of things  they didn't do."

"You really believe he's innocent?" He challenged on his way to tossing  another chunk of two-by-four into the center of the room. "Yet you were  with the lawyers yesterday, convinced he'd stolen."

"I haven't asked Dad about it. Maybe he knew."

Sterling snorted. "That's not very comforting, is it?"

Oh, this was hopeless. She ought to quit humiliating herself and leave.

He hooked a hand near his hip, retrieving his hammer from a loop at his waist.

The motion drew her gaze, and something on the closet doorjamb fixed it.  The original faded green paint had never been painted over. Short  horizontal marks climbed the space from about three feet off the floor  to about four and half.

"What are those?" she asked, feeling her lips go numb as she saw the initials.

"What?"

"Those." She pointed.

He turned to examine the penciled dashes, all of them dated through the late-fifties, each one accompanied by a pair of letters.

"Granny measuring her kids, I suppose, ‘cause A.L. is Uncle Alf, the one  I stayed with while I went to Harvard. Larry was his middle name. P.B.  is Aunt Pearl. Belinda," he added, dragging his finger down.

"And?" Paige waited until his nail underlined the third pair.

"Sigrid Evelyn. Mom never uses her first name. Doesn't like it."

Paige lifted her gaze to his, didn't say anything as she drew her  father's ring from beneath her T-shirt and held the chain taut. The ring  rolled and skittered.

With love. S.E.

Sterling closed his eyes in a slow wince. "Fuck."





Chapter Twenty-Six

Sterling pulled into his parents' driveway and parked, wondering if his  father had come home yet. He couldn't do this if his father was here.

Judging by what he'd come to talk to his mother about, however, he would understand if his father never came back.

"Wait here." He wasn't sure why Paige had climbed into his truck. If she  thought she was providing comfort, she had another think coming. The  way this situation was looking, there was nothing he was going to want  from her ever again.

"I want to know," she said stubbornly.

What was there to know? Her father was an asshole. This shouldn't even be possible.         

     



 

Perhaps she sensed his resentment. She climbed from the truck in silence and avoided looking at him.

Clutching the ring she'd given him, the chain dangling and tickling his  knuckles, he climbed out of his side and met her at the front bumper.  She wore a frown of worry.

Worry didn't begin to touch on what he felt. Fortunately, his storm of  emotion was overshadowed by hope that it had nothing to do with his  mother. But deep in his gut, he knew. He just knew. Paige, at least, had  the advantage of expecting this kind of behavior from Grady. For  Sterling, his mother having an affair was a crack in the foundation of  principles that had supported him his entire life.

And an affair with Grady Fogarty? Shoot me now.

He gave one short knock on the kitchen door, then opened it and stepped in. Paige to followed.