“I know,” she said softly. “But the summers are usually busy, right?”
I smiled. “Thank you for reminding me of the good stuff. It’s easy to forget when I’m missing him so damn much.”
“Do you want to talk about him?”
“There’s nothing to say. He’s on Year Three of a ten-year sentence and still won’t let me see him.” I shrugged, as if the heavy burden pressing down on my heart could be reduced to that casual gesture. “I miss him, Vi. That’s the bottom line. I miss him with every particle of my body. But I’m also so angry at him for shutting me out. In my worst moments, I’m tempted to do what he said—let him go and move on with my life.”
“But…”
“But that’s impossible. And I wish he knew that,” I said, tears pricking my eyes again. “More than anything, I wish he understood what he means to the people who love and need him.”
“I know,” Violet said. “Miller doesn’t talk about it much, but he’s hurting too. Both Ronan and Holden disappeared in their own way, cutting him off.”
“God, I haven’t even asked how Miller is doing,” I said, quickly wiping my eyes. “Better, I’ll bet, now that he has you with him.”
I heard Violet’s smile over her words, happiness infusing her voice. “He’s going to be okay. No more touring until he’s rested and even then, no more arena shows.”
“Good. I—” I stopped as I caught sight of the same figure in gray skulking outside my window, only this time I caught a glimpse of hair too. A furtive glance, then he was hurrying away. “Vi, I’m sorry, I have to call you back.”
The figure was halfway down the sidewalk when I tore out of the shop. “Hey!” I called sharply. “Stop right there!”
The guy jerked to a stop and hunched deeper in his ratty coat. Then, slowly, he turned around and I tensed all over, the air catching in my chest as if I’d been punched in the gut.
Frankie Dowd was almost unrecognizable. Pale, sickly, nearly emaciated, with one eyelid permanently drooping from the beating he took three years ago. He shuffled toward me, limping, as if he couldn’t control his left leg very well.
“Hey, Shiloh,” Frankie said, his hands jammed in the pockets of an old windbreaker that might’ve once been blue and was five sizes too big. His jeans were ripped, and his Converse were filthy, the laces held together with knots.
I glared at him, trying to ignore how my heart sort of ached to see him like this, so wretched and sad. I’d never seen a person completely without hope before, but Frankie was close.
Then I remembered how hopeless and undone I felt the night my shop was vandalized. How Ronan must’ve felt when he had ten years taken from him for something he didn’t do. I hardened my voice.
“What do you want? Why have you been skulking around my store all morning? Casing the joint for your next attack?”
He winced, but truthfully, the guy looked like he couldn’t lift a crowbar now to save his life.
“I need to talk to you.”
“I have nothing to say to you.”
“But I have something you want to hear.”
His sad, plain tone caught my attention. I crossed my arms. “After all that’s happened, why should I give you the time of day?”
“You shouldn’t,” he said. “I don’t blame you for hating me, but you’re going to want to hear this. Please.”
I crossed my arms tighter. The urge to scream at him, to rage and rail and try to inflict a fraction of the pain on him that I’d endured—that Ronan had endured—in the last three years was fierce but fading, until I just felt sorry for him. And the fact that he was here, talking to me, sparked a little flicker that it wasn’t going to be the same hopeless day as every other day over the last three years.
“Fine. Let me lock up first,” I added pointedly, and Frankie hung his head in shame, like a whipped dog.
My lone employee—Luisa—was off that day. I grabbed my purse from the backroom, put the Will Return Soon sign up, and joined Frankie Dowd on the sidewalk.
“You want to get a coffee?” I asked. “Something to eat?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “If you want.”
It was obvious he was hungry. Even more obvious he didn’t have any money.
Am I going to buy Frankie fucking Dowd lunch?
It seemed that I was. He looked as if he hadn’t eaten in a week.
“Order what you want,” I told him as we sat down at the Hill Street Café, a little diner I frequented sometimes on my lunch breaks from the shop.
“Thanks,” he said, hardly a whisper, and ordered the soup and sandwich combo of the day.
“Just coffee for me,” I told Lucy, the waitress.
Frankie looked sheepish. “You’re not eating?”
“My stomach is twisted in so many knots right now, I can’t possibly think of food.” I folded my arms and leaned toward him. “Do you know how much I hate that I’m sitting here, desperate to hear what you have to say? Because for three years, I’ve had nothing. No hope.”
“I know. I’m sorry, Shiloh. For so much.”
I braced myself, my heart pounding in my chest. “Well? Let’s hear it.”
Frankie toyed with his napkin, not looking at me. “My dad is dead. Heart attack. A few days ago.”
I sat back, absorbing this. “Forgive me if I have a hard time offering condolences right now.”
“Don’t bother. He wasn’t a good man.”
“Was that what you wanted to tell me?”
That can’t be all. Please…
Frankie’s eye twitched and he pressed the napkin to it. “Sorry, it does that sometimes. My leg doesn’t work so great anymore either. The doctors say it’s brain damage from that night.” He looked at me with one eye, clear and blue. “My dad did this to me. It wasn’t Ronan.”
The café faded away, and all I knew or felt or thought was hope, blooming wild and huge in my chest.
I blinked hard, unwilling to let Frankie Dowd see me cry. “What happened that night?”
Frankie heaved a breath, his eyes on the napkin in his hands as he spoke. “I was at the parking lot behind the Burger Barn, hanging with Mikey and some people from school. Mostly Mikey. No one else liked me much. Everyone left, but I didn’t want to go home.” He hunched deeper into his jacket. “My dad was supposed to do a year, but they put him on house arrest. Then things got real bad. So bad my mom left, and she didn’t take me with her.”
I nodded, his pain was palpable, emanating off of him like the stink of his unwashed clothes.
“Dad was stuck at home with no job. Nothing to do. He loved his job. Not the protecting and serving like it says on the squad cars. It was the power he loved. He was mad all the time. Beating up on people he thought were ‘criminal scum’ made him feel better.”
The waitress came back and dropped off a coffee for me and a three bean soup and ham sandwich for Frankie. He didn’t seem to see the food, his mind somewhere besides this café.
“That night, I was alone in the parking lot, sitting on the hood of my car. Then Ronan walked up, like out of nowhere. His face was…scary. I was sure he was going to kill me. I tried to drive away, but I couldn’t get the keys in the ignition; I was shaking so bad. He tried the door, not saying a word. Which was almost worse, how quiet he was. I’d locked the door, so he smashed his fist into my window, hard enough that it cracked. Then he threw a right and shattered it.”