RaeAnne Thayne - Riverbend Road

“I get that. Believe me, I get it. But instead of going out to find another job, he goes out and buys more booze. What is wrong with him?”

Cade didn’t know how to answer. Christy wanted him to fix his brother. He felt as if he’d spent his entire life trying to duct-tape together the jagged pieces of his broken family in one way or another. Hell of a lot of good that had done over the years. He hadn’t been able to prevent his mom from getting sick when he was eleven and he couldn’t keep anybody else out of the hot mess of trouble they always seemed to land in.

“What do you need from me?” he asked.

“How about a phone number for a good divorce attorney?” she countered.

That would be a disaster for their three kids, who adored their father. On the other hand, living with an unreliable, unstable, angry drunk wasn’t a great alternative.

“I can’t help you there, Christy. He might be an ass but he’s still my brother. He would be devastated to lose his family. You know he loves you.”

“Does he? Really? He’s losing his family right now. He’s just too plastered to notice!”

Was she only calling to complain or did she really think he had some power to change his brother’s behavior? He couldn’t decades ago when they were kids. He certainly couldn’t now.

“I’m not bailing him out this time,” Christy went on. “I’m dead serious. I’m working my fingers to the bone, trying to keep food in my kids’ mouths and shoes on their feet. I’m not going to use my hard-earned money to bail him out of jail one more time. As far as I’m concerned, he can rot in there.”

Maybe that would be the wake-up call his brother needed, the stimulus to get off his butt and make a change. Or maybe Marcus would perceive Christy’s inaction as proof she didn’t love him, which might send him slipping further into the depression that seemed to have caught hold.

“I understand where you’re coming from.”

“Do you?”

Yes. Hell, yes. After his mother died, Cade had tried his best to help his father but had finally had to accept his father loved Johnnie Walker far more than he could ever love his sons.

Marcus wasn’t Walter. He was a good man going through a rough stretch.

“I can try to talk to him, see if I can convince him to go into rehab.”

Christy paused and he heard more sniffling on the line. “Don’t you think I’ve tried that? Only about a thousand times. He won’t listen.”

“It’s worth a shot.”

“Maybe you’ll have better luck. He respects you more than any other man he knows.”

“I can’t make any promises,” he warned. “Any change has to come from him.”

“I appreciate the effort anyway. You’ve been a good brother to him.”

He would beg to disagree. A good brother would have been better at keeping his siblings out of trouble.

“It might be a few days before I can get over there. I’ve got to work double shifts for a while since I’m short an officer this week.” He grimaced at the reminder of Wynona Bailey and her foolhardy stubbornness.

“That’s fine with me. Let him stay in there and stew about the mess he’s created.”

“I should be able to squeeze out a few hours toward the middle of the week to drive to Boise.”

“I hope you can talk sense into his hard head.”

“So do I.”

She was silent for a moment and he heard more sniffling on the line and a muffled sob. “Why does he have to make it so hard to love him?” she finally burst out.

If his brother had been there, Cade would have had no problem pounding him, badge or no badge. Idiot. He had a good thing going. A wife who loved him, kids who needed him. Why would he throw all that away?

Cade’s own beer—the bottle from the single six-pack he allowed himself per week—suddenly tasted flat and bitter.

None of them had been given much of a chance, with an abusive drunk for a father and a weak mother who didn’t take care of herself and ended up with liver disease because of it.

With such a screwed-up childhood, it was a wonder Marcus had been able to maintain a good relationship with Christy all these years.

“You take good care of yourself and those kids.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do. But you know Marcus won’t see it that way.”

He feared she was right. “Do you need help with bills?” he finally asked quietly.

Christy was silent for a long, awkward moment. “You’ve done more than enough, Cade.”

He didn’t mention to her that Marcus had come to him asking for help paying the mortgage the last few months. He had a feeling she knew and was too proud and stubborn to ask for more.

He would send a check anyway and hope she accepted it, for the kids’ sake. Losing their home wouldn’t help the situation right now.

“I’ll talk to you later in the week to see how things are going,” he said.

“Thanks, Cade. I didn’t know what else to do but to call you. I needed to vent to someone else who loves that idiot as much as I do.”

“I’ll do what I can,” he promised.

After they said goodbye, he leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes, exhausted suddenly from the crazy day. Marcus and his latest DUI seemed like just one more thing he couldn’t fix.

The world was filled with problems he couldn’t solve, which sometimes seriously sucked.

The doorbell rang while he was still trying to figure out how he could slip Christy the extra money for her mortgage—which happened to be the one problem he could remedy.

He might get to that steak at some point that evening, but he was beginning to wonder.

“Coming,” he called out.

He headed to the front door and pulled it open. All thoughts of Marcus and Christy, DUIs and mortgages, flew completely out of his head.

Wynona Bailey stood on his doorstep with her wheat-colored hair pulled back into a thick braid and tan shorts revealing a surprisingly long stretch of tawny legs.

Yeah. The world was really good at throwing unsolvable problems at him.

His mind snapped back to that nightmarish moment when he had pulled up to the fire at Darwin Twitchell’s barn and found her patrol vehicle empty and no sign of Wyn, and then an instant later she burst through the doors of the barn with a kid in each arm and flames exploding behind them.

He had run through that moment in his head dozens of times in the last few hours and still couldn’t figure out the emotion he’d experienced, when he knew she was safe and unharmed.

Something had changed. That’s all he knew. Or maybe it had been there forever but was only now growling to life.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, then realized how rude the words sounded when her hesitant smile slid away.

But what was he supposed to say? Though she lived at the other end of the street, they didn’t socialize at each other’s homes outside of work. He could count on one hand the times he’d been to her place, usually to drop off paperwork. She stopped here just as seldom.

Why was that?

He didn’t know the answer and it seemed odd now. They were friends and had been for years, even before she came to work for him after her father’s injury. Her brother was his best friend.

He had been to all his other officers’ homes several times. Barbecues. Birthday parties. It had never been a big deal to socialize outside of work, especially in a small police department like Haven Point. But something about Wyn Bailey was...different.

Maybe he could blame the same something that had sent him rushing to the scene of a fire after she stopped responding to the radio, with his heart hammering and his foot pushing hard on the gas pedal.

“I’ll tell you why I’m here but I’d rather not do it standing on the porch,” she said. “May I come in?”