Page 113 of One In Vermillion

I spentthe rest of the day at the factory with Olivia and Jason, talking about its future. Olivia was enthralled with the place, and even Jason was upbeat enough to say, “This is a great project. I like the challenge.”

We decided definitely on a community center, a community theater (for Molly), a vintage car museum (Patsy and Will had been pushing for that and Patsy had numbers she’d put together from other similar museums showing their draw of tourists and who knew people liked classic cars that much), and low-income housing (Anemone was going to love that), and then talked about meeting rooms, classrooms, anything that the community could use. “Cleve’s office is mine,” I said, but I told them everything else was up for grabs.

Olivia called her office and told them she was extending her stay in Burney, and then she called Anemone and told her she’d be staying for a month. Anemone was thrilled, and so was I.

My factory was going to be amazing.

Then we moved on to my house, a much smaller, much cheaper renovation that I was no longer intimidated by. Anemone was going to drop a lot of money on the factory, so the cottage now looked like chump change to me. And I loved Olivia’s plans.

The future looked bright. Of course, that would be after we got Cash out of Burney, we got George in as mayor somehow and Anemone in as First Lady of Burney, and things settled down, I was going to have a place of peace and quiet where I could have great sex on my back porch with my amazing boyfriend.

That last bit sounded wrong. I was thirty-three. Wasn’t that past the boyfriend stage? Lover? That sounded pretentious, which was probably why I’d used it with the senator. The truth was our relationship had shifted over the past couple of weeks. We were truly working together now, we were listening to each other, Vince had even announced that from now on all the bedrooms in his life were going to be blue, so he was really paying attention. We felt . . . permanent. At least I felt that way. Vince, as usual, had no comment on us, aside from variations on “Why aren’t you naked?”

The thing was, I didn’t want marriage. I just wanted lifelong commitment. I thought about the marriages I knew, and “lifelong commitment” was so far away from most of them that I almost saw marriage as the antithesis, a ritual that trapped people with each other.

I just wanted to spend the rest of my life with Vince Cooper.

“Liz?” Olivia said, and I realized I’d drifted away from the conversation while Olivia and Jason were discussing copper pipe.

“Sorry,” I said, and we wrapped things up. They went off to do practical things that would lead to my house and my factory being fabulous, and I called Vince and told him we needed to meet at JB’s and catch up on what had happened.

And maybe talk about what was going to happen next. For us. The future.

Yeah, like that’s not terrifying.

CHAPTER 58

I met Liz at JB’s at six and we ate tenderloins and talked about the factory and the Big Chef addition and her cottage on stilts, all about the future before we left for her place, leaving the Camry in the parking lot behind the bar, so I could go see the plans Olivia had drawn up. I had the windows down. It was evening and the cicadas were calling as the sun set in the west and Liz was beside me. It was about as good as it could possibly be.

Until we got close to her place.

When I reached the turnoff for her driveway I hit the brakes, a little too abruptly. “Something’s wrong.”

Liz looked around. “What?”

“The no trespassing sign is gone,” I said.

“That’s a dumb thing to steal,” Liz said. “Especially since it has your name on it.” It took her a second and then she said: “Fuck.”

“Yeah. We should come back tomorrow in the light.”

“No,” Liz said. “I want to see my house. If something’s wrong, I won’t be able to sleep not knowing.”

“What if Cash is waiting inside for you?” I asked.

“I need to know,” she said.

I pulled my pistol off the magnet on the door and then drove slowly up the drive, eyes scanning both sides. We stopped in front of the house.

There were no lights on. The new front door had been opened by someone breaking the doorjamb. The windows were all shattered. A foam mattress was slashed and blocking the steps.

“Stay here,” I said as I got out.

Of course, she did no such thing, but it was her house, after all.

We went up the stairs side-by-side. I pushed the ruined mattress over the railing and it fell to the ground.

Liz bit her lip. “Hey, at least the door isn’t broken. You do good door.”

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