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Chapter Seventeen
Adam
WHEN I ARRIVE AT THE guard station at Barking Sands Missile Range, Sam Crowe meets me at the entrance as an escort, since it’s my first time there. She signs a waiver assuming responsibility for me then I follow her truck down the narrow roads to the project trailer on the south side of the base. I pull into the dirt lot and pull my green sedan into an unmarked parking space next to Sam’s old Chevy pickup truck.
“I’ll call the rental company today to see if we can switch out your mom car for something a bit more rugged,” she says with a snort as we climb the steel steps up to the door of the project trailer.
The inside of the trailer is cool and quiet and filled with the rich aroma of fresh coffee and the sweet smell of fresh blueprints. Four desks line the opposite wall of the trailer. On my immediate left is a water cooler and a foldout table topped with a coffee machine and various creamers and coffee supplies. The fourth desk at the end of the trailer is occupied by Larry Cromwell, who is currently on the phone. He nods at me and I salute him even though my dad already told me Larry doesn’t like to be saluted. Larry doesn’t know that I know this about him so I’ll just wait for him to tell me himself.
“That desk on the other end is for Ollie,” Sam says, nodding toward the messier desk at the opposite end of the trailer from Larry. “He had a meeting with the surveyor this morning. He’ll be in soon. These two desks in the middle are for us.”
Great. I’ll be listening to that snort for eight hours a day for the next two months.
After I boot up my laptop, I open my email to find a message from Claire.
Claire: Good morning, babe. I’m on my way to bomb this test on binomial distributions, but I wanted to shoot you a message to tell you how much I miss you. Call me on your lunch break. I should be back in the dorm by then. Love you.
She doesn’t normally send me good morning emails, but then again she doesn’t normally wake up five hours before me on a Monday. I make it through a few more emails from the grading and rebar subcontractors before I get to the last email from my cousin Jamie.
Jamie: Just thought I’d give you a heads up that Lindsay and Nathan are going to be at that competition on Koki Beach. Also, I spoke to Pauline (not about what you told me) and they’re doing okay.
That’s it. Even though we had a nice heart-to-heart discussion about Myles, she’s still a little pissed that I didn’t tell her the specifics of his death. She thinks I should have trusted her not to tell anyone. She doesn’t understand that I still feel like I got away with manslaughter. There’s no way I would have stopped Jamie if she went to the cops because that’s pretty much all I’ve hoped for these past five years since Myles fell to his death. I wish someone stronger than I would confess on my behalf.
So Nathan and Lindsay are going to the competition and Pauline and the rest of Myles’ family are doing okay. I don’t believe that Pauline is okay, but I have no doubt that Nathan and Lindsay will be at the Koki competition. Lindsay and Nathan are the reason I moved to Wrightsville Beach. On one hand, catching Lindsay cheating on me with Nathan was one of the best things that ever happened to me because it led me to Claire. On the other hand, I really don’t want to see her fucking smirk or the scar on his face from the day I beat the shit out of him. Mostly, I don’t want to be reminded of how out of control I was back then.
After a few hours of phone calls spent trying to work out permits and temporary utilities, Larry invites me to lunch while Sam stays in the trailer to hold down the fort. We each take our own vehicles because Larry has a meeting on the other side of the base after lunch. I follow him to Wrangler’s Steakhouse on Kaumualii Highway just a few blocks away from my rental house. As soon as we’re seated at our table, it only takes one sentence uttered from beneath Larry’s craggily gray mustache to know that I’m going to regret this lunch.
“So how long have you been working for Daddy?”
The waitress arrives and takes our drink order, giving me a moment to think of an appropriate response to this inappropriate question. Larry orders an Arnold Palmer and I order a glass of water.
“I’ve been working with my dad part-time for more than two years and full-time since June.”
I’m tempted to add that I started working at Parker Construction after graduating from Duke with my bachelor’s in architecture, but I doubt it would do anything to convince Larry that I deserve this position. Larry smiles as he sits back in his chair and folds his thick hands over his belly.
“I’ve known your dad for quite some time and I know he’s got plenty of other guys more qualified to do this job. Why’d he send you?”
I grit my teeth together as I try to remind myself that I will only be working with this prick for eight weeks. I dealt with the skeptical looks from employees in the Wilmington office for the first year or so, but everyone there knows I worked my ass off to get my degree and help my dad out for nearly three years and they respect me for it. This asshole doesn’t know that and it’s not my job to school him. But one good thing my dad did teach me was that we teach people how to treat us. Larry Cromwell will not treat me like a spoiled dumbass for eight weeks.
“I assure you that I am the most qualified project engineer for this project. I handled the startup on the Camp Lejeune training center project in June and, no disrespect, but this project is a walk in the park compared to that. My father sent me here because I’m the only one he trusts to oversee the dredging.”
He doesn’t look convinced, but this shuts him up. We make it through the meal without any further questions about my qualifications. We talk about the meetings we have scheduled for the week and when the drilling subcontractor is set to start their work. By the time I get into my car I’m annoyed. I don’t want to call Claire when I’m like this, but she asked me to call her on my lunch break.
I pull out of the steakhouse parking lot behind Larry’s new Cadillac and punch Claire’s number. I put her on speakerphone before I set the cellphone into the cup holder.
“Hey, sexy,” she answers.
“Hey, baby. What are you doing?”
“Studying to retake the exam I just failed this morning.”
“Why did you fail? I thought you were studying for that last night.”
She’s quiet for a moment. “I was gone for a while last night. I didn’t get a whole lot of studying done.”
“Were you partying on a Sunday?”
The silence on the other end of the phone puts me even more on edge. She’s hesitating and I can only imagine why.
“Chris was in an accident yesterday so I was at the hospital for a few hours. I didn’t get to study.”
Fuck. I hate that I feel even the slightest bit happy that he was in an accident. That’s fucked up.
“What happened? Is he all right?”
“He’s fine. He just broke his leg and they had to reset his fibula.”
“You went to the hospital to visit him for a few hours when you had a test to study for and all he has is a broken leg?”
“I didn’t know until I got there.”
“But you stayed for a few hours.”
“I was already there.”
I take a deep breath as I attempt to focus on the road. The ten-mile drive back to the base and the conversation with Claire was supposed to calm me before I got back to work.
“Adam?”
“What?”
“You’re mad.”
“How did you even visit him at night if you’re not family? I thought his mom never adopted you.”
“Adam, please.”
“Please, what? I just want to know if you’ve been lying to me.”
“I have not been lying to you. I lied to the hospital staff.”
“What do you mean, you lied to the hospital staff?”
She sucks in a loud breath then lets it out slowly. “It’s not a big deal. I just told them we were family so that I could get in to see him.”
“I don’t fucking get it
. Why was it so important to see him if it was just a broken leg?”
“Because I ran into Jackie in the waiting room and she wanted me to see him so I lied to the hospital staff and said we were married. Okay? Are you happy now or are you going to keep grilling me?”
Am I happy now?
I blink my eyes to keep the silvery road in front of me from blurring with rage. They taught us in anger management to take a moment to collect our thoughts. Step away until you can work things out calmly. I’ve had to use the shit I learned in anger management a lot lately.
“I can’t talk about this right now. I have to get back to work. I’ll call you when I get off work.”
“Adam, please don’t shut down. I had to deal with Jackie the best way I could. You have to understand what a tough situation I’m in here. She doesn’t know anything about the baby or us.”
“Why doesn’t she know about us?”
“Because I already broke her heart and I’m just becoming a part of her life again. And I need her. She’s the closest thing I have to a mother. Please don’t make me put that in jeopardy.”
“If she’s like a mother to you she’ll understand that you’ve moved on. I think you haven’t told her because you’re not sure you’re ready to move on.”
“What? That’s ridiculous. I… I can’t even believe you would say that. Chris and I are over. We’re just friends and we have to stay that way if we want to have any chance of seeing Abigail.”
Her voice cracks when she says her daughter’s name and I feel awful. Even if I’m still not totally convinced that there’s nothing between her and Chris, I can’t make her feel even guiltier than she already does. I can’t give her a reason to go running to him.
