He sat in his jail cell, waiting impatiently for the counselor to show up. That wasn’t something he ever thought he’d be doing – waiting for a counseling appointment wasn’t exactly something he did all the time, let alone finding himself looking forward to it – but here in jail, he was beginning to look forward to any changes to be had in his suddenly monotonous life.
The truth was, he was bored out of his skull. This was the longest he’d ever gone without working since he’d turned eight and had started regularly helping his dad out in the fields. Even during the winter, he was able to go for rides on the horses or work on tractors out in the barn.
So day in, day out of nothing but reading Louis L’Amour, eating food from Betty’s Diner, and walking out in the courtyard for 30 minutes at a time was, quite simply, slowly driving him insane.
Well, that and watching Abby walk past on her rounds. And walking to his cell with his dinner tray. And then spending time bantering with her over whether or not tomatoes were really edible (which of course, he was right and she was wrong and tomatoes just weren’t edible, no matter how much people protested otherwise).
But other than Abby and all Abby-related activities, jail was sheer boredom. He lay back on his bunk and stacked his hands underneath his head, staring up at the water-stained ceiling. Talking to a counselor…he hadn’t done that since high school, and that was a career counselor, not a help-you-with-your-emotional-shit counselor.
This counselor was 100% his lawyer’s idea, arguing that telling the judge in Boise that he’d been trying to get help while awaiting his hearing could only help his case. Wyatt didn’t think the judge would give a rat’s ass – his former father-in-law here in Long Valley sure as shit didn’t – but…
He was bored.
Bored out of his ever-lovin’ mind.
Bored enough that talking to a counselor sounded like a fine idea.
Which had to be the very definition of boredom.
He was glad Shelly wasn’t there to see him in jail, rotting away. She’d be so disappointed in him. Of course, him punching her brother probably wouldn’t have helped matters any, either.
On the other hand, if she was still around, he wouldn’t have had any reason to punch her brother.
He heard the door open at the end of the cell block, thankfully interrupting that internal never-ending cycle of guilt. Abby’s voice floated down towards him as she walked beside who he guessed was the long-awaited counselor. “He’s back here – we have conference rooms you can meet in if you’d like.”
Just hearing Abby’s voice was…nice. Wyatt swung his legs over the side of the bed and watched as she walked towards him, hips swaying as she did so. He’d always appreciated a little meat on a woman’s bones – whoever thought that sleeping with a bag of bones was sexy was just this side of completely insane – and Abby managed to have curves in all the right places.
Not that he was looking at the sheriff’s daughter in that way.
Of course.
“Yes, that would be appreciated.” The counselor’s voice, cultured but friendly, finally had him turning towards his new distraction from insanity. She was a little older, maybe late 50s, with short brown hair peppered with gray, and square-rimmed glasses that gave her a bookish appearance. He’d never met a counselor in real life, and he wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but now seeing her…
She looked just like what he imagined a counselor would look like. If he’d ever bothered to imagine a counselor, which he hadn’t, of course.
He stood up from the bed and moved towards the cell door. He put his hands through the door’s opening so he could be handcuffed, when the counselor put her hand up to stop Abby. “I prefer that my clients not be handcuffed while talking to me. It makes it hard to relax if you’re in metal bracelets. I believe that I can trust Mr. Miller to be a perfect gentleman while we talk?” She looked straight at him, her gray eyes assessing him as she spoke.
He nodded without breaking eye contact. “I give you my word,” he said solemnly. Not that he’d ever attack a woman, but considering his history of beating people up who didn’t agree with his viewpoint of the world, he understood her desire for assurances.
“Good enough for me.”
Abby shrugged and hooked her cuffs back on her belt. “Then I’ll just lead you two to the conference room,” she said, unlocking and swinging the cell door open for him. He brushed past her and unconsciously inhaled as he passed. Lemons. How was it that she always smelled like lemons? It was the damndest thing, in the most awfully perfect way. It was his favorite scent – clean and pure without being cloying – and if he didn’t know any better, he’d think that Abby picked it on purpose to drive him crazy.
Which obviously she hadn’t, considering that she didn’t know it was his favorite scent.
Which made the whole thing even more maddening.
She walked behind them as they made their way to the front and to the right. After they got settled at the conference table, she pulled the door shut behind them, telling the counselor, “Just come get the officer on duty when you’re done,” and then disappeared behind the wooden door.
Wyatt felt a sense of loss at her disappearance that he didn’t want to begin to explain to himself. Or anyone else for that matter.
The counselor smiled at him, a friendly yet professional smile that told him that she would be a confidant, but not a friend. He respected that.
“Mr. Miller, may I call you Wyatt?”
“Yes, ma’am, that’d be fine.”
“You may call me Rhonda.”
He nodded once. “Rhonda.”
“Wyatt, I understand that you have some history with the man you beat up, a Richard Schmidt. Is that true? Or did you simply get a hankering for a good ol’ time, and begin swinging at him because you hadn’t punched someone lately?”
He couldn’t help the small smile that grew around the edges of his lips. “I’m sure it depends on who you asked,” he said blandly. “I’m sure there are people in this town who’d believe that’s exactly why I was punching Dick.”
“Dick? I thought he preferred to go by Richard.” She arched a perfectly manicured eyebrow at him. He grinned boyishly at her.
“Oh, he does. Which is exactly why I call him Dick. It’s just a lot more appropriate for his personality.”
She cracked a smile of her own at that. “Well, why don’t you tell me about your relationship with Richard. We can start there.”
Wyatt settled back in his chair. “How long do we have?” he asked sarcastically.
“As long as we need,” she responded without missing a beat. “Normally, I schedule my clients in one-hour increments but I don’t have anyone else in Long Valley to see today, so I can spend the afternoon chatting with you if that’s what you’d like.”
She was purposefully pushing back at him; she knew he wouldn’t want to spend all afternoon talking to a counselor any more than he’d want to spend all afternoon taking ballroom dancing lessons.
She had a spine. He liked that.
“I married Dick’s sister, Shelly, seven years ago. I got along with Dick and his father, Mr. Schmidt, fine in the beginning but it quickly became apparent that they didn’t think I was good enough for her. Which I probably wasn’t, but truth be told, what husband is good enough for their wife?”
“So your father-in-law is Judge Schmidt?” she asked.
“Ex-father-in-law,” he corrected.
“You got a divorce?”
“No.” He heaved a sigh, and shifted in his seat uncomfortably. This was the hard part. This was the awful part. It was the one good thing about living here in Long Valley – everyone knew his story. He didn’t have to tell it over and over again. He didn’t have to face these facts that made up his shattered life. “She died. Car wreck. One year ago. My daughter was in the car with her. They both died at the scene.”
She just stared at him assessingly, nodding once to indicate she’d heard him, so he continued. “My father-in-law and brother-in-law blamed me for it.”
“Were you driving?” she asked.
“No. I was at home.”
“Then why did they blame you?”
“Because I’d asked her to go get the milk that night. I’d just gotten home – it had been a long day – and Shelly told me we were out of milk. Normally I’d go and get the milk because you don’t want to buckle in a five year old to drive to Franklin just to buy milk but I was tired and didn’t want to make the drive. I was being selfish.” He stared at the far wall, a nondescript print of a seashore hanging there, and felt his throat tighten with frustration and tears.
No, not tears. He didn’t cry.
Just frustration.
“What time was it?” the counselor asked softly.
“Time? Evening. Maybe around nine or so.”
The counselor let the silence fill the small room, expanding, pushing down on him, but he didn’t say anything and so she finally, blessedly, continued. “So when you saw your brother-in-law—”
“Ex-brother-in-law.”
“Your ex-brother-in-law at the convenience store, you decided that it was time to discuss this…with your fists?”
He nodded. It may not be politically correct to admit it, but yeah, that was exactly how it went down.
“Did he do anything to provoke this…discussion?”
“Yes!” He stopped, realizing that his voice was overwhelmingly loud for the tiny room they were in. He breathed in, trying to reign in the feelings washing over him, but the injustice of it all had been gnawing at him for weeks now. It was time for someone other than his lawyer to hear his side of things, dammit.
“He was driving drunk. He almost took out the front side of Mr. Petrol’s. He was there to buy more beer, and the cashier let him. Told me that he wasn’t about to piss off the judge’s son, not when his probation was almost up. Dick was already in his ugly-ass orange camo Jeep when I came outside to stop him from driving away. Things got out of hand pretty quickly.”
“Why didn’t you call the cops instead?”
“That’s what everyone says I should’ve done, but I say bullshit. The cops would’ve come, arrested him, and he would’ve been out by morning. His dad would’ve made sure that he got off scot-free from it. That would’ve been the end. Dick Schmidt would’ve gotten away with it. Again. I couldn’t stand the thought. This whole valley…it’s like that everywhere, for everyone. Special treatment if you know the right people, can pull the right strings.”
“Have you thought about moving away from here?”
“Away?” he echoed dumbly. “And go where? My farm is here.”
“I’m pretty sure that there are farms elsewhere,” she said with a quirk of her lips.
“But my family is here. I’ve never lived anywhere else. I couldn’t leave Long Valley.” He felt panic welling up inside of him at the idea, and he was surprised by the strength of it. He’d spent most of his life hating Long Valley, hating the good ol’ boys club that was so prevalent in the area, but when faced with the idea of leaving it, he was terrified. This was his home. His great-great-grandparents helped settle the area. He couldn’t leave it.
“Okay, so if you don’t want to sell and move elsewhere, what can you do to make your time here in Long Valley more pleasant? If you won’t change your circumstances, how will you change your outlook on those circumstances?”
That stopped him in his tracks. “Change his outlook”? That too had never occurred to him.
He was beginning to realize that there were many things that hadn’t occurred to him, and he wasn’t particularly sure he appreciated that insight.