Here's something new. It's probably the same old thing. What can I say? They painted us into a corner. ; )
Chapter 1
It was just past noon on a frigid post-Super Bowl Sunday.
She was in the produce section of the IGA thinking about meatball soup and fluffy socks and Netflix, and maybe a nap. There was no pressure and no emptiness, only local ground beef and trucked-in vegetables, and a can of tomato sauce, and her first full day off in two weeks.
Then her phone vibrated in her back pocket. And there she was.
She hadn't meant to be, not six months later and over halfway through yet another hostile Wyoming winter. Not with at least ten solid reasons to have fled the scene by late summer. But she was still there, and she was still planning on planning on getting out.
At the time she hadn't had the funds or the drive to move cross country, and she hadn't been willing to admit this latest failure to the only people who might have been able to help. She could have hidden this one in the folds of the other slightly less recent failure. No one would have suspected, but she didn't want them thinking the divorce had been her undoing either.
What she wanted was to not be undone. Since there was no getting around that, she wanted at least to finish putting herself back together and to conceal the scars. From there, she could move forward.
There was a second vibration.
She slid her phone out. It was the station. The rest was inevitable.
"Hey, Ruby," she said.
She wasn't on call, but Eamonn was off for a long weekend at his brother's wedding in Jackson, and Ferg was working overtime. It wasn't her problem, but that was a weak argument in a department like theirs.
"It's Ferg."
She cradled the phone between her ear and shoulder and picked up a bag of celery.
"Hey, Ferg."
"Vic."
He sighed.
"What's up?" she said.
She faked a loud yawn.
"The Sheriff's caught up in Hardin," he said. "Engine trouble."
"What kind of engine trouble?"
She grabbed a bag of baby carrots and dropped it in her basket.
"Something with the block."
"Hmm," she said. "You need me to man the office while you go bail him out?"
She could have 'lost service' quite easily. It was a specialty of hers.
"My folks are expecting me for Sunday dinner."
"Hardin's what?" She picked up a yellow onion and examined it. "An hour and a half away? You'd be back in time."
"More like two, and that's without the weather that's coming in," he said. "Storm watch."
"Why'd he go up there now then?"
She put the onion back and chose another one.
He sighed again. He was bugging the living shit out of her.
"He left hours ago. He had plenty of time to get back."
"Did he drop off Stanich?"
"Not yet," he said.
"Crap."
"He's got his truck in a shop up there, but they're telling him it'll be a couple of days."
She almost said, That would be awesome, but she was committed to not inflicting her distaste for Walt on the rest of them. They all seemed to feel sorry for him. Again. Still, the idea of not having to see him, not having to worry about seeing him for forty-eight hours was liberating, exhilarating even.
"Fine," she said.
"Want me to patch you through."
"Fuck no. But thanks."
"That's mature," Ferg said.
"Whatever. Just text me where he is."
"Thanks, Vic. I owe you."
After the invasion, once he was out of the hospital, Walt had moved in with Cady for a while. His front door had been destroyed, and the place was riddled with bullets and blood, and of course, there were the investigations. His injuries weren't life threatening, but they were serious enough that he couldn't be alone anyway, at least at first.
By all appearances, he did still have a girlfriend who could have cared for him as he'd apparently done for her. In retrospect, he probably knew then what they all found out later.
Cady had wanted Vic to stay, said they'd make it work. She might have even suggested it would be fun. It was a sincere offer, and she considered Cady a friend now, but it was out of the question. Before Walt was released from the hospital, Vic found a month-to-month lease up in Sheridan, thirty-five miles away. When people asked wasn't there anything closer, she planned to say yes, but no one asked. There was a lot going at the time.
She'd done this to herself, all of it.
There should have been something in the divorce settlement to get her into a new home or back to Philly if that's what she wanted. But in all her starry-eyed recklessness, she hadn't imagined she'd want to be anywhere but Durant. She'd been that delusional.
Her attorney was either a moron or an unprincipled sleaze. He had to have known better than to allow her to stay in the Newett house. In fact, not one person had pointed that out to her. She was an idiot, that was her excuse. What was everyone else's? She tried not to give too much attention to the idea that friends look out for each other. She knew she'd done that to herself, too.
By the time she dropped the groceries off at her apartment, it was after one.
She was wearing yoga pants and a hoodie with a thermal shirt underneath and UGG boots. Six months ago she would have welcomed this inconvenience, made all kinds of pitiful effort: taken a shower, redone her make-up, shaved. She probably would have made him a sandwich. And she would have gone to great lengths to act nonchalant about the whole thing.
Fuck that shit.
He wasn't who she'd believed he was. She really didn't care what he thought about how she looked.
The hardest part hadn't been that he didn't want her. That she could live with. What she couldn't stand was the image of herself so smitten, so self-destructive. She'd let him run the show, and it wasn't his show to run. She'd been so willing to walk the tightrope with him, to be an option. Before Branch, after Arizona, she'd been on eggshells. It never occurred to her that a love, a friendship so easy to ruin probably wasn't worth it.
Of course, she was still married at the time. As far as she was concerned, they were both assholes. She would discourage any quality individual from having a relationship with either of them.
Soon after she crossed the border into Montana her phone rang, a 406 area code. As she slid the bar to accept the call, she cringed.
"Hey."
He cleared his throat. "Vic."
He sounded like he was in Siberia, whatever that sounds like.
"Yup."
"You on your way?"
"Yeah."
There was some conversation in the background, and a burst of laughter.
"I'm using the shop's phone," he explained, as if embarrassed. He should be.
"I should be there around three," she said. "Ferg says we still have to drop Stanich in Billings."
"They may come pick him up."
"They said that?"
"Not yet," he said.
"So we still have to drop Stanich off in Billings."
"Maybe."
She rolled her eyes.
"Magic Body and Lube," she said. She hadn't actually looked at the name of the place yet. "Holy shit."
"Yeah."
"You think they noticed that?"
"Probably not," he said. She could hear the smile in his voice.
"Both the body and the lube." She couldn't help herself. "Magic."
She needed to stop.
"The storefront says 'smoothest body work in town.'"
"Even better," she said.
"Either way."
He'd been working on his suggestive comebacks. Maybe with Donna. Maybe Donna had loosened him up, chewed him like a stiff piece of leather.
"Someone should tell them," she said, serious all of a sudden. "You have time on your hands."
"It would be a public service."
She forced herself to keep the rest of the free-flowing banter dammed.
"Hey . . . uh," he stammered. It was a good reminder of everything she hated about him. "I asked Ferg to come get me."
"If you'd like I can go back and tell him it's him you want."
It was exactly like him to do this, to make someone else suffer for his whims.
"That's not what I meant," he said. "I appreciate you coming, but it was your day off."
"When has that ever stopped anyone?"
"There are labor laws."
"Are you encouraging me to sue you?"
"Join the crowd."
Self-pity. That was more like it.
"I'll be there around three," she said again. "Where's Stanich?"
All day the sky had been overcast white. Now it was graying to the west.
"Right here."
"You've been saying all this in front of him?"
"All what?" The smile had returned.
He was such a dick.
There was silence on the line now. For a moment she thought they'd lost the connection, and it was a relief. Then she heard some rustling, probably him flattening down the back of his hair.
"I'll see you in an hour and fifteen."
"Good," he said. "Thanks, Vic."
Staying had become easier once she'd known she was really done.
She'd always functioned better on her own, done better at home and at work when Sean was out of town, investigated better before there were other officers on the scene, survived better without anyone there to make sure she was surviving.
The decision hadn't even really been hers. Walt wasn't in any condition to return to work. It was never discussed; everyone just assumed. She was in charge again, and that was that.
Enough time had passed. She wasn't unhappy.
Eamonn had a girlfriend now. They seemed right for each other. Vic didn't feel much about that one way or the other. She'd used him; she knew that, and so did he. She'd needed to feel worthy or wanted or something.
What happened between them had been all about Walt. They both knew that, too.
If everything hadn't gone down the way it had, she would have left. Maybe she wouldn't have gone back to Philly, but she wouldn't have stayed here.
