1:45 a.m. Frankie’s Bar
The bartender leaned as far over the bar as his huge belly would allow and whispered, “We’re closing, Randi, you want another one?”
Randi Howard stacked her last shot glass beside the others and shook her head. “Can’t seem to drink enough to feel it tonight, Frankie.”
The old boxer behind the bar nodded. “I’ve been there, kid, believe me.” He used two of the glasses she’d emptied to pour them each a shot of tequila. “Jimmy was a good man and he’ll be missed. Here’s one to him.”
Randi didn’t down the offered drink. She just nodded. “He was a good man. Best damn husband I ever had.” She looked up at Frankie. “He never beat me. Did you know that? Not once.”
Frankie moved down the bar to the next customer; sympathy and advice were doled out like whiskey, in short shots. He’d been a boxer and a biker before settling down to tending bar. Randi guessed he’d heard every hard luck story over the years, and hers was just one more.
She lifted the last drink to her lips. “To you, Jimmy. I might not have been able to stand the boredom of living with you any longer, but I’m sure going to miss you now I know you’re gone and I can’t come running back.”
Blinking away a tear, she remembered how he once told her that she was a one-woman wrecking crew leaving broken hearts wherever she went. He always said things like that to her before they married. Afterward she swore sometimes he looked right through her. He worried more about his uncle Shelby’s business than he ever did about her. If the accident hadn’t happened, he probably wouldn’t have noticed she was gone for at least a week or two.
Randi closed her eyes wishing she could write the kind of sadness that settled in between them into a song. But singers don’t sing about love dying by inches or how it feels when there is nothing to feel anymore. None of the sad country songs she knew could ever make her hurt as badly as watching Jimmy slowly stop caring.
She hadn’t lost him in an oil fire. She’d lost him a fraction at a time…the day he stopped calling her name when he entered their trailer…the first morning he forgot to kiss her goodbye…the night he rolled away even though he knew she wanted to make love. She hadn’t known how to say goodbye then. She wasn’t sure she knew how to say goodbye now.
Maybe she should have had a farewell song ready the day she married. Then, every time something cut off a piece of her heart she could have turned up the volume a notch. Eventually, he would have heard it and then her leaving wouldn’t be a surprise.
The only thing she could think to do now was to stick with the plan she’d come up with less then twenty-four hours ago. She felt like she’d wasted most of her life trying to figure out what to do. She had been leaving him, heading to Nashville to give herself a chance at a dream she’d had all her life. She would just pretend Jimmy was back here waiting for her. That he still cared. It shouldn’t be much of a stretch really, she’d been pretending someone cared about her most of her life. Pretending was easier than believing. Believing could get her hurt, but pretending could go on forever. But now that she had finally decided on a direction, she would cut and run.
“It’s time to face the champ!” Frankie yelled from the end of the bar as he raised his fist and tapped the set of boxing gloves hanging above his head.
A young cowhand a few stools down leaned toward Randi. Long past drunk, he smelled of smoke. “What’s he talking about, ma’am?”
Randi smiled, wondering how many times she’d explained Frankie’s last call. “It’s time to face the champ. When anyone says that to a fighter, you can bet it is your last round for the night.”
The drunk nodded as if he understood.
Randi lifted her purse along with his hat off the empty stool between them. “Come on, cowboy. I’ll walk you to your pickup.”
“How’d you know what I drove?” he said as she turned him toward the door. “Lucky guess.”
Parking lot of County Memorial Hospital
2:15 a.m.
“Can you drive home, Meredith?” Sheriff Farrington knelt beside the open Mustang door as he helped Meredith Allen into her car.
She worked summers and holidays at the county clerk’s office just down the hall from his office, but she could never remember him using her name. Funny, when you are a schoolteacher in a small town everyone calls you by your last name. First students, then their parents. Even the other teachers in the building referred to one another as Misses or Misters. Slowly, the town knows you that way.
Meredith knew what people thought of her. When she had been in school, she had been a “good girl,” the type boys remembered to open doors for. She figured she would grow into middle age and become a “fine woman.” Then her hair would turn from auburn to light blue and she would take her place up front in church with all the other widows and become “a sweet old dear.”
Only now she was already a widow, and not one hair of her curly mass had turned gray. Something had gone wrong with the order of things.
“I’ll be fine, Sheriff. Thanks for sitting with me.” She took a long breath and leaned back against the headrest. “I just didn’t want to leave until the funeral home picked up Kevin. It didn’t seem right somehow to leave him alone.”
“I understand,” he said, his voice still cold but less formal than usual. “Restlawn would have been here faster if they’d known you were waiting. I guess they didn’t figure it mattered, so they sat out the rain.”
She looked up at him. “They will take good care of Kevin?” She knew she was making no sense, but she had to ask. Restlawn was the only funeral home in town. Kevin was dead and far too burned to have an open casket. What difference could the care make?
“Of course they will.” He played along with the fantasy. “Those boys have known your Kevin all his life. They’ll be taking care of one of their own.”
Meredith nodded.
“You call me if you need anything,” he offered.
“I will,” she answered, knowing she never would.
He stood and closed her door. She watched him walk back into the hospital as she pulled out of the parking lot. It was good of him to sit with her even if they had not said more than a handful of words to one another.
Meredith drove through deserted streets, trying to make herself believe Kevin was gone. Even after the long day at the hospital, it seemed impossible. She had loved and worried about him for more than half her life. He had always been there, through high school and college. Even before they married, every action, every thought, every decision had Kevin factored in. Then, today, for one second she blinked and the world changed. He was gone.
How could the town, the people, look the same? Didn’t they know the earth had tilted? Crystal Howard said she had felt something in the wind, a shifting. She was right. After this day, life would change for them all.
But the grain elevators still loomed like a miniature skyline behind the old depot. Main Street still ran in front of the courthouse with store fronts sliced in between vacant buildings, just as they had that morning when she drove to school.
Several years ago, a senior class had taken on a project to install displays of the history of Clifton Creek in the empty store windows. The undertaking was a great success but, as the years went by, sun and dust faded the efforts until they matched the dilapidated buildings that housed them. Tonight they loomed through the fog like ghosts of the past.
Meredith fought back tears, forcing herself to maintain control. Kevin always says getting emotional doesn’t help.
Kevin always said she corrected, as if a red pen sliced through her thoughts.
He could always tease her into smiling, no matter what happened. Only Kevin was no longer here. He would never be here again. Not to tease, or to gripe about