Page 18 of To Belong Together
Dad could’ve noticed a problem others would miss, but Mom should’ve heard a brake squeal.
His call yesterday may not have been as normal as she’d thought.
On the drive to the shop, she strained to pick out a problem. Not a single unusual chirp or clunk sounded. She parked in her stall at work and blinked back tears.
Oh, Dad.The grief threatened to bury her, so she turned to prayer. Sensing God wouldn’t grant her repeated pleas to deliver her family from the nightmare, she settled for asking for help to make it through the day.
With a gulp, she opened the car door and stepped into the shop. Someone else was already there, because the overhead lights shone and the snow outside had been cleared. She flipped the switch on the lights at her workbench and tilted her head to read the paperwork someone had left on her toolbox.
Didn’t look like a customer invoice.
She slid the paper closer. It was an official or legal document. Among the other words, the name John Kennedy stood out.
Face stinging as she remembered the way she’d rebuffed him, she picked up the paper for a closer look. A non-disclosure agreement? What did this mean? Was he suing because she’d told him to find another technician?
“Mom says he came back last night.” Sam rounded her parents’ car. “Someone emailed this to her a few hours later, asking us all to sign. What’d you do to him?”
Erin flipped to the second page. The single-spaced text demanded the signee treat John’s very existence as a secret. “What is this?”
“You still haven’t recognized him?”
A billboard for a law firm stood next to the highway. Was John one of the suits pictured there? She’d never looked closely, and he hadn’t struck her as the type.
“John Kennedy.” Sam spoke slowly. “Gannon Vaughn. Philip Miller.”
“Gannon Vaughn?” The famous lead singer of the rock band Awestruck. Everyone had gotten excited when he’d bought property near Lakeshore, but he’d been around for a few months now. Erin had never seen him or the other band members who’d supposedly also moved to the area. But she had heard the band’s music plenty.
Thathad been the singer on John’s stereo. She hadn’t placed him because the recording had only been Vaughn and a guitar, rough instead of the polished and full sound of their music when she streamed it. The track had lacked drums, among other things.
Other details lined up—the solo John drummed on his steering wheel, Roy’s interest when she’d asked him to take John’s payment.
Mortification slammed her.
He’d asked her to coffee, and she’d turned him down.
She’d told him to take his business elsewhere.
As a celebrity, he must be accustomed to getting his way. His team of lawyers could ensure that if he didn’t, someone would pay.
Why hadn’t she at least agreed to take the car on her own, like he’d suggested? The idea had been more than reasonable.
Whether he went after her, the business, or both, this would be a nightmare. As if the one she was already living with her father wasn’t enough. “He never said who he was.”
Sam crossed his beefy arms. “Everyone knows they moved here.”
“You didn’t figure it out either, or you wouldn’t have pawned him off on me.” Plus, she’d had other things on her mind—Mom and Dad, dealing with Sam and Roy, searching for a new job. “I treated him like I would’ve treated anyone, and that must be what he wanted, or he would’ve pulled theI’m famouscard.”
She hoped.
“Something changed or he wouldn’t have sent an NDA.”
NDA? Now Sam was pretending he’d signed hundreds of these?
“It was probably whatever Roy said to him.” She hoped. “You two are the ones who recognized him. He had nothing to worry about from me.”
Erin grabbed a pen from her toolbox and scribbled her signature on the paper, as if completing a pointless formality. But if her behavior brought on a lawsuit, this would be bad. She’d wanted to get out from under this place, but she had nothing else lined up. Besides, Dad had invested so much of his life in this shop. Whether she continued to work here or not, Hirsh Auto was his legacy, and she didn’t want to damage that with a lawsuit and bad press.
She passed the paperwork to Sam and got to work on her parents’ car. When she finished the job, she double-checked her work because she’d been so distracted. The last thing Mom and Dad needed was her forgetting to tighten something and ruining their car or endangering their lives.
