AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Sure,” he said, his reliable nature shining through immediately. “What can I do for you?”
“I have to go back to Maryland for a bit and just need someone to drop by my place once in a while and make sure the mail isbrought in, stuff like that. I don’t have any plants to keep alive, just make sure the place isn’t broken into.”
Mark laughed. “I thought you had a girlfriend,” he said.
“Hey now,” I said. “I don’t know what Carmela is telling you, but Melanie and I have been keeping that all under wraps for now.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “Still.”
“I don’t want to bug her with keeping up my place,” I said. “You know how things are when you’re still new.”
“I get it. No worries, brother. How long will you be out of town?”
“It might be a little bit. Maybe a month? Did Carmela tell you what I found out about Sarah?”
“She did,” he said. “I was waiting to talk to you about that. Seriously, what the fuck?”
“Man, I don’t even know,” I said. “I knew she was an ambitious ice queen, but this… it takes the cake.”
“Well, damn,” he said. “Anyway, yeah, I can keep an eye on your place. If you want to drop a key off at my practice, I’ll start going over there either on my way to work or back. It’s right on my way.”
“Awesome,” I said. “I will do that.”
“Can I ask if you know what’s going to happen with everything up there? I’m not trying to get all in your business, but I’m stressed outforyou,” he laughed. “Getting arrested for embezzling is nuts. Did they think you were involved?”
“From what my lawyer says, they investigated me too, but figured out pretty quickly that I was clean,” I said. “She didn’treally start siphoning money until I was gone. Apparently, that’s what the whole business about her coming down here was. She wanted to bully her way into an ownership stake in the store so she could pay back what she took from the consulting firm.”
“Damn,” he said. “That is wild.”
“It is,” I said. “I have to go give some in-person interviews with the detectives and prosecutors and tie up some loose ends there. Eventually, if she’s going to go to prison, I need to figure out what to do about the house and all the stuff. It will probably all be sold off to pay her debts, but some of the paperwork still has my name on it, so I need to go figure things out.”
“Well, good luck, brother. I can’t imagine going through all that. How’s Melanie taking it?”
“Thanks,” I said. “She’s handling it well. She doesn’t know I have to head out of town for a month yet, though. I just found out and called you. I’ll be telling her tonight.”
“Oof,” he said. “All right, well, I’ll keep that under wraps from Carmela until tomorrow.”
I laughed. “Good idea.”
We chatted for a few more minutes, and when I hung up the phone, I at least had a plan for how to handle things going forward. All that was left was telling Melanie and then giving her the real surprise that I had held off on until now. The one that required I make a bunch of calls and set up before I approached her with it. The one that would make her the happiest I could make her.
I pulled up a chat message with Melanie and shot her a text asking if she wanted to go out to Mero’s and visit the store totalk about the future. She said she would love to, and I made the reservation, happy to be revisiting our new favorite place already. It would soften the blow of seeing the store completely demolished and telling her about my upcoming trip. But it would help set the scene for what I wanted to tell her about the future. About her future—ours if she wanted it.
Dinner was, as was becoming custom, delicious, and I decided to keep the conversation light through it, wanting to preserve that place as only one of happy memories. When we finished and headed to the lot where the store used to stand, Melanie’s breath hitched when she saw that all the walls had come down. There was only a little rubble left of the original walls, foundation pieces that were still in place and would come down tomorrow. The floor had been emptied and cleaned out, all the materials inside either donated or tossed. Only flooring still remained, checkerboard tile in some areas and the beige concrete flooring elsewhere. All that would have to come up too.
“It’s so weird seeing it like this,” she said as we walked through what used to be the front door and was now just a lip where the concrete rose higher than in other places.
“It is,” I agreed. “But try to think of it not as a destruction of what was, but a new beginning. A starting point.”
“I’m trying,” she said. “I keep seeing possibilities. Things that I always thought we could do but didn’t have the space or the structure or, frankly, the money for.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Hold on to that.”
“I’m trying,” she said. “Like, for instance, right there.” She pointed at a corner that had previously been a section of home and beauty products. “What if we put the drive-through there for a pharmacy? Mark has said before that having a pharmacy in town would be great since Old Man Stevenson passed away last year. Right now, everyone has to either get them filled out of town or online.”
“It might require some extra licenses and permits, but I think we could get that done,” I said.
“And over here,” she said, a grin spreading across her lips and excitement filling her voice, “I was thinking we could have an in-store sandwich shop. Maybe even license it out to a local business so they can partner with us. I would love to be able to come into the store and smell fresh bread every day.”
