Redemption Road (Jackson Falls #5)

Redemption
Road:

Jackson
Falls Book 5

Laurie
Breton

c. 2013 by Laurie Breton

All rights reserved.

Lyrics from “When the Roll is
Called up Yonder” by James M. Black.

This song is in the public
domain.

Thanks once again to Patti Korbet,

critique partner extraordinaire!

This one’s for Paul,

who has spent the last thirty years

putting up with a crazy writer

who sometimes

masquerades as a wife.

Books in the Jackson Falls Series

Coming Home:
Jackson Falls Book 1

Sleeping
With the Enemy:  Jackson Falls Book 2

Days
Like This:  Jackson Falls Book 3

The
Next Little Thing:  A Jackson Falls MINI
: Book 4

Redemption Road:  Jackson Falls Book 5

Also by Laurie Breton:

Black Widow (Ellora’s Cave Publishing)

Final Exit (MIRA)

Mortal Sin (MIRA)

Lethal Lies (MIRA)

Criminal Intent (MIRA)

Point of Departure (MIRA)

Die Before I Wake (MIRA)

Colleen

January, 1993

Jackson
Falls, Maine

She hadn’t been sure the fourteen-year-old Vega would make it this
far. She'd bought it for a measly two hundred bucks the day that Irv’s kids ran
her on a rail out of Palm Beach. They’d sat her down one afternoon, announced
that they were contesting the will, and given her fifteen minutes to pack up
what was hers before the locksmith waiting in his panel truck in the circular
drive outside the mansion changed the lock on the front door.

It wasn’t what Irv would have wanted, but she was too weary, too
discouraged, to fight it. They’d eventually win, anyway. She and Irv had only
been married for a year. In the eyes of his kids, that was hardly long enough
to justify her stealing their inheritance, and she was certain that the right attorney
could easily sway the judge to their way of thinking. It didn’t matter to them
that she’d actually cared for their father, despite the twenty-five-year age
difference. As far as they were concerned, she was a gold-digger, and that was
all that mattered.

So she’d left with nothing more than two suitcases of designer
clothing, a few pieces of jewelry, and seventy-five bucks in her Chanel
handbag. She’d sold the bag and most of the jewelry to a small secondhand shop
for a price so low it was insulting, but it was enough to cover the cost of the
car and the trip to Maine.

She’d thought about stopping in Boston. Trav lived there, on a
dead-end street in Chestnut Hill, and he would have let her sleep on the couch
in his finished basement. But she and her brother’s wife had never seen eye to
eye, and what was the point of stirring up trouble between them?  So she'd
given Boston a wide berth, circling around it on 495, praying she and her
little Vega, which pretty much topped out at 61 mph, would survive all those
crazy Boston drivers swerving around her doing ninety.

And here she was, back in this shithole town, the one place she’d
sworn she’d never return to. But she was out of money and excuses, and home was
the one place where, when you had to go there, they had to take you in. On this
fifty-degree January afternoon, driving through downtown in a fourteen-year-old
Chevy with a mud-splattered windshield because she’d run out of washer fluid
two hundred miles back, she could smell the faint sulphur odor from the paper
mill downriver. There was no denying the fact that she was one hell of a long
way from the moneyed fragrance of Palm Beach.

The Vega was running on fumes, and she was down to her last
twenty-dollar-bill. Colleen downshifted and wheeled into the Big Apple
convenience store, where she pumped five bucks worth of fuel into her gas tank
and cleaned her windshield with a fistful of snow. She’d gone to high school
with the guy working the cash register. Sonny Somebody-or-other. She kept her
sunglasses on and her eyes lowered as they completed their transaction, hoping
he wouldn’t recognize her and want to chat. Small talk had never been her
strongest suit, and what was there to talk about anyway? 

Him:  What have you been up to since the last time I saw you? 

Her:  Oh, nothing much, except that I just buried my
sixty-year-old husband.

Meadowbrook Road was a quagmire. It always was at this time of
year. The town maintained the unpaved road, or so they claimed, but between
January thaw and mid-April, it mostly consisted of deep, muddy ruts and frost
heaves. Easily navigable in a four-wheel-drive vehicle. Not so much in a Chevy
Vega with summer tires that had spent its entire pathetic life in southern
Florida and was skittish as a newborn colt on these snowy Maine roads.

John Anderson was singing
Straight Tequila Night
on the
dashboard radio when she passed the old Abercrombie place, perched atop a small
hill. She’d heard, through the grapevine, that her sister had lived in the
Gothic Revival farmhouse for a time before selling it to their nephew Billy
when Casey and her second husband had built a new home on Ridge Road. Colleen
had never met her sister’s new husband, although he’d been a huge part of
Casey’s life for nearly two decades, and she was mildly curious. The late,
great Danny Fiore would be a hard act to follow. The irony of it struck her:
She’d always been jealous of her older sister, had always coveted whatever
Casey had that she didn’t. It was really true that you had to be careful what
you wished for. She and Casey had never had much in common. She’d certainly
never expected that when they finally did share something, it would be the
mantle of widowhood.

She took McKellar’s Hill at a snail’s pace, let out a sigh of
relief when she reached the bottom and saw the river ahead of her, its frozen
surface dark in spots, slushy from the thaw. Another quarter-mile, and then, on
her right, she saw a broad expanse of snowy fields with broken, yellowed corn
stalks poking up here and there through the pitted snow. Beyond that, wooden
fence posts marked the pasture where Dad’s Holsteins grazed. In the distance
loomed the weathered nineteenth-century barn where hay was stored, flanked by
the low-roofed addition, circa 1952, that housed the milking parlor and the cattle
stalls. Two blue Harvestore silos stood sentinel, and as she drew closer, the
old farmhouse hove into view, smoke rising from its chimney, its clapboards in
need of a fresh coat of paint.

She passed the mailbox, clicked her blinker, and turned in at the
sign that read MEADOWBROOK FARM - REGISTERED HOLSTEINS. A cluster of chickens
scattered as she came to a stop beside the ominously tilted utility pole at the
center of the yard, directly behind the red Farmall tractor her father had
owned since the beginning of time. For a moment, she just sat there gazing
across a muddy, slushy barnyard, the steering wheel vibrating beneath her hands
and dread filling every crevice of her heart. Dad didn’t know she was coming.
She hadn’t been able to muster the courage to call for fear that he’d hang up
on her. Or worse, tell her not to bother. She hadn’t been the favored child to
begin with; she could only imagine how far she’d fallen from grace since the
day she walked away from Jesse and her nine-year-old son.

But if there was one thing she’d learned in the past decade, it
was that running only got you so far. Sooner or later, everybody had to face
the music. So she shut off her ignition. The Vega sputtered and died. She
opened her door, swung around, and planted her Ferragamos flat on the muddy
ground.

And for the first time in nearly a decade, Colleen Bradley
Lindstrom Davis Berkowitz stood on Maine soil. She took a hard, deep breath,
one that drew in the scent of mud season overlaid with the sharp tang of wood
smoke and the faint aroma of cow manure. Then she shut the door and marched
resolutely toward the house.

The black sheep of the Bradley clan had returned to the fold.

Harley

He’d been trying to coax her out from under the barn for the past
six days, ever since he’d first seen her there, wet and muddy and shivering. No
tags. No collar. But that was standard procedure here in rural Maine, where taking
unwanted dogs “for a ride in the country” and dumping them off had been
elevated to the level of Olympic sport. She had an injured paw, specks of blood
mixed in with the mud, and the one time he’d seen her running across the yard,
chasing after one of his Rhode Island Reds, he couldn’t help noticing the way
she favored that left front foot.

He had to be the worst kind of fool, caring so much about a
butt-ugly, mud-splattered, gimp-legged, chicken-chasing mutt. But the first
time he’d looked into those velvety chocolate eyes that pleaded
Love me!
he was a goner. So he’d been out here every day, crouched in the mud at a
prudent distance, while the dog, with one apprehensive eye watching his every
move, wolfed down the expensive canned dog food he’d brought her. She still
didn’t trust him enough to come within touching distance. Somebody, probably
the same somebody who’d dropped her off, had taught her not to trust.

But she wanted to. He could see it in her eyes, in the tentative
wag of her tail. She sensed that he was friend instead of foe. If he waited it
out long enough, he’d win her over.

He’d already given her a name. It was a stupid thing to do, naming
a homeless wild creature that, for all he knew, was the canine equivalent of
Club Med for fleas and ticks. He hadn’t planned to do it. But her long, matted
coat was ginger colored, and it reminded him of the classic
Ginger vs. Mary
Ann
debate he and his brother Earl had spent countless hours locked in when
they were kids. While Earl had always picked the perky girl-next-door Mary Ann,
Harley had inevitably gone for the sultry, glamorous Ginger. As a kid, it had
been harmless fun. As an adult, it had gotten him into trouble more than once.
Earl had found his real-life Mary Ann and married her. They had four kids now,
a nice house in suburban Atlanta, golf club memberships, a golden retriever.

Harley, on the other hand, had found more than his share of
real-life, high-maintenance Gingers, and where had that gotten him?  Up to his
ass in cold January mud, sitting under a rotting barn that was likely to fall
on top of him any minute, waiting for a dumbass dog to realize her standard of
living would improve immensely if she’d just come into the house.

But old dreams die hard.

He’d named the dog Ginger.

It was time to end this little
pas de deux
the two of them
were involved in. Sliding deeper into the mud and gloom, Harley pulled out his
secret weapon, a big chunk of roast beef left over from last night’s supper.
Unwrapping wrinkled foil, he said, “Come here, sweetheart,” and held out the
piece of meat. “There’s another one like this in the fridge. If you play your
cards right, it’ll have your name written on it.”

The dog looked at him with dark, mournful eyes. Gave a single
swipe of her matted tail and took a tentative step toward him. “That’s right,”
he coaxed. “You know you can trust me.”

She looked at him, at the piece of beef, back at him, and he
watched as she calculated the risk.

“Tell you what,” he said in a conversational tone. “I’ll set it
right here.”  He dropped the meat to the muddy ground beside him and turned
away from it, toward the narrow strip of daylight that marked his pathway back
to civilization. Crossed his arms over his knees. And waited.

It took a few minutes before she decided to take a chance. From
the corner of his eye, he watched her, belly flat against the mud, crawling
stealthily toward the beef. While he pretended indifference, she reached the
tasty morsel, nosed it delicately, then scarfed it down as though she hadn’t
eaten in a month.

Judging by her prominent ribs, that probably wasn’t far from the
truth.

Harley continued to sit, unmoving except for the rise and fall of
his breathing. It might have been five minutes, might have been twenty, before
he felt a cool, wet nose nudge his hand. She sniffed him thoroughly, licked the
lingering taste of beef from his fingers. Then, with a long, heartfelt sigh,
she rested her muzzle against his thigh and closed her eyes.

 “Gotcha,” he said softly.