Seeing is Believing (21 page)

Piper didn’t imagine there was much need for full-time marketing employees in Cuttersville. Except maybe at the plastics plant. “You could talk to Boston.”

He looked less than enthused at the prospect. “I’m not sure I want to dive right back into a corporate job, but I have to do something.” Drumming his fingers on the table, he didn’t look particularly upset or irritated. In fact, he looked very relaxed. Happy.

It made Piper felt squishy inside. “My mom has that cousin in New York who owns an art gallery. Maybe we could talk to him, send in some of your work.”

She wanted him to be successful and she wanted him to stay. The minute the words were out of her mouth, she wondered if her suggestion was at cross-purposes with her desire to keep him in town, but it was too late to withdraw the suggestion.

“Sure,” he said. “That would be cool.”

Brady didn’t think for one minute that anyone in New York would give two shits about his work, but it was sweet of Piper to offer. The only reason he was really agreeing was so they could close that subject and move on. It was easier to say yes than explain why it would be pointless. He didn’t want to waste time debating his talent, or lack thereof. “Isn’t there usually a fall festival? They still do that here?”

“Yes. It’s this weekend.”

“Will you be my date?” he asked, feeling ridiculously pleased with his life. No job, no money, but he was happy. Insane, that’s what it was. “I want to kiss you on the hay ride.”

She nodded her yes, but before she could answer, two women came up and spoke to her, asking about their students and how they were adjusting to Piper’s class. Then a few minutes later, an elderly couple thanked her for raking their leaves. Followed by a girl around eight who looked thrilled to have run into her old kindergarten teacher.

Brady sat there and watched, proud to be with her. Impressed by the woman she had become.

Everyone loved Piper. Including him.

Chapter Thirteen

“I HOPE YOU KNOW WHAT THE HELL YOU’RE DOING,”
Shelby told him.

Brady eyed his cousin as they stood in the driveway, leaning on the U-Haul he had rented to drive back to Chicago and pack up his apartment. “I have no idea what I’m doing,” he told her truthfully. “But I haven’t been this happy in I don’t know how long.”

He and Piper had been basically living together in the little blue house for the last two weeks, painting walls, yanking weeds, cooking dinner together, sharing night after night in the little bedroom. She always got up and left and drove back to the farm, but after this weekend, she was moving in for keeps, and Brady felt that, for the first time in his life, he was where he was meant to be.

Shelby sighed. “Just please don’t get her pregnant.”

“What would be the big deal if I did?” he asked defensively. “She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I want to be with her.”

She just shook her head, lips pursed tightly.

“Is this how it’s going to be for the rest of our lives? Everyone always telling Piper she could have done better? Everyone always making me feel bad?” He didn’t want to have this argument repeatedly, and he didn’t want attitude at every family gathering.

“Brady.”

“Don’t Brady me.” He got in the truck. “I’ll see you later.” Annoyed, he slammed the door harder than was necessary. The file he had picked up from Bree with the hospital records on Rachel sat on the passenger seat.

As he drove on 77 North, he realized that the downside to being around people who loved you was that their opinions mattered.

It had been lonely in Chicago but he’d never had to deal with anyone’s criticisms.

He didn’t like it.

* * *

PIPER STOOD IN HER OLD BEDROOM AND RAN HER
hand over a butterfly. It was a little faded, maybe slightly dingy, but it was still charming and whimsical, somewhere between cartoon and realism. Closing her eyes, she pictured the way she had looked that day, a grungy ball cap covering her bald head, brand-new sneakers too big on her feet, eyes wide with awe that something so pretty was hers. That this was her room, her very own private space, was almost incomprehensible to her.

Brady had been sporting blue hair and a lip ring at the time. He smelled like cigarette smoke and excessive cologne but that didn’t bother her. Most of the adults in the trailer park had smoked and it was a familiar scent. What wasn’t familiar was the casual kindness he had shown her, the way he had treated her like she was totally normal.

Now, fifteen years later, they were building a home together. The love shack, he called it. It was hard to believe.

Lifting her digital camera, she took several shots of the wall, both from a distance and some close up. These were going to be blown up and framed and hung in the guest room of the blue house, the room she secretly hoped would be a nursery in a couple of years. It was too soon to hope for anything like marriage or children, since Brady hadn’t even told her that he loved her, but he spoke like their future together was a given.

The portrait of her in the living room had been shaded and painted in oils in the weeks since he had first scrounged that pencil out of her purse and started drawing. He had gone back to it again and again, adding to it until she was amazed at the detail he coaxed from his paints. He had also gone out and bought some canvases and paint supplies, and since then he had been painting in the upstairs bedroom. His skill and sudden drive amazed her, especially since he had shrugged and swallowed his pride and gone to Charlotte Murphy-Thornton for a part-time job at her coffee shop. He seemed to enjoy the casual interaction with people and not having to bring his work home with him. Just coffee beans.

Her dreams were coming true. And her nightmares had gone away. There were no sleepless nights, no ghosts. No stepfather shutting her in the closet.

Her phone buzzed, but when she glanced at the screen, it was an unknown number. She’d gotten several calls like that recently and she wondered what telemarketing list she’d wound up on.

Turning, Piper almost ran into her father, who was standing in the doorway, watching her, eyes filled with something she didn’t understand.

“Hey, Daddy.” She smiled, wishing away this sudden distance between them. Did it happen to all women when they fell in love? Did it make all fathers feel like they had been replaced? Her decision to see Brady despite her family’s concerns was the first time she had ever willfully defied him. But this wasn’t skipping school or running off with a criminal. Brady was the right choice for her, and she knew her father would come around when he saw that she was happy.

“Hey, baby girl. Grandma said you were in here. What are you doing?”

She held up her camera. “Decorating on a budget.”

He nodded. “He’s going to stay in the house with you, isn’t he?”

There was no question of who “he” was or how her father felt about it. Piper nodded. “Yes.”

Her father sighed. “If it doesn’t work out, there’s always a place for you at home. Just so you know.”

“I know.” She did. “I’m sorry that you don’t feel good about this. I never wanted to disappoint you.”

“Oh, baby, you could never disappoint me.” He held open his arms. “Come here.”

She did, because she was going to cry and she wanted to feel his big, strong hug surrounding her.

“I just want you to be happy. I don’t want you hurt.”

“He’s not going to hurt me,” she said into his chest, words muffled.

“You’re special to me. You know that.”

She nodded, but then she looked up and told him honestly, “I don’t want to be special. I don’t want to be the girl who got dumped in your driveway so you can never be hard on me. I want you to treat me like you do the boys, and I want to make my own mistakes and fall on my butt and have you tell me I’m being stupid.”

His jaw worked. “Alright, you’re being stupid.”

Piper gave a watery laugh, stepping back away from him. “I didn’t mean right now, not about this.”

“As far as I can figure, this is the first dumb thing you’ve ever done besides letting Cameron talk you into going to the honky-tonk when you were eighteen. So maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s time for me to let go and let you fall in love with a man you just met.” He studied her for a second, then threw his hands up. “Love is maybe the stupidest thing any of us ever do and it almost never makes sense. So who am I to say who you should be with? Would anyone have thought it would work out between me and Amanda? They were probably placing bets on how soon we’d wind up divorced, her hightailing back to Chicago, yet here we are.”

“Here we are,” Piper repeated softly, feeling the weight of his disapproval lifting off her shoulders. She cried a little harder, just knowing that she could love both the two most important men in her life. Because she did love Brady, whether the words had been spoken out loud or not. “And I’m the luckiest girl in the world to have a father who loves me like you do.”

Now her father looked like he was working up a tear, only he pretended it wasn’t there and said gruffly, “Come on, there’s pie at home. Grandma and Grandpa are coming over for dinner.”

If there was one thing Tuckers agreed on, it was that pie solved everything. Or maybe that pie went with everything, including the bittersweet.

“Sounds perfect.”

* * *

BRADY STARED AT THE MOUNTAIN OF MOVING BOXES
around him and rolled his shoulders. Every muscle from head to toe ached. Even his tongue ached. It was nothing but affirming that he was making the right decision to get out of town because none of his so-called friends had been willing to help him pack his stuff up and get it on the van. He had suddenly realized that what he had was a bunch of superficial relationships and nothing more. Not that he was blaming other people. Those were the friendships he had cultivated, keeping people at arm’s length, never sharing much more than a drink or two after work.

For years, he had drawn it that way, but now it wasn’t enough. It was black-and-white when he wanted color.

It made him all the more eager to get back to Cuttersville and Gran and his stepmom and Shelby and Piper. Most of all Piper.

Fortunately he didn’t have that much stuff. He’d sold his couches and bed to a former coworker. So that was that.

He was going to sleep on the couch, then head out in the morning, so he was lounging on it with the file from Bree. This was the first opportunity he’d had to read it.

Rachel’s death certificate was in the file. Intemperence was the official cause of death. Brady had had to look the word up on his phone and found out it meant “excessive consumption.” So she had overdosed, in other words. Intemperence was a much nicer way to say she was a smack addict.

Flipping through the pages, he saw daily schedules for her, dosing charts, the bill her parents were sent for seven dollars and eighteen cents. When he came across a report written by a Dr. Cyrus Drummond, he thought he might have found something.

“I do not believe that Miss Strauss’s insanity was caused by dissipation and menstrual derangement as was originally concluded. After extensive conversations with the patient, my conclusion is that she is wholly sane. Her current state of confusion can be attributed to grief and dependence on laudanum and chloroform. It is my opinion that Miss Strauss is just as much a victim as her dead fiancé.”

Brady sat up, intrigued, chewing his fingernail as he read. “So what happened, Dr. Drummond? The dude didn’t whack himself.”

“The story that she tells is one of deception, manipulation, and violence, but none of it perpetuated by her. It was her understanding that her maid was of a duplicitous nature and was well acquainted with the male form. Miss Strauss had actually informed her earlier in the evening that she was being dismissed, as her conduct had been shy of appropriate. Then she went upstairs to fetch her bonnet at the last moment, and as she was returning down the stairs, she heard her fiancé spurning the advances of the maid. Though this distressed her, nothing could prepare her for the sight of coming around the corner and seeing her fiancé being bludgeoned with a candlestick. Miss Strauss was aghast, in shock, and as the maid repeatedly struck him, Miss Strauss rushed forward to assist and was herself hit upon the head. She sat stunned, whoozy, as the maid put the candlestick in her hand and began to scream, thus turning herself to victim. By the time help arrived a few moments later, Miss Strauss’s mind had snapped and she was not able to coherently tell her story to a doubting witness and, later, the coroner. The maid, who was at once hateful and manipulative, successfully maneuvered herself into position as the district attorney’s wife, and Miss Strauss’s fate was sealed. I have repeatedly suggested to the board of directors here at the asylum that Miss Strauss be released to no avail.”

That was interesting. The doctor in charge of her treatment thought Rachel was innocent.

The story sounded believable enough to him.

Did it matter? Brady wasn’t sure.

Alone in this apartment, he suddenly found he wasn’t entirely sure about a lot of things.

* * *

“YOU’RE LETTING HIM MOVE IN WITH YOU?” CAMERON
said, sounding appalled. “Hello, can you say mooch?”

Piper flushed with anger. “He’s not a mooch.”

“You just said he lost his job and no one in his family would take him in. That’s a little too convenient, in my opinion.”

“I don’t remember asking your opinion.” Piper propped her phone with her shoulder and cut the daylights out of a piece of French bread, thoroughly annoyed. Everyone seemed determined to tell her that she was making a mistake. Given that she had never experienced that in her post–Mark the Butthead life, she wasn’t really liking it. Her dad had finally come around a little, and now she had Cameron telling her she was being used.

“Yeah, well, here’s another one—let’s see how in love with you he is in six months when he’s financially on his feet.”

“That’s the meanest thing you’ve ever said to me.” Piper fought the tears that welled up in her eyes. “I’ll talk to you later. Bye.”

Slamming her phone down on the kitchen counter, she took a deep breath and tried not to cry. Her phone rang. It was Cam calling her back, most likely to apologize. But she didn’t feel like hearing it. You could only have people telling you you’ve made a mistake so many times before you got sick of it. Plus, she hated to admit it, but without Brady there, showing her how much he cared, she was starting to feel some doubts creep in. Was she a phase or a fad for him? Would he get tired of her and leave? He had left Cuttersville with a fire under his butt the first time. It didn’t seem likely that he would just be willing to settle back down in the town he couldn’t wait to leave.

He’d been gone two days and she was already doubting that any of it was real. That frustrated the hell out of her.

With shaky fingers, she assembled her ham sandwich, jumping when her phone rang again. This time it was Brady.

“Hello?”

“Hey, babe, how are you?”

“Fine.” Not really. She was starting to freak out that they were moving too fast and that he couldn’t possibly care about her in any real way and that everyone in her life was turning on her. “Great. How did everything go?”