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Having his name linked with theirs again was pissing him off. Just thinking about it made him madder than anything else on this earth, but there was nothing he could do about it except wait it out and hope that the whole thing would blow over soon. He’d live in the same town as Misty all these years, except for his time away at college, and hadn’t said a word to her since the whole pregnancy thing came to light.
So, he wasn’t expecting the call from the police station asking him to come down. When he asked what it was about and was told it regarded his supposed daughter, he figured now was as good a time as any to take care of this little headache once and for all. Though he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what they could possibly want with him after all this time.
Misty couldn’t be dumb enough to be going after him for child support, surely. He’d never had anything to do with her or her child, had never even acknowledged the girl as his, so he wasn’t sure how that would play out. It couldn’t have anything to do with Ryan Swamp being arrested; he didn’t know anything about that and had always made it a point to steer clear of anything to do with that family.
He didn’t tell his wife where he was headed, just told her he would be back as he left her looking over their children’s schoolwork with them. All the way to the station in the car, his mind relived one of the worst times in his life. The time he’d endured the worst betrayal in his existence to date and hoped never to come close to that level of treachery again in this lifetime.
CHAPTER 24
Ryan was ready to leave the hospital as soon as he got word that the charges against him were being dropped. The doctor wanted him to stay at least a few more hours to make sure all of the drugs had worked their way out of his system, but he wanted gone from there. No one was talking, but he was dying to know why they’d dropped the charges. Obviously, it meant they’d found the right culprit, didn’t it?
With discharge papers in hand, he walked out into the midafternoon sunlight and drew in deeply of the first blush of fresh air as a free man. He didn’t have his car, so he had accepted a ride from Pete, who’d come to help him, but one look at the other man’s face, and he knew that all was not yet right in his world.
He’d already been stressing about his living situation and where he was gonna go since the thought of being in the same air space as Misty gave him thoughts of committing murder, so there was no way he was going back to the house, not even to grab a few things.
The house is one of those things he’d done that on a clear day made no sense to him. He’d never had any plans on setting up house with anyone else, not after he’d lost his family. Not only that, the little house Misty had wanted was cool and all, in one of the better neighborhoods, but it’s not the type of place he would’ve chosen for himself. His ideal was a place with a large backyard where he and the dog he’d imagined adopting when he moved back home could play.
This place’s value was in the house itself, as small as it is, with nothing more than a postage-stamp-sized front lawn. He’s pretty sure the house had some sort of sentimental value to Misty though she’d never said what that was. He knew he was letting his mind ramble to give himself time to prepare for whatever it was that Pete had to say. He was way past his quota of bad news for the next decade at least and was nowhere near ready to hear anything that could tarnish the joy and relief he was now feeling at being let go.
He didn’t fool himself that this was over. The court of public opinion still needed to be dealt with, and he knew that the stigma from something like this wasn’t easily shirked. As they drove out of the parking lot, though, Pete’s silence got to him, and he caved and asked the question that was burning a hole in his tongue. “What happened now? Why do you have that look on your face?”
Pete shook his head, still not sure how to frame the words he had to say. He didn’t think this shit could become even more of a shit storm than it already was, but he’d been proven wrong. All the time, he was sure that his old friend was innocent, his mind never went to who the guilty party might be, and if it had, he doubts it would’ve come up with the truth they were now faced with.
