I Do With You (Maple Creek)

Chapter 23 HOPE

Chapter 23

H OPE

I don’t like leaving the cottage without Ben, but I do as he asks, heading to my parents’ and worrying the whole way. I look in the rearview mirror roughly three hundred times, thinking every car behind me is either a deputy who’s now been additionally assigned to look for my car or Ben chasing after me. Neither happens.

But that doesn’t mean it’s an easy trip.

Nope, as I turn down my street, I see another car I hadn’t considered. Roy’s Lexus is parked in the driveway next to Mom’s car.

“What is he doing here?” I ask aloud. Nobody answers me, of course, but a sixth sense in my gut knows. He’s still not giving up.

But I’m not going in there to listen to him talk down to me again or try to woo me into marrying him as if I just had a little meltdown moment like a tantruming toddler and should be fine after a nap and snack. I’m also not gonna let him run me away from my own home.

I park around the corner like a perfectly reasonable person with big brass balls of courage and walk toward the house, thankful no one in the neighborhood is outside to see me sneaking up like a coward. Silently, I go through the gate into the backyard and turn the knob on the back door as slowly as I can. I slide through the tiniest crack I can fit through and then close the door with a small snick, staying out of sight.

I can hear Roy and Mom in the living room, and I eavesdrop shamelessly.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into her,” Roy says, sounding exasperated. “I thought everything was good.”

“You’ll have to talk to her about that,” Mom replies gently. I get the sense she’s told him that a few times already, because I can hear the like I said tone in her voice that I’m all too familiar with. Mostly because Shepherd takes at least four times of hearing something before he processes it. He’s better now, but when we were kids? We all got tired of repeating ourselves when he’d be lost in his own head.

“I tried!” Roy exclaims. “Ended up at the hospital, getting my nose set for it.” He does sound a bit stuffy, I realize. I feel guilty about it, yet I can’t help but smile just a tiny bit because he deserved it. A little.

“I’m glad they were able to take care of it.” Mom’s being polite, but I know she’s angry at Roy on my behalf. Sharing what it’s been like behind the facade of our relationship has been hard for her to hear, and she’s disappointed in us both. “I think it’s important that you listen to what Hope has said, though. She’s sharing her heart, and you should pay attention to that. Even if it’s hard, even if it hurts.”

“It’s just this guy,” he scoffs, dismissing her advice. “This Benjamin Taylor guy. He’s got her head all messed up, but there are things Hope doesn’t know about him. Things that would make her realize he’s got her confused.”

It’s not Ben. It’s you!

I want to yell out to correct his entirely off-track thinking. The issues I had with Roy have been there, festering deep and hot until they boiled up to the surface at the wedding. We were done long before then. I just hadn’t admitted it, even to myself. And when I escaped, Ben was in the right place at the right time to help me, and that’s turned into something bigger, better, and more intense than anything I ever felt for Roy.

“What do you mean?” Mom asks.

Curiosity killed the cat, but Mom can’t help batting at the carrot Roy’s dangling in front of her. She’s looking out for me, and if there’s a chance Roy knows something I don’t, Mom will want to make sure I’ve got all the information I need to make a good decision. But Roy sounds almost delighted to divulge ugliness about Ben, which says more about him than the man he’s dragging through the mud.

“He’s got a record. It took Dad a little bit to get an unsealed report, but he did. Taylor was part of a theft ring in California that hit dozens of houses and stole thousands of dollars’ worth of property. He’d go door to door, putting flyers out as a cover, and when nobody collected the flyer, he’d hit the house, stealing what he could—jewelry, electronics, cash, guns, drugs. Until one day, he got caught and the whole ring was busted. Him, his mom, and a whole bunch of other people—they all served time. He’s a criminal, probably scoping out houses around Maple Creek the whole time he’s been here. He was here, too, right? You should check your jewelry box, probably Jim’s toolbox too.”

Roy makes it sound like Ben was the criminal mastermind of the theft ring and is continuing his tirade of terror on our town now, starting with our home. But that’s not true. That’s not what happened then, and it’s not what’s happening now.

Ben told me about his mom’s boyfriend and about how he turned on him, getting plea deals for himself and his mother. Yes, Ben stole, and yes, he was a criminal, and I’m not excusing that, but he was young, desperate, and trying to keep his mother safe from a very scary guy.

Mom doesn’t know any of that. She’s hearing about Ben’s past from Roy, who’s colored it to be something much more sinister than it was so he can manipulate her into being worried for her own most valued possession. Namely me, her daughter.

“Thank you for your concern, but my jewelry’s fine, Roy,” Mom clips out, not playing into Roy’s game.

Go, Mom!

She really is amazing, though I have no doubt my phone’s gonna ring as soon as she gets Roy out the front door, when she calls demanding an explanation.

“You’re sure?” Roy follows up. “Wonder if maybe other people in Maple Creek have lost items? Might have to get my dad involved if there’s been an outbreak of robberies in the last week or so.”

He’s outright threatening Ben.

Okay, maybe not outright, but it’s clear enough without him declaring that he can get Team Roy people to lie for him and claim “missing items,” which the sheriff’s department will of course pin on the tourist in town with a record of theft.

I hear Mom’s recliner squeak as she rocks back and forth. Dad’s been saying he’ll fix it for years, and the WD-40 is in the garage, but he never does. Secretly, I think he likes hearing Mom rock. It’s a sign she’s sitting down, not running around doing stuff for everyone else.

“Roy, can I give you a little advice from an old lady?” she says, her voice hard and cold as a diamond. She doesn’t wait for him to agree but fiercely barrels on. “A man lives and dies by his reputation. It belongs to him and no one else. He has to create it, foster it, and stand by it with pride. And your dad’s reputation, as a man and as sheriff, isn’t something you should throw around lightly, because it has less than a hill of beans to do with yours. The sooner you figure that out, the better off you’ll be. You’d do well to focus on your own reputation without using your father or threatening others.”

Those rose-colored glasses my parents have been seeing Roy through? Gone. Roy’s just massively overplayed his hand with my mom, and she’s a force to be reckoned with.

“Ahem.” Roy clears his throat. “I just meant, if anything happens, a criminal would obviously be the first suspect. Hope should know that because I’d hate for her to get caught up in things and get hurt. You’ll tell her?”

“Oh, don’t you worry. I’ll be real sure to tell Hope you stopped by.” Mom makes it sound like Roy will wish she’d kept her mouth shut by the time she’s done telling me, but there’s no need. I’ve heard it all.

I heard the way Roy talks about Ben. About me. About himself, like he’s somehow important even though he’s an average guy, with a boring job and a shitty personality, who’s treated me poorly for far too long.

The front door opens and closes. Trusting that Roy’s gone, I step into the living room.

“How much of that did you hear?” Mom asks from by the front door, where she likely escorted Roy out. She doesn’t seem surprised in the slightest to see me.

I shrug. “Enough. Heard the threats against Ben and me.”

Mom looks at the front window like she can see Roy pulling away through the closed blinds. “Has he always been like that? How did we not see?”

She sounds sad, and mad at herself.

I go to her, hug her tightly, and confess, “I never gave him a reason to show you that side. I only saw it recently, when I started questioning things.”

I feel her nodding as she apologizes anyway. “I’m sorry. I should’ve known.”

Pulling back from the hug, I correct her, “I didn’t want you to. I did my best to make it seem perfect, even if it meant Roy walked all over me.”

“You can lie down for people to walk on you, and some of them will still complain you’re not flat enough. Be bumpy as a speed bump, Hope.” She boops me on the nose to emphasize her point.

A bark of laughter escapes my chest because I did not expect that from her. “Where’d you hear that? A fortune cookie?”

She laughs too. “Saw it on Facebook. One of those me-mes.” There’s a glint in her eye, and I laugh harder, realizing she’s intentionally mispronouncing meme to lighten the situation because she follows it up with a hard question. “What about the things Roy said about Ben? How much of that’s true?” She peers at me, her laughter gone as she frowns so hard the lines by her mouth turn into parentheses.

I grimace. “More than you’ll like, but Roy made it sound worse than it was. Sit down and I’ll explain what I know.”

To Mom’s credit, she does, and so I do, telling her the rough details of what Ben shared.

Mom doesn’t like it, but she seems to understand that things were different for Ben than they were for me—or her—growing up. “Nobody got hurt?” I shake my head. “People got their stuff back?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. I don’t know if Ben knows. He was a kid. But he helped the police take down the ringleader, which was the best he could do at the time.”

She stares off into space, still thinking about it. She probably will be for a long time, and then she’ll discuss it with Dad, and then they’ll both think about it some more. Especially with Ben’s record adding a layer to his arrest today. I hope they come to the same conclusion I have—people, like circumstances, can change. And I’m not going to hold what Ben did to survive a life I can’t imagine against him.

“How’d things go after we left?”

“ Mom! I’m not talking about that with you!”

She rolls her eyes, giggling like a schoolgirl. “Not the sex, Hope. I don’t need to know that. I don’t want to know that.” She shakes her head vehemently. “I meant, did you two talk?”

“Not really. Sean showed up and Ben said they had a lot to talk about, so he asked me to give him a bit.” I nibble on my lip, still worried I overstepped and extra worried that there seems to be something Sean knows that I don’t, though he keeps assuming Ben has told me.

“Oh! You met Ben’s friend. Was he nice?”

Such a mom question to ask, but the truth is ... no, he was not. He was gruff, rude, and basically kinda terrifying. “I think I liked him better on the phone.”

Mom’s brows jump up her forehead, remembering what I said after hanging up with Sean.

“Well, it sounds like I need to set an extra plate for dinner, then,” she says, tapping me on the leg. “Come on, you can help me cook, and when Dad gets home, we’ll eat while Ben and Sean get themselves sorted.”

Mom’s the best. She can tell I’m worried and is going to do her damnedest to keep me busy in an attempt to keep my mind off it. It won’t work, but I appreciate her trying more than she’ll ever know.