“YOU SURE you’re up to that?”
Given the reaction Jesse had shown the last time he had been the focus of Artie Bennet’s attention, he couldn’t blame Dustin for asking that question. But Dustin had put the old man’s words into perspective since then, in the middle of the street on the east side of Main, halfway between the diner and the creek. And the perspective had finally given Jesse the one thing he needed to push the barbs from Artie Bennet into the place they belonged: the rambling of an old man, instead of a decisive, personal attack against Jesse.
Though Dustin’s question remained valid.
Thanks to Jesse’s reaction when Artie Bennet had again ranted over the fate Jesse had deserved as rightly as Geoffrey Meyers, Jesse knew there was no longer a question about exactly who he was. Everyone in Miller’s Creek would know by now that he was Jesse Michael Ellis, one of the two boys found in the cemetery fifteen years ago with the beaten figure of one of Miller’s Creek’s homeless lying bloodied at their feet.
And every one of them would be watching to see what he did next.
Dustin’s green eyes were watching him as the remains of their breakfast cooled on the table between them, and Jesse lifted his cup to drain the last few drops of coffee before finally meeting them with the steady gaze of his own.
No, Jesse wasn’t sure he was up to speaking to Artie Bennet in the public arena of the diner.
But he would do it anyway, if for no other reason than Artie did remember when Jacob Palmer was alive and well, and that meant he was the closest link Jesse had to finding out what had truly happened the day Palmer punished his family for the actions committed by somebody else.
It was something Jesse wanted to know, and wanted as much for himself as for Douglas Keats and the readers of the Attingwood Journal.
“Are you going to be there to chase me down if he runs me out of the diner again?” Jesse asked at last, teasing lightly with the question, although the answer was one he really wanted to hear. Dustin had brought him back from the edge he was ready to throw himself over just yesterday morning, after Artie Bennet’s words had hit too close to home, but that hadn’t been the only part of Jesse that Dustin had healed.
The hours they had spent in bed last night, talking and listening as the specter of Geoff Meyers was brought fully out of the shadows, had put another part of Jesse’s life into a perspective that made it seem far less threatening and much more manageable.
Geoff’s actions weren’t abnormal for a fourteen-year-old, Dustin had pointed out, and experiments involving sex were common at that age.
Jesse might have begun experiments of his own if he hadn’t been so shaken by what had happened in the cave—something Jesse’s therapists had told him long before he heard the same words from Dustin. But hearing them last night—listening as Dustin relegated Geoff’s act to something that might have merely seemed reasonable to a fourteen-year-old mind, and watching him do it without casting judgment on either of them for their actions—had been calming in a way Jesse couldn’t describe. And the peacefulness he had found falling asleep in Dustin’s arms after was capped by the sheer intensity of their physical acts shortly before dawn.
Dustin had still been sleeping when Jesse woke up, but the green eyes had come alive the moment Jesse pinned him to the bed with his body, and the wet, anxious kisses and heavy-handed strokes Jesse lavished on Dustin’s body were answered soon enough with sloppy kisses and heavy strokes from Dustin. God only knew what time they had started or how long the heated, passionate play had continued, but they had both collapsed amid sweat and cum and bone-deep exhaustion by the time the sun crested the horizon.
The exquisite, profound satisfaction thrumming through Jesse had made climbing out of bed for a hot shared shower a slow, reluctant process, and the thought of sharing breakfast alone in Dustin’s kitchen a much more enticing option than a booth in the crowded diner. But going to the diner was something Jesse had to do—for his job and himself.
He could never see himself plunged into the mind-set of Jacob Palmer seventy-five years ago, but Jesse did remember when it was him the town had seemingly turned against and when he had been the topic of so much whispered conversation and so many quickly hidden stares. It was the one thing he had in common with Jacob Palmer.
And the one thing he was going to risk being subjected to again the moment he slipped into the booth with Artie Bennet.
Dustin smiled at Jesse’s question. “I’ll chase you all the way back to Attingwood if you get too big of a head start on me,” Dustin answered, teasing lightly. His eyes, however, said the truth Jesse wanted.
Yes.
The plates that had held pancakes and sausage were pushed aside as Jesse lifted himself up and leaned over the table, and his smile was inviting enough to draw Dustin into accepting the invitation. Dustin half stood to meet Jesse in the middle, the scrape of the bristles darkening his cheeks as their lips teased each other through a kiss. Their hands remained on the table, but the moment was still intensely intimate, and at last Jesse pulled back enough to whisper, “Leave the dishes for a while?”
Dustin’s hand moved to grasp the loose fabric of Jesse’s T-shirt as his lips found Jesse’s again, and Jesse took that as all the answer he needed. Wrapping his hand around Dustin’s so he could use it to guide them both away from the table, he released it once they made it to the bedroom, then pulled the T-shirt over his head. Slipping his sweats over his hips showed his cock was already gaining interest despite their early morning activity, and it swelled even more as he watched Dustin slide his clothes off.
“ARE YOU sure you want to do this, Jesse?” The slamming of the truck’s door sounded almost before the question was finished, but Jesse already knew the answer. He slammed the passenger door closed a moment later.
It was later in the morning than when Jesse had initially intended to come to the diner, but Artie was an old farmer, and Sundays were just like any other day as far as farmers were concerned. Which meant finding Artie in his booth at the diner was nearly a given, even if it was after ten in the morning.
And speaking to him was far less intimidating than it had been the day before. Jesse would give Dustin the full credit for that.
He was smiling as Dustin rounded the bed of the truck to join him.
“I’m pretty sure I don’t want to do this, but I still have to,” he said in answer to Dustin’s question. “I wouldn’t be much of an aspiring journalist if I let a little-known detail of a suddenly popular story go to waste because I don’t like the person giving it to me. I’d kind of like to think I’m better than that.”
“Oh, you’re definitely good, no question about that,” Dustin answered, widening Jesse’s smile with a wink as he stepped up beside him, then widening it even more as he slipped an arm around Jesse’s waist. Dustin wasn’t hesitant with openly showing affection, that much was clear, but Jesse had known that by his reaction to the kiss Jesse pressed in front of the diner yesterday. Slipping his own arm around Dustin was surprisingly natural.
“But whether you’re going to get more out of that ranting old man than his own iron-clad opinions is the question,” Dustin added, moving them both across the street and toward the door. “And the operative word there, in case you missed it, is ‘opinion.’”
“Well, ‘opinion’ is all I really need, you know,” he reminded Dustin teasingly. “I’m a writer, not a cop, and there’s nothing to investigate anyway, since there’s no question about what he did and how it ended. Besides, ‘opinion’ is the only thing I’m going to be giving too, you know. Just like everyone else,” he added, letting his arm slip free of Dustin as they stepped onto the curb. Then he turned back to give him a smile as he reached for the door. “I’m just hoping to get a little something more to add to the mix and give everyone else something to think about and base their opinions on.”
“Spoken like a true journalist,” Dustin told him with a smile of his own.
“One day. Maybe. So,” Jesse pulled the door open to finish his thought. Let’s see what happens.
“So,” Dustin repeated. Jesse gave Dustin a wink of his own for the first time, and then pressed a light hand to Dustin’s back to urge him in first.
The smell of coffee and grease was heavy as they stepped into the tiled dining room of the Miller’s Creek Café, and Jesse greeted the eyes of the diners that turned to them with a brief nod as Dustin did the same. Recognition had been in more than one of those gazes, but it was more likely the recognition of Jesse’s name than any remembrance of Jesse as a kid. Jesse didn’t recognize their faces anyway, though there was nothing to say he wouldn’t have known their names if he heard them.
At least most of the people showed definite signs of a wish to avoid trouble as they turned back to the breakfasts. The rest would no doubt be expecting a scene. Jesse just hoped they wouldn’t get it. The diner wasn’t full, and there were several booths empty, including the ones on either side of the center booth occupied solely by Artie Bennet, though Jesse and Dustin moved by unspoken agreement to stools at the counter. Neither of them needed food, though coffee would do for Dustin as he waited.
Kim coming down the line behind the counter to meet them meant Jesse would have to wait a few more minutes to approach Artie, however.
“Hey, sweetie. I’m glad you haven’t skipped town, even if we seem to keep giving you reasons to do it,” Kim called in greeting, finishing her words as she came to a stop in front of them. “God knows, you’ll probably be glad to see the last of this place, for all the grief some people in our community seem intent on giving you.”
Her words weren’t anything more than cheerful small talk, though they nevertheless hit on the one thing Jesse hadn’t given any real thought to since he had come back to Miller’s Creek. At least not while he was in a calm state of mind. But the sudden realization that talking to Artie Bennet was likely the last thing he would need to do to finish his assignment brought his attention to the one thought he had been avoiding: the assignment was never meant to keep him in Miller’s Creek for more than a few days.
Only now the days were suddenly almost over.
Jesse felt a twist in his gut as the thought became something he couldn’t ignore, but if Kim saw the shadow that darkened his eyes at the reminder he would be leaving soon, she didn’t mention it. Her smile was as brilliant as ever as she moved it from Jesse to Dustin and back again.
“Lord knows how that old coot hasn’t run everyone out of town by now,” she went on, sticking the pen she had in her hand expertly behind her ear. “You boys want to go ahead and have a seat and let me get you some coffee?”
Jesse turned to Dustin, but Dustin’s words addressed only Kim’s question, rather than the sudden queasiness Jesse wasn’t sure he kept from his face. “Here’s fine, and I’ll take a cup for now. Jesse may be back for his in a minute.”
Kim stopped in the process of pulling silverware from under the counter and looked from Dustin to Jesse. “You’re not staying? I didn’t think there was anything going in Miller’s Creek this morning worthy of a news reporter, but I can get you a to-go cup to take with you. Lord knows you’re going to need it if the temperature drops any more.”
Jesse looked at Kim and then back at Dustin, but the amused grin and raised eyebrow Dustin gave him said he was going to let Jesse handle Kim’s barely hidden question on his own. Jesse returned a feigned “traitor” grin as Dustin sat down on the stool at the end, though he was sure it wasn’t quite as convincing as he would like. Damn, he didn’t want his time with Dustin to end.
“I’m not actually leaving, Kim,” Jesse answered at last, turning away from Dustin and forcing himself to face only one problem at a time, and face the one he knew how to deal with first. Then, once the story of Jacob Palmer and Artie Bennet was settled….
Kim’s surprised expression caught him the instant he looked at her, and he cleared his throat before speaking. “I’m just going to go over and talk to Artie for a minute.”
Kim froze in the middle of setting an empty cup in front of Dustin. “Why in the world would you want to do that? That man drives the people who aren’t talking to him up the wall with that tongue of his! And seeing how he picked you to start griping about for the next two weeks—”
“I know,” Jesse answered, the laugh he had been forced into by the sheer truth of Kim’s words at least stopping her from continuing on a tirade. “But he might be able to give me something for the story I’m doing on Jacob Palmer. He remembers him, when Palmer was alive.”
Jesse’s own barely hidden question was answered just as quickly.
“Oh, I know it, hon. And he makes sure the whole town knows it too, the first time someone mentions that crazy man’s name loud enough he can hear it,” Kim told him, her voice both amused and exasperated as she moved only far enough to grab the pot of regular. “You heard it yourself the first time you came here. Talks about how Palmer was always doing things he shouldn’t, messing with kids, begging for money—”
“Speaking of that,” Jesse cut in, drawing Kim’s gaze as she was about to pour Dustin’s cup. “Artie was talking about that before. Do you happen to know where that idea came from?”
Jesse already suspected the simplest answer to that: the student he was tutoring against the school board’s will. The real answer, though—who started it and if it had really been just a means to punish him for breaking the town rules—was something he hadn’t heard anywhere yet.
Kim merely shrugged, then continued to pour the coffee. “Other than Artie, no,” she answered simply. “My grandpa used to say something like that now and again, but he was more senile than even old Artie and still thought the world was square. You know how the Bible says that the angels stood on the four corners of the world?” Kim lifted the pot and looked from Jesse to Dustin, her eyes bright. “Well, there’s no corners on a globe, so therefore the earth must be square. That’s what he would fight you tooth and nail over, anyway. So I really wouldn’t trust anything he ever said about Jacob Palmer.”
Jesse studied her for a moment. “What about your grandmother? Did she ever say anything about Palmer?”
Kim’s laugh was surprising. “Oh no, hon. That’s not how she was raised, or how anybody else was raised back then either. Or least not here. Menfolk were the ones that did the talking, so my grandma wouldn’t have said anything even if she knew something everyone else didn’t. Thank God my mother broke that way of thinking so I didn’t have to learn it.”
Kim’s relieved sigh brought a smile to Jesse’s face as well as Dustin’s, but the sound of another voice behind them reminded Jesse that it wasn’t Kim he had come here to talk to.
“Bring some more of that coffee over here.”
Artie Bennet.
“Coming up, Artie. Hold your horses,” Kim called back. Then she gave Jesse and Dustin an apologetic smile. “Let me go fill him up, and then you can have him. Just don’t let him get to you, okay, hon? The man’s got more venom than a rattlesnake and isn’t half as considerate.”
“I know, and don’t worry. I’m ready for him,” Jesse told her with a quiet laugh, and Artie’s second call for coffee kept Kim from warning him away anymore, though the hand Dustin rested on the small of his back told Jesse he hadn’t been convincing to at least one person in the diner. Jesse turned to Dustin but didn’t need to hear the warnings a second time. They were written in Dustin’s eyes.
“I know,” Jesse told him in answer. “But if talking to Artie Bennet is the best way to find out what really happened—”
“You’ll talk to Artie Bennet,” Dustin finished. His hand moved lightly over the thick leather of Jesse’s coat.
“Yeah,” Jesse said with a heavy breath. “I’m hoping for the best, but you know as well as I do how things can turn out. And you said you’d come after me if he runs me out of here again….”
The teasing was forced, but the quiet laugh Dustin gave him was soothing.
“Don’t worry. I’m in the perfect position to block the door,” Dustin told him. Then he sobered as he added quietly, “Just keep him focused. If he gets distracted with who you are and what happened the last time you were in Miller’s Creek—”
“Start talking about how the school board was the best thing that ever happened to this town and then let nature take its course,” Jesse finished with a soft laugh of his own. The teasing settled his nerves as the prospect of talking to Artie became suddenly real, though the light that lit up Dustin’s eyes made the whole thing less intimidating.
“Well, as long as you have your game plan set,” Dustin told him, and the sound of Kim returning from Artie’s table said the time to gather his courage was up. Jesse took a deep breath as Dustin’s hand slid from his back to the back of his thigh, though the pat he gave Jesse for encouragement wasn’t nearly as effective as the wink he gave an instant later.
“I’ll wait for you here.”
Jesse’s breath became a laugh, and leaning over to drop a kiss on Dustin’s lips was impulsive, though completely without regret. “Thanks,” he murmured.
Kim came back to their place by the counter as Jesse turned to Artie, and the headshake she gave him as she rolled her eyes calmed Jesse’s nerves even more. Kim might think he had lost his mind, but it felt good knowing she would be waiting, as certainly as Dustin would be, when whatever happened at the center booth… happened. Dustin might be the only lover Jesse had found that he wanted to keep in his life, but he had obviously found another friend.
And though he had turned his back on them both as his gaze settled on Artie Bennet, he knew Kim was watching as closely as Dustin when he finally crossed the diner to the booth where Artie was waiting.
“THERE’S OTHER places you can sit down!”
Artie’s words were loud and sharp and unquestionably directed at Jesse, though his eyes never made it to Jesse’s face. Instead he scowled at the bench seat Jesse slid into, his hand tightening around the barrel of the cup Kim had recently refilled, almost as if he thought Jesse would rip it from his grip.
Jesse simply drew a deep breath and continued taking his seat.
Artie looked even older up close than he had from the counter. His face was sunken, and his skin showed the spots of age and far too much sun, while the deep lines creased every inch of it. Even his hands, gnarled and twisted as they were, bore the same weathered skin, while his body had grown thin and spindly over the years, something that couldn’t be hidden even with the olive drab winter coat he wore. Only a few thin wisps of white hair kept him from being bald, while his eyes remained rheumy and unfocused as he glared at the seat.
Artie Bennet hadn’t aged well, though his tongue was as sharp as ever.
“I didn’t invite you to sit down, so go on and find some other place to be! Damn kids thinking they can do as they please….”
“Mr. Bennet,” Jesse began, steeling himself for a greater outburst as the smell from the other side of the booth finally reached him. It was rank, and seemed to surround Artie rather than emanate from him, as if the decay taking place in someone as old as Artie Bennet was making it to the surface. And Artie was old. It was amazing how suddenly seeing it sparked something in Jesse that he would have never thought he could feel toward the old man. Not respect, but more like… tolerance. The same kind of tolerance Kim showed as she served him willingly, even when his tongue got the best of him. The same tolerance Dustin had shown when he didn’t exactly defend Artie, but instead urged Jesse to merely accept that he was old and bitter and let it go at that.
The tolerance that Jesse felt now as he drew in a breath, then spoke again. “Mr. Bennet, I know you didn’t invite me to sit here, but I would like to ask you something—”
“And who says I have to answer you? Strangers don’t have no business coming into town and asking questions that don’t concern them. The town don’t need no city folk coming here and stirring up trouble—”
“I’m not here to cause trouble, Mr. Bennet,” Jesse ground out, forcing his voice to remain calm, “but I just wanted to ask you about something you said yesterday—”
“And what damn business of yours is it what I said? Now go on and get out of here!” Artie had raised his voice anyway, and his words carried clearly through the diner.
“What you said—” Jesse tried again, louder himself now.
“Can’t you hear?” Artie bellowed.
“Tell me about Jacob Palmer.”
“Damn fool bastard didn’t have no business teaching school where he could be around those kids!”
Jesse blinked. The suddenness with which Artie took up the subject of Jacob Palmer was nearly as stunning as the heavy silence that fell the moment his shout ended. It had taken no more than the mention of the man’s name, and as fast as that Artie Bennet had changed the target of his rant. Artie might not be as senile as Kim made her own grandfather out to be, but Jesse was struck momentarily speechless at witnessing how Artie’s mentality had seemingly shrunk his world down to only the things he liked and those he didn’t. More than that, he had just seen that when presenting the man with two things he didn’t like—Jesse’s presence and Jacob Palmer’s memory—Artie would lash out at the one he disliked the most.
And it was obviously Jacob Palmer.
“They should have taken him out and shot him before he killed all those people. Would have saved the town a lot of misery if they had!” Artie’s bellowing words shattered the silence in the diner. “Should have figured he’d do something like that, given everything else he done to this town—”
“What else did he do?” Jesse had to raise his voice to get over Artie’s thundering rant, but the question turned the subject exactly as Jesse had hoped it would.
“Took the kids is what he did!” Artie shouted, nearly spilling his coffee as he reacted to his own sound. “That Franklin boy wasn’t the first. I can tell you that. Told the boy’s parents he was going to tutor him in private—”
Franklin. It was the first time Jesse had heard the name of the student Palmer had taken on as a private tutor. His last name anyway, given the way Artie used it. Jesse didn’t have to write it down to know he would remember it.
“Nobody takes a boy into his house in the middle of the night to teach them schoolwork!” Artie went on. “Doing things he shouldn’t be doing is the only reason for that! Should have burned his house to the ground—”
“Oh, Artie, it couldn’t have been the middle of the night!” Kim shouted from the counter, though she was looking at Jesse when Jesse spun around to face her. “You know it gets dark early in the winter, and you already thinks it’s ten o’clock at night whenever the sun sets! How many times have I told you that it’s only six when you start muttering about how late we stay open?”
Jesse hadn’t realized that Artie also came to the diner in the evenings—and Kim obviously knew Jesse would have no idea that Artie’s concept of time had slipped along with his common decency in regards to his tongue. Jesse gave a nod of thanks to Kim as Artie muttered that he knew what goddamn time it was, and he was rewarded with an understanding smile before he turned back to Artie.
“It was late enough that all decent folk would be home!” Artie shouted then, taking up his rant again while confirming that the time was anything but certain. “Kids should be home with their parents that time of night! And parents should know better than to let their boys run off to a stranger’s house….” Artie’s voice trailed off as he momentarily ran out of steam again, but Jesse was ready.
“So what about this Franklin… boy’s parents?” he asked pointedly. “They had to know he was going to Jacob Palmer’s house, didn’t they? They were the ones that hired him, weren’t they?”
“Had more money than they knew what to do with, those people!” Artie nearly spat the word “people.” “House in town, big car, and no more common sense than a cow eating hay! Wanting that boy to learn books instead of how to work! Should have put that boy in the field and let him be taught right! And yet they still had more money than the rest of us put together!”
Jesse heard the resentment in Artie’s voice loud and clear, and it was obvious he didn’t like the Franklin family any more than the Palmer clan. But how that tied into the molestation charges Artie was so willing to throw at Jacob Palmer….
“So how do you know Palmer was doing things he shouldn’t do with the Franklin boy?”
“Because he took the boy home in the middle of the night!”
“Oh, Artie….” Kim breathed again, though Jesse didn’t turn this time.
“And there’s only one reason people do something like that!” Artie said again. “And then the boy suddenly starts getting good grades and thinking about moving to the city, like the town wasn’t good enough for him no more! And he started talking to the bastard on the street and letting the bastard buy him ice cream at the corner store every Saturday afternoon! Things like that—”
Would be perfectly normal in any mind other than Artie Bennet’s. Jesse felt his gut clench as Artie went on with the list of things that would only be expected to occur between a tutor and a student, with every word echoing the resentment Artie had felt toward them both—Jacob Palmer and the boy named Franklin.
The pieces Jesse hadn’t been able to find in the town’s musty library fell into perfect place.
Jacob Palmer taught school, the one thing that would enable the kids of Miller’s Creek to do more than farm the land, something that Artie Bennet would think of as betrayal to the only life he had known.
The Franklin family was rich, something that Artie had never been, and they had gained their wealth without ever working a farm, something Artie could never accept. When those two factors came together….
Jesse closed his eyes as he drew a deep breath. Then he opened them to Artie Bennet and said the words he already knew were true. “You started the rumor, didn’t you?”
Jesse didn’t speak loudly, but the quiet that followed was the same as if he had shouted. And the way Artie stopped talking, his words ceasing and his eyes remaining fixed on the single point on the bench seat to Jesse’s left….
Jesse could feel Kim and Dustin watching him, along with every other person in the diner, as the seconds ticked by. Even the kitchen seemed to have fallen silent, though Jesse didn’t turn to look at any of it. He kept his gaze solely on Artie Bennet.
“You’re the one who started the rumor about Jacob Palmer and this Franklin boy,” Jesse said again. “You hated Palmer because he taught his kids something besides farming. And you hated him so much that you wanted him gone.” Jesse saw the muscle jump in Artie’s cheek. “And the Franklin family. You hated them simply because they had money, and you hated them even more because they had gotten it without ever blistering their hands in the field. Neither of them were worthy of the Miller’s Creek you wanted, yet both of them were proof that Miller’s Creek was changing. And you wanted to stop that change, wanted to keep Miller’s Creek focused on only the farming that made this town, and wanted it so badly….” Jesse paused for the space of a breath, then finished. “You started the rumors about Jacob Palmer.”
“They got what they deserved! Both of them! The damn school board wouldn’t do a damn thing no matter how many kids that bastard took into his house!” Artie shouted.
Making the question Jesse had about which had come first, the threat to Palmer’s job or the accusations against him… irrelevant.
Because there had never been a real threat to Palmer’s job. There had only been the added resentment when the threat against his job proved useless.
“And that Franklin boy wasn’t no better than me no matter how mamsy pamsy his parents were!”
“So did they leave too?” Jesse asked sharply. “Did the Franklin family move away from Miller’s Creek because of the rumors you started?”
Artie didn’t answer, and Jesse had to swallow the anger that was suddenly rising in him. But not before it burned away the tolerance he had gained for the old man only moments ago. Artie Bennet had hurt more people than the two he had set out to destroy, even if Jacob Palmer had never had children to ensure he was remembered as more than a crazy old man, and even if the Franklin family had found acceptance elsewhere. Everyone in Miller’s Creek had been affected by the act Artie had pushed Palmer into committing. It would be impossible for them not to be.
Jesse glared at the old man across the table, then said calmly, “For their sake, I hope they did.” Then he pushed himself away from the table and slid to the edge of the seat. He had the answers he had come for, and Dustin was already standing up from the stool when Jesse gained his feet.
“You should have gone to hell right along with that Meyers brat!”
Jesse whirled at Artie’s words, but Artie was still sneering at the bench.
“You don’t think I know who you are? You have no right to be back here after you went and killed that man in the cemetery! Miller’s Creek don’t need the likes of you, filthying up the streets where respectable people live! You weren’t any better than that whole Meyers bunch, and nobody with any sense is ever going to believe what you did wasn’t what you meant to do!”
Jesse stood frozen as Artie’s words echoed around him, but the chill that started in his gut wasn’t a reaction to the venomous accusations Artie was again making toward him. Jesse remembered very clearly how his family was shunned after the incident, how people started avoiding them, ignoring them, talking about them behind their backs.
He knew at that moment that the person talking the loudest had been Artie Bennet. He had been talking about them here. The diner was one of the central points of Miller’s Creek, one of the few places where the town gathered on a regular basis and where everyone heard when Artie spoke. But why the hell all those people would believe Artie over his own parents….
“… don’t blame them for believing for a little while when they should know better. It’s just too easy to do when you don’t know the truth.”
Dustin’s words came back to Jesse between one breath and the next, and Jesse felt his mouth close as he stared at the old man in the booth. He had been ready to rip into Artie with every bit of the viciousness Artie had directed toward him, but Dustin was right. Nothing he could say would ever change Artie’s belief about what happened that night in the cemetery, any more than he had ever had a chance of changing Artie’s opinion of Jesse, his family, or Geoff Meyers—
“I told this town that Meyers boy was nothing but gutter trash!”
But Artie’s wasn’t the only voice in Miller’s Creek. Not anymore.
“No, he wasn’t.” Jesse’s words were calm but clear enough—cold enough—to get the silence he was after. From the old man in the center booth and from the diner behind him. But Jesse kept his attention focused on Artie Bennet.
“Geoff wasn’t trash,” he said again. “He was a fourteen-year-old boy. He was new to Miller’s Creek. He didn’t know anyone in this town and didn’t know what to do to fit into it. That may have made him a troublemaker, but the things he did here were no different than the things every kid in every other town does when there’s nothing else for them to do. He mixed up the books at the library. He moved some statues. He went into the cemetery to find out about something he heard about in a story—”
“He beat a man to death!”
“It was an accident!” Jesse nearly shouted. The breath was ragged in his lungs, but the simple act of breathing gave him time to lower his voice. He blinked against the sting in his eyes before saying it again. “It was an accident. One that never should have happened, and one that ended tragically for more than the man in the cemetery. But Geoff was still just a kid. And if his parents didn’t fit into your view of what Miller’s Creek should be, so what? You didn’t have to hate them because they didn’t live their lives the way you thought they should. You didn’t have to hate Geoff because he created a little trouble in this town. He may have been a troublemaker, he may have been an outsider, but he wasn’t trash—and never once did he ever set out to hurt anyone!”
“That punk killed a man—”
“Something he never meant to happen!” Jesse’s words echoed in the silence that had fallen around them. And though his next words were far quieter, they were heard just as clearly. “And I know that for a fact, because of everyone in this town, I’m the one who knew him best.”
Jesse paused again, and felt Dustin’s presence beside him even before he felt the hand Dustin rested against his back. Then said the last words he hoped he would ever say to Artie Bennet. “No matter what you say or how much you hated him, Mr. Bennet, Geoffrey Meyers was my friend.”
Jesse turned abruptly away, turning his back on Artie and letting the hand Dustin hadn’t removed from his back guide him away from the booth even as Artie began to bellow again that Jesse wasn’t any better than the others, that all of them got what they deserved and Jesse should have met the same fate and left this town in peace….
But Jesse wasn’t listening. Kim was still behind the counter near the register when Jesse and Dustin reached it, though she moved the moment they stopped. Her smile was firm as she stepped up to Jesse, her eyes bright, and Jesse realized the second before she drew him into a hug that the brightness was tears.
“Good for you for doing that, honey,” she said quietly, though there was no question that everyone in the diner heard her. “It’s about time someone put that old badger in his cage.” The tears were threatening to fall as she let Jesse go and smiled at him again. “And it’s well past time someone stood up for that boy.”
Geoff.
Jesse felt his own twist of pain at the gratitude he heard in Kim’s voice, and saw just how much she meant it written in her eyes. Dustin’s words about how easy it was to believe something when you didn’t know the truth came back to him, and Jesse closed his eyes as he finally understood that Geoff had been a victim every bit as much as he himself had. Not just a victim of the rumors, but a victim of the ignorance of what really happened that night. A victim of what the town didn’t know about him at all. People may not have believed everything Artie spewed about Geoff before or after they had gone to the cemetery, but they didn’t know enough to defend Geoff against anything said about him.
But now they did. And maybe that would make the difference.
The tear that slipped down Kim’s cheek as she pulled him into another hug said it already had.
And what Jesse saw once Kim released him to return to the service area behind the counter said the change wasn’t going to end with the waitress at the diner.
The middle-aged man two booths away from Artie Bennet gave Jesse an approving grin when he caught Jesse’s eye, while his wife, seated across from him, bowed her head to hide her smile. And the man drinking coffee at the far end of the counter was chuckling quietly over the rim of his cup as he met Jesse’s reflection in the mirror along the back wall. Even the glimpse of the beefy cook’s grinning face as he wiped the counter under the ticket holder was open and approving, while the older couple in the booth by the kitchen door talked quietly between themselves, though their smiles and glances both turned to Jesse more than once.
No one had ever had the ability to defend Geoff or his actions before, but they were certain they had it now. And as Artie’s bellows subsided into muttering, the look on the faces around him said they wouldn’t hesitate to do it. Maybe not as blatantly as Jesse or as vocally as Kim, but in their own way nonetheless. Jesse felt his lips curl into a quiet smile.
Whether or not that defense would extend to Jesse and therefore his family didn’t really matter anymore. The pride he saw in Dustin’s face as he turned to meet the green eyes was enough, and the arm Dustin circled around him as Jesse leaned in to kiss him was better than any accolades he would get from the Journal for finally setting an old matter to rights.
The kiss didn’t last longer than a second, however, as the sudden clattering of silverware reminded them they weren’t alone.
“Oh, don’t mind me,” Kim told them, dropping the bundle of loose flatware she had pulled from the shelf hidden under the counter. “You boys can do whatever you want in here as far as I’m concerned, but I should warn you old Mattie down there”—she nodded at the older woman in the end booth—“will make it a topic of discussion during her next book club meeting. And that’s after she invites you to join it.”
Then she smiled at Jesse again and said the one thing Jesse had been hoping she wouldn’t bring up. “Artie and his kind have been tearing that Meyers boy up for years, and without anyone knowing enough about him or what happened to say anything different. Maybe if you stayed around here long enough, you could get Artie to shut up about him for good….”
It was a question as clear as the hope in Kim’s face, but the slipping of the smile on his own face gave her the answer before Jesse said it. Jesse’s arm tightened around Dustin as he forced himself to say the last thing he wanted to.
“I’ve got to go back to Attingwood soon,” he told them both, feeling his chest tighten as he said the words out loud. “I was only supposed to be here long enough to get a few stories, and between the library, the Sentinel office, and Artie….” He tried to smile, but knew it was as weak as Kim’s. Dustin’s face he couldn’t look at. “I think I’ve got what I need.”
Kim’s face fell as she sighed over the silverware. “Well, I was hoping you would say something different, but I’m glad you came back for a little while at least. Just come back and visit us once in a while, all right? And make sure you come say good-bye before you leave. I’ll make sure you don’t hit the road hungry.”
Jesse laughed quietly as he told her “Thanks.” Then Kim stepped away to tend to the other customers in the diner, leaving Jesse alone with Dustin. Looking into Dustin’s eyes was one of the hardest things Jesse had ever done, and he felt his throat closing as they said the same thing Jesse’s heart did: neither of them wanted Jesse to leave.
But the words Dustin said aloud were much simpler. “Ready to head home?”
Jesse smiled, and if they weren’t standing in the open in the Miller’s Creek Café, he would have wrapped his arms around Dustin and kissed him until they both forgot that his visit was coming to an end. Instead, he simply gave Dustin a squeeze and then answered with a simple honesty of his own. “Yeah, let’s go home.”