Things Made Right (2 page)

Before he went any farther, Sully needed to know exactly what Loren knew, who she’d told.

Why she was even stirring this shitpot now.

“How long ago are we talking?” he quietly asked, more to stall than anything.

He knew the date.

It was forever etched in his brain, along with the details.

Loren’s hands dropped to her lap. “Over thirty years ago,” she quietly said.

Sully froze, an icy flood of relief and shock washing over him, short-circuiting the really bad adrenaline jolt that had just started pumping through his veins.

Now he honestly had no clue what she was talking about.

He nodded toward her menu to buy himself some time to recover from the near miss. “We need to be ready when the waitress returns,” he said, hoping his own voice didn’t tremble from the force of his relief.

* * * *

Once their orders were in, Sully leaned in and reached across the table to gently clasp Loren’s hand in his.

“I’m your friend,” he said. “If you ask me to keep your secret, I will. But I will also be brutally honest with my opinion. I won’t sugar-coat something just to make you feel better. Understand?”

Silent tears slipped down her cheeks and fell to the table as she nodded. He realized today she wasn’t wearing any makeup, which was totally unlike her.

“What happened?” he asked.

He had to struggle to hear her pained whisper. “He was only trying to make things right,” Loren said. “He never told me the details about what happened. But I know. He told me never to ask him the details, because he never wanted to lie to me, and he didn’t want me to know. But I
know
.”

Over thirty years ago would have put Ross and Loren in their early twenties, Sully knew. College years.

“He, who?” he asked, although he suspected.

“Ross,” she said.

“I still don’t know what we’re talking about,” Sully said, both confused and relieved.

Loren withdrew her hand from his and reached into her purse. She withdrew a small tablet, turned it on, swiped through a few things, then handed it across the table to Sully.

It was a PDF file, a scan of the front page of an old newspaper.

The bold headline on 1A, just under the fold and directly below the main article about a Middle East US military action overseas, read “Four Students Dead in Tragic Crash.”

The article talked about four frat brothers—including three who were on the Pennsylvania university’s football team—who’d died in a fiery middle-of-the-night car crash when they apparently got drunk and then missed a sharp curve, running their vehicle off a hundred-foot drop. Walter Kessling, Charles Van Hardy, and Lawrence Busch were the players. David Corning was heavily involved in student government at the school. All four seniors lived at the fraternity house.

Loren still cried. “He was only trying to make things right,” she said. “No one else would do anything. After the other girl told me what happened to her, I told Ross.” She nodded at the tablet. “And then…”

Sully took a deep breath. As a cop, he suspected he knew exactly what had happened, what it would take to push the man over the brink like that.

Still, he needed the full story.

He returned the tablet to Loren. “Why are you asking me about something that happened a long time ago? Why is it important now? What’s happened?”

She swiped through to something else and showed him the tablet again. Another story, this one recent, three weeks earlier, posted on a Pennsylvania newspaper’s website.

Football team to honor Adequan Smith and three past fallen teammates with memorial plaque at ceremony before the game this Saturday.

Smith had been an innocent bystander shot and killed during a convenience store robbery only two weeks into the start of the school year. Kessling, Van Hardy, and Busch were the three “fallen” being belatedly honored. Surviving family members of the three young men had been invited to attend the ceremony.

One Melody Van Hardy Axlerod, a younger sister of Charles, was quoted in the article. “It’s about time someone finally honored them, considering the investigation into the accident was botched from the start.”

He read through it before returning the tablet to Loren. “That still doesn’t answer my question. Why is this important now?”

She took a deep, shuddering breath. “Because Melody Axlerod found me on Facebook and contacted me last week. Then she called me yesterday. She lives in Tampa. She wants to meet with me to talk.”

Then…

Loren Miller’s first year of college had gone well. After not a little begging on her part, her parents had agreed to let her move out of the dorm and share a small, furnished two-bedroom apartment with her friend, Emily Andrews, for her second year. Loren and Emily had graduated from the same high school just outside of Pittsburgh, and had been good friends their junior and senior years.

Loren, who’d just turned twenty, worked part-time, as a waitress just off campus at a small coffeeshop. They weren’t open late, most of their clientele being nearby office workers, and the employees with seniority usually grabbed the more lucrative morning and lunch shifts.

When she first met Ross Connelly, it was, ironically, a dark and stormy night.

Seriously dark, because the power went off. And seriously stormy, an early spring weather system that dumped massive amounts of rain right on top of them for over twelve hours straight.

During a lull in the weather, Emily’s older brother, Mark, had stopped by to eat dinner, his good friend Ross Connelly in tow.

Then the bottom dropped out of the sky again and the two men were stuck there until nearly midnight.

Not that Loren minded.

She liked Mark well enough, but he was almost like a big brother to her in many ways. She’d spent enough time at Emily’s house during high school she’d come to see him as the big brother she’d never had.

She’d never met Ross before that night, although she’d heard his name mentioned once or twice in passing. Three years older than her and in his final year of pre-law, he was starting to grow into his lanky six one frame, his sandy brown hair a little on the tousled side, his brown eyes sweet and inviting.

The dark and stormy night awakened something in Loren.

At the time, she didn’t know what.

It wasn’t until later, after the events of a different night, that she could fully appreciate who Ross was.
What
Ross was.

And who and what she was, as well.

* * * *

“If you want,” Emily offered, “Loren and I can share a room tonight, and you guys can either share my bed, or one of you can have my bed and the other the couch.”

It was nearly midnight and they were all yawning. With one lone pillar candle to light the apartment, and with the rain apparently not letting up anytime soon, it wasn’t like there was anything else to do.

Mark stood at the living room window overlooking the street in front of their apartment building. They were on the second floor. “No, we need to get going. I have an early class in the morning.”

“Me, too,” Ross said. “I won’t melt.”

Mark dug his keys out of his pocket, jingling them in his hand. “Well, guess I won’t need to take my weekly Saturday bath now,” he joked.

“Eww,” Emily protested in mock horror. “Is
that
what I’ve been smelling?”

“Not for long, sis,” Mark said. “Hey, make sure you lock up after us.”

Emily walked them to the door, shooting the deadbolt after they left. The women headed over to the window. They really couldn’t see much but rain and more rain, the moonless night and clouds combining with the power outage to make it pitch black outside.

Across the street, in the apartment building there, candles flickered in a couple of apartments.

“Oh!” Loren startled when the power blinked on. The street lamps outside started glowing to life outside, just in time for Loren to see the two men emerge from their building’s entrance on the street below.

Ross turned and tossed a wave at her before dashing through the rain after Mark.

Em crossed her arms over her chest. “Chase him, girlfriend,” she said. “He’s a catch. Nice guy, not a douche, hard worker, good grades.”

“Maybe,” Loren said, watching as Mark’s headlights came on a moment later after he started the car. “Right now, I just want to get through this semester.”

* * * *

“
Argh!” Loren pounded her fist on the top of the electric typewriter. It was her typewriter, but since Emily didn’t have one, it sat on the desk in the living room so they could both use it if they needed it. Neither bedroom in the tiny apartment was large enough for a desk, anyway.

Ross laughed from where he sat at the small dinette table and had been talking with Mark and Emily. “I’ve heard of pounding out an assignment, Lor, but I don’t think they mean that literally. What’s wrong?”

“This stupid piece of junk is what’s wrong,” Loren said. “I just have one lousy page to finish typing on my paper, and I really don’t want to drive all the way in to campus to go to the computer lab for that. But the keys keep hanging up.”

Ross pushed back from the table and walked over to the desk. Her parents had given her the electric typewriter when she entered high school. It wasn’t the nifty—and expensive—electronic word processor that she’d asked for, but it had come in handy. Especially since one of those expensive desktop computers was way out of her budget.

Now it was aggravating the hell out of her, the countless hours of use over the past several years finally taking its toll on the machine.

“Let me take a look at it,” he said.

She vacated the chair in front of the desk and he took her place. “The keys keep sticking together,” she told him.

He rolled her piece of paper out and rolled in a fresh one, playing with it for a minute. “It looks like this key is a little bent. See?” He pointed. “And it needs to be cleaned out. What is that, cat hair?”

She looked where she was pointing. “Maybe. I caught my cat laying on it a couple of times at home. Probably because it’s warm when it’s plugged in.”

“The grease is gummed up with dust and cat hair and stuff. Haven’t you ever cleaned it out?”

“It’s a machine. I don’t understand it. You might as well be speaking Greek to me.”

He laughed. “I have a toolkit in my trunk. Let me run down and get it. I bet I can fix it for you in just a couple of minutes. It’ll still need a good cleaning, but maybe I can get it working for you for now.”

“Would you? I’d really appreciate it. Heck, I’ll pay you if you want.”

“I’ll work for some of your chocolate chip cookies. How about that?”

She laughed. “Deal! But I can’t make them tonight. I don’t have the ingredients. Can I owe you?”

He stood, leaning in with a wink. “That’ll cost you interest, then.” He took her hand, his gaze never leaving hers, and brushed a kiss across her knuckles. “You’ll want to make sure you pay my vig. How about you fix me dinner Saturday night?”

“Deal! You’re not going out?”

He shrugged. “Wasn’t planning on it.” He headed toward the front door. “I’ll be right back.”

When he left, Emily let out a giggle. “You know, you should chase him. And I don’t mean down the stairs, either.”

“Yeah,” Mark agreed. “He’s single. He broke up with his last girlfriend a couple of months ago. He’s not dating anyone right now.”

Loren blushed. “I don’t know him that well. How do I even know he likes me?”

“Yeah?” Mark said. “Well, get to know him better. He asked me a couple of weeks ago if you were seeing anyone.”

She felt even more heat fill her face. “He did? Really?”

“Really. Hey, I’m a dumb guy, but I’m smart enough to know when a guy likes a girl. And he’s been asking to drop by here with me the past couple of weeks. So…duh.”

“Where’s your girlfriend tonight?” Loren asked.

“Family stuff. They’re here in town. I’ll see her tomorrow night. Why you think I’m hanging out here with my dumb little sister? Ross wanted to know if he could hang out with me here tonight.”

“Hey, I’m not dumb!” Emily protested, her laughter belying her feelings. “I scored higher on my SATs than
you
did.”

“I know.” He smacked the table. “Another reason I should be allowed to pick on you, dammit.”

* * * *

Twenty minutes later, Ross had Loren’s typewriter back in working order. She gave him a grateful hug. “What time Saturday would you like to eat? I have to work from one to five, but after that I’m available.”

“How about I come over at seven thirty, then? I have to work Saturday morning, too.”

“Perfect. Any preference on what you’d like me to cook for you?”

“Nope. Surprise me.”

She rolled her paper back into the machine and picked up where she’d left off.

It now worked perfectly.

“Thank you so much!”

He smiled at her from where he’d retaken his seat at the small table. “You’re very welcome. Any time I can fix something for you, don’t hesitate to ask.”

She smiled as she returned her focus to her assignment, hoping he didn’t see the way she was blushing.

She’d let Ross fix anything for her.

Any
time.

Maybe it’s time I accidentally break a few things around here.

It wouldn’t be the worst way to spend an evening, that’s for sure.

Loren even managed to get her paper typed, and still had time to sit and talk with Ross, Emily, and Mark before the two men had to leave for the evening.

She tried not to think about what Mark had said. She didn’t want to read too much into it. Ross had never given her any indication he really liked her, and she didn’t want to come off as his best friend’s little sister’s goofy friend.

Try saying
that
three times fast.

Before her parents had allowed her to move out of the house and first into a dorm, then here to the apartment with Emily, Loren had to promise them she would finish school. That she would not get involved with a guy and end up throwing away her education.