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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

A spen’s car was in the driveway when Garrett arrived at her house that afternoon. Since she’d finally trusted him with her key, he’d already been by once to unload the things they’d purchased the day before. Then he’d returned to his condo to get the tools he’d need that hadn’t fit in the truck the first time around.

He jogged up the walk, and, after knocking to announce himself, propped open the glass storm door and pushed open the other door into the room. It was a mess, from two-by-fours to sheets of drywall, from new toilets to floor tile. He was about to announce his presence when he caught sight of Aspen bent over a five-gallon bucket of paint. She seemed to be trying to lift it. “Hey, don’t?—”

“I can’t live like this.” She let the paint bucket tip back to the floor with a thud.

“No, I know. I was?—”

“You can’t just leave all your crap in the middle of the living room.” She stood to her full height—which still left her about six inches shorter than he—and glared. “This is unacceptable. I come home to find my house in total disarray, you nowhere in sight, probably off to get lunch. You seem to have zero regard for my property. You need to get this taken care of and taken care of right now.”

Hot rage rose from the very center of his being.

He would not have orders barked at him as if he were a naughty child. Her words, her attitude, brought back too many memories of his father’s demands. The more Dad had asked of Garrett, the less he’d done.

When his dad demanded that Garrett shovel the driveway by hand—despite the snow-blower in the garage—he’d piled all the snow right behind his father’s sedan and then took off for a friend’s house.

When his dad demanded that Garrett make better grades, he’d quit studying altogether.

When his dad demanded that Garrett stop hanging out with losers, he’d befriended the neighborhood troublemaker. They’d broken into houses, cars, and eventually a video game store.

He’d nearly gone to juvenile detention for that.

Which was how he’d ended up in Coventry.

Uncle Dean and Aunt Deborah never demanded anything of Garrett. When they wanted something done, they asked. They’d always been kind and respectful, and he’d always been willing to do whatever they needed.

Aspen had been respectful, too, until that moment.

A very small, very petty part of him wanted to leave everything exactly where it was and leave to make her accusations true. An hour or so at The Patriot would calm him down. And teach her a lesson in respect.

But even from where he stood on the opposite side of the large space, he could see tear tracks on her face.

“Having a rough day?”

“That has nothing to do with this.” She bent again and tried to heave the bucket by her feet.

He slammed the door with his foot and rushed across the room. Gently, he slid his hand around her arm. “You can’t move that.”

“Why is it so…?” She looked up at him, and he could almost see the curse word forming on her lips. She managed to finish with “…ridiculously heavy? Who buys paint in five-gallon buckets, anyway?”

“General contractors,” he said. “Painters. Handymen. It’s significantly cheaper.”

“It’s impossible to move.”

“Five gallons of paint weighs almost sixty pounds, Aspen. You can’t possibly?—”

“At my church there was an eight-year-old who weighed more than that.” She propped her hands on her hips. “I used to lift him every Sunday.”

The more irrational she sounded, the less angry Garrett felt. Something was very wrong, and it had nothing to do with the mess in her living room.

“Paint is dense, denser than water by about twenty percent.” Maybe random facts and numbers would shift her focus. “I can see you lifting a sixty-pound child, but children are easier to maneuver. They have armpits, for one thing—convenient little handles. They’re taller, so they don’t have to be lifted as far. You can toss them over your shoulder or prop them on a hip, and they’ll wrap their legs around your waist and their arms around your neck. They’ll hold on. Their weight is distributed on your body. But you can’t prop a paint bucket on your hip like a child. A paint bucket isn’t going to hang onto your neck. Obviously, a can of paint is much less pliable—and helpful—than an eight-year-old. And of course there’s the density issue.”

Her lips twitched as if a tiny smile were trying to break through. “You sound like a physics teacher.”

He shrugged. “I always liked science. Got it from my uncle. He was a chemistry major in college.”

“Your uncle the carpenter?”

“I know. Go figure.”

He held her eye contact, and she didn’t look away. Seemed like a good sign. “Just so you know, I didn’t go to lunch. I went back to my condo to pick up the rest of the supplies I’d need.”

“I see. If you’d warned me or something…”

“I texted you. You said you were going to town, so I figured you’d get it.”

“Oh.” She swiveled and headed for the breakfast room. When she stepped back in a second later, her focus was on her phone. “It was on silent.” She shoved it in her pocket and looked up at him. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.” He smiled to show he meant it. “We all have triggers that make us crazy.”

“I am not crazy.” All amusement drained from her face. She shoved her hands on her hips and scowled at him. “I am not crazy just because I like things to be in order. I’m not?—”

“I didn’t mean anything by it.”

She blinked, then turned and marched into the other room.

He needed a redo. Would that he could delete the last five minutes and start over.

Instead, he set to unloading his pickup and moving everything to where it needed to be. Aspen had already given him the go-ahead to set up shop in the basement, so he hauled many of the items downstairs. The other things he moved into the office. He was coming down the hall, maneuvering the empty hand truck he’d used to move the paint, when Aspen stepped through the door and saw him.

“So that’s the trick.”

“If I want to not end up in traction, yeah.”

“Smart.”

Rather than risk another spat, he rolled it into the living room and then carried it down to the basement. Heaven forbid he should leave anything in her way.

He stopped in the center of the dark space and inhaled a deep breath. He blew it out with a prayer.

Whatever was going on with Aspen, it had little to do with her house being in disarray. He wanted to be a friend to her, but he also had a job to do, and he needed to do it well. He needed wisdom. He needed to concentrate on the work and not be distracted by the woman upstairs.

He’d brought a sandwich in his backpack, so he dug it out and munched it while he decided on a plan. He had everything he needed for the downstairs bathroom, so he was going to start there. She’d told him she’d prefer he only work in one space at a time, and he wanted to honor that request as best he could.

Lunch wolfed down, he headed upstairs to the bathroom and got started.

He’d removed the old toilet and ripped up the cracked linoleum floor when Aspen knocked on the open door. “Hey.”

He looked up from where he was measuring to find she’d washed off the streaked makeup. She looked younger, more vulnerable somehow. “You okay?”

She leaned on the doorjamb. “I don’t deal well with chaos.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, but home improvement projects are chaotic,” he said. “They’re messy and unpredictable. There’s no way to avoid that.”

“I know.”

“I understand why you want to stay here, that you want to find out what happened to your mother, but if the work is going to be a problem?—”

“I don’t think I do.”

He wasn’t sure exactly what she meant, so he brushed off his hands and stood, waiting for her to continue.

“Want to find out what happened to my mother, that is. Maybe everybody’s right. Maybe I should just let it go.”

Maybe she should. Would that get people off her back? Would the burglar leave her be? Would his uncle no longer be curious about her activities?

Not that anybody else knew that was why she was there. So…no. As long as she was in town, people would be curious about her. Some more than just curious.

He lifted his water bottle and shook it. “I could use a refill.”

She turned and headed for the kitchen.

He followed and was filling his bottle when he asked, “What happened when you were in town?”

“I spent about an hour reading articles about the bombing.” Standing by the door of the dingy space, she related some of the facts and the evidence against her mother.

“The world seems convinced she did it.” He tried to infuse gentleness in his voice. “Are you?”

She shrugged. “Either she set off that bomb or somebody else did an excellent job of making it look like she did.”

But based on the defeat he saw in Aspen’s eyes, he guessed she wasn’t holding out hope for the second.

And then she told him about a woman who’d accosted her at Cuppa Josie’s, a woman who accused her of knowing where her mother was.

“Who was it?” he asked.

“Rhonda something. The sister of the woman who was killed.”

Dean had mentioned her that morning. “That must have been upsetting.”

“Yeah. I was there to talk to Brent Salcito. He tried to intervene, but she was pretty determined to have her say.”

And then after securing his promise to keep it confidential, she told him about her conversation with Salcito, who’d been having an affair with Jane Kincaid after Aspen’s birth.

As if that hadn’t been distressing enough news, he’d gone on to share his theories about what happened to Jane.

Either the woman had committed suicide, or…

“He actually said that to you?” Garrett didn’t try to temper the anger in his voice. “That he thinks your father murdered your mother?”

Aspen nodded, face ashen.

Garrett tamped down a wave of fierce protectiveness, which had him wanting to hunt down the mayor and give him a piece of his mind, or maybe his fist. Instead, he opened his arms.

She stepped into them, pressing her cheek against his T-shirt.

He held her tight. “Considering Salcito’s relationship with your mother, he’s probably not the best judge of your father or your parents’ marriage.”

She tipped her head back to face him. “That’s true.”

“What did your dad say about your mom and their marriage?”

Aspen stepped away and leaned against the counter, crossing her arms. “Not much, honestly. When I’d ask about her, he’d smile and tell me I looked just like her. He’d tell me things about me that reminded him of her, though they were always the same things. I guess she was outgoing and had a lot of friends, and she was confident and knew her own mind.”

“I can see that in you.”

“Can you?” She shook her head. “In the past, maybe, but it doesn’t seem like that these days. Anyway, he never said anything about their marriage. Today, Brent said that my mother loved me, and I realized that my father never told me that she did, never once.”

Ouch. “Perhaps your father’s definition of love was different from your mother’s. Perhaps he just didn’t understand hers.”

Aspen shrugged.

“Maybe they just didn’t understand each other. Maybe he didn’t trust her love for you because…” He let his words trail before he finished the sentence. But Aspen knew what he was getting at.

“Because Dad didn’t trust her love for him?”

“If what Brent said was true, then…”

Aspen blew out a long breath. “It’s so frustrating trying to piece this together. It’s like trying to complete a jigsaw puzzle with no picture and only half the pieces.”

“Is there anybody else you could ask about this? Grandparents? Siblings?”

“My dad had a brother, but their family didn’t live near here. They didn’t know my mom well, and what they knew, they didn’t like. Though they never said that to me, my cousins weren’t so careful with their words. I don’t know that I’d trust their impressions. And we were never close to my mother’s parents.”

“Are they the ones who live in Florida?”

“They’re in North Carolina. They moved here when Mom was a senior in high school, but they only stayed a year before they moved away again. I guess my grandfather was in hotel management, and he got transferred a lot. My understanding is that they weren’t living here when Mom and Dad got married. Dad didn’t keep in touch with them. So, I guess I could ask them, but…” She shrugged.

“Maybe they wouldn’t know much about the marriage either.”

“And my dad’s parents hated my mother. I mean, they never said that to me, but they didn’t have to. So could I trust anything they told me? I don’t know anybody who would be able to give me an unbiased opinion.”

“Maybe you could get all their opinions and weigh them against each other.”

“Or maybe I should just let it go. My father wasn’t a killer. Brent Salcito can’t be right about that.”

“If Brent thought it, then I wonder if your father was a suspect in her disappearance.”

“Huh. I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Can you get the police reports, or maybe talk to someone who investigated?”

“That’s a good idea. And, you know, people tell me she had a lot of friends. Maybe I should figure out who they were. There have to be some who are still around, don’t you think?”

“Seems likely.” She could talk to Dean and Deborah, but Garrett didn’t think they’d want him telling Aspen about their friendship with Jane. In fact, based on the conversation he’d had with his uncle that morning, he knew they wouldn’t.

It felt deceitful, keeping that information from Aspen. But he couldn’t betray his family.

He hated being in the middle, feeling like he had to choose.

“Thank you.” Aspen stepped back toward him.

He hugged her. “I didn’t do anything, really. Just listened.” Guilt wrapped itself around him, almost as tangible as the feel of Aspen in his arms.

“You did more than that. Dad told me another way I’m like my mom. He said she had to express every thought before she knew what she was thinking. She was an external processor, and I’m the same way. Used to drive my father crazy. He’d want to sit quietly, and I’d babble about everything that happened to me all day long. He’d say almost nothing, just nod along. And by the time we were finished, I’d have some clarity.” Her expression turned darker. “Is that weird or…crazy? I never thought about it, but maybe it’s a sign.”

Like a flash, he remembered all the times she’d used that word. Crazy.

She’d asked if it would be crazy to remodel the entire house.

She’d worried that buying the nicer used sofa would be a crazy decision.

When they’d been talking about her wearing her handgun, she’d said she felt like a crazy person.

Earlier that day, it’d been Garrett who’d used the word, suggesting the messy house had been a trigger that had made her…

Crazy.

And his use of the word had made her…

He wasn’t going to say it.

How many times had Aspen wondered if she was like her mother? How many times did she second-guess her decisions for fear of it?

He took Aspen’s upper arms and set her away so he could get a good look at her face—and she his.

“Aspen Kincaid, you are not crazy. You’re one of the sanest, most rational people I know. You might be like your mother in a few ways, but you have a sound and ordered mind.”

“I know.” But when she blinked, a tear dripped down her cheek.

“And your mother wasn’t ‘crazy.’ I don’t know what she had, but it seems pretty clear that she suffered from a mental disorder caused by a chemical imbalance. That word… We need to stop using that word.” He was going to eradicate it from his vocabulary permanently.

She said again, “I know.”

“I’m not sure you do,” he said. “But I assure you, whatever mental illness your mother suffered, she didn’t pass it along to you.” He pulled her close again, wishing he could convince her. Would she always wonder? Would others, like Uncle Dean, make it worse with their assumptions and theories?

Would Aspen always question her own sanity because of her mother’s illness?

He held her close and prayed that God would help her see herself the way Garrett saw her, the way God saw her. As a beautiful, kind, generous, and determined woman.

A woman he was falling for more every moment.