It takes me a minute before I turn my head straight, hoping the darkness of the night hides the heat crawling up my neck.
The butterflies in my stomach dance to the hum of the car’s engine as we move through the quiet streets. I can’t seem to focus on anything but his woodland scent filling the small space as a new, unexpected hope blossoms.
Brodie’s place better be far, far away from mine.
As I waitat a bistro table for Brax, I take in the light green tables and white chairs vacant around me. Lottie’s Scoops has been a Huxley Bay landmark for years.
The muted blue-green and lilac tones on the outside wall of the parlor has been touched up recently, giving it a smoother and cleaner look, but it’s the same paint from when the store opened over sixty years ago.
I love that years have passed, people have come and gone from Huxley Bay, a town that has evolved over time, but the one thing that’s remained the same is Lottie’s.
The golden bell over the door jingles.
Nelly, a regular server, walks out backward with a tray in her hand. She sets it down on the round table and puts one M&M Mayhem in front of me, the other across from me for Brax. Of course there are more than just M&M’s decorating his ice cream. He’s a sucker for toppings, and I count at least five different ones in his container.
“Detective Langford doesn’t mess around when it comes to ice cream.” Nelly chuckles as she pushes her round frames up her crooked nose before she heads back inside.
The small candies in my ice cream sundae sink into the creamy texture, and the color of the chocolate’s outer shell bleeds into the vanilla, like watercolor fusing together.
My mind goes back to the day I was here with Elliot—the day he died. I think back to our conversation about the rehab facility we had.
“So, tell me about Healing Wings?” I ask.
“I thought the name was stupid at first, but then I heard the story about how the organization got their name, and it just really spoke to me,” Elliot says as he looks down at his wrist tattoo of wings that appear a few years old now.
“Tell me,” I say encouragingly.
“The idea is that everyone’s born with wings and can fly away to do whatever they want in life. Sometimes people get lost and end up on a dark path, but it’s not because their wings are broken. This place helps you heal the wings you already have, that you can still use if you accept what you’ve done and believes you can make better choices without needing a new set to start over or forgive yourself.”
After the crash, I replayed that day repeatedly. The details of that conversation didn’t align with everything I’d heard about him before he came back to town. Something didn’t add up—and I couldn’t shake it.
Not long after my seventh regular season had started last year, I met a girl named Laurel. She was wasted, stumbling out of a bar into the cold weather.
I couldn’t leave her there.
I helped her get sober, and then she told me why she turned to the bottle. Her ex had gotten mixed up in drugs and left a bag of them in the back of her car before he disappeared.
My heart sank like a fucking stone when she showed me the picture of her ex.
It wasElliot.
My brother.
I didn’t tell Laurel that. She didn’t seem to know we were related.
So, I did the only thing I thought I could. I took her to the airport, gave her enough money to get out of Huxley Bay, and told her never to come back. That she was better off without Elliot and his mess in her life.
Then I told Brax everything. He asked me where the bag of drugs was and said he’d take care of it. And he had. I didn’t ask how, but I guess a detective has his ways.
Elliot showed up in Huxley Bay a week or two later but never said anything about Laurel or the drugs.
I texted Brax, telling him I felt off, that perhaps Laurel had lied about everything because Elliot seemed to be doing well. But also, she didn’t ask me for anything, and the money I gave her wasn’t a huge amount. I couldn’t understand what her motive was, especially since I hadn’t seen her again.
It wasn’t until after Elliot died that Brax told me my “off feeling” forced him to look into Laurel. He learned she and Elliot met at Healing Wings.
Since that day, everything we’ve learned has created nothing but confusion.
Brax’s voice fades in from the distance, and I look up to find him walking over to me, phone pressed to his ear.
