Page 65 of Break My Fall

“Thanks for nothing.”

“Anytime.”

The call disconnected.

“What was that about?” Meredith pressed a finger into Cal’s arm. “Why did you do that?”

“He’s too chicken to call you himself, so he called me and put me in the middle of the two of you when he knows full well that I’m trying very hard not to be in the middle. So he can deal with it.”

Mo’s low chuckle had an ominous edge to it. “Remind me never to make you mad, brother.”

“Oh, you’re next on my list, so buckle up.” Cal stood and took his glass to the sink. “I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with men who don’t have the sense to see the beauty that’s right in front of them.”

Meredith watched Mo and Cal face off.

“And yeah, Mo, I’m talking about you too.”

“You think you’re some kind of macho-man cupid or something?” Disbelief tinged Mo’s question.

“No. I think I love you guys too much to let you keep beingstupid.” He kissed Meredith on the head, grabbed his coat from the sofa, and paused at the door. “I do, you know. I love you both.” He slammed the door behind him.

“Didn’t see that coming.” Meredith waved a hand to where, on the other side of the window, Cal strode to his truck.

“Me neither.” Mo took his own cup and rinsed it in the kitchen sink. “I gotta get to work.”

“Yeah. You do that. I’ll call Bronwyn.”

“Don’t leave without letting me know.” Mo followed Cal’s path out the door but turned to his own house a few yards away.

Meredith was left alone at her tiny table with an empty glass and a heart that didn’t know if she should be grateful to be so loved or angry that the people she loved most were all mad at each other in large part because of her.

She called Bronwyn, made plans to meet at Gray’s after lunch, and got ready for the day.

Gray was not ready for the way his heart dropped when he looked up to see Meredith and Bronwyn standing in his office door at 1:00 on the dot. Bronwyn’s taped wrist made him want to throw a stapler at the wall. Meredith’s bruised face made him want to rampage through the streets of Neeson until he found the men responsible.

There were two dead men in a truck, and they might be the ones who committed the act, but they weren’t the ones behind it.

He stood and waved them in. “Please come in. Have a seat. Would you like some water? Coffee?”

Both women said no.

He sat down behind his desk and tried to scrape together his last ounce of professionalism. “I don’t want to make any assumptions.I know we talked Monday night, but it would help me if you could go over what happened again.”

They nodded, and Bronwyn spoke up first. “We’ve known Judy forever. Went to school with her. When I left town, she and Meredith did a lot of stuff together for a little while.”

Meredith and Bronwyn shared a look, and Bronwyn continued. “Okay, it wasn’t long. Judy started dating Jason in the middle of junior year and that was that. But we’ve all stayed friends. So when she said she wanted to have music bingo night, we told her we’d do all we could to support it.”

Meredith nodded but didn’t contribute. Bronwyn continued. “I told the staff at The Haven. Meredith had signs at the office. We mentioned it to everybody we saw. Invited them to come out. Told them we’d be there with bells on.”

This wasn’t something he’d known before. “So the fact that you were going to be at Mountain Brew on Monday night was common knowledge?”

“Anyone who was making any kind of effort to know our plans wouldn’t have had any difficulty finding out where we’d be. We posted a selfie with Judy before things got rolling and reminded people of where we were.”

Meredith cleared her throat. “I think we even said we’d be staying to the end and that it wasn’t too late to come out and join us.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” Bronwyn shrugged. “In hindsight, that seems like a dumb thing to do, but I don’t think either of us could have predicted that someone would try to run us over.”

Meredith nodded. “It doesn’t make any sense. How could they have predicted it well enough to have someone shove us in the road and try to run over us? That seems too coincidental.”

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