What did you think you were doing, coming after me like that?” Goat demanded. It had been a delicate operation, getting himself out of the kayak and into the front of the rowboat. He’d nearly fallen in, which probably wouldn’t have done much for his mood; as it was, he had Stella holding on to the kayak, which trailed along behind as Goat stroked powerfully toward the Wallachs’ dock.
“It’s that dang cell service,” Stella said. “I couldn’t get through. I called and called, and then I figured I might as well come on out here.”
“And yet Irene got me just fine. Go figure.”
Stella shrugged and focused her attention on a dragonfly that was flitting around beside the boat. It was a warm afternoon for September, banks of cattails along the shore nodding gently in lazy breezes, and fish occasionally glinted rainbows near the surface, competing with the sunlit flashes Chrissy’s shoes sent kaleidoscoping around the boat.
“Look,” Goat finally said as they approached the shore. “I guess I know what this is about.”
That was a surprise, since Stella herself didn’t really understand.
“We got your boy in the lockup, and now it looks like we got another strong suspect—” He held up a hand to stop Stella from speaking. “—and I ain’t gonna confirm or deny what we got on this Wil Vines, either, so don’t ask.”
Shoes—had to be the shoes, unless Brandy didn’t know what she was talking about.
“That Cory Layfield of yours didn’t pan out,” Goat continued. “Mike’s following up, but Layfield’s a nurse’s aid over at a hospice in Rolla these days. He told Mike that while he was taking care of his sick uncle he realized he was called to work with the sick. He offered to drive right on down and help out however he could, just as soon as he got off his shift. I mean, I could have Mike go measure his foot if it makes you feel better, I guess, but…”
Stella felt her face flame with embarrassment. “No, I don’t guess that’s necessary right now.”
“Yeah. So the way I see it, you’re here to make your case for your boy Neb. But I got to tell you, Stella, you know that it’s gonna come down the way it always does, and that’s just purely on the facts, and no amount of you spinning it up one way and down the other is going to make a damn bit of difference if—”
“I
know
all that—”
Stella couldn’t stand to hear any more. She usually loved seeing Goat all worked up into one of his justice frenzies, seeing as it made the veins in his strong arms stand out in a most becoming way, and set his hard jaw in an even firmer line than usual, but the idea that he would think, even for one minute, that she would try to influence the outcome of a case—
—well, if that’s what the man thought, then he clearly didn’t get her. That was the thought that arrived in a mini-huff, an indignant self-righteous little push-back against the assault on her principles, her
honor
, for heaven’s sake, and she wasn’t about to stand for it.
Except … he was sort of a little bit right. She
did
make a habit of flouting the policing and judicial and corrective systems and doing everything her own damn way. She did it all the time, in fact. And she wasn’t sorry.
The law had procedures in place for when one human being, generally of the male variety, decided to start taking out his frustrations on a weaker and less powerful person, generally his wife or girlfriend. Stella had read that an astonishing third of all women get abused at some point in their adult lives, a fact that helped explain why she never had a shortage of clients.
The law made it clear that the abusers should be prevented and punished. The procedures laid out exactly
how
they should be prevented and punished. There were training programs and guidelines and protocols and hotlines and websites and shelters. But even with all those resources, the abusers kept on doing their thing.
There were just too many things that could go wrong. Responding officers couldn’t convince terrified women to press charges. Husbands learned how to hurt without leaving marks. Men got locked up and came out angrier than when they went in. Paperwork got misfiled, court dates got delayed, wealthy defendants hired attorneys and poor ones honed their fury waiting for their court-appointed defenders to look at their cases. Men skipped their court-ordered counseling; or they went and the lessons didn’t stick; or they cleaned up their act for a while, until the day when the woman in front of them was once again just too tempting a target for all their frustration.
And they kept on hurting. They kept on and on until someone even craftier and angrier and more determined came along and made them stop. Someone who worked outside the law, who was unfettered by red tape, who judged for herself just how far to go to make sure that this time was the last time. Someone whose toolbox included pain and terror and intimidation and who answered to no one but herself.
This was a conversation Stella had never really had, in detail, with Goat. And she wasn’t exactly sure she wanted to. Even if she was sure that he would never interfere with her work. Even if he gave her his blessing.
Because despite the warts and flaws and setbacks in the system, and all its members who did a terrible or mediocre or not-quite-good-enough job, there were those like Goat who got up every morning and put on the uniform and went out into the world with every intention of cleaning up messes and straightening out jams and reeling in the misguided and locking up the really bad ones. And Stella didn’t figure she wanted to put a dent in any of that. All of it was good. All of it was worthy.
Not all of it was Goat, of course. There were plenty of deputies and sheriffs and police officers and lawmen out there, perfectly hardworking nice gents—probably thousands of them—who
didn’t
get her all fluttery on the insides.
“I know all that,” she repeated with a little less conviction.
Goat gave her a funny look and dipped his oar into the water a couple of times, moving the boat far more effortlessly than Stella had managed, and eased it up in through the water weeds and bumped it gently against the dock.
But there was still something else that had to be said. Something completely unrelated to the law enforcement situation. One more thing, if Stella was going to ever get the lid on the hurting envious corner of her heart. A sense of urgency stirred up Stella’s breath as Goat reached out a strong hand for the edge of the dock and set a variety of words tumbling to her lips, though none of them seemed like the right ones.
“Wait up a sec,” she said. “Just—Brandy—was she—is she—?”
It wasn’t enough that Brandy had finally given Stella the blessing to go after Goat, that her interest in the man turned out to be entirely hatched from self-serving instincts.
Stella needed to know if Goat still wanted her.
“Who left who?” she finally blurted out.
Not exactly the question she’d meant to ask, but it would get the job done, seeing as it got straight to the heart of what had gone wrong between the two of them.
Goat slowly tucked the oar back along the bottom of the boat. He reached past Stella to take hold of the kayak, his arm brushing her thigh and sending little hot sensations along her skin. The kayak floated atop the surface of the water as if it were no more substantial than a paper boat, and Goat lifted it, dripping sparkly water droplets into the boat, and set it securely up onto the dock.
Then he sat and regarded her with his elbows on his denim-clad knees, long forearms crossed casually, looking like an aging Ralph Lauren model with a taste for trouble. The boat rocked against the silt for a moment, then floated out away from the dock, drifting with the breeze down the shoreline away from the Wallachs’ place.
“Strange times, those were,” Goat finally said, so softly that Stella had to lean a little closer to hear. “She left me. And ain’t I a dang fool for letting it drag on so long … Stella, that was one show that was over before it even got started. Brandy, well, she has a knack for getting herself into jams.”
“So I noticed.”
“Yeah. See, a few years back—hell, must be about five years now … I got called out to a domestic disturbance over on the far side of town. I get there and there’s this skinny little gal’s pulled a knife on her husband, who had to weigh about three times what she did, but she had him backed into a corner shaking like a leaf, and she was screamin’ her head off how she was goin’ to cut off his balls and serve ’em for dinner.”
“Brandy did
that
?”
“No, not Brandy—her sister. Her estranged sister now. But back then, Brandy was coming off a patch of bad luck, and she needed a place to stay, and she was sleeping on their sofa—until the day her sister kicked her out for calling the cops on her.”
“And you…”
Rescued her
. Stella didn’t even need a road map—she could see that one coming.
Goat sighed and looked out across the lake, where a bunch of kids were splashing around in inner tubes. “All I did, that night, was to buy her a cup of coffee. Out of the machine, at the station. We were trying to line up temporary housing for her, and I got her this crappy cup of coffee, and she’s sitting there in a folding chair looking around the station over in Versailles, and if you’ve never been in that building, let me tell you it’s nothing much to look at, smells like a locker room and looks like—well, a prison, I guess. Anyway, Brandy looks around and she gets this little smile on her face and she says, ‘Is it always this quiet?’—and it’s like midnight by then, so of course it’s quiet, it’s just the night guys, and she goes on to tell me how much she misses having a little peace and quiet ’cause she’s been bouncing from one friend’s couch to another, trying to get her life straightened out.”
“So … you married her.”
Goat flashed a rueful little smile. “Not
right
away. It took me about six weeks.”
“Holy fuck, Goat,” Stella said. “I mean … have there been others? A whole string of women who were down on their luck, maybe you dragged ’em out of homeless shelters and halfway houses and turned ’em into brides?”
“Hey, I never said I had any smarts when it came to women.” His smile this time was genuine, if a little embarrassed. “But no, Brandy was the only one who—who took me for the long ride. Not that I’m blaming her.”
“Seems like she might of earned a little of the credit for the mess—don’t you think? I mean, is she tryin’ to bleed you dry, what with the lawyers and what-all?”
“That? Nah.” Goat managed a dry chuckle. “I ain’t exactly got a whole lot to fight over, in case you haven’t noticed. Brandy, she just needs the drama, plain and simple. Sometimes I think she stirs things up when she’s lonely—she’s always got to have something going on. That’s what she left me over, if you want to know—not six months after we were married—there just wasn’t a whole lot of excitement to be had waiting for me to get home at night.”
“But you didn’t get separated for twenty-two months—” Stella realized her mistake and shut her mouth, fast.
Goat regarded her with amusement. “I wonder how you figured that out, anyway,” he said. “Guess there’s a whole lot of things I don’t know about you, Stella Hardesty. You’re a lady of mystery.”
Silence continued to seem like the best course, so Stella merely nodded, and picked at a loose thread at the edge of her shorts.
“Well, she took off after six months, but I didn’t file the separation papers until I was sure she had a good job, one that could pay all her bills,” Goat said. “Call me a sucker, but—”
“Sucker.”
Goat stared at her for a minute, eyebrows raised, and then he laughed. Just a short laugh, but a heartfelt one, deep and rich and infectious, and Stella felt herself smiling for the first time in a long day.
“You know, Dusty,” Goat drawled, giving her a long, leisurely once-over with those big old blue eyes. “That’s what I just can’t seem to get over, about you. The way you give me a hard time every chance you get. I haven’t known too many women who are up for that particular challenge.”
“Well—” Stella didn’t know exactly quite what to say to that. “Huh.”
It would have been nice if he’d said that’s what he
liked
about her. Or what he couldn’t
resist
about her. Or something like that.
But get over … measles was something you
got over
. Bad breakups. Hell, even shaving rashes.
“You know,” she said as casually as she could, “that night, when we had the tornadoes—when you fixed me dinner—when Brandy showed up—”
“Yep.” Goat sighed, and the smile melted out of his face. Oh—so not a particularly good memory, then.
But Stella soldiered on. “The thing is, I know it ended up—well, a little confusing, and all. But—see, I never got around to thanking you.”
Goat shot her a glance—just a quick one, that met her gaze and then flashed away again. “Well, I don’t know that you had much to thank me for,” he said gruffly. “You barely got a glass of wine down—and as I recall, we managed to turn your dinner pretty much inedible—”
“It was delicious,” Stella said hastily. “I mean, once I got the pepper scraped off.”
“That’s nice of you. But I didn’t exactly show you the kind of time that … well, that I hoped to.”
There was a silence then, and Stella noticed that they’d left the Wallachs’ place far enough behind them that the dock was a mere smudge on the shore. She thought of and discarded a dozen different remarks.
Try me again
, was what she really wanted to say.
Just give me another try
.
It was dumb. It was pathetic. The woman she used to be, the one who was afraid to speak up, afraid to fight for what she wanted, that woman was dead—Stella’d buried that old self and replaced it with the new version, who said what needed saying and did what needed doing and slapped her own self on the back at the end of the day if there wasn’t anyone else around to tell her she done good. This new self didn’t sigh and whine when things needed to happen—she went out and
made
them happen.
And yet for all her grit, all her hard-won confidence, all her determination … here she was in a boat with the man who kept her up nights, and he couldn’t get away even if he wanted to, and she couldn’t seem to say the first thing about how much she wished he’d give them another chance.