Yeah. Paul swallowed. But sometimes things that were good just destroyed themselves. Sometimes, things that seemed good really weren’t. An image of Wendy smiling at him and hugging him, singing alongside him in church, tried to press itself into his mind. He shook it away like a dog emerging from a lake would shake off water. “What’s the plan here?”
“I just took a bunch of pictures for the insurance people,” Trey said. “They said we could clean up, but that we should save the damaged books and store them somewhere safe. Any that are undamaged, put on that display table up front for Mary to go through and organize.”
“We’ll inventory all of that later,” Drew said. “For now, I’m doing phone calls. Insurance, cleaning companies, workers that were to come in today.”
Paul started in, helping Trey. Picking up the stacks of destroyed books and loading them into boxes made Paul feel a little sick. “These books could have made kids happy,” he said.
“Yeah, I noticed that it’s mostly kids’ books that are destroyed. Wonder what that’s about.” Trey put another armload into a box.
“What about the young adult books, for teenagers?” Drew asked.
Paul walked over to that section. He’d noticed Mary had a good collection of those books last night.
Almost every shelf was bare. The floor was ankle-deep in ripped, stomped books. “Destroyed,” he told Drew.
Like his own life had been destroyed. He shook off the self-oriented thought, grabbed another box and knelt in the young adult section, loading up the ruined books.
“At one point,” Trey said, “Mary mentioned that she hadn’t seen the stepdaughter since the girl was a teenager. Wonder if there’s a connection with her destroying kids’ and teenagers’ books?”
“My thought exactly,” Drew said.
When his phone vibrated with a text and Paul pulled it out and saw his in-laws’ names, he blew out a sigh.
Need to see you today. Where are you?
Great. But this day couldn’t get much worse, so he texted his location and they said they would be there in an hour or less.
It hit him then: they were related to Davey by blood. Paul himself wasn’t, if last night’s story was to be believed. They’d be shocked to even hear it hinted that their daughter had had an affair.
Paul and Trey continued working through the mess in the bookstore, sorting the books. Paul started hauling boxes to the storeroom in back while Trey dragged in a carpet cleaning machine.
As Paul stacked up the boxes of damaged books, he found himself wishing he could do the same with his own problems. Just load them up and put them away. Have things go back to the way they’d been before last night.
All he’d wanted was to control his life and protect his son. But that had been blown out of the water because his son wasn’t his son.
Images of Davey kept flashing before his eyes, but it was as if the focus had shifted. Now he kept noticing ways that he and his son—because Davey still felt like his son, absolutely—he kept noticing ways they were different. Had Davey’s freckles come from his biological father? How about his left-handedness?
And then he would start thinking about Wendy. Her affair had happened years ago, before she had ever gotten sick. She’d carried that lie through their marriage without ever telling him. Had she loved the guy? Had she thought about him every time she looked at Davey? Obviously, it had been at the forefront of her mind in the last days. It had bothered her enough that she told Amber.
“You okay, man?” Trey’s voice behind him made him realize he’d been standing in the storeroom way too long.
“Yeah. Sure.”
Trey just looked at him.
“I found out something,” he said, and headed back into the front of the bookstore.
“Something to do with what happened last night?” Trey asked, following him.
Paul nodded. “Sorry to worry you. I’d never hurt Amber.”
Drew’s face turned in their direction. “Amber’s a good person.”
“So everybody says,” Paul said. “I thought so, too.”
Drew’s eyebrows lifted.
Trey gave him a sideways glance as he poured something from a plastic bottle into the carpet cleaner. “Whatever she did to make you mad, I can guarantee it wasn’t from a bad heart. Amber’s definitely unconventional, but like Drew says, she’s a good person.”
Paul didn’t answer.
“Women can sure make you mad,” Drew said. “There have been times I’ve wanted to walk away from Ria. In fact, I did, for a while.”
“Coming back was the right thing to do,” Trey said. “You have a good family.”
Paul didn’t want to hear about other people’s good families. He walked over to a door that led to a supply closet, now ripped off its hinges. He studied it, wondering if he could at least rig something up for now.
He’d thought he had a good family. Yeah, they’d been stricken by tragedy, but the memory of Wendy, Davey and him had shone bright. Now it was tarnished.
If he was being truthful with himself, he had to admit that he’d started to have fantasies of a new family, with Amber as his wife, as Davey’s mom.
That wouldn’t be happening. Amber had known the truth and she’d kept it from him, kept him in the dark. Made him feel like an idiot. Acted like he wasn’t even worthy of the simple courtesy of being told the truth.
Georgiana hurried into the store, Ferguson right behind her. She waved when she spotted Paul. “We need to talk to you right away.”
Paul hoped he could be patient with them. His temper was already frayed.
Ferguson cleared his throat. “Is there somewhere private we could have a conversation?”
“Maybe we can use Mary’s office,” Paul said, and after getting the okay from the other two guys, they headed through the door behind the cash register, entered Mary’s office and closed the door.
Paul leaned against the
