Page 35 of Love Me Gently

“Well I hear from you enough.”

Philip Scranton was old and crotchety. He also liked to play his jazz music and host parties that even more crotchety and old people across the lake from him hated. Which meant we spent a lot of time asking him to turn it down.

The small, gated lake community he lived in also happened to have its own private runway, and Philip’s own private plane sat in a hangar connected to his house. Part of the reason he had such large and loud parties. Pull the plane out and the hangar was one hell of a gathering area.

“I’m actually calling this morning because I need your help.”

He might not have known Trina well, but he was born and raised in Deer Creek and anyone who was from there was one of our own. Without bringing up her name, I explained the rest of the scenario and when it came time to figure out if his neighborhood’s private runway was long enough for Kip’s jet, I handed the phone over.

“You have your own connections,” Valerie said softly, while I kept one ear on what Kip was saying.

“It’s a small town but it’s not an irrelevant or dying town like others.” We were a large tourist area in both the summer and winter. And while many towns were dying, our ski slopes kept people coming back year after year. Not only did we have a small, private college in town that had seen an increase in enrollment, there was a growing university twenty minutes away. All that meant even our shopping had grown over the years. But the people who lived on that lake had either lived there for generations or bought their second homes out there for privacy—the private runway being one of the main enticing factors.

“Promise me you’ll keep her safe.”

Her tone had such a thickness, held such guilt and worry I looked her dead in the eyes. “To my dying breath.”

It was a vow. I’d swear it with my hand on the Bible if she requested. She must have understood how serious I was because she exhaled and went back to nibbling her bottom lip.

“I don’t mean to keep questioning you, but Katrina didn’t speak a lot about her past. And she only mentioned you a few times.”

“But she mentioned me.”

Valerie blinked slowly and nodded. “After I confronted her about Jonathan, the night she finally admitted to what he was doing to her. I kept giving her drinks and she kept talking.”

I chuckled. “Nice. Get her drunk to steal all her secrets.”

A quick flash of a grin appeared and then vanished. “She was a vault before then, one massive cement block that I’d been chipping away at for years. It didn’t take much to finally have her crumble.”

A 45mm bullet to the gut would be less painful than knowing how miserable she’d been for so long. Still, I forced myself to nod, like I knew.

I didn’t. I suspected there’d been a lot of traumas in Trina’s life since she left for New York. “It’s good she had you.”

“I know about the baby,” she whispered on a hitched breath. “You should know that. She hates herself for it, you know. Despises that choice she made and telling you she’s still carrying guilt for it isn’t a heavy enough phrase to use.”

I’d despised her for it, too, for a while. And then I grew up. But I had a life to look forward to, a good one. And while it may have never been as full as I once wanted, I now had two little girls I couldn’t imagine a life without, and Trina was sitting in a hospital bed. Any lingering anger I’d had about Trina’s decision was gone years ago. I hated hearing she still hadn’t moved past that.

“Thank you for letting me know.”

“I figure you should. Just…go easy on her. I doubt the road ahead for either of you will be easy.”

“A road smoothly traveled isn’t one I have a lot of experience navigating,” I assured her and cracked a smile.

It was small, but she grinned back.

Kip handed me my phone back. “It’ll work. Mr. Scranton says he’ll handle everything on his end.”

“Then let’s work out the details down to the second, shall we?”

Kip grinned. Valerie chewed on her lip.

And me? For the first time in a long time, I had an overwhelming sense of hope and peace that things were finally going to go exactly the way they should.

Fourteen

Trina

Then

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