Page 5 of After All The Wreckage
It wasn’t Ivy who was having the meltdown. It was me. But Monte would do just about anything for our little sister. When she’d first been born, he used to crawl into bed with me for comfort whenever she was crying, even when it was just a normalI’m hungrytype of cry.
My phone buzzed with a reply from Monte, and relief washed through me.
MONTE: I went home with India, remember? I’m spending the weekend with her to work on our science project.
My relief was quickly replaced with guilt. Had he told me and I hadn’t paid attention? I’d been so focused on his vision, sleeplessness, and growing restlessness that I might have missed him telling me.
ME: Are you sure that’s a good idea with everything happening?
MONTE: It’ll keep my mind off it for a while.
In my gut, I knew the truth. He was doing this for me as much as himself. He didn’t want me hovering over him, worrying. But it was my job to protect him, not the other way around.
I put the SUV in gear and backed out of the spot, heading toward the bar.
The asphalt roads at the edge of town quickly turned into cobblestone streets in the town center. The first village in Cherry Bay had been founded in the late 1700s, but the college that had been built on the bluff overlooking the Potomac in the 1940s was what had put us on the map. It drew students and academics from around the globe.
I hooked a right at the alley between two stone buildings that would have been perfectly at home in a medieval English village and headed into the small parking lot at the back. The Prince Darian Tavern had been in my family for over two hundred years. It had first been a post inn, and now it was a bar and restaurant with a two-bedroom apartment and extra storage space above.
While Dad had leased out the restaurant several decades ago, the tavern had been run by a Palmer since its inception. Between the renovation loans I hadn’t known he’d taken out and the pandemic closing us down, we’d been almost wiped out financially. After Dad had died, I’d had to sell the house, and we’d moved into the apartment that he used to rent to college students. We were squished together in a space crowded with furniture that didn’t fit, but I refused to get rid of those last pieces of our family history. Selling the Victorian we’d grown up in had been painful enough.
I parked the Pathfinder and waited with gritted teeth while Ivy fumbled with her buckle. My gaze journeyed to the next parking lot over, and my heart skipped a beat at the sight of a dark-haired woman. I could practically feel the energy vibrating from Rory Bishop as she headed toward the doors of the Cherry Bay Police Department. The aura of brave confidence was the same as it had been when she’d been fifteen. A self-assurance that mimicked the fictional heroine she’d worshipped back in the day.
Lithe and edgy in all black, I was hypnotized by the way she moved. Unable to draw my eyes away from her.
How long had it been since I’d seen her? How many miles, years, and traumas had filled the space between us?
I was just about to call her name when Ivy jumped out of the car and landed on my foot. It turned any sound that would have emerged from me into a deep grunt, and I had to catch my sister as she wobbled and balance myself at the same time. When I looked back over to the station, Rory was gone, and something a bit like sadness filled me.
Which was ridiculous. I didn’t even know Rory anymore. I’d barely known her as a teen.
I pushed aside any thoughts of her, stepped around the wrought iron staircase leading to our apartment, and headed forthe rear entrance of the bar with Ivy’s hand in mine. A delivery truck had its door rolled up, and as I’d expected, River was already unloading it on his own.
His wide shoulders flexed as he hefted a case of vodka onto his shoulder. His height and build along with his shaved head, pierced nose, and plethora of tattoos intimidated most people. They had no clue his aura radiated nothing but kindness when all they saw was a scary giant.
River had been working for my dad since he’d been in college himself, and decades later, he was still here. Although I was pretty sure that had more to do with not abandoning me and my siblings than because he needed the job. Not when his art was in high demand around the country.
“Sorry we’re late,” I offered before looking down at my sister. “Go into the office and get a snack from the snack drawer and your coloring books from the shelf. I’ll be in after I help River.”
“Can I have a chocolate cwinkle?” she asked, eyes wide, knowing I normally didn’t let her have sweets this close to dinner. But with my nerves feeling frayed after the scare I’d just had at the school, I didn’t feel like arguing with her.
“Yes, but only one,” I said, narrowing my eyes at her.
She grinned and then took off down the hall, her messed-up hairdo bouncing around her.
“Hey, Squirt! Don’t I even get a hello?” River grunted after her.
She waved her stuffed otter without ever looking back as she hollered, “Hi, Uncle Wivuh!” her R’s lisping into W’s.
“I expect a hug later.”
I grabbed another case off the back of the truck, hauling it to the storage room above the bar. The dark interior stairs were small and groaned with age, but they were smooth and stained to perfection. Everything in the building might be old, but it wasn’tshabby. Dad had made sure of it, and I’d picked up where he’d left off.
While River and I unloaded in silence, my thoughts kept drifting back to the brown-haired dynamo I’d seen next door. A piece of me longed to go back in time to when I’d known her. When I’d had nothing to worry about but internships and college tuition. To a time when I’d been adored by a girl who I’d known would take the world by storm and set some guy’s heart on fire.
Last I’d heard, she was at Georgetown, but I vaguely recalled some mumblings late last year about her mom being in a car accident. I hadn’t paid much attention to the talk because Rory and her mom hadn’t lived in Cherry Bay for almost a decade. Plus, I’d been hip-deep in another of Monte’s visions and finalizing the paperwork on Ivy’s and Monte’s adoptions. I’d barely been able to breathe at the time, let alone think of a young girl from my past.
But now I couldn’t shake the image of her.
