Page 12 of Rival Hearts

“Why didn’t you tell me yesterday or, I don’t know, any other day we’d been shortchanged?”

“I didn’t know. Our summer students counted the boxes.”

I eased my hands down my face and crouched so my knees almost touched my chin. “I suppose the only good news is the noise complaint is a nonstarter. We will barely have enough fireworks to light up the sky for five minutes, let alone finishing late.”

“I can make some calls and see if any other towns have extra we can buy off them.”

I closed my eyes and let Pete’s voice wash over me. There had always been something about the way Pete spoke that I found comforting. His slow, careful drawl was different than the way most people spoke in Little Falls, and the rhythm calmed my anxiety enough for me to focus. He was an implant, a Southerner who’d moved here because his wife had fallen in love with Little Falls as a kid. Right now, I was grateful he was the one delivering this second blow to my day.

“Take photos of all of this. We’ll have to go after the shipping company or the supplier later.” I rose and rubbed my face one more time before squaring my shoulders. “If we do get them, what about Sabrina’s noise complaint?”

“I was duty bound to tell you, but she can’t make her complaint until it actually happens. She raised quite a stink on the phone with me today, talking about how the noise would wake up her sleeping children.”

“She has three, right?”

“Yep, all by different daddies.”

“Not so lucky in love.”

“Or birth control.”

“Pete!”

“I’m just saying, she didn’t even know the rule was a bylaw when she called. When I explained to her there was an amendment in the bylaw for the Fourth of July and other civic holidays involving fireworks, she told me she didn’t know what any of those words were, but she’d raise hell if we went past eleven.”

I stifled a laugh. “Sounds like she needed a better complaint coach too.”

“Must have been Grady. Kelvin would have tattooed the words and definitions on her skin.”

“Grady’s like her. He probably doesn’t even know what those words mean.” An unkind statement. Grady was smarter than he let most people see, but he’d seemed to enjoy his slacker image in high school and beyond. I’d never understood why he and Sabrina Kim, who was not faking her lack of intelligence, had spent so much time together.

“Seems odd to me, him running for mayor against you. You reckon that’s got anything to do with what happened with you and Trent?”

With anyone else, I would have bristled at the implication there had been something foul about me and Trent. But with Pete, he was simply trying to puzzle Grady’s motivation out, not being malicious. There might be other people in town who’d come to this conclusion, too, and wouldn’t have the guts to ask.

“You mean about Trent going to jail?”

“Yeah, and a certain faction of the public who thought maybe Trent wasn’t capable of what he was convicted of doing.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with Trent cooking meth and selling it. That’s a schedule two narcotic. It carries, as we all nowknow, a mandatory sentence in New York State. I wouldn’t have gone anywhere near that.”

“Sorry, Mags, I didn’t mean to imply you did. Only wondered if Grady might’ve thought Trent wasn’t clever enough to do it on his own.”

And he hadn’t been, of that I was sure, but I hadn’t willingly helped Trent either. Thinking about what happened back then caused a rush of anger. The fallout had been such a debacle, and I hadn’t seen any of it coming. In hindsight, I’d been naïve. Forgiving myself had taken a while, but I’d only been seventeen. The things that don’t occur to you at seventeen are endless.

“One of the things I like most about you, Pete, is your bluntness.” I smiled and then picked my words carefully. “Trent was the mastermind of that scheme, not me.”

“What do you reckon Grady thinks?”

Unbidden, the look on Grady’s face after Trent was arrested entered my mind—disgust, betrayal, and underneath it all, like me, the guilt over something we’d never speak of. “He doesn’t like me. I’m certain of that.” If I’d had any doubts, Grady’s behavior since he’d returned made his feelings clear.

“He’s running out of spite.”

I gave the tiniest shrug and head shake. “Who knows? Grady probably doesn’t know. He’s a drifter. Even if he wins, he won’t stay.”

“You don’t think so?”

“Four years in one place? According to Penny, since he left here, he’s spent a year at most anywhere before moving on.”

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