Chapter Twenty-Three

Jessie

I stared at the number in my phone for a long time. I hadn’t called it, ever, and had just recently put the contact back in there. I only had it because she had still been emailing me, going straight to my junk email address, all the way up to last week. At the end of each email was her name and phone number.

This was what she wanted. She wanted to get me to talk to her, one on one. So she was going to get it. I highlighted Lacey’s name, pressed my thumb down, and hit the call button.

“Hello?”

“It’s Jesse,” I said.

There was silence for a long moment, then a shuffling sound and a door closing. It got quieter, and I could hear her breathing before she cleared her throat.

“I’ve been waiting for you to call me for a long time, Jesse.”

“I know,” I said. “But I don’t want to talk on the phone. I want to meet in person.”

“It’s pretty early in the morning,” she said. “I have things I have to do. Can we just talk here?”

“No,” I said. “If you are serious about wanting to talk to me, you will meet me in the park down the street from the sheriff’s station. I’ll be here until you get here.”

“It might take me a little while. Your son needs to go to the babysitter.”

“Take as much time as you need. I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “Call me when you get here.”

I hung up before she could protest and walked across the park to a food truck that had parked outside. Food trucks were a rarity in Foley, but in the greater Louisa county area, you could catch them occasionally. This one served wraps with hot chicken or lamb, and I ordered one. I hadn’t eaten since yesterday, which was probably a massive mistake considering the amount of booze I had in my system. But ever since I’d walked away from Charlotte, I just couldn’t imagine putting anything other than alcohol down my gullet.

I looked terrible. I could see my reflection in the glass of the truck and tried and failed to smooth my hair out to make it look reasonable. I was still wearing the same clothes from yesterday and looked like I’d been hit by a truck.

Oh well. It wasn’t like I was going to impress anyone anymore. I didn’t care about anything. Nothing except setting the record straight with Lacey and getting this part of my life moving forward.

I sat down and ate my wrap joylessly. When it was finished, I threw away the wrapper and walked back to the truck to buy a soda. It wasn’t the whisky I’d been downing all night before I turned to beer, but it was better than nothing. Sitting on the bench where I’d sat with Charlotte only made me angrier, and the anger built as I waited for Lacey to arrive.

Finally, after an hour, she showed up, and I was mostly sober, dehydrated, and absolutely done with everything when I saw her recognize me in horror. She almost recoiled at the sight of me, and I crossed the space between us.

“Jesse, what happened to you?” she asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I want to take a paternity test. You owe me that. I will do whatever you want, pay whatever you want in child support, whatever. But I want proof. Give me that.”

“No,” she said, taking a step back. “Jesse, you’re scaring me. What the hell happened to you? And you don’t need a paternity test. You know it’s yours.”

“No, I don’t,” I said. “All I have is some pictures. No proof.”

“You don’t call this proof?”

She pulled out her phone and swiped to her camera roll. A picture came up a few seconds later of a little boy with curly hair that looked like a mix of my own and Lacey’s. He had a big, crooked smile like mine, but nothing else about him struck me as looking particularly like me. I could see the resemblance to Lacey, sure, but it wasn’t as convincing as the baby pictures she’d shown me years before.

“No, I don’t,” I said.

“He’s your spitting image,” she said. “How dare you deny him?”

“Wait, let me see that again.”

She resisted showing me the picture again, but I was fast and grabbed the phone, pulling it toward me. She relented, and I stared at the picture, not at the child, but at something else. Something in the background that caught my eye. I pinched the screen to zoom in and tried to make out what it could be. It was a familiar shape, but…

“What is this?” I asked.

“What is what?”

“This,” I said, letting her take the phone back.

She froze, her eyes going wide before pinching the screen back into place, clicking the button on the side to darken it, and then shoving the phone into her back pocket.

“It’s nothing,” she said. “Just a toy on the coffee table.”

“That was no toy,” I said. “I know what that is, and it was no toy.”

“You’re crazy. What do you think it was?” she demanded, an incredulous smile on her face.

“It’s not what I think. It’s what I know. That was a badge. Specifically a deputy’s badge for Louisa county.”

“What? No,” she said, shaking her head. But the lie was written across her face. She knew she was caught.

“Where did you park?” I asked.

“Back that way,” she said, pointing vaguely.

“We can talk again later,” I said, “after you think about my offer. But I should walk you to your car first.”

“No, it’s fine, I can walk myself.”

“I insist,” I said.

“Jesse, no, I don’t need you walking me to my car.”

“It can be dangerous out here,” I said, my eyes on the distance where I figured she’d parked. There were only a few cars out there.

“Jesse, you just stay here. Away from me. I will call you when I have thought about it, okay?”

She was walking away, and I followed her. She picked up her pace, and I saw her make a movement with her arm, like she was trying to tell someone to go. An engine cut on, and I looked up to see where the sound was coming from.

An unmarked car was parked in the back of the tiny parking lot. Inside was someone I knew very, very well.

Oland Anderson.

“What the hell is he doing here?” I thundered.

The gig up, she took off for Oland’s car, and he got out of the driver’s seat to come around toward me. He seemed to be ready for a fight but not exactly itching for one. The last time Oland and I had squared off one on one, I’d left him with a broken nose and a ton of embarrassment.

“Jesse Galloway, you need to back up,” he said.

“Or what, Oland?”

“I said back up,” he repeated.

“This was you, wasn’t it? All this time, it was you. You were setting me up! But why?”

“Jesse, you’re acting like an idiot,” Lacey said. “Thank God there aren’t a bunch of people here, or else you’d be a fool in front of everyone.”

“I’ve already been the fool, haven’t I?” I shouted. “I saw your badge in that picture, Oland. I know you were there. So tell me, is that baby yours? Huh? Was all this just an attempt to extort money out of me?”

“Jesse, I’m going to give you to the count of three to calm down,” Oland intoned.

“You can count to a hundred, Oland, I’m still gonna be mad as hell. You set me up! You both set me up!”

“I said shut your mouth,” Oland said, closing the space between the two of us and getting in my face.

“I’d back up if I were you, Oland.”

“You back up, punk!” he said.

“Who would believe you, Jesse?” Lacey said, laughing. “Lord, you are stupid. I knew you were stupid, but not this stupid. Everyone already thinks you are the father. They think you are a deadbeat dad. You won’t beat that rap. So you have two choices. You can do what I say and pay me to make it seem like you are a decent human being, or I will drag your name through the dirt and let Oland do what he wants to you.”

I shrugged.

“I warned you,” I muttered.

“Warned me what?”

Normally, I detested cheap shots. I liked it best when the other person threw the first punch; that way I could respond not only morally, but I’d have the advantage usually of getting a clean shot in while they recovered from their miss.

But sometimes, in rare instances, it was better to take the first shot. This would be one of them.

I reared back and slammed my head forward, crunching into Oland’s nose and feeling the crack of his healed nostrils breaking once again.

“I tried to warn you,” I said.