“Someone like him? Sawyer isn’t an alien,” Paxton said.
“He’s a rich boy from the other side of the creek.”
“Just because he comes from money doesn’t automatically make him a bad person,” Paxton said.
Wait.Had she really just said that? Did she believe that?
Yes. She did.
“I just want you to be careful,” Belinda said. “I know what it’s like to have a rich boy charm the pants right off you.”
Paxton knew she was talking about her father, though she rarely thought of him in those terms. Damien Gaines was the boy who had gotten her mother pregnant. Period.
He’d come from a family of means. They weren’t on the scale of the Robertsons—few in Gauthier were—but the Gaines’s were well off by most standards. Back when Paxton was in high school, Belinda had imparted what Paxton considered a cautionary tale. She told her how Damien had sweet-talked her into sleeping with him, and once he found out she was pregnant, he had denied it ever happened. Her mother was also adamant that she had not been with anyone else, so even though there had never been a paternity test, Paxton had no doubt that he was her father.
It wasn’t as if it mattered.
Belinda had been both mother and father to her, and she’d done a damn fine job of it.
Damien Gaines now lived over in St. Pierre, a small town just east of Gauthier. Paxton would run into him from time to time, but she never so much as nodded his way. He was a nonfactor.
Her mother had always been afraid of Paxton falling into the teen pregnancy trap, even though she hadn’t been a teen in nearly two decades.
“Mom, you don’t have to worry about me,” Paxton assured her. “I know how to take care of myself. You taught me well.”
“I know you can take care of yourself physically. I’m worried about your heart.”
Paxton gathered her in a hug and squeezed. “I can take care of that, too.”
And she would. When it came to her heart, she would do everything she could to protect it.
Using the flashlight app on his phone to illuminate the dead bolt, Sawyer inserted one of two keys that he suspected opened the lock on the front door of the building he hadn’t set foot in since his dad purchased it more than four years ago. The telling click of the lock rang out into the still night; the only accompanying sound was the hoot of an owl off in the distance.
Once inside, Sawyer used the phone to locate the building’s lights, flipping them on and breathing a sigh of relief.
“Good job, Mike,” he said.
Michael Bastian, who had worked for years as a foreman at the lumber mill, had taken over maintenance of the building soon after his father had bought it. It was just before the cancer diagnosis, when Sawyer’s life had taken yet another heart-wrenching turn.
He spotted a push broom leaning against the wall. He grabbed the thick handle and, despite the room being virtually spotless, proceeded to shove the thick bristles along the vinyl tile flooring. The monotonous motion was surprisingly soothing, giving his brain a much-needed break from all the thoughts that had been swirling around in there for the past couple of days.
Between the plans for this flood-protection system that were starting to make him more and more nervous by the second and what seemed like an insurmountable task of breaking past that barrier Paxton had built up against him, Sawyer didn’t have time to think of much else. But a germ of an idea had managed to burrow its way into his head after he talked with so many of the mill’s workers at Belinda Jones’s sports bar.
It wasn’t until he’d passed it on his way to the bar’s grand opening that Sawyer even remembered exactly where this building was located. He didn’t get out to Landreaux all that often. He didn’t have a reason to. Other than one small filling station that doubled as a grocery store, a few churches, and the bar, the area was made up of mainly residences.
But many of those residents were his father’s loyal workers, men and women who made it to work at the lumber mill before the sun came up. Hardworking people whose families would benefit from a place where they could hang out in the afternoon and on weekends—a place like this building.
Over the past four years Sawyer would get the occasional phone call from Mike, inquiring about plans for the space, but up until now Sawyer didn’t have an answer. During the final year of his life, he and his dad never had a chance to discuss it. Sawyer had been content to let the building sit there unused.
Until now.
A flash of light through the uncovered window caught his attention.
There wasn’t another house for a half-mile on either side of the stretch of highway that led to the bridge over Landreaux Creek. Sawyer carried the push broom with him as he made his way to the door.
A rusty Ford pickup, circa 1981, pulled up alongside the Buick. The driver’s-side door opened and the overhead light illuminated the truck’s cab, revealing Mike Bastian’s leathery face.
Sawyer broke out in a smile as he leaned the broom handle against the outside wall and walked over to the truck.
