I barked out a laugh and felt my face heat. Gentry shushed his uncle through his own laughter.
The two of them were sitting at the island in front of a laptop while an abandoned cutting board sat with a half-cut pile of onions on it. Nearly one whole countertop was covered with mismatched vases of wildflowers, tins of fudge, and several kinds of homemade baked goods that Mikey said Mia, Bill, and even Barney had apparently brought by that morning.
Music played softly from the speakers around the big TV in the kitchen’s comfortable sitting area, and through the giant picture window past the kitchen table, I could see the burgeoning yellow green of the aspen trees blooming between the wide expanse of the lodge’s backyard and what would soon become a ski slope again.
This town—this property—was poised on the edge of something exciting and new. I kept trying to remind myself that I actually had a life and a home back in Houston, a business that needed to be moved which would require any number of time-consuming steps and critical conversations with loyal clients, crews, and vendors I’d used over the years.
I didn’t even want to leave Aster Valley long enough to do any of that. This place, this very kitchen, was so welcoming, so comforting and exciting all at once, that I wanted to settle in and make a little part of it my very own.
Truman and Winter came back inside at the same time Mikey and Tiller returned. Mikey called out my name and asked if he was going to have to come bail me out of “fire jail” later or if it would be traffic jail instead. Everyone glanced over at me, and Truman nearly knocked Gentry’s husband over as he raced over to say hello.
Halfway across the kitchen, he remembered himself because he came skidding to a stop in his socks about three feet away from me.
“Oh, hi,” he said awkwardly as if I were delivering a package he’d forgotten he’d ordered.
I smiled at him. “Hi.”
A tiny tremor shook its way through his body, but he tried ignoring it. “So, you’re… not arrested? I mean… no… fire jail for you or anything? That’s good, because jail in general is a very unhealthy place to spend time. Unfortunately, people in jail experience more disease. For instance, incidence of sexually transmitted diseases is significantly higher among…” His eyes widened, and he cut himself off with a choking sound. “Of course, I didn’t mean to imply that you…” He stopped and swallowed, his face becoming a little blotchy. “Help,” he squeaked.
I stepped closer and grabbed his face, leaning down to kiss the man silly. Truman’s hands grabbed at my shirt and fisted the cotton so I wouldn’t pull away.
God, I loved kissing him. I could have seriously stood there all afternoon exploring his mouth at my leisure. But we were in a room full of people, and I’d embarrassed him enough as it was.
I pulled away and met his eyes. “No fire jail crabs for me, sweetheart. I’m all clear.”
He closed his eyes and groaned, moving even closer to me and hiding against my chest. “I’m not fit for polite society,” he muttered against my shirt.
“Then maybe I’ll have to keep you tied up in my dungeon lair,” I said softly into his ear.
“You already told me the chalet doesn’t have room for a dungeon,” he reminded me, looking up with a smirk.
“It doesn’t now,” I agreed with a wink, “but I’m a builder.”
Truman pulled me over to introduce me to Winter and catch me up on the insurance help Doran had given him while I was gone. Gentry had described Doran as an expert in all things contractual, and he’d been correct. Doran had discovered the part of the policy that definitively showed the shop would be covered despite the arson finding. That was enough of a relief to explain why Truman had been so happy when I’d walked in, but then he also told me a funny story about Gentry being mistaken on an airplane once for a popular televangelist. Truman could hardly hold his giggles as he retold it.
As the group socialized around us, I realized that this was way more beneficial to Truman’s well-being at the moment than surveillance cameras or even tending his farm would be. So I sat down next to him at the kitchen table and listened.
There were times he became self-conscious and stammering, but for the most part, he seemed to shine under the affectionate attention of the other men in the room. Somehow he’d recognized everyone here as a friend, and it allowed him to come out of his shell more than I expected.
It wasn’t until someone mentioned the “motorcycle accident” that I saw Truman’s mask slip.
Mikey’s eyebrows furrowed. “I can’t believe Gene Stanner is allowed to drive without a license and there’s no one around to stop him. People could be killed. What if he’d hit one of you?”
Truman’s breathing had shallowed, and he looked like he was about to faint.
“Hey,” I said. “Why don’t we head back to the farm for a bit? You still have those orders that need to go out.”
I didn’t care about his orders, but I wanted to get the cameras installed before making a call back to Houston to touch base with the Harding brothers about moving my business to Colorado. I knew they’d take good care of my clients in my absence, but I needed to notify them and get the ball rolling.
“Oh, uh, yeah. That’s… a good idea.”
“I picked up some security cameras I wanted to install at your place if that’s okay with you. They’re really easy to use, and you can even check them from your phone.”
He looked at me in surprise from where he sat next to me at the kitchen table, shredding a paper napkin with nervous fingers. A half-empty baggie of peanut butter cookies sat in front of Truman at the heavy wooden table, and Doran’s collection of wine bottles he was emptying “for an art project” took up most of the rest of the tabletop space.
“You didn’t need to do that,” he said.
“I know. But I’d like to. Do you want to come with me and get those orders done?”
He nodded. “Yeah. And maybe lie down. I’m feeling drained all of a sudden.”
We stood up and said our goodbyes. Thankfully, Truman’s Subaru was out front, so we were able to leave Tiller and Mikey’s SUV at the lodge. We drove toward the farm in what I originally thought was companionable silence, but I quickly discovered was not.
“I lied to everyone,” he said, shoving the words out like he’d spent several minutes trying to get them to leave of their own free will first. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
20
Truman
After Gentry had brought up the motorcycle hit-and-run, which of course everyone simply thought was a case of regular drunk driving, I’d been swamped with guilt. I’d asked Sam not to mention that we thought it had been deliberate until I was ready to talk to them about what happened in December, too.
But the guilt was eating at me. How could I be in Mikey’s kitchen acting like one of his good friends after I’d kept the identity of his hit-and-run driver a secret all this time?
Because of me, Mikey and Pim had never gotten justice.
The guilt was a poisonous ball in my gut that was never going to go away. Not only had I kept the secret, but I’d also allowed myself to get closer to Mikey as a friend during this time. How could I have done something so horrific?