Travis

“Thank you all for coming to, uh, the follow-up to the town meeting,” I said, the microphone giving out an ear-piercing shriek that traveled along my already-frayed nerves as I winced, leaning back slightly. I cleared my throat. “I know this is irregular, and I appreciate you all making time to be here. Again.”

I bent, lifting a box of stapled packets at my feet and handing it to Deb. She took it with a small huff, staggering slightly under its weight. I leaned away from the microphone. “There’s a dolly over there,” I whispered, inclining my head.

“Thank goodness,” she murmured, taking the few steps to where I’d parked the dolly I’d used to cart the boxes in.

The crowd murmured, expressions rife with interest, and some concern, as Deb wheeled the first box toward the crowd, asking everyone to take a packet and pass them down. I waited a few minutes while they were distributed, Deb wheeling back and getting a second box to hand out to the middle and back rows. I avoided looking at the first of the citizens who’d already received the list I’d compiled throughout a long week and several sleepless nights. I couldn’t bear to see their faces. I was bone weary, and yet fear and humiliation roiled in my gut.

“The flyer distributed at the annual meeting about the Torreses was wrong on every level,” I began. “I didn’t intend for any of that to be made public”—I shot Spencer a look and he bowed his head, ashamed—“but, I take full responsibility because I was the one who, because of my pride and my shortcomings, planted the seed that resulted in that list being compiled.” I looked around, watching the packets being passed down one aisle and then the next. “We’re better than that, as a community, and as individuals. Eight years ago, we learned what making outcasts of people does, and what gifts we all receive when we embrace a welcoming spirit.” 

I cleared my throat. The murmurs were rising in volume. Yeah, there was a lot to murmur about.

“Regarding the Torreses, I’d also like to make it clear that I’m biased. I’m biased because I’m in love with Haven Torres. Deeply, miserably, completely in love with her.” I was pretty sure more mouths dropped open but my vision had gone slightly blurry. “Maybe it seems quick—”

“Maybe it seems like it’s about damn time!” someone yelled from the crowd below. I thought it sounded like Mrs. Connick, but I couldn’t be certain.

“In any case, I’m sure it will be some consolation to many of you that you’ll enjoy witnessing my torment and suffering for a long time to come. Possibly for the rest of this life. Potentially into the next.”

Murmurs. The sound of pages flipping. Someone in the back shouting, “What the hell? Who does that?” as they read over one bullet point or another.

“Haven Torres is the bravest, most big-hearted person I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing, and any community would be lucky to have her in it. Communities should hold lotteries to win people like her. She cares for people, and even things, deeply and we don’t deserve her because no one does.” I glanced around quickly. “Easton Torres has made mistakes. But so have I.” I squinted, clearing my throat again. “I, of all people, have no right to pass judgment on others. I’ve done things to ruin lives. I’ve acted in ways some might judge irredeemable.” I paused, gathering what little courage it felt like I had left. “And the further truth—and a fact that wasn’t included on that list—is that Easton acted as a hero when he saved his sister’s life and for that, I will spend the rest of mine grateful to him. As an act of contrition, and of public apology for my part in what happened at the first town meeting, I’ve compiled a list, of every immoral, shameful, in a few regrettable instances, sacrilegious, and . . .  well, in some cases downright illegal things I’ve ever done. Because I can’t make excuses for Easton Torres, nor for myself, but I can join him. And that’s what I’m here to do. I’m here to join him.”

I dared a glance at Moira Cormier in the front row, who ran the pet grooming shop in downtown Pelion. Her eyes were wide and her mouth hung open as she scanned one page, flipping to the next. “There are some doozies in there. As you’ll see, names and specific dates are redacted to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.” I swallowed. The murmurs rose again, this time not only in volume, but in intensity. My face felt hot, muscles achy with tension. I didn’t want these people to know these things.

“Er, I realize . . . well, I realize that some of these items might make you consider a chief of police recall. I wouldn’t blame you. I’m prepared for that if you all deem it in the best interest of the town,” I finished. I felt scared, miserable, and yet there was a strange weight that had been lifted off my shoulders. I didn’t know if I was grateful for the release of pressure, or if that empty spot would come to be filled by a different, weightier burden.

But I’d accept whatever fallout this might cause. I’d earned it.

I’d never fought for anyone before. I’d been too busy fighting for myself. Thinking only of myself. While Haven had only done the opposite. And I loved her. God, I loved her.

Ellen Russo, the elderly high school chemistry teacher stood up, shaking the packet, a look of horror etched into her ancient features. “You did what in the chemistry lab at the high school, Travis Michael Hale? You’re lucky you don’t have chemical burns on your—’

“That was me!” Tracy Berry stood up with her toddler in one arm, her other arm raised high. “That’s my name that’s redacted!” She grinned around, her smile fading when she saw her husband’s face in his palm. Her raised arm fell limply to her side. “He was the captain of the football team. All the girls wanted him,” she said in explanation. “Oh, get over it, I hadn’t even met you yet,” she grumped, rolling her eyes and dropping back into her seat.

Citizens turned to other citizens, exclaiming about this or that, turning the pages quickly, as my face continued to burn, shame sitting like a rock on my chest.

You deserve this. Every bit of it.

“A strip club? A strip club?” Maggie shouted, rising, and pulling an obviously uncomfortable Norm with her to stand in solidarity to her outrage. She tapped her finger on the page. “You took that innocent boy to a strip club?” she yelled, shock and disappointment clear in her tone. I shivered. “How could you? I oughta take my wooden spoon to you! Despicable, Travis Hale!”

“I know, Maggie,” I said into the microphone. “Believe me, I know.” I stuck my hands in my pockets, both wanting to be swallowed into the floor, and knowing the point of this was to stand in front of these people and experience their disdain, waiting as they all read through each and every item.

We were all going to be here a while.

I glanced at Amber Dalton, the girl, and then woman I’d conspired with on more than one occasion to harass Archer, most notably in a strip club she’d worked at on the other side of the lake many years ago. Her mouth was hanging open. I knew pieces of her story. She’d had a rough time at home too—we’d been messes together for a time and eventually outgrew each other. Despite her issues, and the part she’d played in several of my schemes, Amber had a sweetness to her. Unfortunately, we had never brought out the positive in one another. We’d never filled each other’s hollow spots. She’d gotten her life together, was married to a mechanic, and had two little girls at home. The police department was never called there, not like they’d been to the home she’d grown up in. She caught my eye, and despite her shocked expression, her mouth hitched up slightly and she winked at me.

A small gust of breath released, something lightened minutely inside.

“That was my mailbox you sumabitch!” Linton Whalley shouted, raising his fist. “Three times I replaced that!”

Oh, right. I grabbed the folder on the table next to me, stepping down off the stage and walking toward the row where he stood at the end. I opened the folder, rifling through the stack of checks in a total that had drained every cent I had combined in all my accounts, including a cash withdrawal from one of my credit cards. “I’ve written out a check. I, er, looked up the average price of a mailbox, uh, times three, and added a five percent interest rate.”

Linton grabbed the check from me, his eyes flashing with indignation. “You vandalized my property,” he said.

My shoulders dropped, and I nodded. I’d been eighteen years old. I’d known better. Linton paused, his eyes narrowing as he considered me. “But,” he finally said, “you also held my wife’s hand when she collapsed last summer. You were the first one there, and you kept her calm. Me too, truth be told.” His lips thinned and he held my gaze as he lifted the check and ripped it up. “We’re even, Chief.”

Another exhale, the blessing of grace. “Thank you,” I breathed.

I returned to the stage, leaning in to the microphone. “I apologize to all of you,” I said. “The ones I hurt. The ones I used. All those things I did were about me, never about you. I wish I’d wised up sooner. I wish I’d been quicker on the uptake.” I paused, trying desperately to contain my emotion enough to make it through this. “Most of all,” I said, taking in a gulp of air and finally gathering the nerve to turn my body to where my brother stood off to the side of the room. His expression was one I’d never seen before and I didn’t know how to read it. “Most of all,” I repeated, “I want to apologize to you, Archer, because you’re family. And I . . . I was supposed to be there for you. Instead, I made things worse.” I turned the pages on the packet sitting on the lectern in front of me. “If you all turn to page seventy-three to one hundred four, you’ll see every despicable thing I did to Archer. Addendum 1a outlines the times I was cruel. And addendum 2a–3c lists the times I was manipulative. I wanted to break them down so you knew I had considered the difference and how each might have affected you. And uh, well, addendum 4a outlines the times I publicly shunned you, which might have been the worst. You’re my family and I shunned you. God, I’m so sorry. Haven said something to me recently about having apologized to you, but I never actually did. So you couldn’t have fully forgiven me. I’ve never said the words, but I am. I’m so incredibly sorry for all the times I looked away from your pain, from your loneliness. If I could go back, I’d do things so differently. Because I hurt you, and I hurt Bree, and God”—I hitched in another breath, a lump filling my throat that I could barely speak around—“if anything I’d done had resulted in those two boys and that little girl not existing, I would have been responsible for ruining not only your lives, not only mine, but ruining the entire world.”

Burt had described the way two people sometimes completed each other perfectly, helping to fill the empty gaps, and that’s what Bree and Archer had been for each other. Her ability to sign had opened up his entire world. And he’d helped her overcome the loss of her father too. I didn’t know the details, but I knew that much.

And I’d attempted to get in the way of that through trickery and manipulation.

The murmurs had stopped, heads swiveling between Archer and me, waiting. Bree came up beside Archer, standing quietly by her husband’s side. As if her presence there had spoken to him in some silent way only he understood, he glanced at her, giving her a smile.

My heart picked up speed, thumping rapidly. I still had something else to say. “Our dad and his brother came to such an ugly end, on a highway, smeared with blood. You were there. You know.” I closed my eyes momentarily. Winced. My hands were shaking. The whole room had grown silent, only the sound of my whooshing blood echoing in my head. I met Archer’s eyes again. “I used to drive out there to the spot where it happened quite a bit . . . just sit on the side of the road . . . picturing a scenario where I could have intervened, stopped it somehow. I drove there today and it suddenly occurred to me that if you can find it in your heart to forgive me, really forgive me, then in some way, we will have stopped it. We will have broken the cycle. I want that for us, Archer. I want that for your sons, and for the ones, God willing, I might have someday.”

My heart continued to pound, fingers trembling as I waited. He glanced at his wife, another unspoken something moving between them and then he turned, walking toward me. When he’d stepped onto the stage, he raised his hands. None of us can go back, he said. But we’re here now. And as far as new beginnings go, it’s a pretty great place to start from. I’m all in if you are. He walked up to me, placing his hand on my shoulder, and then removing it to speak. Brothers till the end, he signed.

I let out a small choked laugh that was filled with the enormous relief I felt. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m all in.” I wrapped my arms around my brother, grasping him tightly, seeing Bree wipe a tear from her cheek, watching us from where she stood. I signaled her to join us and she walked toward the stage. The town might not forgive me, or ever trust me again. But I had my family back. They’d given me another chance, and I was going to grasp it with both hands. And now I knew, with absolute certainty, that my dad had loved me. He hadn’t thrown me away. He had never thought of me as second best or someone he hadn’t wanted. I had been loved.

But even if I hadn’t been, I was now and God, I was grateful.

Bree made it to where we stood, wrapping her arms around us both.

“Is there a reason you’re wearing”—her brow knitted as she stared at my hand on Archer’s shoulder—“a donkey thimble?”

“Oh, er, it brings back a moment,” I said, as we all stepped apart. “And I wanted that memory here tonight.” To give me strength. To remind me why I was doing this.

“That’s a nice show of family affection,” I heard someone say. “But I don’t know if he should still be chief. Have you read page forty-seven? What kind of role model is he?”

I had no argument for that.

Bree leaned toward the microphone, the murmurs beginning again, a few people still engrossed in my packet of shame, others asking questions about repercussions. Family was one thing, I heard someone say, but public service required higher standards. “We all have lists of things we’re ashamed of,” Bree said, glancing around. “Perhaps not with so many, er, addendums.” She gave an uncomfortable laugh. “But each of us could make one of our own. What would be on yours?” She pointed into the audience randomly. “Or yours?” She moved her finger to the left.

Apparently, assuming the question was non-rhetorical, Elmer Lunn stood up, put his hands in his pockets, hung his head, and confessed, “Sometimes when I’m bored, I go to the library and switch all the book jackets. Gives a little thrill.”

A loud, sharp inhale of breath followed. “You evil bastard!” Marie Kenney, the town librarian said, standing up and glaring hatefully at him.

The whole crowd swiveled as Clyde Chappelle stood. “I pretended to be a spirit named Alucard.”

His sister, June, came slowly to her feet, her eyes wide with disbelief. “The one we spoke to through the Ouija Board for years as kids? The one who demanded to know all of our secrets and threatened to pull us out of bed by our toes if we refused? That Alucard?”

“Yeah,” he said sheepishly. “That’s him. Er, me, I mean. I’m him.”

“I’ve been in therapy my whole adult life over Alucard, you sick devil!” She lunged for him, but was restrained by her best friend, Honey Smythe.

“I ran over my in-law’s dog and replaced it with a new one,” Bill Donnelly confessed.

“Chewie?” Marie Flanders gasped. “Chewie’s not . . . Chewie?”

Norm rose, head bowed, Maggie’s eyes widening with what looked like panic. “I buy my secret-recipe potato salad by the tub at the Costco off the interstate.” There was a collective gasp as Norm sank back down in his chair. “It’s the best,” he muttered defensively.

“Well now you’ll have to retire. In shame,” I heard Maggie hiss accusingly.

Cricket stood up. “I killed Betty’s husband and I’m not sorry about it.” My head, along with Archer’s and Bree’s swiveled in unison. There was another collective gasp as the entire crowd turned her way. She reached down, took Betty’s hand, and looked around. “He beat her. He knocked her in the head so many times, it’s a wonder she held on to any words at all. And so I killed him. It was only an accident that I killed his cat, Bob Smitherman. He walked in front of the shovel I was swinging. But I do feel sorry about that. I bought him the biggest headstone I could afford, but it doesn’t feel like enough.”

Betty stood up, her hand still gripped in Burt’s who sat beside her. “I should have been the one to go to prison for letting the abuse go on as long as I did. It’s my fault you were . . .” Her brow dipped. Her fingers drummed on her skull as she struggled.

“Jailed,” Cricket said.

“Imprisoned,” Burt said.

“Incarcerated,” I offered, leaning in to the microphone.

“Yes!” She breathed out a sigh of relief, smiling at me. “It was my fault you were incarcerated.”

But Cricket shook her head. “No. It wasn’t. I would have done it even if you had left and I still wouldn’t have been sorry. Family is everything. I think Chief Hale has learned a lot about that recently if I’m not mistaken.” She shot me a kind smile.

“Okay, okay,” Bree said. “Point made. Um, thank you?” She looked around. “The thing is, we all have other lists too. Travis Hale answered the call that day in the diner that saved my husband’s life, and most likely my own. He rushed in without a moment’s hesitation.” She looked at me, taking my hand in hers and giving it a gentle squeeze before letting go. “He’s one of the reasons those two little boys and little girl are here.” She focused back out to all the watching eyes. “He’s answered countless calls over the years. I bet he’s helped each of you, even in some small way.”

The murmuring rose again, but this one sounded agreeable, several heads nodding. “He’s a wonderful uncle who showers his nephews with love and too much ice cream,” Bree said, sending a smile in my direction. “There are lots of other items on your list of good and heroic deeds, and that’s the one we all hope you’ll add to over the years, addendum after addendum. We’re counting on it.”

The community members nodded or shook heads, and chattered in unison, apparently too stirred to stop things now.

“There still might need to be a reckoning,” someone to my left said. “Do we really need a public official who did what’s on page fifty-three? And in a church?”

“To be specific, it was in the graveyard,” another voice chimed in.

“That’s worse!” came a shout.

In my peripheral vision, Lucinda Rogers made the sign of the cross.

My head buzzed. Someone stood near the back and shouted another confession of their own that someone on the other side of the room responded to. My vision blurred even while a laugh bubbled up my chest. Yes, there might still be a reckoning, and I had a stack of checks to distribute that represented my entire life savings, but for a minute, I just had to sit, overwhelmed, and shaken with too many competing emotions to name. I breathed out, taking a few steps to the plastic chair nearby and sinking down, turning as someone else rose, then another. Shouts ricocheted around the room and I sat there watching as the whole place broke out in utter mayhem.