Page 50 of Where the Fields Don’t Reach

Mason had taught her how.

Step here, not there, and don’t breathe until you’re halfway up the staircase.

That advice wasn’t what stopped her now, though. Instead, it was Warren’s voice echoing in her mind that had her glancing down at the worn, wooden plank. Warren had stood in the church parking lot earlier this week, with his mayoral pin and vague answers, letting it slip that the floorboards at the bottom of her staircase had always squeaked.

She’d shut the door on this house at eighteen and driven away, leaving the worst behind her. Those memories belonged to her family, to the people who’d all but bled inside these walls. So how the hell did Warren Caldwell know which board squeaked in the house she’d grown up in? He’d smoothed over the slip, too fast, and she’d been too distracted to even notice.

“Don’t,” Sam warned behind her, pulling her back into the present. “Let him sleep it off, Hads.”

“Why?” Hadley turned back to face him, not wanting him to get the wrong idea of why she’d stopped herself from going upstairs. “Why does he get to sleep it off, Sam? I just spent the last few minutes fearing that I was going to find him face down in the dirt on the side of the road. Images of him bleeding out in the weeds because he hit his head in an...”

Hadley’s emotions spun into fury.

“No.” Hadley took a step closer to Sam. “I refuse to stand here and call that an accident. He was drinking and driving, and we both know it. I should haul his ass to the hospital for a blood test. I should…”

Sam leaned a shoulder into the doorframe of the living room and settled there, unbothered, ready to let her spend herself. It was worse than if he’d argued with her. She groaned in frustration and pressed the heel of her hand to her sternum, where the lukewarm coffee from Martin’s kitchen had turned on her and started its slow burn up her throat. She spun and crossed to the front door, staring out through the screen at the yard.

“It’s going to take him time,” Sam said quietly, not telling her anything she already didn’t know. “To adjust. You have to give him that, Hadley.”

“I know that. I do.” Hadley wrapped her arms around her middle. “I just didn’t think he’d turn into our father while doing it.”

Sam fell silent, because she wasn’t sharing anything that he didn’t already know. He’d been a witness to her father’s drunken rages more than once. Once she had her composure, she turned around, her gaze immediately seeking out the indentation in the drywall where the paint had never quite matched again.

One of many.

Her father had left his mark on this house the way he’d left it on the two of them, in dents and divots a person could paint over but never fix.

“He put his fist through that wall once because dinner was cold. Mason stepped in front of me. Took the next one on his shoulder so I wouldn’t. He was maybe fourteen.” Hadley squeezed her arms past the point of pain. “The last thing on this earth Mason ever wanted was to end up like that man. And it’s killing me, Sam, because I’m the reason he’s driving into trees at five in the morning. Me. I did that.”

“There’s more than enough blame to go around,” Sam muttered, and he didn’t have to draw her a map. She understood why he shared in her misery. He’d been in the woods that night, and he’d known all along that someone…something else…had been lurking in the shadows. “Starting with the man six feet under.”

Hadley realized that she’d been so busy investigating Roland Mercer that she hadn’t set up a visit with Kalen Telfort. She still needed to ask whether his father had kept that coat, burned it, or buried it. She was leaving loose ends, and that wasn’t like her.

Hadley brought both hands up over her face and held them there, breathing as rhythmically as possible until she had her emotions under control. She then lowered her arms and asked him a question that he wasn’t going to like.

“Were you drinking with him last night, Sam?”

“In case you didn’t notice,” Sam said, lifting the mug an inch, “I’ve switched to coffee. And no, it isn’t laced.”

He stared down at the contents again, as if even he couldn’t believe it wasn’t some form of alcohol. Clearing his throat, he adjusted his shoulder against the doorframe, as if he wasn’t comfortable with what he was about to share with her.

“I made a decision last night.” Sam met her stare, and his pain practically radiated from his rugged features. “I’m driving out to Emberwood this afternoon to attend my first AA meeting. When Mason sobers up, I’m hoping to take him with me.”

“And what made you come to this decision, Sam?”

Hadley had a hard time believing that he was suddenly about to change his entire life just because Mason had driven off the road and into a tree. She’d grown up with two alcoholics, and setting down the bottle wasn’t like folding away a basket of laundry.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Sam replied with a dry laugh. “No one knows this, but Gus had some chest pain last night. It was after closing, and he came downstairs as I was sweeping up the place. Let’s just say it was bad enough to scare me. He wouldn’t hear a word about the hospital, stubborn old goat, but I couldn’t just lock up and leave. I needed to make sure he wasn’t going to drop dead in some back booth. Anyway, I sat with him for hours. He got to talking, the way he does. Said it’d be a shame if that bar didn’t outlast him. That the townsfolk needed a place like the Watering Hole to keep them connected, and the responsibility fell on me to keep things going when he couldn’t. I’ve known for a while now that I’m in his will, and I…well, I can’t be the reason his vision dies when he does.”

Sam lifted a hand and used his sleeve to wipe away the moisture in his eyes. He even took a sip of his coffee, and she assumed it was to clear the lump from his throat. He loved that old man, and if Gus was the reason Sam needed to get sober, then so be it.

She wasn’t going to offer him platitudes, though.

He was about to walk through hell, and as much as she wished her brother would join him, she didn’t believe Mason was anywhere near having such a similar epiphany.

“That’s why I was on the road at five this morning, Hads. I was headed home.” Sam’s gaze was drawn to the stairs. “I spotted Mason’s truck, nosed into that old oak. He was out cold behind the wheel.”

The last of the anger drained out of her all at once, but all that had done was leave her tired. Hadley drew a steady breath and held it, hoping a little oxygen would get her through the rest of the conversation. She wasn’t sure what the future held for any of them, but Gus had a point about a special place in the town’s history for people to come together.