Chapter Twenty-Three
“Well, as you can imagine, I was livid, not to mention very hurt,” she tells me. “All this time, Everett had only sought me out to get revenge on Caleb, revenge for what, I didn’t know. Even Caleb didn’t know. He had no clue. I asked him, and he genuinely did not know.”
I tuck my legs under my rear. “Weird.”
“Needless to say, I told Everett to go to hell. I wanted nothing else to do with the man after that.”
“Understandably,” I say, completely relating to her story. That’s the main question on my mind where Colton is concerned. Does he really care for me? Or am I just this month’s distraction? The thought of seeing him strut around with a new girl makes my heart ache.
“But he wouldn’t let me go,” she goes on. “He called and called. I kept hanging up. He dropped by at the store, but my older brother took to chasing him off. He even spied on me, and followed me to my piano lessons. I’d leave someone’s house, kissing my students goodbye, and then I’d spot him waiting for me at the end of their drive.”
“Creeper,” I joke. “What did he want?”
“He wanted to explain. He kept insisting that he really did care for me. It hadn’t started out that way, but he’d developed deep feelings for me along the way. He’d fallen for me, and now he was apparently irrevocably madly in love with me.”
“Sounds kind of romantic,” I chime in. “Did you believe him?”
She smiles and blushes a little. “I did. I knew he loved me.”
I sigh. “Then what happened?” I ask, realizing I sound exactly like Christian.Then what happened? Then what happened?
“He finally wore me out,” she tells me. “I agreed to have coffee with him, and that’s when he told me his story.”
Just then, Christian, the king of great timing, interrupts us. “I finished,” he announces, handing me his letter writing book.
I quickly flip through, impressed. “Great work!”
“Show it to Judy,” he says, excited.
I hand it over, and she turns the pages much more slowly than I do, really appreciating the effort Christian has put forth. “Wonderful job, Christian,” she says kindly, and I can see the piano teacher in her. She must have been a wonderful teacher.
“Why don’t you trace them with color pencils now?” I suggest. “Rainbow colors.”
His face lights up. He likes the sound of that. “I’ll be back and show you,” he tells us, and sprints back to his room.
“He is such a sweet boy,” Judy says. “He reminds me so much of my Andrew—”
Andrew is her oldest boy. “Yes, yes,” I cut her off. “Tell me Everett’s story.”
Her face falls. “Oh yes… well, it’s a very sad story,” she starts. “When Everett was twelve, his mother went out late at night to go fetch some milk because he and his younger sisters wanted some cereal before bed… it was a tradition of theirs, and that night they had run out of milk.”
My heart sinks. I think I know where this story is going.
“She was on her bicycle because most people did not drive back then. It was dark and she didn’t have a light on her bicycle. Unfortunately, she was hit by a car going too fast, and she died.”
My heart breaks for Everett and his sisters. “Oh… how awful.”
“I know…” she says, and her words trail off. “I’d wondered why Everett never talked about his late mother, and now I had my answer.”
“But what did Caleb have to do with all this?” I ask, not very fast on the uptake.
“Caleb had been driving the car, joyriding with his friends,” she tells me. “He’d also been drinking.”
“Oh… damn.” I can’t believe her words. “He got due punishment, I hope.”
She shakes her head. “That’s the thing… he didn’t. The judicial system wasn’t what it is now, Clara. Because it had been dark, and she didn’t have a light on her bicycle, he got off with a slap on the wrist.”
I shake my head. “That is…” There are no words.
