“You want to fight me?” Larimer challenged.
You bet! “Not worth the trouble.” But, yeah, what Beau wouldn’t give to square off with Larimer, punch his lights out.
“You need a lesson in respect.”
Then he’d heard the familiar hiss of a belt being stripped from Larimer’s jeans. The same sound he’d heard as a boy of not more than five. His heart stilled. Bastard, he thought. Beau then turned, dropping the rake in the same motion, and his father had drawn back and started to crack the slim leather over his head. As it whipped toward him, Beau had deftly caught the belt in one hand. Sharp leather cut into his fist, but he barely felt it.
“You ever try this again, I swear I’ll kill you,” he warned in a low voice. Larimer tried to yank his weapon away, but Beau had wound the snake-like strap around his fist, drawing his father closer until they were glaring eye to eye. His father’s nostrils flared, and Beau smelled the stink of whiskey and tobacco on his breath. A drop of sweat drizzled along the old man’s hairline.
“You don’t have the guts.”
“Oh, sure I do.”
“You’d spend the rest of your life in prison.”
“No court in the county would convict me.” With his free hand he lifted his shirt to show the scars that were visible on his skin. “You wanna take your chances?”
“You’re just like me,” Larimer insisted. “You look like me, and now you’re acting like me.”
“I’ll never be like you, you sick piece of shit.”
Surprisingly, the old man had backed down. For the first time in Beau’s memory, he dropped his belt and backed out of the doorway of the barn, his looming silhouette visible against the backdrop of the setting sun. Beau had gone about finishing his chores, then later swung his leg over the saddle of his miserable excuse of a motorcycle and roared off.
He’d never seen Larimer Tate again.
And he hadn’t regretted it.
Still didn’t.
Except for the terrible thought that Larimer might have hurt Shiloh while Beau had turned a cold shoulder to his father’s other family.
*
Shiloh took one step into Faye’s bedroom, then backed out and closed the door. No way could she stay in the room where her mother had slept, at least not yet. The ghosts were too nearby. A single glimpse of the bedroom, with its faded floral wallpaper, yellowed curtains, patchwork quilt, and a bureau of Faye’s things, including her wedding picture to Tate, was enough to convince Shiloh that she wouldn’t be comfortable occupying a space that was so intimately Faye’s. Maybe she’d change her mind. Someday. Then again, more likely not.
So she turned and nearly jumped out of her skin when she spied Morgan standing in the doorway of the other bedroom.
“That’s Mom’s room,” the girl said.
“I know.”
“You’re not gonna sleep in there, are you?”
“No.”
“Good.”
There was a heavy silence before Shiloh said, “Are you okay?”
“No.”
Shiloh’s heart twisted.
“Are you?” Morgan asked.
“Not . . . really.”
“Are you staying here?”
“For now.”
“Why?”
“Well . . . because of you.”
Another long pause, then Morgan said, “You don’t have to. Beau’s here . . .” Her eyebrows knotted. “Isn’t he?”
“In the attic over the garage.”
“He should be in here.”
“His choice.” Shiloh took a step closer. “Can I get you something?”
Her eyes narrowed. “No.”
“Maybe a glass of water? Or . . . hot cocoa?”
“I’m not a two-year-old!”
“I know . . . I’m just trying to help.”
“Then leave.”
“What?”
“You don’t belong here,” she charged. “You really want to know what would help? If you left.”
Shiloh wanted to fight back, to mention the fact that Faye had been her mother as well, but she knew she would only be wading into deeper, darker emotional waters, and Morgan was only twelve and hurting.
“You should have come back when she was alive. She wanted that.”
Guilt jabbed at Shiloh, but she didn’t explain.
“But . . . you . . . didn’t, did you?”
“It was complicated.”
Morgan crossed her arms over her chest, her chin tilted at an imperious angle. “What? You can’t explain? You don’t think I’ll understand?”
“I don’t—”
“Never mind. I can tell you’re going to lie.”
“I’m not going to lie,” Shiloh shot back. “Okay, the truth. I left because I didn’t get along with my stepdad, your father.” That was sugarcoating it, but the little girl didn’t need to know what a perverted creep her father was, and Morgan was still very, very raw from Faye’s death only hours before.
“Dad’s been dead a long time.” She pressed her lips together.
“I know, but by that time I had my own life.”
“That’s what Mom said, but you know, I think it’s all just a big excuse.” Her last words quavered, and she cleared her throat. She wasn’t nearly as tough as she wanted Shiloh to believe.
“Okay, look. You’re right. I should have been closer to Mom while I had the chance. I get that. And I get that you’re mad at me because you think I didn’t treat her right, but, we have to go forward. So maybe you and I can start over.”
The glare she received could have melted granite. Without a word, Morgan stalked past her and into Faye’s room. She shut the door so fiercely the timbers creaked. A second later, the lock clicked.
Shiloh closed her eyes and slowly counted to ten. She’d tried. She’d failed.
Frustration boiled inside, and she nearly started beating on the door, to try and engage her sister, but that wouldn’t work. Instead Shiloh reminded herself she just needed to give the kid some space. Everyone grieved differently. Morgan was hurting and transferring the source of that pain onto Shiloh.
Made sense, but just the same it didn’t feel good.
“Wonderful,” Shiloh hissed beneath her breath. “Just . . . fabulous.”
Chapter 6
“Shiloh Silva’s back in town?” Kat repeated, staring at her father in surprise. She was standing in his tiny office, a storefront, its only nod to décor a few fishing poles and nets tacked neatly onto the gray walls.
Patrick Starr was seated behind his desk, a newspaper spread on the scarred top, coffee warming in a glass carafe on a hot plate situated on the credenza stretched behind him. Since retiring from the force, Patrick Starr had worked as a private detective, renting this hole-in-the-wall office space in a strip mall. His private detective business was wedged between a taxidermist, who doubled as an accountant when tax time rolled around, and a bakery that specialized in a wide array of cupcakes. The freshly made pastries were so special that most mornings a line of patrons snaked from the counter inside Betty Ann’s Bakery and out the front door, even in the middle of winter with the temperatures freezing. So far, Kat had resisted temptation and hadn’t sampled Betty Ann’s fare.