Page 52 of Nothing Ever Happens Here

“Nope.”

“What the hell?” she says. “I have to tell Clay to pick me up.”

“Herb and the gang coordinated to drop your car off last night. They said they had nothing more exciting to do and would be happy to help, so it’s outside. So just…no need for your phone yet.”

“Uhhh. Why?”

“Just…don’t look at Facebook. I know you will, but maybe notjustyet,” I say, and she crawls down and snatches her phone from the puff of comforter that swallowed it.

“Jesus. What now?” She opens her app and scrolls. It doesn’t take long before she sees it, but at least I got to semi-warn her.

“Yeah, it appears Riley’s wife took a video of the whole thing last night on her phone and took liberties with how she edited it,” I say, rewatching it as Shelby plays it over and over. It’s less than two minutes long, but her shoving Riley’s shoulder is in slow motion and her mouth is twisted and her eyes are watery and bloodshot as she yells“This guy’s a fucking crook! A fucking thief!”and the caption reads “Mental Health Awareness” and goes on to say that Shelby essentially has lost it and there is no evidence of all the things she’s reporting are happening to her and maybe she’s lying. That all this is a need for attention, a cry for help, and we should have some compassion and get her the help she needs…not in those exact words, but that’s the gist of it.

Shelby stares at the phone screen with her mouth open and an unreadable look in her eyes. She starts to scroll down.

“No! Seriously. Nobody should ever read the comments. Let’s just…” but of course she does and one of the comments from Karen Gustafson says “Poor Bernie. It’s no surprise he killed himself if this is what he had to deal with from his caretaker.” I see tears form in her eyes.

“I’m not even his caretaker. It’s senior living, not a nursing home. They don’t even…” she begins to say, picking out the wrong thing to defend because she doesn’t know where to begin with the real accusations, I suppose.

“Hey, come here,” I say, gently taking her phone away and replacing it with her coffee mug. “Karen Gustafson is a twat. We all know that. She snaps her fingers and calls me waitress when she comes into the cafe. And she tips in loose pennies from the bottom of her purse,” I say and try to continue offering examples of her faulty character, but Shelby interrupts.

“It has six hundred views,” she says numbly.

“It’ll pass,” I say.

“Does everyone think I’m lying? Is that what people think?”

“No,” I say. “Of course not.” But the truth is I don’t really know what people are saying because I have been so wound up in my own crisis, running to hell and back looking for Leo, decoding boxes of paperwork, and cryptic messages. I have no earthly idea what people are saying about Shelby, but they probablyaresaying that. It’s Rivers Crossing. When the gossip gets old and tired, spice it up a bit. Why not?

“Do you think they were Bernie’s?” she asks.

“What?”

“The footprints. What if he got out of the car—maybe he checked to make sure the tailpipe was packed with snow, maybe he just walked around to make sure nobody was around, which I guess is silly because that road goes unused for days at a time out there, but I mean, maybe. People were saying Bernie seemed depressed… I don’t know.” She sighs, sinking down into the bed and holding her cup of coffee on top of the covers tucked up to her chin. She stares up at the ceiling in dismay.

“Maybe, but from what I remember, they were just like…boot imprints leading away from the car. I don’t recall prints leading back, but you’re right. It’s kind of a blur because it was a shock and I wasn’t looking for that sort of thing, so when I remembered, it’s just a flash in my mind. But I’m sure that’s what I saw.”

Shelby sighs again, puts down her mug and slowly gets to her feet, pulling on a sweatshirt she left hanging over the chair on the vanity and looking for her socks.

“I have to go and see the girls at my mom’s. They’re staying there a few days. Maybe longer. I need to call Clay. You know I can already see the look on Riley’s face when you tell him you saw footprints. It’s sort of like you know he’s rolling his eyes internally, you know? That’s what it will be.”

“I wanna tell you something,” I say. She gives me a what-else-could-there-possibly-be look, but when I pat the edge of the bed,she tentatively sits. I sit crunched up against the pillows in front of the headboard and rest my coffee on my knees. I take a deep breath.

“I’m losing the house. Leo took out a secret mortgage on it and it’s getting foreclosed on, but please don’t say anything about that. I don’t wanna talk about it right now,” I say quickly, and her shocked eyes and open mouth slowly adjust into a forced neutral expression as she lets me continue.

“He cheated a lot of people. Gambled and stole money from his staff, partners, and you. Sort of.”

“Me?”

“Yes, in a roundabout way.”

“Um. Wouldn’t that be something I’d know about?” she asks.

“I have something to show you,” I say, and she watches me walk out the guest room door into the kitchen where the dogs see and start barking until they realize it’s just me and go back to lie down in their bed by the fireplace. I grab some files off of the kitchen counter and Shelby is already behind me, taking them from my hands before I can do this gracefully.

“What is it? You’re freaking me out.”

“I found these in Leo’s things.” She’s looking through the pages, not making sense of it. “Essentially, he’s been skimming off the top at the Oleander’s. There’s a secret bank account I found, so however he set up this…fraud, I guess, it’s just automatic now and it filters through this bank, which takes a percentage before it is sent to the Oleander’s system, and you would never know that’s not the full amount. I don’t really understand money laundering but that’s the general idea, I think.”

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