“Good. Stay inside with the doors locked. I’ll send someone your way.”
“Thank you.”
After disconnecting with the dispatcher, Hailey locked eyes with Maggie. “Now we wait, I guess.”
From the quiet in the back seat, she wondered if Jenna had fallen asleep. Sure enough, when she checked the mirrors, the toddler’s eyes were closed. That was probably for the best, though she hoped the nap wouldn’t result in her refusing to go to sleep at a decent time tonight. She’d cross that bridge when they came to it. For now, she should probably keep an eye on the front of the house in case anyone decided to make a run for it before the police arrived.
But when Officer Titus Gibson showed up five minutes later, there’d been no signs of life from inside her home. She gave the officer her key and spent the next several moments on edge while he cleared the house.
When at last he emerged from her front door and beckonedher forward, she breathed a sigh of relief. She pulled farther up the drive and stepped out of the SUV to talk to him. “Find anything?”
“I don’t see any sign of forced entry or any other indication of an intruder.”
“Thank you for checking. I’m sorry to have called you out for nothing.”
He waved off her apology. “You made the right call. Better safe than sorry, especially when you’ve got kids. Too bad you don’t have close neighbors out here.”
She agreed. Wesley had thought the semi-secluded area was a great selling point, but now that he was gone, she wished there were other houses within sight to help keep an eye on things.
“Do you want to file a report about the vandalism?”
She eyed the harsh words emblazoned across the door. “Since you’re already out here, I suppose we might as well.”
He nodded. “I agree, especially since you had a similar issue yesterday. You sure you don’t have any idea who might be doing this?”
She shrugged helplessly. “I have no clue.” She paused, then pinched the bridge of her nose. She didn’t want to bring this up, but ... “If these things had happened nine or ten months ago, I might think they had something to do with Wesley. You know, people mad about what happened with the city funds.”
The officer’s eyes softened with understanding and maybe a touch of pity.
Hailey squared her shoulders, resisting the urge to scuff her shoe against the paved driveway. She didn’t want his pity. She just wanted to get on with her life. Before he could comment, she added, “But it’s been too long for that to make sense. So really, I don’t know.”
“But the trials were only a month ago.”
She hesitated. She hadn’t considered that. Since Wesley was dead, there were no pending charges against him—no reason forher to rip open her barely scabbed wounds by following the trials of his surviving cohorts. But that didn’t mean other citizens of Kincaid hadn’t done so. In fact, they probably had.
A sigh escaped her. “I suppose that’s a possibility,” she finally admitted. “But I still don’t think anyone around here would stoop to vandalizing my property to run me out of town.”
“But someone is.”
She nodded. Yeah, someone had done this.
After the officer was gone, she pulled her vehicle closer to the garage door, but she didn’t open it just yet. Leaving the AC running since Jenna and Maggie were still in the SUV, she climbed out again and inspected the damage. She touched the paint and frowned. It was dry. The August sun had probably baked it on within minutes, if not seconds. There’d be no scrubbing it off—she’d have to paint over it. And considering the dark shade the vandal had chosen, it would probably take more than one coat.
One more problem she didn’t need.
HOURSLATER, Hailey turned over in bed, unable to sleep. Her cotton sheets rustled, the sound loud in the midnight quiet. She stared at the ceiling and tried not to think about the vandalism or the looming space beside her. The king-size frame she’d once shared with her husband still felt far too big for one person, but replacing it with something smaller was an expense she couldn’t justify.
And try as she might, she couldn’t get Wesley off her mind. The devastating tsunami of grief had begun to ebb over the last couple of months, but its retreat left her feeling hollow. Empty. And totally unprepared for the moments when it rushed back in with a fury.
It wasn’t just the grief that burned in her chest. She was angry too. So angry at the man she’d loved. Angry that he’d left them,though she knew he hadn’t wanted to, but also angry at the choices he had made that led to such a tragedy and perhaps to the harassment she was facing now.
There’d been no excuse for what he’d done. Yes, they’d been in some debt, but things had been under control. At least, that’s what Wesley had led her to believe. After his death, she’d discovered the truth. Besides their mortgage and the medical bills from her difficult pregnancy and Jenna’s hearing issues, Wesley had been buried in student loans and a decade of credit card debt that he’d hidden from her.
If he’d just been honest with her and allowed them to work together on paying down the debt, they could have figured out how to make things work. Instead, he’d taken part in a shady business deal and got caught by the wrong person. That had started a spiral of capitulations and eventually led to Wesley’s murder. When he’d finally stood up to his blackmailer, he’d been shot, leaving her to pick up the pieces. Though some of his debt had died with him, she’d felt responsible to make amends where she could, including paying the city back for the stolen funds the forensic accountant attributed to Wesley’s involvement. She’d had to take out a home equity loan to do it, but she knew she’d never be able to live with herself otherwise.
If he’d survived his gunshot wound, he’d probably be in prison right now. Their marriage would be in shambles. But at least he’d be alive.
She clutched the blankets to her chest, remembering those last few days. Wesley hadn’t died immediately. He’d been in and out of consciousness in the hospital, but they’d gotten to say their good-byes. More importantly, she had the hope that he’d finally come to Christ in those last moments, and she would see him again one day.
