“I tell you, that war…” Patrick shook his head. “Lots of good boys dying over there. Mitch Adams, I still can’t believe it. He always seemed to have a horseshoe up his ass or something—luckiest damn guy. Did you ever see that girl he married?” Patrick whistled through his teeth and Jesse had the sudden and powerful urge to smash in those teeth.
“I heard she was gorgeous,” Patrick continued.
Time to leave.
Jesse shifted, digging into his back pocket for his wallet.
“Guess old Mitch’s luck ran out.” Patrick’s well of insight was seemingly bottomless. “The whole town thought it was nuts when he went into the military after you. He could have done anything, football scholarship, anything. His mother…” Patrick wrapped his fat fingers around the pint Billy slid over.
“Will never forgive me. I know.” Her name was at the top of a long list of such people.
I shouldn’t have come in here.
Jesse threw a few bucks on the bar, drained his mug then made an attempt to stand. But his bum knee buckled. Too many hours in the car.
“Whoa there.” Patrick laughed, putting up a hand to brace Jesse. “What’d you have in that mug?”
Jesse’s arm jerked instinctually. He stood frozen, knowing exactly how he could kill Patrick with an elbow to the windpipe or the heel of his hand to the nose.
Jesse didn’t do it, of course, but he was capable of it and that was somehow worse.
“Hey, man, sorry if talking about Mitch—” Patrick looked nervous but there was something else in his small eyes, a certain morbid curiosity. The rumors had made it home. “Terrible accident.”
If Jesse stood here long enough, maybe Patrick would just come right out and ask what he clearly wanted confirmed. But Jesse didn’t have time to pussyfoot, he had a house to get rid of and a life to get on with, so he took pity on Patrick.
“I killed him.” Jesse said. “I killed Artie McKinley and Dave Mancio. I put Caleb Gomez in the hospital. And I watched Mitch Adams burn up in his helicopter.” He patted Patrick on the back, like the good friend Patrick had always wished him to be, and limped away.
Mitch ghost dogged Jesse out the door.
The bright sunshine blinded him. Jesse blinked and gave himself a second to adjust before tackling the steps down to the asphalt parking lot.
A hot wind blew down from the mountains, carrying the smell of tar and sun-warmed grass. The scent of the southern California desert reminded him all too much of being a boy.
He’d grown up in this town on the edge of nowhere, and if it weren’t for the damn house his mother left to him in her will, he would never have returned. The war had kept him occupied for three years, but now, thanks to the discharge papers, he could no longer ignore this little obligation.
All he had to do was get rid of the house and he could leave. Chris Barnhardt, a buddy from before the war, waited for him in San Diego with more construction work than he could handle and an interesting proposition that included the word partner.
If Jesse were a smart man, something he’d never claimed to be—he’d be halfway down Highway 101 on his way to the rest of his life. A life he could taste like clean, cold water after years choking on dust in the desert.
Instead he was in New Springs. Just him, more dust, the dumb dog he couldn’t get rid of and the ghosts.
The bright spot of reflection bounced off his Jeep’s windshield sitting the corner of the parking lot. A small woman stood next to the vehicle. Her brown hair blew out behind her like a flag. Like a warning.
He lurched to a stop.
Not this, Jesse thought, panic kick-starting his heart. Not her.
She pushed away from the Jeep and Jesse forced one foot in front of the other, inching his way toward his sister.
She had a lot of nerve. A lot of goddamned nerve tracking him down this way, ambushing him when he hadn’t been in town long enough to get his bearings.
“Hello, Jesse.” Rachel took a few steps closer. He tried not to notice the chin she thrust out as though she were ready for whatever he might throw at her.
It was exactly the way he remembered her. Even at thirty-four, she still looked like that eighteen-year-old girl who’d been so damn fired up to take on the world.
“How’d you know I was here?”
“You know small-town gossip. Mac and I got word the second you drove into town.” She tried to laugh, but it came out all wrong. Broken in all the important places.
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and he was struck by how short she was. How fragile she appeared. He almost laughed as he thought it. Fragile? Rachel? As a boy he’d believed she was the biggest, tallest, strongest thing on earth.
But now she didn’t even come up to his shoulder and he could easily snap her in two.
He never figured his perspective would change.
He opened the driver door only to have Rachel slam it out of his hand. She slid along the side of the vehicle until she was right in his face. “You’re not going to run from me like you did at Mom’s funeral.”
“Get out of the way, Rachel,” he growled, not necessarily on purpose, but the effect was good.
“No.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Please just listen to what I have to say.”
He didn’t care what Rachel had to say, so he turned and started walking back to the bar. He’d take Patrick and his barely veiled insinuations over his sister any day.
She darted around him and Jesse stopped, attracted
and repelled by his sister’s magnetic force. “Why didn’t she leave you the damn house?” he demanded.
“Jesse,” she whispered. He kept his eyes locked on the y in the Billy’s Final Score sign over the door of the bar rather than succumb to Rachel’s plan. Her voice was thick with emotion and he was not going to stand here and watch her fight tears. “Before Mom died I wrote you letters, Jesse. Didn’t you get the letters I sent?”
“I got them.”
She had written almost every week since the day she’d left after her high school graduation. Once he turned eighteen and joined the army, he’d finally written her back and told her to stop. And for a year, she respected his request. Then the letters had started arriving again—with a vengeance. He now knew that was about the time she and Mac Edwards had finally gotten together.
There had been cards from Mac, boxes of cookies from Rachel and funny pictures from Amanda—Jesse’s new niece thanks to Rachel’s marriage to Mac.
He’d opened all letters that weren’t addressed in Rachel’s handwriting. The rest he sent back or burned. Except the cookies—a man could only be so mad.
But he’d never responded to Mac’s letters, and only once to Amanda’s. There was never a reason for them to continue sending him stuff. But they had.
The whole family was just so stubborn.
“We’re hoping you might come up to the farm. Amanda is dying to see you again and Mac can’t wait.” She smiled again, all the hope in the world rolling off her.
“I didn’t read your letters, Rachel.”
“Jesse.” She reached out to him as though to touch his arm, and he stepped out of the way. His eyes met hers and he saw what his rejection did to her, the light that it killed in her eyes.
Let it go, Rachel, he urged silently. You keep coming at me like this and you’re