Face the Music: Beyond Jackson Falls Book 1 Read online

  Paige set down her teacup and stood on wobbly legs. “Thank you. Both of you.”

  “For what?” Casey said.

  “For being here. For listening. For taking me in. For being you, and never changing.”

  “We love you,” her father said. “Some things never change. That’s one of ‘em.”

  MIKEY

  “I THINK WE should paint your living room.”

  Mikey paused the DVD remote, silencing Tom Hanks mid-word, and turned his gaze toward his baby sister. At fourteen, she was brimming with ideas, bouncing merrily along from one scheme to the next, barely stopping to take a breath. “It’s not even my living room,” he pointed out.

  Beth looked around the rented trailer and said, “It’s so sterile and empty. Like a motel room, only without the hideous paintings on the wall. You don’t have a dog or a cat or a hamster. You don’t even have a houseplant. There’s no permanence at all. This place needs to look like somebody actually lives here. It needs color. I seriously think we should paint the living room a nice shade of pink.”

  “If I painted my walls pink, I’d be the laughing stock of the U.S. Marine Corps. Not to mention the entire population of Jackson Falls. Besides—” He sat up straight, feet flat against the carpet, and studied the ugly brown faux-wood paneling. “I’m not sure Wyatt Beaudoin would take too kindly to me painting the walls of his trailer.”

  Beth waved a hand in dismissal. “As long as you pay your rent every month, Wyatt Beaudoin wouldn’t care if you raised cattle in the spare bedroom. He’s too busy spending the rent money down at Louie’s bar to even notice.”

  “You’re fourteen. How is it you know so much about Wyatt Beaudoin?”

  “Because this is Jackson Falls, where everybody knows everything about everyone. I also happen to know that he spends every Tuesday night with Elsa Laptewicz.” She punctuated her words with a cheeky grin before waggling her eyebrows and adding, “All night.”

  Intrigued in spite of himself, he said, “Elsa Laptewicz of the frizzy hair, the pink stretch pants, and the Marlboro dangling from the corner of her mouth?”

  “One and the same.”

  At the picture this painted in his mind, Mikey coughed to camouflage the snort of laughter he wasn’t quite able to hold in.

  “Exactly. So if not pink, how about green? A nice, quiet shade. Like the trim on Uncle Rob’s house.”

  “I don’t really think painting’s a good idea.”

  “Of course it’s a good idea. You do know how to paint, right? Because if you don’t, that’s okay. I’m really good at it. Emma and I painted her bedroom over Christmas break. It came out fabulous.”

  He raised a skeptical eyebrow.

  “Seriously fabulous. Uncle Rob called it Pepto-Bismol pink and pretended to hurl, but he was just being his usual goofball self. It’s an awesome color. We even painted the ceiling. Dark blue with gold stars.”

  Mikey wrinkled his brow in a fruitless attempt at a scowl. “I draw the line at stars. We are absolutely not painting my ceiling any color other than white.”

  “So does this mean we can paint the walls?”

  How was she so good at wearing him down? Twisting his words and making him say things he didn’t mean? His kid sister was the one chink in his armor. Beth was fully aware of this, and used it as a weapon. In the annals of history, it would be permanently recorded that Achilles had his heel, and Michael J. Lindstrom had Beth.

  “Fine,” he said, “but I get to pick the color.”

  * * *

  HE WOULD HAVE taken the bike, but carrying a paint can would have been next to impossible, and besides, if he ever got caught riding Beth on the back of the Harley, his stepmother would remove his first few layers of skin without thinking twice. So they took his ancient pickup truck instead. As they bounced along the rutted gravel lane that passed for a road in Stetson’s Trailer Park, Beth said, “We should probably pick up a pizza, too. Painting is hungry work.”

  “You just ate.”

  “That was two hours ago!”

  “You had pot roast and mashed potatoes. And pie for dessert. Damn good pie, I might add. How can you be hungry now?” He eyed her in disbelief. “I don’t know where you put it. The way you eat, you should weigh three hundred pounds.”

  “Are you implying that I’m fat?”

  “I’m implying that you have an inexplicably fast metabolism. Otherwise, you’d be the size of a sumo wrestler.”

  Beth lowered the passenger-side window and thrust out an arm, palm held upright, to catch the wind as he drove. “You know what my ultimate dream is?” she said. “To live someplace where they actually deliver pizza, instead of having to drive to the pizza place and pick it up.”

  If the lack of pizza delivery was her biggest complaint in life, that was a good thing. She’d grown up a little spoiled, a little sheltered, and that was a good thing, too. There was too much evil in the world. He’d seen it firsthand, and he was thankful that most of the people who mattered to him resided here in this tiny town at the end of the earth, where life was boring, change was slow, and terrorists didn’t decorate the roads with explosives.

  “So why did Mom and Dad get all wonky when you mentioned Paige?”

  He adjusted his position in the driver’s seat. “What are you talking about? They didn’t get all wonky.”

  “Yes, they did. The minute you mentioned that you’d seen her, they both started acting really weird. Why?”

  Sometimes, Beth saw too much. This was one of those times. “A long time ago,” he said, “Paige and I had…a thing.”

  “Ew, Mikey! She’s your cousin!”

  “No, she’s not. She’s your cousin. Not mine.”

  She thought about it for a minute. “You’re right,” she said, sounding surprised. “She’s your stepcousin. And the two of you had a thing?”

  “We, ah…” He cleared this throat. “Eloped.”

  “WHAT? You and Paige got married?”

  “We never got that far. My truck died outside of Omaha and the whole thing fell apart. She went back home, I went on to basic training, and that was that. I never saw her again. Until today.”

  “How come nobody ever told me this?”

  “I suppose they all wanted to forget it even happened. Nobody was overly impressed with us at the time.”

  “But this is family history. Big family history that I should’ve been told about.” She wrinkled a brow. “Does Emma know? Wait, she couldn’t. Because if she knew, she would’ve told me.” Beth and her cousin were best friends who shared everything.

  “I don’t have any idea what Emma knows. It’s not a big deal. We were kids. We did something stupid. We both survived it, and life went on. In retrospect, it all seems silly and juvenile now.”

  “But you were in love?”

  He didn’t know how to answer, settled for a half-truth. “We thought we were. She was only seventeen. Still in high school. It was a crazy idea from the get-go.”

  Beth continued to stare at him, wide of eye and slack of jaw.

  Mikey scowled. “What?” he said.

  “I’m blown away,” she said. “And impressed. Who knew my clean-living, law-abiding, Boy Scout big brother had it in him to do something like this?”

  Maybe not so clean-living. The Boy Scout had long since flown the coop. God help them both if she ever uncovered the real Mikey hidden underneath.

  His sister continued her babbling. “So tell me, do you still have feelings for her? Did your heart skip a beat when you looked into her eyes today? Did little twittering songbirds start circling your head?”

  He silently pulled the truck to a stop in front of the hardware store. Switched it off, but left his hand on the key, still in the ignition. Turned his head to eye his sister balefully.

  And said, “You ask too many damn questions.”

  * * *

  AS HE SQUEEZED through the noisy crowd milling about the high school gym, the odors of dirty sneakers and stale sweat accosted him.
That, and the memory of the rhythmic slap of a basketball against a hard floor. The memory was surprisingly poignant. He’d played basketball for a time, until football became his passion. It had been more than a dozen years since high school, but the memory of setting up for a jump shot remained embedded in his brain.

  There’d be no more jump shots for Mike Lindstrom.

  Ahead of him, Beth and Emma threaded their way in and out of the crowd, fair-haired lookalikes, bobbing and weaving, mouths going a mile a minute, looking more like sisters than cousins. He didn’t think either of them had stopped talking to take a breath since they climbed into the cab of his truck. He’d tuned out their chatter. Maybe that was why he liked spending time with the two of them. When he was alone with his chatterbox sister, as her captive audience, he had trouble sometimes keeping up. But when her cousin was along for the ride, both girls pretty much forgot he was there. Even when they remembered his presence, they didn’t treat him any differently just because he was different.

  Sometimes, it felt good to be invisible.

  Weaving through the crowd, he came face-to-face with Everett Campbell. In high school, Everett had played tight end to Mikey’s quarterback. Ev looked startled for an instant, glanced down at Mikey’s leg, then quickly tried to camouflage his curiosity. “Lindstrom,” he said, giving Mikey a hearty clap on the shoulder. “Good to see you.” And he kept on walking.

  He should be used to it by now. He’d been home for close to two years. But it was getting old, the sympathetic shoulder claps, the gentle pats on the back. The mournful eyes, the fake empathy they all oozed—while, of course, carefully avoiding looking at his leg. Pretending it didn’t matter when all the while, they were dying to hear the juicy details. They thought they knew him, but they didn’t. They knew the Mikey Lindstrom from Before. For that was how he’d come to think of his life: there was Before, and there was After. And nothing that came After even remotely resembled what life had been like Before.

  He’d left this town a football hero. He’d returned a war hero. Neither of those titles was a comfortable fit. That was one hell of a responsibility to place on a man’s shoulders when all he wanted was to be left alone to piece back together the shards of his shattered life.

  Mikey followed the girls up onto the bleachers, where they found seats that would give them a decent view of the stage. Generally, he avoided public events like this, for all the aforementioned reasons. But sometimes, it was impossible to finagle his way out of them. Amy Tardiff was chair of the school’s drama department and director of the annual school play. He was Amy’s boyfriend. And in a town the size of Jackson Falls, where the school play was a big deal, the director’s boyfriend was expected to be in attendance. Whether he liked it or not.

  The play was standard high school fare, but if you measured its worth by the level of applause at the end, you’d think you were sitting in a Broadway theater instead of the high school gym in a backwoods town in Maine. After the second set of bows, his dad came onstage, dressed in a charcoal business suit and gray tie as befit the high school principal, and presented a bouquet of red roses to Amy and to the young actress who’d played the lead role. Amy beamed, gave Jesse an awkward hug, then hugged her star one-armed, maneuvering around the bouquets so they wouldn’t be crushed.

  Trailed by his sister and his cousin, Mikey fought his way through the departing crowd to the dressing rooms, which were actually a couple of administrative offices Amy had commandeered for the show. He found her standing in the corridor, talking animatedly with the mother of one of her students.

  “The play was wonderful,” Betty Bricker said. “I don’t know if you realize it, Ms. Tardiff, but you’re the best thing that ever happened to this school.”

  “Thank you,” Amy said. “I’m so grateful every day for this job. I learn as much from the kids as they learn from me.” She glanced up, saw Mikey over Bricker’s shoulder, and her face lit. “Hey,” she said.

  “Hi.” He leaned and placed a husbandly peck on her cheek. “Great show.”

  She greeted the girls, and there were hugs all around. Bricker wandered off, and Amy said to him, “A few of us are going out to Kelley’s for a drink or two. I’d love it if you’d come with us.”

  A few of us always meant the same thing. Teachers. They were all teachers, and they would talk for hours about teacherly things, things about which he had no knowledge and less interest. He was always the odd man out, unable to contribute to the conversation—or even follow it—and consequently, bored beyond belief. Not to mention that her friends, like everyone else here in Jackson Falls, were insatiably curious about his disability, even while pretending they hadn’t noticed it.

  Mikey hesitated, and Amy gave him The Look. The one that said, “You’re not trying hard enough to be supportive.” Being supportive was a big thing with her. Why she believed she needed him by her side when she was out with like-minded friends was beyond him, but the message came through loud and clear. A good boyfriend would be there for her. Period.

  “I can’t,” he said. “I brought the girls. I have to take them home.”

  “That’s not a problem,” Beth said. “Dad’s here somewhere. We’ll just track him down and catch a ride home with him.”

  He shot his little sister a look that clearly said, There will be payback for this! But she just widened her eyes, all adolescent innocence, while Amy said, “There, you see? The girls are all set.”

  Trapped with no escape route, he found himself twenty minutes later squeezed hip to hip with Amy in an oversized wooden booth at Kelley’s Roadhouse. Beer and pizza, the only part of these gatherings that he enjoyed, were ordered all around. While they waited for their pizza, the teachers talked shop.

  “I don’t know what to do about Corey Randall,” said Cindy, or maybe it was Wendy. The two women, both dishwater blondes with unflattering hair styles, conservative clothing, and a painful earnestness, looked so much alike he had trouble telling them apart. “He’s two points away from failing English, and no matter what I try, he just sits and stares out the window. Trying to get some of these kids engaged is like pulling hen’s teeth. If we can’t turn him around, and soon, we’re going to lose this kid.”

  The others expressed sympathy. “Have you talked to the parents?” asked Wendy (or maybe it was Cindy).

  “I’ve tried. But I haven’t made any headway with them. They just don’t seem to think it’s a big deal. And if the parents don’t care about education, how can I expect the kid to?”

  Amy said. “I had him last year. I don’t think either of his parents graduated from high school. It’s hard to get the point across to someone who’s stuck in the past. Thirty years ago, they just went out and worked. That diploma didn’t matter. If you worked hard, you could still support a family. Those jobs are gone now, but a lot of people don’t understand that things have changed.”

  Sean, the only other man at the table, said, “Some of these kids are just marking time until they can leave school and go out into the real world. Make their own decisions, run their own lives.”

  “I foresee massive disillusionment ahead,” Amy said.

  The pizzas arrived, the heavenly scent of cheese and a variety of toppings reminding him that he hadn’t eaten since lunch. Mikey snagged a slice of pepperoni and mushroom and devoured it.

  “Right,” Sean said, picking a piece of mushroom off his slice of pizza and discarding it. “It’s a real tragedy. Without a high school diploma, these kids will be lucky to get a job asking if you want fries with that.” He folded the slice of pizza, New York style, and took a huge bite.

  Amy leaned over the table and said, in a lowered voice, “Evie Stinson’s pregnant.”

  “No!” Wendy said (or maybe it was Cindy). “I had her last year. What is she, sixteen?”

  “Sixteen, seventeen. Babies having babies.”

  “Is she dropping out?”

  “She says no, but I’m not holding out too much hope. Apparently she and Dave are ge
tting married. I give it a year. If that.”

  “Crap.”

  Sean said, “It’s a damn shame. So many of these kids can’t see past their own noses. They’re rootless. No goals, no plans. No road map, no job skills, no future. The girls end up pregnant, get married, and start popping out babies. The boys wind up either in prison or in the military, where Al Qaeda uses them for target practice.”

  Everyone at the table froze as his words registered. Not just his words, but the fact that Mikey Lindstrom, a decorated Iraqi War veteran, was sitting across the table from him. He met Mikey’s gaze. “Sorry,” he said, but his eyes, flat and unrepentant, told another story. What the hell was it with this guy?

  “No offense taken.” Which was also a lie. Once again, he’d been reminded that he didn’t fit in with this crowd. Which was probably Sean’s intent. Mikey picked up his bottle of beer, drained it, and set it on the table. Turning to Amy, he said, “I’m tired. I think I’ll just call it a night.”

  She didn’t respond, but her lips were pressed together so tightly they almost disappeared. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said, and slid out of the booth.

  Nobody spoke a word as he pulled out his wallet and dropped a twenty on the table. But the irritation was evident on Amy’s face. She was too polite to make a scene in front of her friends. But he knew he’d be hearing from her later. “Have a nice evening,” he said to the table at large, and left them sitting there.

  Outside, cool night air caressed his skin. Relief coursed through him, mixed with shame, because somehow, Sean—a guy he barely knew—had managed to crawl inside his head and shine a spotlight on every one of his failings. No roots, no goals, no plans. No road map, no job skills, no future. How was it that he’d managed to hit the mark with such unerring accuracy?

  It hadn’t always been like this. There’d been a time when he had dreams, goals, plans. A career. Hope for the future. Dedication. But all those things had been blown to pieces by the side of a dusty Iraqi road. Every accomplishment he’d made in his life had evaporated when he failed at the most important job he’d ever been trusted with. He could never go back and fix it, and he would live with that failure for the rest of his days.