“What does she know? I’m head of contracting on this site and we’re doing fine. I’ll talk to her myself. As for the window, I have about four window guys who owe me big favors. I’m going to light some fires, so to speak. You watch. We’ll have a new one installed in no time.”
“I appreciate it, but if it’s all the same to you, I don’t want to go home.”
“Em.”
“I mean it, Michael. I want to be kept busy. I’m not going anywhere.”
He frowned, but little by little, the knit in his eyebrows relaxed into an arch of approval. “Careful. Your Nonna Olivia is showing.”
“It’s a good thing she’s not here. She would have already started going door-to-door, interrogating the neighbors.”
“We don’t need a detective to tell us who did this. This has Trent’s signature all over it.”
“That’s the thing though. It doesn’t. In all my time with Trent, even after he was fired, I never saw him demonstrate this sort of behavior.”
“Love can make people do crazy things, especially when we lose it.”
“I hear you, but this is probably a case of neighborhood teens looking for a cheap thrill.”
“No, this is personal. He knows you’re with me now and it’s pissing him off. This is Trent getting revenge.” His lips compressed and he lowered his voice. “You saw what he wrote on the brick, Em. He called you a…I can’t even say it.”
“But…”
“Please don’t defend him to me. He’s a prick and he was terrible to you. End of story.”
As Michael walked with her into the house, Emily worried the story was far from over.
***
“I don’t care what the police said,” argued Michael. “I want to talk to Trent myself.”
If Emily didn’t know any better, she’d swear the vein at Michael’s temple was throbbing. With each passing hour since the smashed window was discovered, he’d grown more agitated. Now, at the end of the day, even after one of his window guys had come to take measurements for a window replacement, he seemed ready to head out on his own in search of Trent.
“You heard them. He cooperated and he was able to provide an alibi for his whereabouts last night.” Indeed, when pressed, Trent had apparently admitted he’d spent the night with a woman he’d picked up at a bar. The woman had confirmed he’d spent the entire night with her. The information had stung, but it would have hurt a lot more to know Trent had deliberately damaged her house. So he’d had another night of debauchery with some other woman. It hardly mattered now.
“I don’t care, Em. This stinks.”
“I know, but thank God there’s comprehensive insurance. The repair work will be covered.” She nodded at the window Michael had boarded up himself. “Hell, the new window will look so nice I’ll have to get all the others done now to match it.”
He embraced her and leaned his forehead against hers. “I don’t trust him.”
“You need to let this go, Michael. Trent might do a lot of things, but he wouldn’t destroy my property. He just got a new job. He wouldn’t jeopardize it.”
“I don’t believe this was a case of neighborhood hooligans running amok.”
“It’s just a window. As annoying as this has been, the important thing is no one got hurt.”
“This time.” Michael looked her in the eye. He caressed her cheek, slowly running his thumb along the arch of her eyebrow. She wanted to run her own fingers over his brow and smooth out the furrows. He looked so stern, so concerned. He’d taken the incident to heart. As much as Emily appreciated how much he cared, it also scared her a little. The man already suffered from headaches and flashbacks. She didn’t want to add to his stress.
If only he would put it behind them.
“I hate the idea someone would do this to you.”
“It probably wasn’t even meant for me. Some idiot got bored and decided to pull a prank. This sort of thing happens all the time.”
“I don’t know about that. And anyway, this time it happened to you.”
His eyes turned down at the corners in sadness. Emily wondered that he could feel the injury more keenly than she did. Of course, knowing what she knew of Michael, he didn’t take injustices lightly. He was a fixer and wanted to fix it. For her.
