Forgiven (Ruined) (12 page)

             
It's hard to make up with someone when they're successfully avoiding you.  Sunday morning he's out of the house before I wake up.  Which is a good trick, because I fell asleep on the couch.  I know I was still there when he went out through the living room.  I try his phone, texting him, until he finally sends back,
Everything's all right. Just need some breathing room.

             
As un-comforting as that is, at least he's speaking to me.  Kind of.

             
With nothing else to do, in Carmelita's spotless kitchen, in an empty house, with no plans and no on-hand friends, I take a very long walk, do some of my own laundry, and finally am reduced to doing my math homework.  Hello, C minus.  If I'm lucky.  Can't figure out what I need math for anyway.

             
Oh, I know – to count the complications in my life.  After a while Reed shows up, letting me know he's going back to Boston.  He gives me a handwritten schedule of suggested station crew meetings and their focus.  For a second I consider balling it up and throwing it in his face.  If he didn't think I could do the job, why'd he dump it on me? 

             
Instead, I take a breath.  If he hadn't thought I could do the job, he wouldn't have dumped it on me.  Everybody needs a little OTJ training. 

             
"Everything OK with you and Kellan?" Reed asks as we walk meanderingly toward the street where he left his car.  The day is hot and windy.  Summer is unrelenting, fall a dream.

             
"No, it's not, thanks for asking," I say without elaborating. 

             
Reed, after pretending to duck any blows I threw his way, loops a friendly arm over my shoulders. 

             
"Everything all right with you and the blond with the legs?" I ask.

             
Reed lets go of me.  "Hard to say," he said without elaborating any more than I had.

             
"Journalists at work.  Such wordsmiths."  I shove my hands in the pockets of my jean shorts.

             
"I was going to chide you for being a chatterbox," he says. 

             
"Chide?" I ask.  "Chatterbox?  You OK, Grandpa?"

             
"Wordsmithing, that's all."

             
He leaves without telling me anything about the blond.  That makes me uncomfortable.  If she were a fixture –

             
We could double date!  Like with Emmy and the guy she thinks she might have met!

             
If she were a fixture, I'd be comfortable that Reed's coming to Charleston was to check on his beloved station and his
friend
, Willow.  If she were a fixture and she lived in Charleston?  So much the better.

             
The lanes leading to the beach are full of people.  Families heading for Sunday on the beach.  Kids with Frisbees.  Dogs with Frisbees.  Dogs with tennis balls.  Dogs with no way of reading the No Dogs on the Beach signs or the Dogs on Leashes signs.  Dogs on leashes causing bondage screw ups as they wrapped around their humans' legs.  Small children with ice cream cones.  Old couples strolling.  I wonder if some day I'll be part of an old couple or if I'm just going to go on screwing things up forever.

             
"You OK?" Reed asks, bending a little to look into my eyes.  "The break-in shake you up that much or is it Mr. Tall, Dark and Silent?"

             
I blink, looking around.  I've been pretty far into my own thoughts.  The street's still full of people.  There's a guy on the steps leading to one of the big luxury apartment houses just up the street talking on a cell phone and staring at us.  A camera hands around his neck on a strap.  Two girls in tiny bikinis and flip flops flip flop by him and he doesn't even blink.  His eyes stayed riveted on us, making me uncomfortable.

             
I shake it off, meeting Reed's eyes.  "All of the above.  Plus the huge responsibility of the station that this
guy
who
ran off to Boston
seems to think that
I, a delicate flower,
should be handling."

             
He struggles not to grin.  "I was wrong.  You
suck
at words.  Delicate flower?  You?  You're a Valkyrie." 

             
It's silly, but I like it.  Reed unlocks his car door, turns back to me, grinning, and I go up onto tiptoes, kissing the edge of his mouth.

             
From the edge of hearing, I catch a sound, maybe the sound a camera makes, but when I turn around, the apartment building stairs are empty. 

             
Paranoia.  My old time best friend.  Not so good to see you again.

             
I wave to Reed, and amble back to the beach by myself.

* * *

             
Kellan relents, or something, at the tail end of Sunday.  He comes downstairs and together we find steaks in the freezer, thaw them out and barbecue them.  We don't talk much and since every time I do talk to him I seem to set him off, I'm fine with that.

             
We sit on the porch, eating steak sandwiches, the barbecued steak tucked into crusty bread, and sipping lemonade.  We're still there when Mom and Bruce get back, looking much more relaxed than they had when they left.

             
"Did you save us anything to eat?" Mom asks, carting into the house the whole of several department stores.

             
"There's two cooked steaks keeping warm in the oven."

             
That surprises her.  She pauses, kisses me on the cheek, drops a couple of the bags in my lap, drops some more on Kellan's, and follows Bruce into the house.

             
"She bought me presents?"  Kellan seems almost stunned.

             
I laugh.  "She always brings stuff back."  I'm already digging into the bags.  It's never anything big that she buys.  Just that she does it.  This time it was an elegant blank book I'd never have the guts to write in (and besides, any time I had for extracurricular writing I usually typed it) and new flip flops, insanely bedecked and bejeweled.

             
"She knows you, fluffy bunny," Kellan says.

             
I slap at his arm, but he dodges away.  "Shut up.  I hope she got you – "  I sputter, unable to think of something Kellan wouldn't be able to make look masculine.

             
She's bought him t-shirts, comfy stripped things for beachcombing, and the newest Stephen King novel.  Not a bad haul.  I'll definitely be borrowing the book.

             
Kellan sees me eyeing it and whisks it out of my reach.  "Cost you a pack of smokes," he quips.  He's never made a voluntary reference to his prison time, or any kind of joke about it.

             
"How about protection in the shower," I ask, winking broadly.  I hope he won't ask what I mean, because I'm not sure. 

             
He doesn't.  He just laughs, reads the jacket flap, nods, passes me the book.

             
We're on good terms again.  Which means whatever happens next, I'll move carefully.  I want to help.  Not make things worse.  But I definitely intend to do something.

* * *

             
Monday brings school and station.  I go in before classes to see how the weekend went.  There are enough people present for an impromptu meeting.  I end up promising Tabby
again
that I'll check into getting some stipend pay for us if nothing else, as soon as Zach and Tyler finish the proposal.  When Tabby goes on about it, I interrupt. 

             
"We're on the same side, Tabitha.  There's only so much the University is going to do.  Give me a little while and I'll see what I can do.  Have you asked Tyler and Zach how the proposals are coming?" I asked.

             
She relaxed, and we fell to discussing the next documentary series that might make the University treat us all a little more seriously and after that, the break-in.

             
Nobody else had been there for any of the other break-ins.  We bat the topic around for a little while and decide to put together a couple short special reports that could air on the topic. 

             
Then I head to math class where I utterly bomb on the test.  After all, my studying was relegated to the very last hours of Sunday. 

             
Oh, well. 

* * *

             
The Coffee Mug seems like the most logical place to go.  It's got free wi-fi and passable coffee.  Reed introduced me to the place and Emmy and I have come here.  I don't know that many people on campus, so it's a logical destination.

             
Ordering a latte, I choose a tiny table with a table top almost smaller than my laptop where I can put my back to the wall.  Probably doesn't matter if anyone can see over my shoulder, but the fact that the brown paper package to Kellan was delivered in person so to speak has my paranoia bells jangling.

             
David Reynolds doesn't have a Facebook page.  That was my first and easiest guess.  If Aimee had one before her death, it would probably be taken down by now.  There isn't anything there anyway. 

             
Biting a thumb nail, I sit staring at the door, watching two girls discuss what must have been a first date for one of them.  They're breathless, giggling, probably around 17 years old.  I missed all that.  Until Kellan came home and Reed came into my life, I'd have thought I was ruined because of what happened with my father. I've been struggling for a while now to actually recreate a life.  Kellan's fighting to get his life back.  I want to help him.

             
Think, damn it.  I stare past the girls, not quite seeing the campus beyond the bright windows.  Probably David Reynolds' new wife, Heather Wilkins, has family, but I met her when we were doing the interview.  She's bright, bubbly, happy.  Why would she dig up David's past if he didn't? 

             
I stare at the computer screen.  Stare out the window.  Great, Willow, you're going to be a fantastic reporter.  You really know how to investigate, if by "investigating" you mean staring blankly into space.

             
"Seriously, what about it?" one of the teenaged girls asks the other, their voices louder as the one asking the question rises to go up to the counter.

             
"It's not like I'm going to marry him," the one still at the table calls.

             
Just like that, I have an idea. 

             
Charleston, South Carolina, lists wedding records online.  Out of curiosity and to see how it works, I type in my mother's name and come up with the record of her marriage to Bruce.  Which is great, only David Reynolds got married in Atlanta, Georgia, and Atlanta wants to get paid for providing such info.  All I want is her name, for goodness sake.  I stare at the form.  I could fill it out, preferably not on wi-fi since I'll be providing a payment.  Or, if I had a driver’s license, I could drive there and check it out.  I understand why public agencies charge for their information, but it's less the fee and more the wait that bothers me.

             
So where else?  Wedding announcements.  And thanks to the interview, I know when David and Heather got married. I enter it and, ignoring a horribly named website called CheckMate for investigating whether or not someone you're thinking of dating is already married, I find the announcement within about 20 minutes of phishing sites, catfishing sites, sites that flatly lie about what they can do, and popups, by going directly to the newspapers and looking there. 

             
Bingo.  David Reynolds' late wife's maiden name is Shelton, and her sister Stacee was her maid of honor back on her wedding day.  And from there within instants Facebook is asking if I want to "friend" Stacee Jacobs.  I don't, but happily I don't have to.  Like most people who have nothing to hide, or who don't believe the social media site is capable of hiding anything anyway, her settings are pretty much open.

             
Especially the photos.

             
Feeling a little like a voyeur, I head into the family photos.  Aimee and David, looking radiantly happy.  Aimee and David and the first of the babies and then both babies.  There are family pets and family events.  And family. 

             
In more than one photo there's a girl a little older and a little heavier but otherwise she looks like Aimee, with the red curls and porcelain skin David had mentioned.  Captioning the photos: Stacee and Aimee.  Dates, locations, times.