Ms Demeanor

Chapter Three

The house was a flurry of motion. Gwen and Eloise were rushing around the kitchen, pulling together a meal reminiscent of the epicurean lifestyle of ancient Greece. Every countertop was filled to the edge with food. There was everything from cold cuts and cheese to spritz cookies and rosettes. His mouth watered. The food was a far cry from what had been ladled onto his tray in prison and the little packs of chips he bought at the commissary. Dang, it was good to be home.

His mother handed him a plate full of food, and another to Laura, as though she was just one of the gang and not someone with the ability to put him back in prison. He couldn’t decide whether it was a part of his mother’s plan that she overwhelm Laura with kindness in hopes it would keep him out of trouble, or if it was just his mother’s way. Regardless, he loved her for it.

His adoptive father, Merle, walked into the kitchen while thumbing through a stack of mail. In all the excitement his mother must have forgotten to tell him that Rainier was home. When he finally looked up from the letters in his hands, a wave of recognition and pure joy overtook his face.

“Son, what are you doing here? I thought you didn’t get out for another couple of days?” His father gave a questioning glance to his mother.

“Oh, dear, I’m sorry. I meant to come get you. I just wanted to make sure that Rainier and Laura were taken care of. I’m so sorry,” she said, throwing her hands over her mouth. “I can’t believe...”

“It’s okay, Mother,” Merle said, giving her a quick peck on the forehead before turning to Rainier. “How long have you been home?”

He shrugged. With all the activity and questions his mother had been throwing his way, he wasn’t sure if he’d been home five minutes or five hours. He wasn’t used to this kind of attention, as if the world revolved around him. He both despised and loved it, but it was almost too much.

Even though he’d said nothing, his father seemed to understand and gave an acknowledging tip of his head.

“We haven’t touched your room, Rainier. It’s waiting for you if you’re tired. This week we can go get you some new clothes,” his mother said, coming over and pinching the pink Hawaiian shirt between her fingers and pulling it as if she wished she could throw it away then and there. “And we can get you anything else you need to get on your feet, as well. Waylon, Christina and Winnie will be coming home later this week.” She grinned with excitement. “It’s just going to be so wonderful to have the entire family here to spend Christmas. And Laura, you’ll have to come, too.”

Laura gaped as she glanced from his mother to him, almost as though she was checking him to see what exactly her reaction should be to that unusual invitation. “I...er...”

“You are more than welcome, Laura,” his father said, jumping in. “You don’t have to answer us right away. I’m sure you’ve got your own family plans.”

She looked a bit relieved, and it made Rainier’s chest tighten as some part of him wished she had agreed to spend more time with him and his family. He took a deep breath as he tried to make sense of his body’s reaction. He barely knew this woman, and their conversation had been limited mostly to business. Yet he couldn’t deny there was something, a spark, between them. It was so strong he could have sworn he felt it in his fingertips.

Maybe it was just that she was the only person who had any real understanding of what his life had been like behind bars. She was his ally, and seemed to be the only one who could understand why he had changed.

“I... Y-you...” he stammered, trying to say something that would be as effectual as his father, but no words came.

Merle smiled. “Rainier and I are gonna head outside. I need to get to work on that broken spigot before the pump burns out.” His father handed him a coat, and he shrugged it on.

He couldn’t have been more relieved and thankful for his father’s interference not just with the jacket, but with helping him to get out of the swirl of activity that made him feel so out of place.

Laura’s face relaxed as she glanced over to him and gave an approving nod.

“If he’s going to be home, you know we’re gonna be putting him to work,” the older man continued.

She gave a light laugh. “That’s exactly what I was hoping for, Mr. Fitzgerald. If you don’t mind, while you all are working, I’ll take a quick look around, a brief home check.”

“That’s fine, but please call me Merle.” His father frowned at the formal moniker.

“Thank you, Merle,” Laura said.

“That’s better,” his father said. “Only Mother calls me Mr. Fitzgerald, and she only does that when I’m in deep trouble.” He turned to Rainier. “Let’s get going. We’re burning daylight.”

He followed his dad outside, and the moment the door opened and he breathed in the cold winter air, Rainier was thankful to be out of the kitchen. He loved his mother and the rest of his extended family, but he needed a minute just to be with himself in the quiet of life—an existence that wasn’t framed by steel bars.

His father led him out to the tractor and, handing him the keys, motioned for him to take a seat. “Sometimes the best thing we can do when our world is a mess is bury ourselves in work in order to clear our minds. There are no prisons worse than the ones we impose upon ourselves.”

The man was right. No matter how bad the nights had been when he’d been inside, the worst of them all had come when Rainier had thought about what he’d cost his family. There were so many things he wanted to say, but one in particular came to the front of his mind. “Thanks for everything, Dad.”

It didn’t seem like nearly enough, but emotions and expressing them had never been his strong suit. It was just so much easier to bottle everything up—although that was exactly the kind of attitude that had gotten him into trouble in the first place.

“Which spigot needs tending?” he asked, afraid of things taking another emotional turn. He’d had more than he could handle for one day.

His father’s stoicism thankfully returned, his face taking on the smooth and patient coolness that Rainier had always loved about the man. Since he’d left, however, his father’s face had seemed to age. In fact, he noticed a new darkness in his eyes and it made a deep sadness move through him. Undoubtedly, he had played a role in those changes, and there was no going back or making things right. There was only moving forward.

“It’s the one in the pasture. If you want to start digging, I’ll grab the piping,” Merle father said.

His father tracked through the snow toward the back of the house. Climbing up onto the tractor, Rainier could see a dark patch of grass and soot where the toolshed had once stood.

The tractor chugged to life and he moved the old beast toward the well as he thought about all the things his family had gone through when he’d been away, and what all else could have happened that his mother hadn’t told him.

The earth was hard with the freeze as he set to digging up the piping around the frost-free spigot his family used for watering the animals throughout the year. The tractor’s bucket broke through the top of the dirt, and as he dug deeper, the frozen soil turned into a muddy mess of gravel and clay as the water from the well spilled from the leaking pipes and saturated the ground. Water poured from the sides of the bucket as he moved the earth, piling it to one side.

It felt good to be working again, to be contributing to his family and the ranch. If he could work here for the rest of his life, he would die a happy man—he didn’t want a job like Laura’s, some nine to five.

He scraped out another bucketful of dirt from the hole. As he emptied it onto the pile, something white protruded from the sticky, brown earth. The object looked like a long stick, but its end was round and knobby.

An uneasiness rose up from his belly as he shut off the tractor, the bucket lowered midway. He stepped down from the machine and made his way across the sticky mud.

As he grew near, the thing lurched slightly, settling with the dirt around it. Based on the grooves and speckles on the surface, it was definitely a bone. He swallowed back the nerves that had tightened his throat as he reminded himself that, even though it was a bone, it was probably nothing—just some animal remains or detritus of days gone by.

He picked up the bone, scraping away the mud as he turned it in his hands. It was stained brown from the tannins in the dirt, the long shaft darker than the round ball of the joint. He wasn’t absolutely sure, but it looked terrifyingly similar to a human femur. He laid the bone down near the base of the hill.

Turning back to the pile of dirt, he looked through it, hoping not to see another piece of bone. He scratched at the cold earth, the dirt and gravel tearing at his fingertips as he frantically searched for anything that could help him make sense of what he had found. His wet fingers grew icy as he worked away, then stopped abruptly when he touched something hard and even colder. His hand closed around something L-shaped and, as he pulled it from the mud, he gave a small, muffled cry. In his grip was a gun.

There was the clang of metal on metal as pipes hit the ground and bounced behind him. He turned to see his father and Laura looking at him. Merle gasped in shock.

Rainier dropped the muddy weapon, letting it fall to his feet as he looked at Laura’s pale face.

“What are you doing with a gun, Rainier?” she asked, disgust and horror filling her voice as she stared at it, and at the bone lying beside it. “You—you haven’t been out of prison for five hours and yet here you are, back to your old ways.”

“I swear...it’s not what you think,” he argued, raising his dirty hands, palms up. “It... I didn’t know it was a gun when I picked it up.”

She shook her head. “You can take it up with the judge. In the meantime, you can kiss your parole goodbye.”

Chapter Four

He couldn’t go back to prison. For a moment, Rainier considered running, just grabbing one of the old ranch trucks and hitting the highway. Thanks to the many letters his mother had sent him when he’d been away, he’d learned all about the murder at the hands of his former sister-in-law Alli and her escape from persecution. It seemed that law enforcement in Montana was usually two steps behind. Then again, thanks to his own experiences, he wasn’t sure he could rely on that to be completely true, or he would have never found his ass in prison.

“Laura—”

“Ms. Blade,” Laura interrupted, as she typed something into her phone.

“My apologies, Ms. Blade,” he said, careful to use the same sharp tone. “It’s just that I don’t... I can’t go back to prison. That wasn’t my gun. Hell, I didn’t even know it was a gun until it was in my hand. You have to believe me, I never want to waste my time behind bars again.”

She stared at him for a long moment, and from the set of her jaw and the look in her eyes, he could tell she was struggling to believe him. He had no idea what else to tell her. No doubt, as a parole officer, she would have learned by now that very few people in this world told the truth—and even fewer who were ex-cons.

He’d long ago given up the idealistic notion that anyone would take anything he had to say at face value ever again. The moment the judge’s gavel hit the block and he’d been delivered the sentence, Rainier had known he’d forever wear a scarlet letter for his crimes. Part of that sentence would be always being thought of as less than and dishonorable—no matter how justified he felt in committing the crime.

“Can’t we just look past this, Ms. Blade?” asked his father. Merle held his hands together almost as if he was silently praying that Laura would honor his request.

Rainier could’ve told him a long time ago that that kind of thing had a way of blowing back on a guy.

“Mr. Fitzgerald, I know your family’s been through a lot in the last month, but that doesn’t mean I can just ignore what’s going on here.” Laura frowned. “I made it very clear to your son that there were certain conditions associated with his parole—conditions he absolutely could not violate. And yet here we are. I can only imagine the kind of trouble he would find himself in if I wasn’t here.”

“I can assure you that my son has always been a good man.”

“Let me guess—he’s just misunderstood?” Her lips puckered as she spat the words out like watermelon seeds.

“I’m not going to make any excuses for my son’s behavior, but you have to know that he wouldn’t intentionally find himself in trouble. Especially not like this.”

Her gaze swung to Rainier and he nodded, hoping that she would listen to both of them.

“Ms. Blade, it’s not like I’m asking for a second chance. I’m just asking for any chance at all.” Rainier hated the note of pleading in his voice. He’d never been one to beg, but he’d never been given his freedom and then had it rescinded on the same day.

“The police are on their way.” Laura pushed her phone into her back pocket. “I won’t tell them about the gun in your hand and the remains at your feet, but you have to promise me that this was just a case of you being at the wrong place at the wrong time and nothing else.”

A sense of relief washed over him, but faded away again as the piercing sound of sirens echoed in the distance. He looked in that direction, but in the bright afternoon light couldn’t make out their source. Hopefully, his brother wasn’t on duty. The last person he needed to see right now was Wyatt.

“Do you promise, Rainier?” Laura pressed.

“Of course,” he said, trying to sound earnest.

“And you won’t find yourself in any more trouble?” she continued.

“You’re welcome to stick around and be my wingman as long as you like, Ms. Blade,” Rainier said, giving her a cheeky smile he hoped would ease some of the tension between them.

The parole officer looked away, making him wonder if his smile had worked, after all.

“Son, it may not be a bad idea for you to go inside and get out of the spotlight,” his father said, motioning toward the house.

On the drive back to the ranch, Rainier had told Laura he wasn’t afraid and that he wouldn’t run away from whatever life would bring him. But now, facing the possibility of seeing his brother after all this time, the urge was strong to tuck tail and run on back to the house. Heck, he could even pretend that when his brother questioned him about the remains and the gun that it was the first he was hearing about the findings. Wyatt would probably think nothing of it, and he certainly wouldn’t jump to conclusions like he would if he arrived and Rainier was standing by disarticulated remains.

His brother had always been like that with him—always thinking the worst. Rainier couldn’t blame him for the trouble he himself got into; he’d always been a little bit of a rebel and the family’s black sheep. But his brother’s condescending attitude certainly didn’t help. It was like every time he screwed up, Wyatt was there to let him know he had seen it coming.

Once, when they had been young boys, their parents had sent them out to collect eggs from the henhouse. Gathering eggs soon turned into Rainier picking up rocks and pitching them to see who could throw the farthest. Colter and Waylon had joined right in, using different size rocks and different throwing techniques until they had found the one that suited them best. But not Wyatt. Wyatt had stood to the side and kept warning them about how much trouble they were going to get into if their parents found them, or if something went wrong.

Of course, the other three didn’t listen, and it wasn’t five minutes before Rainier pitched the perfect pebble straight into the back window of their father’s old Jeep. If he closed his eyes, he was sure he could still hear the crackling sound of the splintering glass, almost like someone stepping on the thin crust of ice on a lake.

Breaking that window had been his first lesson in keeping Wyatt out of his affairs and away from anything fun, as well as how much work it took to raise two hundred dollars to pay for a new window. His father had been understandably angry at the time, but just like now, he’d seemed to understand that sometimes bad things happened. A person could go about living his life between the lines, or as Merle put it, “living between the mustard and the mayonnaise,” but even then couldn’t avoid trouble. Or maybe Rainier wasn’t really the kind who avoided it; maybe he was just as bad and destructive as people expected him to be.

“Rainier, are you listening?” asked Laura.

He hadn’t heard a single thing she said.

“Sorry, what did you say?” he asked, blinking away images of him and his brothers playing around the ranch and causing trouble when they were younger. What he would give to go back to those days, when they’d all still got along and had truly lived for each other.

“Why don’t I walk with you inside—you know, be your wingman?” she repeated, holding out her hand as if he was some kind of wayward toddler.

He was unsure if he should be excited or offended by the way she was treating him, but he had to admit the look she was giving him was far more comforting than the one from a few minutes before, when she had found him holding the gun.

He slipped his hand into hers, and she jerked, almost as if she hadn’t expected him to take her up on her offer. She let go again at once, but not before his father gave him a look of surprise. Rainier was sure his own expression mirrored his dad’s.

This woman continually surprised him. He’d heard so many things about parole officers when he’d been behind bars. From the stories that got filtered down to him, most sounded like real hard asses, but not Laura. Sure, she had a hard edge to her and she was a no-nonsense kind of lady, but there was something equally soft, almost maternal about her. That softness made him wonder if she had a child.

He wasn’t sure if he should ask, especially now that she had agreed to take his side and cover up his role in discovering the remains. He didn’t want to compromise her emotionally any more than necessary. More than that, from the second they had met she had made it clear to him that there was going to be nothing more than professional civility between them.

She walked ahead of him, leading the way back to the house as the sound of the sirens grew louder. As they approached the door, his mother and his brother Wyatt’s fiancée, Gwen, stepped outside.

Rainier glanced down at his mud-covered coat as he tried to wipe the dirt from his hands.

“What’s going on?” his mother asked, peering out in the distance toward the approaching police cars.

Laura smiled, but the action was forced and tight. “No worries, I just jumped the gun—” Her mouth gaped open for a moment as she must have realized what she had said.

“We just found something a little odd, and Ms. Blade thought it best if we got a crew out here to investigate it,” Rainier interjected.

“Investigate what?” Gwen asked. “And where’s your father?”

Rainier turned and looked toward the barn. “He was going to greet the deputies when they arrived. You don’t think it’s gonna be Wyatt, do you?”

Gwen frowned. “He wouldn’t come roaring out here with the sirens on. He’s been coming out here enough lately that he would know not to create any kind of scene for the neighbors. It’s gotta be somebody else,” she said, motioning toward the SUV hurtling their way. As it drew nearer, Rainier could see there was a patrol unit without its lights on following in its wake.

The SUV pulled to a sudden stop, skidding on the ice in the parking lot. A woman, her dark hair pulled into a tight ponytail, jumped out of the car and made her way over to them, with Merle hurrying after her.

“There’s Wyatt,” Gwen said, ignoring the woman and motioning toward the vehicle just pulling into the lot.

“Who’s she?” Rainier whispered.

“New recruit. Her name’s Penny Marshall.” Gwen frowned, and the look on her face held a trace of jealousy, but he wasn’t sure why his soon-to-be sister-in-law would have anything to worry about. Wyatt, above all things, was a good man.

His brother stepped out of the second car. “Penny, wait up. Jeez, woman, you seriously need to slow down. This is my family.”

The patrolwoman turned around. “Hey, if you want to drive like some old fart, that’s on you. For all you knew, someone’s life could have been in danger out here, and you were driving like it wasn’t some kind of emergency.”

“If someone’s life was in danger, Penny, we would have been told about it. That’s what dispatch is for. I’ve told you before, there’s no good reason to put our lives at risk when a situation doesn’t dictate it.”

“Okay, Deputy Fitzgerald,” the woman said, but from the tone of her voice Rainier could tell that she was just playing along and fully intended to keep living her way with or without Wyatt’s approval.

Rainier liked Penny already. From the looks of her, she was in her early twenties, and from the sound of his brother’s exasperated voice, straight out of the academy.