Travis (Pelion Lake) by Mia Sheridan

Citizens turned to other citizens, exclaiming about this or that, turning the pages quickly, as my face continued to burn, shame sitting like a rock on my chest.

You deserve this. Every bit of it.

“A strip club? A strip club?” Maggie shouted, rising, and pulling an obviously uncomfortable Norm with her to stand in solidarity to her outrage. She tapped her finger on the page. “You took that innocent boy to a strip club?” she yelled, shock and disappointment clear in her tone. I shivered. “How could you? I oughta take my wooden spoon to you! Despicable, Travis Hale!”

“I know, Maggie,” I said into the microphone. “Believe me, I know.” I stuck my hands in my pockets, both wanting to be swallowed into the floor, and knowing the point of this was to stand in front of these people and experience their disdain, waiting as they all read through each and every item.

We were all going to be here a while.

I glanced at Amber Dalton, the girl, and then woman I’d conspired with on more than one occasion to harass Archer, most notably in a strip club she’d worked at on the other side of the lake many years ago. Her mouth was hanging open. I knew pieces of her story. She’d had a rough time at home too—we’d been messes together for a time and eventually outgrew each other. Despite her issues, and the part she’d played in several of my schemes, Amber had a sweetness to her. Unfortunately, we had never brought out the positive in one another. We’d never filled each other’s hollow spots. She’d gotten her life together, was married to a mechanic, and had two little girls at home. The police department was never called there, not like they’d been to the home she’d grown up in. She caught my eye, and despite her shocked expression, her mouth hitched up slightly and she winked at me.

A small gust of breath released, something lightened minutely inside.

“That was my mailbox you sumabitch!” Linton Whalley shouted, raising his fist. “Three times I replaced that!”

Oh, right. I grabbed the folder on the table next to me, stepping down off the stage and walking toward the row where he stood at the end. I opened the folder, rifling through the stack of checks in a total that had drained every cent I had combined in all my accounts, including a cash withdrawal from one of my credit cards. “I’ve written out a check. I, er, looked up the average price of a mailbox, uh, times three, and added a five percent interest rate.”

Linton grabbed the check from me, his eyes flashing with indignation. “You vandalized my property,” he said.

My shoulders dropped, and I nodded. I’d been eighteen years old. I’d known better. Linton paused, his eyes narrowing as he considered me. “But,” he finally said, “you also held my wife’s hand when she collapsed last summer. You were the first one there, and you kept her calm. Me too, truth be told.” His lips thinned and he held my gaze as he lifted the check and ripped it up. “We’re even, Chief.”

Another exhale, the blessing of grace. “Thank you,” I breathed.

I returned to the stage, leaning in to the microphone. “I apologize to all of you,” I said. “The ones I hurt. The ones I used. All those things I did were about me, never about you. I wish I’d wised up sooner. I wish I’d been quicker on the uptake.” I paused, trying desperately to contain my emotion enough to make it through this. “Most of all,” I said, taking in a gulp of air and finally gathering the nerve to turn my body to where my brother stood off to the side of the room. His expression was one I’d never seen before and I didn’t know how to read it. “Most of all,” I repeated, “I want to apologize to you, Archer, because you’re family. And I . . . I was supposed to be there for you. Instead, I made things worse.” I turned the pages on the packet sitting on the lectern in front of me. “If you all turn to page seventy-three to one hundred four, you’ll see every despicable thing I did to Archer. Addendum 1a outlines the times I was cruel. And addendum 2a–3c lists the times I was manipulative. I wanted to break them down so you knew I had considered the difference and how each might have affected you. And uh, well, addendum 4a outlines the times I publicly shunned you, which might have been the worst. You’re my family and I shunned you. God, I’m so sorry. Haven said something to me recently about having apologized to you, but I never actually did. So you couldn’t have fully forgiven me. I’ve never said the words, but I am. I’m so incredibly sorry for all the times I looked away from your pain, from your loneliness. If I could go back, I’d do things so differently. Because I hurt you, and I hurt Bree, and God”—I hitched in another breath, a lump filling my throat that I could barely speak around—“if anything I’d done had resulted in those two boys and that little girl not existing, I would have been responsible for ruining not only your lives, not only mine, but ruining the entire world.”

Burt had described the way two people sometimes completed each other perfectly, helping to fill the empty gaps, and that’s what Bree and Archer had been for each other. Her ability to sign had opened up his entire world. And he’d helped her overcome the loss of her father too. I didn’t know the details, but I knew that much.

And I’d attempted to get in the way of that through trickery and manipulation.

The murmurs had stopped, heads swiveling between Archer and me, waiting. Bree came up beside Archer, standing quietly by her husband’s side. As if her presence there had spoken to him in some silent way only he understood, he glanced at her, giving her a smile.