I gave a very unladylike snort as he pulled into a driveway and shut off the engine.
When I saw where we were, the smile slid off my face. We both looked up at the place where the Nickel Auto Body Shop sign used to be. Now it was just a blank spot on a building that would soon be demolished.
“You might miss the place a little,” I said into the silence.
“I don’t think I will,” he said with a low chuckle. “Our new place is pretty great.”
This was true. We’d been slowly furnishing the old house in Montpelier. A few pieces of furniture came to us from my childhood home, which my mother had recently sold. The Virginia condo she’d purchased near her sister’s house wasn’t as large, so she gave us the dining set and my bedroom furniture.
Before she moved away, Father Peters and I had emptied Gavin’s room together, because my mother still wasn’t ready to do it. Though she was doing better in so many other ways. Learning the full extent of my father’s treachery had woken her up. There were many tears when she learned how Gavin had really lost his life, but the shock of it seemed to drain the well of self-pity she’d been drowning in. And with my father out of her life now, she’d risen to the challenge of taking better care of herself.
I didn’t understand it entirely, but I was pretty excited to see her become more active. When she announced she wanted a change and that her sister had proposed she move down south, I was astonished but supportive.
As for my father, he was currently incarcerated in the very jail where he’d illegally sent Jude. The sentence for framing Jude was just a year and a half. Both deputies who helped him with the cover-up all escaped jail time entirely by testifying against him.
But my father wouldn’t be coming out for three years, because they also got him on possession of drugs. All this time he’d kept Gavin’s big stash of pills locked in his gun safe in our basement. Nobody would have ever known it was there if it hadn’t been for the photographs I’d found. They triggered the search warrant. The searchers opened the safe, and the mother lode of pills they found inside sealed Dad’s fate.
The night I heard about this, I made Jude sit down to hear about the stash.
His big, gray eyes widened, and his stubbled jaw fell open. “I didn’t see that one coming.”
None of us did.
Since my father was facing intent-to-distribute charges, he had to tell the prosecutor where he got the drugs. It turned out that Gavin had the entire stash in his duffel bag the night he died. My father had been horrified. He’d blamed Jude rather than let anyone know his own son was a dealer. But he couldn’t frame Jude for possessing such a big stash, because it was such a flashy news story that people would have asked too many questions. So he’d quietly tucked the bulk of the drugs away and let Jude hang for manslaughter instead.
Jude’s conviction was officially overturned just two weeks ago. The letter was stuck to our old refrigerator in the kitchen. Jude and I both paused there every time we opened the fridge just to admire it.
And now I realized that both Jude and I were staring up at his father’s garage, lost in our own thoughts. Jude’s might be awfully sad, too. “I love you,” I said quietly.
He reached across the console to take my hand. “Love you so much it hurts. Here comes the old man.”
His father pulled up beside us. He’d moved out yesterday to an apartment on the two-lane road between Colebury and Montpelier. He’d taken an hourly job at an auto parts store.
The closing on this place was tomorrow, which meant there was one last thing to take care of.
“Hey,” Jude said to his dad, climbing out of the car.
“Hey.”
The Nickel men seemed to communicate entirely in one-word sentences.
“You okay?” Jude asked.
His dad actually smiled. “Yeah. The end of an era.”
I could almost hear Jude’s thoughts. Not a good one.
This awkward little discussion was interrupted as a wrecker rolled slowly up the street. Jude jogged over to tell the driver that he was in the wrong spot—he needed to back into the alley behind the building.
We all walked up the drive to wait for him in back. My phone buzzed with a text, and I pulled it out. May Shipley had sent me the address of the venue where tonight’s festivities were taking place. This place is great, she added.
See you soon! I returned.
When I glanced up at Jude, he was taking something from his father’s hand. He shoved it into his pocket awfully quickly. Then he glanced guiltily over his shoulder at me.
That was a little weird, but I decided not to worry about it. If he and his father were suddenly closer, that could only be a good thing.
The driver of the flatbed had positioned his truck right where he needed to be, and now he jogged toward us. “Jude Nickel?”
“That’s me.”