“Have it your way. I hope you can live with yourselves.” I tromped toward the door, pivoting at the last moment. “By the way, you’ve got thirty days to vacate my property.”
Out the door and into Puppa’s truck. I peeled out, snow flying behind the vehicle as I raced up the drive. Just around the bend, a car came at me on the one-lane road. I slammed on the brakes and pulled to one side, letting the startled woman pass. Traffic on my backwoods driveway? I spun the wheels in anger. Uhhh. I hated Samantha and Joel for what they’d done to my once-private hideaway. I fled to the lake house, the scenery passing in a blur of tears. Puppa was sitting in the living room, reading a newspaper, and looking lost in the empty space.
He lowered the pages as I entered. “How’d it go?”
I flopped forlorn onto the love seat, feet asunder, hands in my lap. I couldn’t even talk, my throat was so full of pent-up anger and grief. Though I tried to stop them, tears kept dripping down my face. I wiped them on my hands, and wiped my hands on my pants, not caring if Puppa saw me at my crudest.
“Not good, eh?” he said. He folded the paper and set it on the floor by his chair. He walked over, snuggling me on the love seat, a little pat on my shoulder. My body gave an occasional shudder while I told him the day’s events. As I talked, my emotional baggage gradually packed up and shipped out. By the time I got to the latest visit to the lodge and my argument with Sam, my stomach was gurgling.
“Hungry?” he asked.
I nodded, staring off.
“Come on. Food always helps.” He got up and pulled me to my feet, dragging me, mute, into the kitchen. “What’ll it be?” he asked, opening the freezer door. “Pizza, fish sticks, potpie, or TV dinner?”
I shrugged my ambivalence.
“Patricia,” he said, pulling out two potpies, “don’t take Samantha’s overprotective attitude personally. She’s been through a lot with this situation. She suffered a broken heart early on when Brad first threw in the towel. You can’t expect her to get her hopes up now, when it seems he’s bent on dying. She needs to take care of herself more than ever.”
“I’m so angry.” Grabbing the printed cardboard from Puppa, I tore open the boxes, digging out the delicate frozen pastry as Puppa set the oven. Chunks of crust fell on the counter. “Sam’s not leaving me with any options here, short of kidnapping Brad and sneaking him off to Mexico.”
Wordless, Puppa set a cookie sheet on the counter.
I slammed the pies onto the metal tray. “Gee, you think border patrol would be suspicious?”
Puppa slid supper in the oven and set the timer. “Don’t get yourself worked up. You can’t control what Sam or Brad does. Ask yourself what you can control, then focus on that.”
I scooped crumbs into my hand and tossed them in the trash. What was my course now? Would I fight for the lodge? Would I fight for Brad? Would I disappear into hiding? Would I return to Del Gloria and finish my college education? I had loads of options, just no answers.
Opening the fridge, I fished for the cottage cheese. The stamp on the container promised it was fresh. I put it out, along with a bag of not-quite-stale bread and a slab of butter. “I haven’t heard anything more about Melissa. What’s she up to these days?”
“She cut ties with the area and relocated, forwarding address withheld. Said she’d love to be back in touch when the kids are older. Right now she’s just lying low and working on getting her life in order.”
I nodded. “So what’d she have? A boy or a girl?” Melissa had been expecting her third child at the time of the ordeal.
“Little boy. Named him Gerard Owen Russo.” Puppa’s face blushed with pride. “Your cousin Gerard married Melissa in July.”
I slumped against the counter. Another Russo baby. So, both my bachelor cousins were married off. I’d missed two weddings and a funeral while I was dead.
I put on a smile. “I’m glad for Gerard. Seemed like he and Melissa really respected one another, just from the little time I saw them together. And to be honest, I was getting worried he was one of the casualties this spring. Nobody’s said a word about him.”
“He took a bullet to the knee, so he has to take things easy now. But he and Melissa couldn’t be happier. I sure miss them around here, but they’re both glad to be on a new adventure. Justin Jones wasn’t as lucky.”
I’d never heard the name before. “Was that the skinny kid with the gun?” I’d called him Skuzz, loathing everything about him, right down to the waistband on the Hanes peeking out from his low-riders.
“He was one troubled kid. Shouldn’t have been involved with Majestic to begin with. He met his match when he messed with Candice.”
I bristled at the name. “I guess I’ve been reluctant to ask about her too. Tell me she’s behind bars.” At least if she were in jail, I’d feel better. She’d confessed murder to me and I’d closed my eyes to it, instead leaving it to the police to solve the case and arrest her. But things had snowballed and next thing I knew, she’d shot Brad. No wonder I’d blocked the event from my memory. How do you live with guilt like that?
“Candice left Frank with a head injury-too bad the guy’s got a skull like a steel drum-then took off. Just vanished,” Puppa said.
“She vanished?”
So Candice was still out there, on the loose, able to hurt anyone at any time for whatever reason. The two halves of my heart tugged in opposite directions. How could you love someone deeply on the one hand, but hate so much of what they’ve done on the other? And yet, wouldn’t it be for the greater good if she was taken out of commission, after what she did to Brad… all because of me?
The timer dinged.
“Dinner is served,” Puppa said, putting on oven mitts.
We ate the steaming potpies in the dining room, the two of us lost at one end of the twelve-seat table.
“So, whatever happened to you that night?” I asked. “The last I saw of you was at the Watering Hole honkytonk. We were diving for cover out the back door. You went one way, Candice went the other.” I shrugged. “And I almost took a plunge into Mead Quarry.”
“That night just kept getting better and better,” Puppa said. “I caught up to Candice and tried to get her to turn herself in. Told her she could cut a deal, get involved in the witness protection program, but-” he shook his head and gave a sigh of disgust-“talk about stubborn. She just waved her gun at me and threw me out of the car. She must have changed her mind about running when she realized Majestic would be on the warpath. Sounds like she got to the lodge just in time to save you.”
“Just in time to shoot Brad, you mean.”
Puppa cradled his head in his hands as if weary. “I think she’s got problems with men.”
“That’s one way to put it. Plus she’s got control issues, a cold-blooded streak-”
“Enough. She’s suffered enough. You don’t need to heap on more condemnation.”
Humbled, I nodded. “You still love her, don’t you?”
“Never stopped.” He rubbed at a spot under his eye.
“I used to think she was a cancer in my brain, always there, always on my mind, growing over the years. I’d have done anything to have every memory, every thought of her surgically removed from my head. The idea of being with another woman turned my stomach. It was like she’d ruined me. It was Candice-or nobody. But after studying and praying and puzzling over it, I realized that I wasn’t infected with a cancer. I was infected with love. I love that woman unconditionally. She’s capable of murder, yet I still love her. When I realized she was involved with Majestic and the local drug trade, I wanted to be angry. I wanted to hate her. Maybe then I could stop wanting to be with her. Maybe then she’d be out of my head. But it made no difference. Since that night at the Watering Hole, I’ve tried to find her. I want to bring her home. Show her that I love her no matter what. If only she’d let me.”
He broke into tears, and then so did I, weeping beside him, my cloth napkin soaked in the by-products of grief.
Was I crying because I was sympathetic to his plight? I knew better. I cried because the woman he loved unconditionally took from me the man I loved unconditionally. My shoulders heaved and I struggled for air. My heart beat painfully, squeezed by some cruel hand inside my chest.
I loved my grandfather. I really did. But I couldn’t ignore my own torment. There was only one way to ease the pain of my broken heart.
I took a calming breath. At least now I knew what course I would take.
