Luca would come to town to give her hell, disappear for a while, but he always came back. When I was almost seven years old, he got drunk, got behind a wheel, and then killed the sheriff’s wife. She was pregnant with Nick Stone’s sibling at the time.
Before Everett could go further into this sordid tale, I took a guess at a rumor that made sense. “One of the Stones was in love with Maggie Beautiful. Luca came to town, stole her away, and there begins the war.”
“There it begins. It was Joe’s—the sheriff’s—younger brother, Jake, who was in love with her, and when the Stones love, they feel entitled. Jake and Maggie were inseparable. He had plans to marry her. A ring was involved—Jake was two years older than Maggie. Apparently, she was all for these plans, until Luca.”
I sensed a pattern here. “Jake Stone, he died sometime after?”
“Of a broken heart, the family claims. He turned to drugs, booze, all of the vices one can imagine, and before the sheriff’s wife was killed, he overdosed. Nick was around five, perhaps.”
“How many brothers does the sheriff have?”
“Seven. No television in their house.” Everett took another drink of water. “I knew the family, even their father, and he had that same sense of entitlement—if you could describe the Stones by one character trait, that’d be it.”
No wonder the Stones were in every nook and cranny. Six brothers, not counting Jake, resulted in countless Stone children. And that sense of entitlement somehow turned into the smug smile they all wore. Character trait—I almost laughed. It was more like a tactic to urge the enemy to war. It was that damn taunting.
Then something else hit me. Jake could’ve been my father. The glass bottle felt like it could shatter in my hand when I considered that reality. I was no fan of Luca’s, but compared to being a Stone, being a Fausti seemed like a treasure.
“He came to see me, you know,” Everett said. “Not long before he died.”
Whether it was because we were talking about love, the Stones, all that they had lost, or from some need to tell me, there was no need to guess who he was referring to.
“Nick,” I said.
He nodded, tilting the bottle of water between his hands. “He took a seat in my office, about a week before the accident, and said he had some pressing issue to discuss with me. And here I thought it had to do with actual business, but to my surprise, it had to do with Scarlett.”
“He liked her.”
Everett gave a rueful smile. “He wanted to discuss their future. Said he had plans to marry her someday. I thought for sure it would’ve been Charlotte. She had been more, ah, receptive to his charms. Scarlett—” He lifted one shoulder and then let it fall.
“She was always the watchful child in the corner—given her life, I’ll be the first to admit that it wasn’t her fault. She was made to watch normal life, but not to live it. Still. I think the lure is in those knowing eyes and that shy smile of hers. The old one-two punch that sends a man staggering.”
I cleared the irritation from my throat. “He asked for her hand in marriage.”
“Not in so many words. I did tell him that I’d have to confer with the lady in question, though, seeing as she had no idea of his intentions. He seemed to take the challenge seriously, like a man. At the time, it was amusing. Nick could be a character, as you know.”
“He wasn’t being funny,” I said.
“No, now that I look back, and consider his family history, not one bit. I take comfort in the fact that he had convinced himself that he had found someone to love before he passed. He was too young to have fully experienced life, or know true love, for that matter.”
“The sheriff doesn’t feel the same.” I brought it up not because I cared, but to steer the conversation back in the direction it had begun.
“Ah.” He waved the water bottle, clear liquid at the bottom swishing around. “You are a reminder of all he’s lost, but more than that,whyhe lost.”
“Why,” I repeated.
“Jake and the sheriff were close in age and close in friendship. Outside of the loyalties of blood, they were tight friends. He took to loving Maggie Beautiful as a sister. Life was grand in the Stone household. That is, until Luca. If every man has an excuse, Luca has become the sheriff’s. At the core of all that went wrong in his life, Luca is it.
“The loss of Jake, Maggie Beautiful moving on, you, the child his brother should’ve had, his wife and unborn child, and then, of course, his only son. What could’ve been with Scarlett weighs heavily on his mind, too, or he wouldn’t bring it up like he does. Now his brother’s son, Brandon, has lost his love to your brother—Juliette was another slap to the Stones. And Joe knew damn well he couldn’t do a thing about any of it. He couldn’t even stand against him, much less bring him down.”
Everett saw past me, into the past, the deep secret resurrecting ghosts. Judging by the look on his face, the sheriff had tried to stand against Luca before. “Tried” being the operative word. “Outside of the bar one night, Joe put down his guns and badge and invited him to go toe-to-toe, man-to-man. Luca was drunk, and even then, with Luca smiling and carrying on, Joe didn’t stand a chance.”
“Then he decides to pin murder on an innocent man.”
“Innocent?” He set the water bottle down gently, staring at its remains.
Minutes ticked.
Sampson yawned. Delilah got up. Her nails clicked against the wooden floor as she came to sit next to Everett, resting her head on his leg. He patted her once, twice, three times. The house creaked. In the distance, a lawn mower ate grass. Then…
