Wind Chime Wedding (A Wind Chime Novel Book 2) (19 page)

Della had said that Tom had never made Becca happy, but who really knew what went on in any relationship besides the two people who were in it? So what if none of Becca’s friends liked Tom? It was her life. She was smart enough to make her own decisions. And she’d been planning to marry this guy for years.

Turning on to the street where Jimmy Faulkner lived, he jammed his hands into his pockets. He had let himself get caught up in his feelings for Becca because she was the first woman he had thought about wanting something serious with since his fiancée. He had actually been stupid enough to start thinking about things like marriage and family and children, things he hadn’t allowed himself to think about in a long time.

He should have known better. It was safer to stay single, to keep his relationships light and simple and meaningless. As long as he felt nothing for the women he went out with, he wouldn’t ever have to risk another rejection.

Walking up the path to Jimmy’s gray shingled bungalow, he stepped over a broken clay pot that had probably once held a plant, but was filled now with moldy soil and water. Even if Becca did call off the wedding, and they dated for a while, she might eventually realize, like his fiancée had, that he wasn’t enough for her. That she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life with a man who wasn’t whole.

It was time to let her go and refocus on the mission at hand. He would have a quick chat with Jimmy about Luke, check in with the crew at the inn to make sure they were on track to finish in two weeks, stop by the café and apologize to Annie, then head back to Annapolis to help his father with the speech for the announcement about the jobs program tomorrow.

He climbed the steps to the door and knocked. When no one answered, he noted that the shades were still drawn in all the windows. He tried the handle. It turned easily and he let himself in.

“Jimmy?” he called, stepping into the dark living room.

The stench of whiskey and cigarette smoke greeted him, along with a disgruntled groan from the man passed out on the couch in front of the television. Jimmy didn’t even bother to get up. He continued to lie there, his baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes, blocking out the rest of the world.

Colin stood in the doorway, taking in the cigarette butts and ashes scattered over the floor, the dirty dishes crusted with food piled on every flat surface, the empty bottles of bourbon overflowing from the trashcan.

“Get up,” he said, his voice low and filled with warning.

“Go away,” Jimmy mumbled through the brim of his cap.

“Get up,” Colin repeated, slower this time.

Jimmy ignored him, shifting a little on the cushions to get more comfortable.

Colin crossed the room, reached down, and hauled the contractor up to his feet. “I said,
get up
.”

Jimmy blinked up at him, bleary eyed and barely coherent. “What the hell, man?”

Colin shoved him, hard, against the wall. A frame fell and glass broke, shattering to the floor.

“Fuck, man!” Jimmy shuffled his bare feet to avoid stepping on the glass. “What’s your problem?”

Colin took a step closer, towering over him. “What’s
my
problem?”

A brief flicker of fear flashed through the contractor’s bloodshot eyes and Jimmy lifted his hands in a sign of surrender. “I checked in with the crew at the inn over an hour ago. Everyone’s there. Everything’s on track.”

“I didn’t come here to talk about the inn.” Colin reached around him and jerked the blinds open, flooding the room with sunlight.

Jimmy squeezed his eyes shut, a pained expression crossing his face before he opened them again, squinting up at Colin. “What did you come here to talk about?”

“Your nephew.”

“Luke?” he asked, confused. He glanced around the room, as if he were looking for him, as if he might still be here.

“I found him walking along the road toward St. Michaels a half an hour ago,” Colin told him.

Jimmy blinked. “What?”

“He was running away.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Jimmy scoffed.

“He was right,” Colin said, shaking his head at the man in front of him in disgust. “He said you wouldn’t even notice.”

“Christ,” Jimmy said, scrubbing a hand over his puffy face. “I can’t keep tabs on the kid all the time.”

“He’s your nephew. It’s your responsibility to keep tabs on him when his mother’s at work.”

Jimmy narrowed his eyes. “How is this any of your business?”

Colin’s hand shot out, grabbing the front of Jimmy’s shirt. “It became my business as soon as I found him walking along the side of the road this morning.” He pushed the contractor back against the wall, holding him there. “Don’t you even want to know why he was running away?”

Jimmy said nothing.

“He overheard the fight last night, the one when you told his mother you wouldn’t go to school with him on Friday.”

“I’m not his father,” Jimmy spat, struggling to get free.

“Maybe not,” Colin said, continuing to hold him in place. “But you’re the closest thing he’s got right now.”

“It’s just a stupid school thing.”

“You’re going.”

“I’m—”

Colin’s hand twisted tighter into his shirt. “You’re going,” he repeated, and there was no mistaking the threat behind the words this time. “Do you understand me?”

That brief flicker of fear returned and Jimmy nodded, slightly.

“Good.” Colin released his grip and lowered his arm back to his side.

“Jimmy?” a female voice said from the doorway.

Colin turned, taking in the wisp of a woman with dirty blond hair in her late thirties. Her blue eyes widened when she saw the glass on the floor.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“Nothing, sis,” Jimmy said, stepping over the glass and digging through the blankets on the sofa for his cigarettes.

Sis, Colin thought, turning to face the woman in the door. Jimmy didn’t have a sister, so this must be his sister-in-law, his brother’s widow—Luke’s mother.

“I just came from the school,” she said. Her face was pale, her expression frazzled. She was wearing a bleach-stained T-shirt, loose fitting gray sweatpants tied with a string around her thin hips, and a pair of battered sneakers. She held a bucket filled with cleaning supplies in one hand. “Shelley said Luke ran away this morning.”

Jimmy lit a cigarette and exhaled a long stream of smoke. “He’s fine now.” Without another word, he walked across the room and into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him.

Courtney stared at Colin from across the room. “Shelley said you found him.”

Colin nodded.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome.”

She stepped into the house timidly, like she was a little afraid of him. She set down the bucket of cleaning supplies and started gathering up the empty bottles on the counters, dumping them into the already full trashcan.

He picked up the ashtray overflowing with butts on the coffee table and carried it over to the kitchen. She took it from his hand, stiffly. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll take it from here. You’ve done enough.”

His hand dropped back to his side, but he didn’t leave. He stood by the door, watching her quick, efficient movements as she picked up bottles, carried dishes over to the sink, and folded the musty blankets on the sofa, like she’d done it a hundred times before.

“You’re not helping,” he said quietly.

Her gaze flickered up, then dropped back to the floor, where she was scooping up fallen ashes.

“You’re not helping by cleaning up after him, by protecting him. You’re enabling him.”

“We’re doing the best we can,” she said tightly.

Colin watched her carry the dustpan of ashes over to the trash, then twist the bag up, lifting it out of the plastic bin, as if it weighed nothing. She wasn’t a stranger to hard work, Colin realized. And she was too proud to ask for help. She probably thought if they kept moving forward, putting one foot in front of the other, they’d both make it through to the other side of their grief eventually.

He used to think that grief could be buried in hard work, that it didn’t really have to be dealt with, that it didn’t have to be faced head on.

He knew better now.

“How long has this been going on?” Colin asked.

She set the bag by the door, walking back into the kitchen to start on the dishes in the sink. “It’s no big deal. He’s been drinking a little more than normal since his brother passed away. It won’t last forever.”

“It’s a big deal if he’s numbing his grief in an entire bottle of whiskey every night.”

She turned on the water, squeezing in a bit of soap. The dishes clinked together as she stacked them, one by one, into the sink. “We all deal with grief in different ways.”

“Yeah,” Colin said bitterly, thinking about all the former service men and women who were back in this country now, struggling to process what they’d seen during back-to-back deployments in two of the longest wars in U.S. history—many of them turning to alcohol when they couldn’t find the support they needed in their communities.

“You’re right,” he said, turning to let himself out. “We all deal with grief in different ways. And this is the worst way.”

B
ecca kept a close eye on Luke throughout the rest of the day. He didn’t appear to be in any distress. If anything, he seemed oddly pleased with himself, which worried her. She didn’t want him to think that running away was a good way to get attention. She knew he needed attention…desperately. But what if he had gotten hurt? Or lost?

Or picked up by a stranger who had no business giving a child a ride?

Standing at the window of her classroom while her students read the assignment she’d passed out a few minutes ago, she wondered for the hundredth time that day what would have happened if Colin hadn’t spotted him from the road. How far would he have gotten? How long would it have taken them to find him?

Outside, the wind pushed at the swings on the playground, the metal chains creaking as they swayed back and forth. She wished Colin had come to her when he’d dropped Luke off at school that morning. She wished he had told her what had happened instead of going to Shelley.

Why hadn’t he come to her?

It didn’t make any sense.

The last time she’d seen him had been at her house two days ago. He’d been so intense, so interested in
her
. And now…what? He was avoiding her?

Wrapping her arms around her midsection, she tried to soothe the hollow, aching emptiness that had begun to grow inside her, as she’d lain awake last night next to Tom, unable to sleep. She needed time to think, to process, to try and make sense of everything that was happening.

But she didn’t have time. She was supposed to be getting married in two and a half weeks. She was supposed to be delirious with happiness and excitement. Instead, she was beginning to wonder if she was about to make the biggest mistake of her life.

How had everything gotten so complicated?

Reaching out, she adjusted the cotton ball dangling from the tail of a construction paper bunny one of her second graders had made during their Easter party the week before. Sunlight slanted in the window, reflecting off the silver heart dangling from the charm bracelet around her wrist.

She wanted to like it. She wanted so badly to like the bracelet Tom had given her, the bracelet he’d been saving for their wedding night. But every time she looked at it, all she could think about was how heavy it felt, how big and thick the chain was around her small wrist, and how she wished more than anything that she could have her mother’s bracelet back.

“Miss Haddaway?”

“Yes?” Becca turned away from the window, grateful for the distraction.

Audrey Morris pointed to a word on the handout in front of her. “What’s this word?”

Becca walked over and knelt beside Audrey’s desk. She glanced down at the word, ‘escape’ and lowered her voice so she wouldn’t disturb the other fifteen students who were still reading. “Can you sound out the syllables for me?”