After all this time, p.1
After All This Time, page 1
After All This Time
Beca Lewis
Perception Publishing
Copyright © [Year of First Publication] by [Author or Pen Name]
All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
Contents
1. One
2. Two
3. Three
4. Four
5. Five
6. Six
7. Seven
8. Eight
9. Nine
10. Ten
11. Eleven
12. Twelve
13. Thirteen
14. Fourteen
15. Fifteen
16. Sixteen
17. Seventeen
18. Eighteen
19. Nineteen
20. Twenty
21. Twenty One
22. Twenty Two
23. Twenty Three
24. Twenty Four
25. Twenty Five
26. Twenty Six
27. Twenty Seven
28. Twenty Eight
29. Twenty Nine
30. Thirty
31. Thirty One
32. Thirty Two
33. Thirty Three
34. Thirty Four
35. Thirty Five
36. Thirty Six
37. Thirty Seven
38. Thirty Eight
39. Chapter 38
40. Chapter 39
41. Chapter 40
One
It didn’t take Nicky Blair long to realize she couldn’t remain anonymous for long in a town like Spring Falls. Not just because it was a small town. It was that the people were curious. And acted friendly. She didn’t know yet if the friendlessness was real or fake. She had been aware for too long about the duplicity of people to accept things at face value. People often acted one way but thought and did another.
So she didn’t trust them. At all.
However, despite herself, she hoped it was true—hoped that the friendliness was genuine. Still, she didn’t like it. How was she supposed to watch what people were doing without them noticing, when they kept noticing her and asking her questions?
Questions she didn’t want to answer.
Even giving up her name was tricky. At first, she thought she might make one up. But Nicky knew herself well enough to know that she wouldn’t remember a made-up name. She had so much going on inside of her it was entirely possible she would say her real name by accident because she’d forgotten she was hiding who she was and why she was in Spring Falls.
So reluctantly, she told people an edited version of what they wanted to know. It was easy because there wasn’t much to tell. She was a nobody. Had been for years.
Once, a long time ago, she had a proper job but had become bored almost immediately. So she moved around, taking odd jobs everywhere she went. She’d rent a room in someone’s house, and when they got upset with her, or she with them—which happened eventually—she’d move on.
Nicky kept no social media presence. She used the internet to get what she wanted. She didn’t let it use her. It had been a lonely life. But it was what she thought she wanted.
Until she started remembering what she had been trying to forget for thirty-five years, dreaming about it when asleep and startled by memories when awake. Finally, she gave in and let herself remember. All of it. At least what she knew. What she didn’t know was the reason she ended up in Spring Falls.
That Spring Falls was near where the nightmare of her life had begun surprised her. She could almost hear her father say, “The world moves in mysterious ways.”
She knew that to be true. However, what her father never told her, probably because he didn’t know himself until it was too late, is mysterious doesn’t always—or often mean—in good ways.
So now, all these years later, she was in a town close to where she grew up, sitting in a tiny diner, trying to remain invisible. And failing. Everyone from the waitress to the couple sitting a few tables over said hello and smiled. It was hard not to smile back, even though she didn’t want to. That they paid attention to her pissed her off. It was ruining her plan to be a nobody.
Nicky purposefully kept her hair un-styled and dyed a dirty, dark brown. When her pure white hair started showing, she covered it up. She dressed like everyone else, so her clothes didn’t make her stand out from the crowd. Because it was impossible to hide her striking blue eyes, so when she wasn’t wearing brown contact lenses she got in the habit of looking down. All in an attempt to avoid calling attention to herself.
Until Spring Falls, staying as invisible as possible had always worked. She arrived in Spring Falls a week before and, as always, rented a room in a home and kept to herself. However, instead of ignoring her, as most people did, her landlady was friendly and curious, like the rest of the town.
Nothing about Spring Falls was working out the way she wanted it to. However, Nicky had to admit to herself that if she wasn’t here on a mission of revenge, she might like this place. It reminded her of her hometown of Jakestown before it changed. Except Jakestown was even smaller. It barely existed on the map. Nicky figured that they probably named it after some guy named Jake who first homesteaded the place.
Nicky had known it was a good place to grow up, even when she resented it. Everyone seemed content with their tiny farming town, even though there was the constant smell of animals when the wind drifted in a certain way, and every few years the crop would fail because of the weather or a swarm of insects devoured them before harvest time.
The men would gather at the diner on the main street for breakfast, and if it was too wet to plant or harvest, almost every man in town could be found there, drinking one cup of coffee after another, talking about whatever men talked about.
The women did church socials and gathered in living rooms to discuss the day, children, and the town’s needs, as they quilted or knitted. Because, as her mother always said, men talked about nothing for hours while women talked about what counted and kept on working. The women helped each other with kids, dinners, and chores if someone got sick.
Jakestown was a pleasant place, but Nicky had always wanted more. She wanted to be someone different. What that someone would be, Nicky hadn’t known. All that Nicky knew then was she wanted to change her life and be on her own. So she left home as soon as possible, traveling a little, trying to discover her place in the world.
But then Sara went missing. And Nicky’s life changed, as did the life of everyone in Jakestown. When it became clear that Sara would never be coming back, that something terrible had happened, the town’s happiness switched off. Each year that Sara stayed missing, the town died a little more.
Before she stopped visiting, Nicky thought the town gave off a smell of decay that drove people away. No one moved there. People left. Distrust settled like dust on people’s hearts.
The thought “it could be any of us” lingered unspoken, everyone afraid to think that it could have been their neighbor that made Sara disappear. Open doors closed, and the joy that was Jakestown faded away.
Nicky stopped going home a few years after Sara went missing. Visiting her parents while they were alive was like visiting when they were dead, except for the tears. Because when they were alive, the tears never stopped as they searched and searched for the daughter they loved. So many tears you’d think they would wash away their house.
Instead, the tears washed away her parents, who now lay side by side in a graveyard in Jakestown. For all Nicky knew, they were still crying. Not her. She didn’t cry then or now.
Nicky knew that someday it would all catch up with her, and perhaps her tears would wash her away too, but right now, she was on a mission, and tears would only get in the way. Now she was an avenging angel, dark and distrustful. She would finally find out what happened to her sister, no matter the cost to herself.
And Nicky believed the answer was in this town called Spring Falls. If it was, then all hell was going to break loose. But first, she had to be sure. Then she would do what needed to be done to punish the person who took her sister away from her and drowned her parents in their tears.
Two
That evening, Nicky found two of the people she was stalking sitting in the back of the room where the lights were dim, hoping no one they knew would see them. But if someone was looking their way, they were hard to miss, and Nicky, who always scanned a room before entering, paused for a moment to study the woman with the soft red hair and the man with blond hair going gray.
They fascinated Nicky. They were young and old at the same time. Nicky couldn’t keep herself from liking them, wanting to know more about them, how they felt about each other, and how they were doing. She felt as if they were part of her story, too, or she hoped they would be. But she didn’t want to talk to them, not yet. They were in their own world, and she didn’t want to disturb them. Besides, she wasn’t ready yet.
This room smells of secrets, Nicky thought. Or maybe it’s me that smells because I am a bundle of secrets.
Looking around the room, Nicky saw families, couples, and even a teenage boy and girl who could barely look at each other. Nicky thought they were probably out on their first date. A flash of memory went by of her and her first date. Lifetimes ago when the future looked bright, and anything had been possible. Now everything in her life had narrowed down from a life of possibilities to one simple focus. Find out what happened to Sara.
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The table was sticky, and the waitress had to wipe it down with a rag before she could set down the glass of water for Nicky. Nicky smiled at the waitress as she handed her a menu and then asked her to wait for a sec because she wanted to order immediately. Nicky pointed to two choices on the menu, asked the waitress what she would order, and then took her advice, along with a diet, whatever they had.
While Nicky ate her pasta—which she was delighted to discover was as delicious as the waitress said it would be—she casually glanced at the other tables, lingering only briefly on the two people she had seen and admired. They wouldn’t have noticed her, anyway. They were busy laughing and discussing something that seemed to please them. Once in a while, they took bites of food as if they had just remembered that was why they were there.
They look harmless enough, Nicky said to herself while admitting that it was often the harmless ones that hurt the most. She hoped these two would be what she needed. She wanted them to help her find the person who needed to be stopped and punished.
But for now, she would be an observer and not a participant. Because first, she had to know if she could trust them.
Nicky had read about the two of them on the internet. Judith Zoe practically ran the town of Spring Falls, but behind the scenes. She and the people she hired did the bookkeeping and accounting for many of the town’s businesses. Plus, Judith had a reputation for speaking up loudly whenever things were wrong. At least wrong, in Judith’s opinion.
After researching what Judith felt was wrong, Nicky had to admit she agreed with most of her conclusions. Which was why she hoped Judith was who she appeared to be. She would be a necessary part of Nicky’s plan if she were.
The man lived a few hours away, but Nicky suspected he was thinking of moving his estate planning practice to Spring Falls. Because of Judith. In the meantime, they seemed to want to keep their relationship quiet, which was why they were hiding in the back of a dim restaurant in the next town over from Spring Falls.
Nicky had no desire to out their secret, although Nicky suspected that more people knew about them than they expected. Perhaps the two of them were the only people who were hiding from the truth. Hiding it from themselves. Nicky understood that. She had hidden away from wanting to know the truth for years.
Then one day, the part of her that was running and hiding said that was enough. It was time for justice. And that day, she started moving towards the answers instead of running.
And now, she was ready to punish the man who hurt her sister. But first, she would be sure she had the right person. Which meant she had to make a few friends. Or pretend to anyway. Nicky thought she’d start with the woman with red hair.
Three
Cindy Lee Jones glanced at her phone lying on the counter and realized she had just a few minutes before she was supposed to meet Judith at the coffee shop for their regular Monday morning chat.
Even though all the Ruby Sisters had returned to Spring Falls and they could have included them in their Monday morning coffees, they didn’t. After all the years when it was just the two of them, they had built a habit they both wanted to keep.
Cindy was grateful. She needed alone time with Judith to talk things through. Judith always saw things logically, while Cindy often lived in a sea of emotions.
Besides, Cindy knew Judith had been out of town for a few days and was looking forward to hearing where she had gone—if she could worm it out of her. There were a few things Judith had been keeping secret from everyone, or she thought she was, anyway. Cindy smiled. She’d keep Judith’s secret if that’s what she wanted.
As always, before going out the door, Cindy stopped in front of the hall mirror to ensure she had put together well enough to be seen in public. Because now that she had taken up painting again, Cindy had to make sure she didn’t have paint in her hair or on her face, which she almost always did. She was a messy painter.
Cindy told herself she was only painting for something to do. She knew her paintings weren’t good enough to be seen by anyone yet, maybe never. And for sure, they would not be hanging in her art gallery where she curated and sold real art by genuine artists.
She had started the art gallery because she loved art and once believed she was an artist. Then she learned she was not. Cindy knew enough not to say that out loud to her friend Bree because Bree would give her a talking to. Bree believed that if you wanted to be something, it was because it was already part of you, and all you had to do was find that part and bring it out.
“After all,” Bree would say, “I wanted to be a writer, and now look, I am.”
Cindy snorted to herself, thinking, yea right. She knew many disillusioned people who thought they could be something but never made it. It didn’t always work out how Bree claimed it did. Besides, Cindy knew that although Bree worked hard at being a writer, she wasn’t acknowledging a certain amount of luck that got her where she was now, a famous spicy romance writer using the pen name of R.B. Curtis.
And although it was sad Bree lost her husband, Bree was now a mother and grandmother, and Bree didn’t make that happen either. It happened to her, and the Ruby Sisters and Bree’s dead husband were the ones that made sure Bree ended up the happy camper she was right now.
To herself, Cindy had to admit she felt a certain amount of resentment towards Bree, and she knew it was irrational. Although, yes, she was the one who had offered to help Bree after her husband died, and she could have said no. She could have chosen not to go to rescue her. But she did. And when she wasn’t feeling grumpy, she had to admit she had loved every minute in her makeshift studio.
Besides, she and Bree had been best friends forever. And it was because of Bree that she survived school. It was Bree who stretched out her hand to her in first grade. So it was only fitting that she had reached out to Bree when she needed help.
Cindy wrapped a soft blue scarf around her neck, fluffed her blond—now shorter and streaked with gray—hair, glared at herself in the mirror, and told herself to stop it. Being happy for other people’s happiness was a part of who she was. Besides, in the aftermath of it all, she ended up with one of her best friends helping her with her business and another living with her until she found a place of her own.
As she grabbed her purse and keys off the kitchen counter, she called up to Marsha, “I’m off,” and heard a faint answer of “Have a great day!”
“I will! You too!” Cindy said, and smiled to herself. She knew she would because she would choose to because, despite sometimes being miffed at Bree and her beliefs, she had adopted a few of them for herself.
Besides, having coffee with Judith was always enlightening and entertaining. And then, after coffee, she, Janet, and Mimi would be busy with customers and Internet art orders at her gallery for the rest of the day. Life was good, and her whiny self would not spoil the day for her or anyone else.
Upstairs, Marsha Melinda Martin groaned and rolled over in bed, telling herself to get up, but not having any luck convincing herself to do so. If she was a good houseguest, she would have been up before Cindy and made coffee and maybe breakfast for her. Then she’d tidy up the house before doing something with her day.
But she was not a good houseguest, and she and Cindy both knew it. Cindy said nothing other than that she was happy to have the company. But Marsha couldn’t believe that was entirely true. After all, she had been there for months when it was meant to be a few days, at the most, a week or two, while she decided what to do with herself.
Paul’s letter to everyone after he died begging them to help his wife recover her life had been a catalysis for all of them. Except for her. Everyone else was moving on with their life, while she wasted time lying in bed or reading books in the soft chair in the living room with the curtains closed. Keeping the real world out.
Because, after years of first trying to make it on Broadway in New York, where she was only modestly successful, and then running a dance school, she had run out of a desire to do anything.
