He decided he owed it to Nova to let it all go.
“I guess I’ll wish you Happy Thanksgiving a day early.” Wyatt patted Adam’s shoulder. “Sorry you’re stuck working it this year.”
“You’ve worked it every year for the past six years. I can take a turn.”
“Well, I surely appreciate it.” Wyatt opened his office door once more. “Tell Kesha thank you.”
“Say hi to Jules for us. Tell her we wanna see those babies as soon as she’s up and moving.” Adam walked with him to the front doors of the sheriff’s office. “And say hi to Tabitha too. You know, Sheriff, I reckoned I ain’t ever told you congratulations ’bout that. That was something. Her coming back. All these years I’ve been working here, I didn’t even know you were married.”
Wyatt snorted. “Don’t take it personal. Most folks didn’t.”
“Why’d she leave?” Adam winced as he said it. “If you don’t mind me asking.”
“I made a mistake. I let her go.” Wyatt held up his hands and gave him a sad smile. “Now I reckon I got the rest of our lives to make it up to her. It’s more than other Conners got.”
“You got three more days of paid leave.” Adam gestured to Wyatt’s SUV in the parking lot. “Best get started.”
“Yeah, I think I’ll do that.” Wyatt left Adam standing in the sheriff’s office. “See ya after the holiday.”
“He just left. For no dang reason. Just packed up and left. Good-for-nothing bastard. After all I’ve done for him.”
Tabitha arched her eyebrow as she sat at the kitchen table in the old Conner house and listened to her mother sob. The old Tabitha would’ve felt bad to hear her mother so distraught. The new Tabitha just pointed out, “I doubt you were crying like this when I packed up and left.”
“Yeah, but you weren’t like us,” she growled. “You never understood me like he did.”
“No, Mama, I didn’t,” Tabitha agreed. “Not at all.”
“Now I’m all alone. I got no one.” She let out a sob of misery. “Ain’t ya at least coming over for Thanksgiving?”
“No, I’m not. I’m going to Jules’s house for Thanksgiving.”
“I can’t believe you went and married into that family.” Her mother’s voice was slurred with drunken indignation despite the recent heart surgery Tabitha had paid for. “Those Conners think they’re better than everyone. You think you’re better than everyone too, but I don’t need you or your money. I can be alone. I don’t need anyone.”
“I have to go now.” Tabitha looked up when Wyatt walked in through the back door. “I have things to do.”
“What things?”
“Important things.”
“And I suppose I ain’t important?”
“No, you’re not,” Tabitha said as she looked at Wyatt, who stood in the kitchen pulling off his coat. “I have a life now, Mama, and it doesn’t include you anymore. I’m spending Thanksgiving with my real family.”
Her mother huffed on the other line. “Well, I don’t need you either.”
Tabitha flinched when her mother hung up. She looked at her cell phone until the screen went dark. Then she set it down, surprised at just how little she felt over the entire exchange. Which, she was pretty sure, meant she was getting better.
She knew it wasn’t the last time she was going to talk to her mother.
But it was the last time she was going to let herself be hurt and controlled by her. If her mama died alone, Tabitha supposed that was her own fault, because she wasn’t sacrificing herself for that woman anymore.
“That was awesome, Tab,” Wyatt said with a laugh of disbelief. “I think that just made my life. What was wrong with her, anyhow?”
“Brett left.” Tabitha lifted her head and gave Wyatt a smile. “He just packed up and left town. Left the whole dang state. He told her he was moving to California.”
“That’s—” Wyatt started as he raised his eyebrows. “Not really all that shocking. I’m pretty sure we know who to thank for that.”
“Yeah.” Tabitha smiled as she glanced to her laptop, staring at the book she was working on. “How’d the last of the questioning go?”
Wyatt held up his hands. “Looks like I’m back to work after the holiday.”
Tabitha looked at her phone again, shocked at what this all meant.
“Are we okay?” she asked in awe. “Are we actually gonna be okay?”
“Yeah, I think we actually are.” Wyatt sounded dazed over it too. “I mean, Vaughn is looking at thirty years easy. Shooting at a sheriff. He was over the legal limit, and he had crack cocaine in his system while he was on probation. That boy will die in prison for sure.”
“What did Nova say to him to make that the better option?” Tabitha asked in amazement. “What did he say to my brother? He was living for free in that house. Now he’s gonna go off to California? He might have to get an actual job. I can’t even imagine him doing that.”
“Tab—” Wyatt shook his head. “I don’t think either of us are ever gonna find out what Nova said to them, and maybe it’s better that we don’t.”
“Yeah?” Tabitha was surprised. Wyatt wasn’t one to let things go. “How come?”
“’Cause I think, whatever it is he did, it bought me a happy ending with my girl.” Wyatt smiled. “And I really wanted one.”
Tabitha pushed away from the table and stood. Wyatt met her halfway and wrapped his arms around her. He laid his cheek against the top of her head and whispered, “I love you, Tabby Cat.”
She hugged him back and whispered, “I love you too.”
Three weeks after Vaughn Davis was released on bail pending his trial, he was found dead in his trailer. Wyatt had to apologize to Adam for being the one forced to go on the call. Wyatt couldn’t do it. He still had too much of a conflict of interest, or he would have. Finding a body eight days gone was never a pleasant experience for a cop. He tried to spare his deputies as much as he could, but this one was out of his hands.
Wyatt expected a gunshot wound.
What they got was a heroin overdose. Vaughn had been a known addict for most of his life. No one questioned it—except Wyatt.
He questioned it again when Tabitha’s brother turned up dead six months later of a similar overdose.
Nova hadn’t been in Garnet when Vaughn died.
He hadn’t been in California when Brett died.
Yet Wyatt knew he’d been the one to pull the trigger.
A nice, neat trigger without any loose ends, but a trigger nonetheless.
Wyatt let it go rather than investigate it.
Tabitha told him the story about the hundred-dollar bill she’d given Nova in the bar when he was twelve.
It was a lot of money to her at the time.
But it was still a pretty good price for a happy ending.
Part Ten
Happy Endings
If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.
Chapter Thirty-Six
One Year Later
Christmas Eve 2013
Tabitha pulled the string-bean casserole out of the oven and set it there.
Then she knelt down to check on the ham.
“Don’t burn it,” Wyatt said as he came in from the outside with snow in his hair and dusting the shoulders of his sheriff’s jacket. “Last year all they had over there was fish and scallops and a whole host of other weird things I ain’t never heard of before. Just no, that ain’t right. Folks are supposed to eat ham on Christmas.”