The Fire Still Burns (16 page)

Everything had been normal until Cal had told him about Zeke getting into a fight.  He'd rushed to break it up, only it wasn't Zeke fighting.  It was two members of his football team.  Being the captain, he felt the responsibility to pull them apart and resolve the matter without blood and fists being involved.

It took a while, and when he returned to where he had left Brynn, she was gone.  He was on his way upstairs to the second floor when she came bounding down, tear stains marred her creamy peach complexion.

“What's wrong?” he went into protective mode.

She'd looked at him, her eyes wide and frightened, red-rimmed from tears.  “I don't feel good,” she'd finally said when he was about to repeat the question.  “I want to go home.”

“All right.  You probably drank more alcohol than you can handle,” he'd responded, reaching out to touch her face.

She'd jerked away as though he were about to slap her, and quickly left the house to wait in his truck, sitting as far away from him as possible once he joined her.  He didn't get a goodnight kiss that night.  He hadn't even gotten a goodbye.

Things had only gotten stranger after that night.  She avoided his calls, skipped the last week of school and barely spoke to him at the graduation ceremony, leaving as soon as the event ended.

After another week of unreturned phone calls and claims of being ill when he stopped by her parents' house, Zeke had been the one to tell him why she was acting so strangely.

“I don't know how to tell you this, but she's messing around behind your back,” his older brother had said.  “I caught her in a lip-lock with Cal Wylie at the costume party.  I should have told you then, but I didn't have the heart to, baby bro.”

Adam hadn't believed it, couldn't believe it.  His girlfriend and his best friend?  He'd told Zeke he was crazy, a jealous liar.  They'd gotten into an awful argument which ended with Zeke telling him if he wanted to stay blind to what everyone else in town could see—that Brynn was trash—then fine.

Afterward, Adam couldn't get the awful lie out of his head, especially since the timeframe fit so well, and it had been Cal who'd told him Zeke was in a fight, setting up the perfect diversion.  Still…it just couldn't be, no matter how odd Brynn acted.  She wouldn't do that to him.  But he still had to ask.

He went to her house, telling her mother he wasn't leaving until he spoke to Brynn.  He'd paced the front porch for hours before Brynn finally came out, looking guiltier than a crook.  She still wore her pajamas though it was mid-afternoon and her hair was in wild disarray.  “You look like you haven't gotten out of bed in days.”

“I haven't.”

“What's going on, Brynn?”

“I don't want to talk now, Adam.  Please just leave me alone.”  She couldn’t meet his eyes.

“Are you cheating on me?” Adam had blurted, unable to postpone the inevitable question any longer.  Suspicion was eating him alive.

Her eyes widened as her mouth formed a big “O” of surprise, but she didn't answer.  She only whimpered as her gaze fell to the porch.

“Answer me.  My brother says he caught you with Cal at the costume party.  He says you were kissing him.  Is it true?”

She looked up at him, her bottom lip trembling as she seemed to search for an answer.  The fact she was taking so long told Adam enough, but he had to hear it to truly believe it.

“Is it true?” he bellowed, not caring if her mother heard him inside the house and called Brynn's father at work.  He needed an answer.

“Yes,” she finally said as tears ran freely down her cheeks.  She heaved in a breath and looked to her left, avoiding his gaze while she drove the final nail in his coffin.

“I can't be with you anymore, Adam.  I've been with Cal.  I'm so sorry but…I did cheat on you.”

She turned and ran back inside the house, not that it would have mattered if she'd stayed outside.  Adam couldn't talk.  He could barely even breathe.

He'd spent the next several weeks in his room, barely eating or sleeping as cruel images invaded his mind.  He couldn't quit picturing the scene Zeke had walked in on, and he couldn't stop wondering how long the two back-stabbers he'd trusted had been betraying him.

She'd said she'd been with him.  She'd slept with him, another man.  His supposed best friend.  She'd called once during that time, asking him to let her explain but he'd cut her off, calling her words that would make his mother faint and telling her in no uncertain terms that nothing she could say would change what she did.

She'd never attempted to call back. 

Eventually, depression gave way to rage.  Someone had to pay for the damage done to his heart.  He'd decided his former best friend would be the one to pay and, for, the first time in weeks, he got out of bed, showered and dressed, leaving the house intent on one objective—to beat the living hell out of Calvin Wylie.

“Let's see how much Brynn wants him when he's in a body bag,” he'd said to himself as he'd jumped into his truck and sped to Cal's home, defying every speed limit he encountered on the way.

He'd found Cal's father sitting on the porch steps chugging a beer.  “If you're coming to beat the hell out of my son, you're too late,” the older man had said, not bothering to get up.  “Can't say I blame you for wanting to, but he's already left town with her.  Seems he knocked her up.”

“What?”  Adam froze in his tracks.

“Brynn.  He knocked her up, son.”  Mr. Wylie looked at him with pity in his eyes.  “He's gonna marry her and they'll live in California.  I'm sorry.  I know you two were good friends and you loved that girl.”

“No.”  Adam backed away, shaking his head vigorously before turning to run.

He didn't even bother taking the truck.  He'd ran until his legs couldn't take it any more and fell to his knees in the middle of Lover's Loop, where he'd spent countless nights fogging up the windows of his truck with Brynn, and he roared.

There was so much anger inside him, he didn't think he'd ever get it out.  But more than that, there was pain and it only increased the more he recalled his final contact with Brynn, the way she wouldn't even meet his gaze, looking away as she told him she'd cheated on him with…

“Adam!  What in the world is wrong with you, boy?”  Doris Good's screeching voice cut through the fog, bringing Adam back to the present where he was holding an empty carton of orange juice over a flooding-over glass.  Juice ran over the side of the counter, sloshing onto the floor.

“Look what you've done.”  Doris’s voice was a screech.       

“She was looking toward her left,” he said to himself.

“What?  Who was…oh, for goodness sakes, let me get the mop.”  Doris griped the entire way to the utility room, but Adam was barely paying attention as he replayed the scene over and over in his mind.  Brynn had looked to the left when she'd told him about her and Cal.  If her theory was correct…

“That means she was lying about it.”

“Lying about what?”  Doris returned with the mop.  “Have you lost your mind in here talking to yourself and pouring out a full carton of juice?  Well, I suppose that would explain things,” she snapped as she worked at cleaning up the mess.

“Imagine my surprise when Mildred Boone called to tell me Nellie Barton had wised up and gone up to Tasty Burger to shoot that floozy her husband's been messing around with, and you and that woman ran in there together.  I heard it was quite emotional, you wiping away her tears and all.” 

Adam looked at his mother, standing with one hand on an ample hip in her plaid nightgown and rollers in her hair, and shook his head.  He wasn't going to argue with her if he could help it.

“She's my partner,” he said flatly as he took a dishtowel from the sink and started wiping down the mess on the counter. 

“That doesn't explain what I was told happened there tonight.  You're letting that hussy make a fool of you again.”

“She's not a hussy.”  Adam tossed the soiled dishtowel into the sink and took a gulp from the glass of juice he'd poured, wishing more than ever it was something stronger.

“She and her little bastard child are no good for you, Adam.”

“How is her child a bastard?  He has a father.”

Doris gasped and grabbed hold of the counter's edge, her free hand clutched over her chest.  “What are you talking about?  What do you mean?”

“Cal fathered her child,” Adam answered, wondering why his mother needed further clarification on such a basic statement.  “Mama?  You all right?”

She nodded two times in quick succession, her eyes squeezed closed.  “Yes, I'm fine.  I just got a little winded there for a second.”  She blew out a breath and straightened to look him in the eye.  “You mark my words, son.  That woman is nothing but trouble.  You stay away from her.”

“I can't.  She's my partner.”

“Do you really think she gives a hoot about finding out who killed your brother?”

Adam squinted at his mother, shocked by the vehemence in her tone.  “Why wouldn't she?  It's not like Zeke ever did anything to her.”

Doris's face paled, and she grabbed the glass of juice from Adam's hand, downing it in two big gulps.  “That's right, but she can't be trusted.  She's no good, that one.”

“Please, Mama.  We broke up a decade ago.  I've gotten over it.  So should you.”

“You just do as I say,” Doris snapped and pointed her finger at him.  “That woman is a sinful little slut who spreads like butter—”

“Wow, now there's a Christian thing to say,” Adam cut in, driven by his rising anger.  “Do you speak to Father Tom with that same vulgar mouth?”

Doris drew back, slack-jawed and eyes wide with fury.  “Why, you ungrateful…”  She slapped Adam across the face.

“I was in labor with you for thirty-six hours, nearly died giving birth to you.  I changed your diapers, fed you, clothed you, and this is how you repay me?  You show some whore more respect than you show me?”  The rant continued with an extended list of other seething comments, but Adam ignored them along with the pain exploding across his cheek.

Pushing past his hysterical mother, he made his way to his bedroom and packed a duffel bag full of clothes and toiletries.  Doris Good still ranted and raved when he returned to the kitchen, adding an assortment of bible scriptures to her tirade.  She froze when she saw Adam with the bag.

“Where are you going?”

“I've stayed here all my life to take care of you, fulfilling the promise I made to Dad,” he walked past her.  “I can't do it anymore.  I'm a grown man, Mama, and I need to live on my own.”

“You're leaving me?”  Her eyes grew round as saucers.

“I'll make sure the grass is cut and the bills are paid,” he said curtly, reaching for the door.

“No!”  Doris grabbed him by the shoulders, forcing him to look at her.  “I'll be all alone.  You can't do this to…  You're going to her, aren't you?”

“Good night, mother.”

“You're leaving me for that tramp, that cheap slut who already hurt you once!”

“I'm not leaving you,” Adam said in exasperation.  “For chrissakes, listen to yourself.  You sound like a jilted lover.”

“If you leave me for her…”

Adam shrugged off his mother and walked out the door, leaving the only place he'd ever called home behind.  He had no idea where he was going, but it had to be a better place to think than the insane asylum which used to be home.  And he definitely had a lot to think about.  Starting with why Brynn lied about cheating on him with Cal.  

~~~

“Are you awake?”

Brynn grinned at the hesitant tone in Adam's voice as it flowed through her cell phone.

“Either that or I'm sleep-talking.”  She reminisced about the many late-night phone calls they used to share when they were dating.  She'd call for the time and temperature and while the automated voice gave her the info Adam would beep in on the other line.  They never got caught doing it and their conversations would often last most of the night.

“I wasn't going to call, I know it's late.”

“It's fine.  I'm reading Rachel Wood's diary.”

“Find anything interesting?” he asked after an awkward pause.

“Not yet.  I'm starting from the beginning.  I haven't reached anything about Zeke yet.”

“Oh.  All right.”

“What's wrong, Adam?”  She closed the diary.

“Nothing.  Why do you ask?”

“You wouldn't be calling me up in the middle of the night beating around the bush unless something was wrong.  What happened?”

There was another long pause followed by a deep sigh.  “I've got a lot of questions and no answers.”

A ball of dread formed in Brynn's belly.  “I know this case seems—”

“I'm not talking about the case, Brynn.  I'm talking about you and me.”

Brynn's palms started to sweat and she nearly dropped the phone, the ball of dread rolling over and over inside her.

“Brynn?”

“I'm still here.” 
Nervous as hell
, she added silently.

“I have hundreds of questions, but there's one that…it's eating me alive, Brynn.  I need an answer.”