Home to Whiskey Creek (Whiskey Creek #4)(30)
Author: Brenda Novak

“If she has, I haven’t seen her,” Eve said.

Noah stretched out his legs. “You two didn’t stay in touch?”

“Us? Not really. We didn’t know each other all that well.” She tossed the paper from her straw at him. “I spent most of my time with you guys.”

Olivia used a napkin to wipe a few drops of cream from the table. “Addy and I were probably better friends, since we were in the same class. At one point we were pretty close but then she sort of…changed.”

Bringing his feet in, Noah sat up. “In what way?”

“She became quiet, reflective, hard to reach. I don’t know, she just…closed up. Then we both graduated and left for college, and I hardly ever heard from her after that.”

“Do you know where she was working before coming here?”

Olivia blinked at him. “Are you about to tell me?”

“No, I’d like to find out.”

“I have no clue,” she said. “Why do you care?”

Noah wanted to learn why she’d been attacked, and why she was so determined to downplay it. And since she was new in town, he thought those answers might lie in where she’d been before. “Just curious.”

“I guess you’ll have to ask her,” Eve said. “It doesn’t sound like she kept in touch with anyone.”

Noah nodded as if that was a possibility, and the conversation moved on to Riley. Riley had received another letter from his son, Jacob’s, mother. Phoenix had spent Jacob’s entire life in prison. She’d even delivered him as a convict, at which point Riley and his family took custody.

“I wish she’d leave me alone,” he said with a grimace.

Ted raised an eyebrow at him. “Have you asked her to?”

“I have. She claims she’s only staying in touch because of Jacob. She swears she’s a changed person, that she’ll be a good mom, that she just wants to know her son.”

Noah was sort of glad Dylan wasn’t here today. He fell silent whenever the subject of Phoenix came up because he could identify with the dread Riley was feeling. Dylan’s father had been in prison even longer than Phoenix and, if J. T. Amos made parole, he’d be out next summer, too.

“You don’t believe her?” Baxter asked.

Riley took a second to answer. “To a point I do. I mean…I’d feel the same if I were her.”

“You can’t judge the situation according to how you’d feel,” Ted said. “She could be using Jacob as an excuse to get close to you again.”

“No.” Riley shook his head. “What we had was way back in high school and it was brief even then. I’m sure she’s over it, especially after all this time. How long were we together? A few weeks?”

Ted threw aside an empty sugar packet. “Long enough for her to become so infatuated and obsessed that she ran down the next girl you dated.”

Riley raked a hand through his hair. “She wasn’t thinking straight. She was pregnant, and she hadn’t told me or anyone else.”

“That’s no excuse,” Ted pointed out. “She was different back then, and she might still be different. You have to remember that prison isn’t a cure-all for someone who’s not right in the head.”

“True,” Brandon said. “Most people get more screwed up when they go inside.”

“I realize that,” Riley conceded. “But…she regrets what she did. She’s apologized a million times. In every letter.”

They called Brandon’s name and he headed to the counter.

“How does that change anything?” Ted asked Riley.

Riley jammed his plastic spoon into his yogurt. “I’m not sure it does. That’s the problem. I don’t want to be hard-hearted or unfair, but…I wish she’d go somewhere else when she gets out. I can’t believe it’ll be good for Jacob to have someone with her history suddenly enter his life, even if she is his mother. Especially if she is his mother.”

Olivia seemed the most compassionate, but she hadn’t been as close to Riley when this was happening as the rest of them, so she wasn’t as firmly on his side. “Does Jacob want to get to know her? Has he been writing to her?”

“Maybe he would if I gave him her letters. But…I’m afraid to pass them along.” He rocked back on his chair, balancing against the back wall. “I mean…Ted’s right. What if she’s as unbalanced as she was fifteen years ago?”

“What if she’s worse?” Kyle said.

Kyle knew a little about unbalanced females. He’d been married to Noelle, after all. But no one was going to say that in front of her sister. Maybe Olivia didn’t get along with Noelle, but they were family.

Brandon slid a bagel over to his wife, and she gave him a dazzling smile, one that said she was as much in love as the day they got married.

Kyle flinched, but then he looked away, cleared his throat and asked Riley what his parents had to say about the situation.

“They don’t want us to have anything to do with her.” Riley dropped his chair back on all fours. “And I feel they have the right to weigh in, since they cared for Jacob during his first year. I was too young, didn’t know what to do with a baby. I couldn’t have gotten by without them.”

Olivia slipped an arm around her husband. “And Phoenix is going to be released this summer?”

“If she doesn’t get into another fight and have to serve more time.”

Brandon had just taken a bite of his wife’s bagel but he spoke around it. “She fights?”

“She claims she was jumped the last time, but…who knows?” Riley grumbled.

“I guess the moral is…be careful who you sleep with,” Ted said dryly.

Riley didn’t appreciate his remark. “Thanks for your advice, fifteen years after the fact, Ted. But I was seventeen when I made that mistake. That’s only three years older than Jacob is now. Anyway, I honestly can’t regret bringing him into my life.”

Eve smiled at him. “Of course not. We all love Jacob.”

“Jacob was about the only good thing to come out of that year,” Baxter said.

They’d lost Cody not long after Phoenix hit and killed Lori Mansfield with her mother’s car. Noah knew Baxter was referring to his brother’s death, but he didn’t like the reminder. Neither did he like the way everyone turned to him, wearing sympathetic expressions. He was tempted to pretend he hadn’t even heard Baxter, but they were all expecting him to make some comment.