Magnolia Road

  Magnolia Road

  By J. Lynn Bailey

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright © 2018 by J. Lynn Bailey

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  All rights reserved.

  Visit my website at www.jlynnbaileybooks.com

  Cover Designer: Hang Le, By Hang Le, www.byhangle.com

  Editor and Interior Designer: Jovana Shirley, Unforeseen Editing, www.unforeseenediting.com

  Proofreader: Julie Deaton, Deaton Author Services

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-7324855-2-5

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Acknowledgments

  A Note to the Reader

  About the Author

  Other Books Written by J. Lynn Bailey

  One

  Bryce

  “It’ll blow over,” my father, Robert Hayes, always says. His go-to saying for every situation the Hayes family is pressed with.

  But this isn’t a media situation. It is the specific words written in the email that my father received weeks ago from an unknown source that made him uneasy, unsettled. My father isn’t an easily threatened man. A life chosen in politics—one I didn’t choose to grow up in—is lived under scrutiny. A watchful eye. One misstep, one move out of the ordinary, and the media is down your throat like a thousand knives.

  You ate a peanut butter sandwich, Congressman Hayes, not a ham sandwich. Can you tell us why?

  Mr. Hayes, your seat belt wasn’t completely fastened before you pulled away from the curb. Can you explain why?

  Can you tell us why you took public transportation instead of your private vehicle, Congressman Hayes?

  So, you’re saying your new proposed bill sent to the House has nothing to do with your personal life?

  My father’s response to all of these? “Give it time. It’ll blow over.”

  I’ve never seen my father rattled. Except once. Terrified might be a better word.

  “It’ll blow over, sis. I just want to take all precautions to be safe.” He’s quiet for a moment. “Please.”

  I hear the sadness in his voice. The sadness no one hears, except the ones who love him most. The sadness that has returned on the 10th of March every single year since I was eighteen.

  It’s the desperation in his tone that gets me. I’m not one to run.

  In fact, that’s another thing my father always says. “Don’t run. Face everything head-on.”

  And, in this case, I wouldn’t be running. I’d be temporarily relocating, just until this all blew over. Right?

  But the bigger problem is, I’m lying. I have a pretty good idea of who’s making the threats. And truth be told? I’m scared but not scared enough to tell the truth.

  “Lenny’s been in touch with the property management.”

  “Dad, I can do this on my own. I’m a grown woman.” I roll my eyes at the phone and pick at my red fingernail polish. “You realize I’m not eight anymore, right? That I handle multimillion-dollar deals?”

  Dad chuckles into the phone. “Your mother and I should have named you Tenacious. Bryce clearly doesn’t fit.”

  I smile even though he can’t see it.

  “Anyway, Lenny will be in touch with the details about the house.” He pauses. “And, sis?”

  “Yeah?” The smile fades as I look out the window of my high-rise office and watch as the traffic crawls down the 405 Freeway. I really do hate the traffic in Los Angeles.

  “You’re sure? Granite Harbor is where you want to go for the time being?”

  No. “Absolutely.”

  The temporary move worked out great with Stan Reedley at Reedley Literary Agency. I’m a senior literary agent at our headquarters in downtown Los Angeles. We have an office in New York City that I’ll check in with to handle office matters that can’t be handled from my rental house. Besides, an agent just left, so it will work out fine.

  This will be good, I try to convince myself. I’ll be closer to Eli and Alex, Emily and Noah. No, this will be great. No more traffic.

  Granite Harbor is the epitome of everything I’ve never wanted. Small. Quaint. Lovely.

  Growing up in Los Angeles, you get addicted to the lifestyle. Fast-paced. Convenient. Cultural.

  I met Alex, my best friend, about ten years ago when she lived in Belle’s Hollow, which is five hundred miles north of LA and still in California. Can you imagine driving five hundred miles and still being in the same state? Texas. Texans would understand this. But the East Coasters have no idea how stuck one can feel. One could drive five hundred miles and cover the entire East Coast and a lot of states. Anyhow, when I started taking the flight from LA to Belle’s Hollow, the need for exotic food and late nights twisted and turned into a knot and became smaller somehow. The need didn’t demand so much fulfilling anymore. Then, Alex moved to Granite Harbor and married Eli Young. That’s when I started taking flights cross-country. Maybe I needed Alex more than I’d thought. Maybe that’s why I had taken so many trips to Belle’s Hollow.

  But temporarily moving to Granite Harbor means seeing Ethan Casey again.

  “Bryce, listen, I’ve got to run.” He pauses. “And call your mother.”

  I know what face my dad is making. I know his lips are pursed together in a thin pink line. I know his graying eyebrows are furrowed.

  “Her heart has always been in the right place, Bryce.”

  I let the air escape from my lips as I stare at the high ceiling of my office.

  My mother was tolerable until my brother’s addiction festered and wrapped around my parents’ marriage, crawling between the small cracks that his disease found, getting between them with his manipulative antics.

  My mother wants to give love to her son, but that same love is killing him.

  “Love you,” I whisper into the phone, pushing away the tenderness that starts to form around my heart, and hit End.

  Two weeks ago, my father received a rather threatening email. It was simple really. It was
an I hate you for what you stand for rant.

  They’re politically driven. That’s all. Someone’s panties are in a bunch because their political views aren’t matched. It’s normal.

  My father shrugged it off. It’s not out of the ordinary for congressmen to receive emails like this. In fact, they’re usually harmless, just some crazy person with access to the internet.

  But then he received another email that described my parents’ home.

  Then, another email that gave my mother’s license plate number.

  Then, another email with a picture of my brother passed out in some dark alley with an unsavory character with a top hat and a dirty face, staring wildly into the camera, clearly unaware he was having his picture taken.

  The last one was of me getting into the shower, taken through my window at home. The window I’d cracked just a little bit to let the steam through as I cleaned my body.

  That’s when my dad drew the line.

  If it were up to me, I’d stay. But things at home with my parents are tougher. My dad is the glue that holds this family together. He’s the giver. He’s the heart. He’s the one who picks my mother off the floor when my brother walks out of another ungodly expensive rehab.

  So, I agreed to move on a temporary basis to help my dad. To make things easier on him. I’m doing this because he asked me to.

  He said, “Pick a place to stay for a bit until this all blows over.”

  I chose, of all places, Granite Harbor. Besides, what crazy is going to find me there, in a small town on the East Coast?

  I walk to my desk and check my email, waiting on a manuscript I requested from a new author. An email from Lenny comes in.

  Hi Bryce,

  Here’s the address to the house the rental agency provided me with.

  28 Magnolia Road

  Granite Harbor, ME

  There’s a key under the mat. I don’t know how they can trust that someone won’t break in. It’s beyond me. Anyway, your scheduled check-in date is September 30. Your flight itinerary is also included. I know; I know, you like to book your own flights because of your superstitions with odd numbers, but your father insisted I do it. I’m sorry, Bryce. My hands were tied.

  You leave tomorrow.

  All my best,

  Lenny

  Leticia Ramos, Assistant to Congressman Hayes

  9378 West Monroe Street

  Los Angeles, California

  Leticia-ramos@losangeles.gov

  I let out a long breath. It’s not a superstition, I want to say to Lenny. But I’ve tried this conversation with her before, and it never works. It’s fact. Odd numbers never bring good things.

  September 11, 2001.

  Friday the 13th. Because duh.

  Robin Williams died on August 11.

  My beloved Prince, the singer, died on April 21.

  Pearl Harbor on December 7.

  Hurricane Katrina on August 29.

  Just to name a few.

  So, I stay away from odd numbers.

  I glance at my watch. Just after five thirty at night. I turn off my desk lamp, slide the box of things I’ll take with me to Granite Harbor into my arms, and walk to the light switch. I turn back and look at my office. There aren’t art pieces from children that plague the walls or pictures of family. The walls are bare, an off-white, with one frame that hangs behind my desk. A college diploma. That’s it.

  I won’t miss this place while I’m gone, I tell myself.

  Though I’ll miss the negotiations that have happened behind that computer, the feelings associated with making people’s dreams come true. But it’s just money made. I’ve worked here for a long time. Long days. Often nights.

  I click off the light.

  It’s just an office with four walls that held one person who did things, Bryce. That’s it.

  After I pack a suitcase full of stuff, I grab my broccoli and beef, a fork, a glass of wine, and sit down at my home work desk. A mirror my mother purchased for me when I first bought this place hangs on the wall in front of me. Before my computer comes alive, I see my reflection. My red hair sits around and past my shoulders. My blue eyes have always plagued me, begging for forgiveness when I wrecked my father’s car at sixteen. My eyes, trusting yet deceiving my brother’s way out of his first rehab when he said they were abusing him.

  So, my eyes are not the honest blue eyes you’d find in a child. I believe maybe they used to be. My eyes are the eyes of past regrets, tainted by flecks of some poor decisions.

  Like the night my eyes told me that Ethan Casey was the one. The eyes that betrayed me when he left the next morning, undetected, as I stared in the mirror that told me I was okay. That I was all right. He just left. No number, no address. No, Hey, let’s go grab a movie. Just a note that said:

  THANKS,

  ETHAN

  Like I was some booty call.

  Sleeping around, one-night stands have never been part of my makeup really.

  I didn’t know who he was until I made my first trip to Granite Harbor many months later. Not a word was exchanged. I wonder if he even remembers me. Who I was. Maybe he’s the one who sleeps around with women in unfamiliar places. It sure as hell isn’t a move I pull.

  Going back means I’ll see him. Most likely, I’ll have to speak to him again. There is no avoiding it.

  Alex doesn’t know. The only thing she knows is, the morning he left, I called her. I told her, with tears in my eyes, that he was the one. He was the one I’d stupidly and naively slept with.

  His dark eyes, almost black, had stayed transfixed on mine as he pushed into me. Conveying only silent whispers in my ear, he allowed his body to relax against my flesh. We lay there until just before the sun rose.

  That morning, my apartment started to fill with sunlight as my eyes quietly shut. My body exhausted and well cared for the night before, I lay there against his chest.

  But we hadn’t started in my bedroom.

  We’d started at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

  There was no way in hell you could miss Ethan Casey. He was tall. His hair was the color of midnight, but I didn’t see that the first time I saw him. He wore a Red Sox baseball hat, a dark blue T-shirt, and dark jeans with boots that fit his torso just right. He wore boots but not the type of boots you’d see men in LA wearing; they were work boots. Clean, but still, working boots. Military-style. His face was clean-shaven, not brown skin and not white skin but somewhere in the middle. Like, if he and the sun met on a long, hot day, he’d bronze without sunscreen. His lean jaw flexed every now and then. A dimple just below his mouth appeared when he pulled his bottom lip back through his teeth. He seemed deep in thought. His arms crossed against his chest.

  I was in line to get coffee at the coffee truck right outside the convention center. He was still off to the side, reading the menu board, his stance big, confident, and quiet, all at the same time.

  I ordered and told the barista that I’d like to buy the coffee of the guy in the blue shirt.

  The twenty-something barista whispered back, “I would, too. Is he your boyfriend?”

  “No.”

  Like, duh, wouldn’t he be standing next to me if he were my boyfriend? was what I wanted to say.

  But this question sent me down the rabbit hole. It was all the barista’s fault.

  “So, he’s single?” she asked another dumb question.

  Really, it wasn’t a dumb question. It was a question I wished I had pondered before I handed her my cash and made the offer.

  I responded with, “I have no idea.”

  And, immediately, I was embarrassed because I didn’t know the answer. He didn’t have a wedding ring as far as I noticed. But maybe a girlfriend.

  Christ, what did I do?

  I tried to flag the barista back over to take back my offer, but the steamer was going, and she couldn’t hear anything.

  My cheeks flushed, I stepped back from the counter and tried to hide.

  As I tried to d
isappear among the patrons, he ordered.

  He and the barista exchanged words.

  He looked back. Caught my eye. Nodded.

  Fuck me. Oh, God. Not like that.

  I pretended to be interested in my phone.

  The barista called my name.

  She called his name. Ethan.

  We met at the counter.

  “Thank you,” he said. His voice was smooth, and it ran the length of my body, creating tiny little bumps along the way.

  Then, I said something ridiculous. I finished his velvet-stained statement with, “Thought I’d buy the next person in line coffee. No big deal.”

  The barista stared blankly and was clearly confused by my reluctance to tell the truth.

  Oh, God. Please don’t say it. But then she says it.

  “But he wasn’t the next person in line. He was four back.”

  Two

  Bryce

  My phone pings, and it takes me away from my thoughts. It’s Alex.

  Alex: I can’t wait for you to get here. I’ll pick you up at the airport. What time will your flight get in tomorrow?

  Me: Flight lands at 6 p.m. I can’t wait.

  Alex: Where’s your rental?

  I pull up the email Lenny sent.

  Me: 28 Magnolia Road

  Alex: That’s right off of Main Street. Thank God, they’re even numbers. ;)

  Me: Funny. Sarcasm intended. :) Kiss my girls. How are they?

  Alex: They’re good. They can’t wait to see Auntie Bryce.

  Me: You know I’m going to teach them bad habits, right? How to smoke cigarettes. Play poker. Cuss like a sailor. All the important stuff. ;)

  Alex: Just get here. Love you.

  Me: Love you. See you tomorrow.

  This is the longest I’ve gone without seeing Alex and the girls, and I think it’s for two reasons. One, I’ve needed some space. Time to make my life my own. Sometimes, I feel like I live vicariously through Alex with her beautiful husband and sweet girls. Work has always been my passion. My drive. Men and relationships have always been an afterthought. And, two, it was hard to see Ethan around town. He works for the Maine Warden Service as a game warden.