Kele Moon - Crossing the line

“Say hi to Jules for us. Tell her we wanna see those babies as soon as she’s up and moving.” Adam walked with him to the front doors of the sheriff’s office. “And say hi to Tabitha too. You know, Sheriff, I reckoned I ain’t ever told you congratulations ’bout that. That was something. Her coming back. All these years I’ve been working here, I didn’t even know you were married.”

Wyatt snorted. “Don’t take it personal. Most folks didn’t.”

“Why’d she leave?” Adam winced as he said it. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

“I made a mistake. I let her go.” Wyatt held up his hands and gave him a sad smile. “Now I reckon I got the rest of our lives to make it up to her. It’s more than other Conners got.”

“You got three more days of paid leave.” Adam gestured to Wyatt’s SUV in the parking lot. “Best get started.”

“Yeah, I think I’ll do that.” Wyatt left Adam standing in the sheriff’s office. “See ya after the holiday.”

* * *

“He just left. For no dang reason. Just packed up and left. Good-for-nothing bastard. After all I’ve done for him.”

Tabitha arched her eyebrow as she sat at the kitchen table in the old Conner house and listened to her mother sob. The old Tabitha would’ve felt bad to hear her mother so distraught. The new Tabitha just pointed out, “I doubt you were crying like this when I packed up and left.”

“Yeah, but you weren’t like us,” she growled. “You never understood me like he did.”

“No, Mama, I didn’t,” Tabitha agreed. “Not at all.”

“Now I’m all alone. I got no one.” She let out a sob of misery. “Ain’t ya at least coming over for Thanksgiving?”

“No, I’m not. I’m going to Jules’s house for Thanksgiving.”

“I can’t believe you went and married into that family.” Her mother’s voice was slurred with drunken indignation despite the recent heart surgery Tabitha had paid for. “Those Conners think they’re better than everyone. You think you’re better than everyone too, but I don’t need you or your money. I can be alone. I don’t need anyone.”

“I have to go now.” Tabitha looked up when Wyatt walked in through the back door. “I have things to do.”

“What things?”

“Important things.”

“And I suppose I ain’t important?”

“No, you’re not,” Tabitha said as she looked at Wyatt, who stood in the kitchen pulling off his coat. “I have a life now, Mama, and it doesn’t include you anymore. I’m spending Thanksgiving with my real family.”

Her mother huffed on the other line. “Well, I don’t need you either.”

Tabitha flinched when her mother hung up. She looked at her cell phone until the screen went dark. Then she set it down, surprised at just how little she felt over the entire exchange. Which, she was pretty sure, meant she was getting better.

She knew it wasn’t the last time she was going to talk to her mother.

But it was the last time she was going to let herself be hurt and controlled by her. If her mama died alone, Tabitha supposed that was her own fault, because she wasn’t sacrificing herself for that woman anymore.

“That was awesome, Tab,” Wyatt said with a laugh of disbelief. “I think that just made my life. What was wrong with her, anyhow?”

“Brett left.” Tabitha lifted her head and gave Wyatt a smile. “He just packed up and left town. Left the whole dang state. He told her he was moving to California.”

“That’s—” Wyatt started as he raised his eyebrows. “Not really all that shocking. I’m pretty sure we know who to thank for that.”

“Yeah.” Tabitha smiled as she glanced to her laptop, staring at the book she was working on. “How’d the last of the questioning go?”

Wyatt held up his hands. “Looks like I’m back to work after the holiday.”

Tabitha looked at her phone again, shocked at what this all meant.

“Are we okay?” she asked in awe. “Are we actually gonna be okay?”

“Yeah, I think we actually are.” Wyatt sounded dazed over it too. “I mean, Vaughn is looking at thirty years easy. Shooting at a sheriff. He was over the legal limit, and he had crack cocaine in his system while he was on probation. That boy will die in prison for sure.”

“What did Nova say to him to make that the better option?” Tabitha asked in amazement. “What did he say to my brother? He was living for free in that house. Now he’s gonna go off to California? He might have to get an actual job. I can’t even imagine him doing that.”

“Tab—” Wyatt shook his head. “I don’t think either of us are ever gonna find out what Nova said to them, and maybe it’s better that we don’t.”

“Yeah?” Tabitha was surprised. Wyatt wasn’t one to let things go. “How come?”

“’Cause I think, whatever it is he did, it bought me a happy ending with my girl.” Wyatt smiled. “And I really wanted one.”

Tabitha pushed away from the table and stood. Wyatt met her halfway and wrapped his arms around her. He laid his cheek against the top of her head and whispered, “I love you, Tabby Cat.”

She hugged him back and whispered, “I love you too.”

* * *

Three weeks after Vaughn Davis was released on bail pending his trial, he was found dead in his trailer. Wyatt had to apologize to Adam for being the one forced to go on the call. Wyatt couldn’t do it. He still had too much of a conflict of interest, or he would have. Finding a body eight days gone was never a pleasant experience for a cop. He tried to spare his deputies as much as he could, but this one was out of his hands.

Wyatt expected a gunshot wound.

What they got was a heroin overdose. Vaughn had been a known addict for most of his life. No one questioned it—except Wyatt.

He questioned it again when Tabitha’s brother turned up dead six months later of a similar overdose.

Nova hadn’t been in Garnet when Vaughn died.

He hadn’t been in California when Brett died.

Yet Wyatt knew he’d been the one to pull the trigger.

A nice, neat trigger without any loose ends, but a trigger nonetheless.

Wyatt let it go rather than investigate it.

Tabitha told him the story about the hundred-dollar bill she’d given Nova in the bar when he was twelve.

It was a lot of money to her at the time.

But it was still a pretty good price for a happy ending.

One Year Later

Christmas Eve 2013

Tabitha pulled the string-bean casserole out of the oven and set it there.

Then she knelt down to check on the ham.

“Don’t burn it,” Wyatt said as he came in from the outside with snow in his hair and dusting the shoulders of his sheriff’s jacket. “Last year all they had over there was fish and scallops and a whole host of other weird things I ain’t never heard of before. Just no, that ain’t right. Folks are supposed to eat ham on Christmas.”

“Feast of the Seven Fishes is an Italian tradition on Christmas Eve,” Tabitha argued. “It’s important to them. It reminds them of their mother.”

“I appreciate that, but I’m not eating octopus salad for Christmas Eve this year. I want ham.”

“You shouldn’t be eating ham at all.”

“I ain’t even on the blood pressure medication anymore.” Wyatt held up his hands. “Doc Philips says he’s gonna have you write up a diet for his other patients. That’s what a vast improvement you policing my diet has made. Once a year won’t kill me.”

Tabitha closed the oven and smiled at him. “Fifteen more minutes. Melody’s making turkey and stuffing. It won’t be just seafood this year.”

“Merry Christmas to me.” Wyatt seemed very pleased over the development as he walked over and kissed her. He put a hand on her rounded stomach and waggled his eyebrows. “Fifteen minutes, huh?”

She giggled. “I need a shower. I’ve been cooking all day.”

“You didn’t overdo it?” Wyatt frowned in concern as he wrapped an arm around her and rubbed at the small of her back. “I wish I could cook so you didn’t have to do all this.”

“That would be a dispatch call just waiting to happen.” Tabitha laughed. “You’d burn this place down for sure, and considering the amount of money we spent on restoring this year, I’d rather you didn’t.”

“How ’bout I wash your back?” Wyatt placed a kiss against her forehead. “Make it up to you.”

“That sounds like more than fifteen minutes.”

“Nah, a lot can happen in fifteen minutes.” Wyatt pulled back and tugged off his jacket as he headed toward the living room. “Come on, Tabby Cat. I got something to make up to my girl.”

Tabitha giggled again and reached over to turn down the temperature on the oven, because showers with Wyatt always lasted more than fifteen minutes. She took the time to cover the green beans with foil so they wouldn’t get cold.

Then she started working the buttons to her blouse as she followed Wyatt up the stairs. She walked past Wyatt’s old room as she headed down the hallway and pushed open the door to the master bedroom instead. Steam was already coming out from beneath the door to the bathroom. She pulled her maternity top off and walked over to lay it over the chair at her desk that faced the balcony doors.

The room was beautiful. They had spared no expense to make it exactly what they wanted. They didn’t live an overly extravagant lifestyle despite being able to afford it, but they were indulgent with the bedroom when they’d remodeled.

When Tabitha had gotten pregnant, Wyatt and Jules made the decision together that it was time to clear out the ghosts and make room for a new generation of Conners. They had worked together at packing their father’s old things, which was an emotional day for both of them. Jules took half of the pictures and furnishings to her house. The rest remained.

Big Fred’s old dresser held Wyatt’s clothes now. The picture of his wife that Fred used to talk to every night was resting on top of it. Right next to the spot where Wyatt tossed his badge, wallet, and car keys every time he got home and stripped out of his uniform.

Other things were different, like the massive flat-screen television that hung on the wall facing the bed. It made Wyatt happy for all sorts of man reasons Tabitha didn’t understand. He’d alternate between watching Bruce Lee movies on quiet nights, to throwing his rice cakes and shouting at it when a fight was on.

Usually Tabitha just sat next to him writing on her laptop. They had a big canopy bed that was comfortable and romantic with the curtains hanging down the sides and could be drawn to hide them from the world. Which wasn’t really necessary with just the two of them in the house, but it fed Tabitha’s creative soul.

She loved that bed.

The walls were decorated with old pictures and framed sheriff stars from all the other Conners. It gave the room an old-world charm that Tabitha liked very much. It matched with the movie poster on the wall next to the bathroom that also had a sheriff star on it, along with the attractive, fresh faces of the young actors and actresses who had been cast to play the characters from the first Heroes of Sapphire County movie.

The second one was already in post-production.

That movie had made so much money. Too much money. With the merchandising rights and Nova negotiating all of Tabitha’s contracts, she had started giving it away by the millions. It was just too much. It started to feel like a waste just sitting in bank accounts gathering zeroes. Even with the massive generosity that had started earning Tabitha humanitarian awards she didn’t want, she couldn’t seem to give it away as quickly as it kept gathering. Nova managed her finances too, and she was starting to suspect it was a game to him to see if he could earn her more than she handed out.

Money came so easily to him. She didn’t understand why he couldn’t just walk away from the rest of it. She and Wyatt talked about it a lot. They were hoping for a day when they got to pay him back for everything.

But it hadn’t come yet.

“Are you coming or not?” Wyatt called from the bathroom. “I thought the clock was ticking.”

Tabitha stripped off the rest of the clothes, taking care with them before she walked naked into the bathroom. They had a massive Jacuzzi tub off to one side. One they could both fit in, but Wyatt was in the shower in the corner. The outline of his tall, muscular body was visible through the frosted glass. She studied him and reeled over how lucky she had gotten.