Rachel Gibson - True Confessions

When he went to bed that night, his thoughts returned to Hope. He figured that if he’d run a check on her before they’d become involved, he could have saved himself a lot of trouble. It was too late now, but he figured he should probably do it first thing in the morning. Just in case.

But the next morning, he found paparazzi camped at the end of his driveway. He and Adam jumped into the truck and headed for the Double T. They spent the weekend riding horses and doing the little things his brother-in-law hadn’t gotten around to doing yet, like fixing the chicken wire around his mother’s henhouse and regrating the gravel road. Julie called to let him know that she and Gerard were hiding out at his family’s vineyards in Bordeaux and that she planed to do an interview with People magazine in a few days.

By the time Dylan went to work early Monday, most of the reporters were gone. He was brought up to speed during roll call, and he had Hazel bring him the accident reports and booking actions for the past two weeks. He skimmed the DUI arrests, and read a complaint filed by Ada Dover which charged Wilbur McCaffrey with purposely letting his dog out in the morning to “do his duty” in the motel’s flower beds.

He waited until he’d read through the stack of reports before he contacted the California Department of Motor Vehicles. Within a few minutes, he received Hope’s address in Los Angeles and her social security number. Once he had that, finding out information about her was incredibly easy.

He found out that she really was employed by The Weekly News of the Universe and that she had three pseudonyms. Before the Porsche, she’d owned a Mercedes, and right out of college, she’d worked for The San Francisco Chronicle and later The Los Angeles Times. And he dug into her court records and read the date she’d been married and the date her divorce had been final.

He dug deeper and read about the civil-harassment restraining order she’d won against a wrestler named Myron Lambardo, a.k.a. Myron the Masher. She’d won it three months prior to her arrival in Gospel, and in his defense, Mr. Lambardo had argued that he was angry and only wanted Ms. Spencer to continue with the Micky the Magical Leprechaun series and turn him back into a “stud muffin” so people wouldn’t think he was a “homo.”

The court not only found in Hope’s favor, but ordered “that the defendant not threaten, strike, or make physical contact with the plaintiff, not telephone plaintiff, not block plaintiff’s movements in public places or thoroughfares, and stay at least one hundred yards away from the plaintiff while at work, home, or any other place the plaintiff may request.”

Dylan shook his head and leaned back in his chair. He guessed he shouldn’t be surprised by what he read. She hadn’t mentioned the restraining order, of course, but there were several important things she hadn’t mentioned. Being stalked by an angry dwarf was just one of them. He wondered what else he didn’t know.

Over the course of the next week, Hope refused to keep herself locked up in her house. She drove to Sun Valley to shop in the trendy boutiques and spent a lot of time with Shelly. She learned how to can pickles and hunt for huckleberries and she worked on her stories. She finished several for The Weekly News of the Universe and had most of the rough draft down for her article on Hiram. After writing fiction for so long, nonfiction was proving more difficult than she expected, but she was enjoying the challenge.

From Shelly, Hope learned that the Donnellys had been a picture-perfect family. The three children were older than Shelly, but she remembered that they never got into trouble and kept mostly to themselves. Two boys and a girl, raised by the county sheriff and his God-fearing wife. Together, Hiram and Minnie had been the moral compass of the community. Holding themselves up as the perfect family, yet their children had never come back to visit once they were out of the house. Something had been horribly wrong with the picture. But what?

It had taken Hope a few days of digging to find out more information on the Donnelly children. Although none of them would speak to her directly, what she discovered was enough to answer her questions and add a new dimension to her article.

She learned that the older son had died of alcoholism, the younger was in prison for domestic abuse, and the daughter was a crisis counselor. Hope didn’t need to hear the particulars to figure out that behind closed doors, the picture-perfect family was dysfunctional as hell. What Hope found particularly amazing was that they’d managed the facade in a town that fed off everyone else’s business.

Most of the time Hope spent trying to forget about Dylan, but she never succeeded for very long. He appeared in her sleep and in her daydreams as well. He’d even made an appearance in her work, too. In her latest alien feature, she’d added a bit of a new slant. A new character in the form of a cross-dressing alien sheriff. She’d named him Dennis Taylor.

The morning the story was due to hit the stands, she drove to the M & S and grabbed the most recent issue of The Weekly News of the Universe from the magazine rack. She flipped it open to the center spread. Once again, her article was the featured story. This was the first article featuring Dennis, and it showed him as a muscle-neck cross-dresser with a gold star pinned to his marabou teddy. While that should have made her feel vindicated, it didn’t.

She chatted with Stanley as she paid for her paper, then left. Walking to her car, she thumbed to the gossip section. Her gaze skimmed the columns, but there was no mention of Juliette and Adam. It would appear, though. Probably in next week’s edition.

Hope folded the paper and took her car keys from the pocket of her jeans. Her stories were doing better than she’d ever imagined, yet she felt nothing. Not happy. Not sad. Just blah. There was more to life than successful alien articles. Like living. Like opening yourself up and falling in love and getting your heart stomped on by a size-twelve cowboy boot.

She thought she heard someone yell her name, and she glanced up from the keys in her hand to the far end of the parking lot. A big cardboard sign caught her attention. It said: Make Micky a Stud Muffin. She couldn’t see who held the sign, just a pair of little sneakers peeking out from beneath the cardboard. That was all she needed. She knew, and it shoved her heart into her throat.

Myron had found her.

She jumped into her car and peeled out of the parking lot, startling a family riding bicycles. As she drove down Main, her hands shook and her heart pounded in her ears.

She didn’t know if her restraining order was in effect in Idaho, or if Myron was free to harass her here. She really didn’t know what to do until she pulled into a space behind the sheriff’s office. She needed answers and she needed help, but she really didn’t want to involve Dylan. Maybe she could just talk to one of the deputies. She was sure someone besides Dylan could tell her what she wanted to know.

She looked for the sheriff’s Blazer and spotted it by the back door. He was in his office. Her pounding heart skipped a few painful beats. She didn’t want to involve him in her problem. The last time she’d seen him, he’d told her to stay out of his life. He’d meant it. And as much as that hurt, and as much as she thought of him every minute of every hour of every day, she meant to get over it. To get over him, but she couldn’t if she had to see and talk to him. Then she remembered his guard dog of a secretary and relaxed. Even if she wanted to see him, she didn’t believe Hazel would let her past. Not even if her hair was on fire and Dylan held the only extinguisher.