“Just flash your pretty smile at the officer, and I’m sure you’ll get out of it.” Caleb gave one of his rare, broad smiles, the kind that touched his eyes. That smile always brought her right back to high school before the breakup. For a long time, it had made her want to go back and figure out why he broke up with her so suddenly, but once Amelia got to know Steve, that had all gone away. Now that sporadic smile was more nostalgic than anything and made Amelia wonder why Caleb worked at Broadlands Roofing in a job where he was nothing more than her husband’s lapdog and in a position where he had no conceivable opportunities for professional growth.
As a teen, he’d been a talented artist, collecting blue ribbons like Amelia collected bouncy balls from the vending machine at the Piggly Wiggly. Everyone thought he’d go into something creative, but then somewhere in the middle of his senior year, Caleb gave up. He stopped going to school, stopped going much of anywhere, and he definitely stopped painting. And even though he was the one to break up with her, she’d always felt a little guilty. Every morning that he walked into the office for his shift, a small part of Amelia was disappointed that he hadn’t finally gotten up the courage to follow his dreams.
“I guess it depends on how fast I’m going,” she said. “Which I’m thinking will have to be incredibly fast. Have a nice day, Caleb!” Amelia waved without looking back and bounced into the house. She collected her bag off the chair, not bothering to push it in again, and grabbed her cello in its cow-spotted case by the door.
She should set the alarm. Steve wouldn’t be happy if he got home first and found out Amelia had left the house open—he thought it was important to keep everything locked down with the revolving door of day workers coming in and out of the business. But she was already late. She’d text Caleb once she got to Chandler—he knew the code and would cover for her for sure.
The white truck parked in the driveway sparkled like it’d been newly washed, a magnetic sign with the company name, BROADLANDS ROOFING, attached to the driver-side door. Oh great. The front left tire—flat.
“Caleb!” Amelia shouted as though he could hear her all the way around the corner of the house and through the business entrance. “Damn it.”
Tears of frustration built up in her eyes. There were only small windows in her life where she was allowed to pursue her passion, to get lost in her music. This was one of those windows, and instead of jumping through it, and even getting paid in the process, she seemed to be missing the opening entirely. Trying to push back the tears, she retrieved her phone from the bulging bag still on her shoulder and sent Caleb a brief text.
Meet me out front. Emergency. I need you. After hitting Send, she briefly wondered if she’d sounded too dramatic, but the thought disappeared with the noise of the office door. Caleb’s footfalls on the loose gravel were as fast and urgent as his calls to her.
“Amelia, you okay?” he shouted from around the corner, appearing just a brief moment later. He ran to her. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?” He searched her over with his eyes like he was looking for a missing appendage. Tentatively, he grabbed her elbow as if helping to hold her up.
Amelia pulled away and shook her head. “I’m fine, but I can’t say the same for the truck. What the heck did you do last night? Run over a box of nails?” She gestured at the front tire, but as she followed the broad sweep of her arm, she noticed something else. The back tire was deflated and misshapen too.
“Not again.” Caleb stepped away from Amelia. “I’m so tired of this shit.” He took a wide circle around the truck and then stopped beside her. The hurt that had crinkled the edges of his eyes when she pulled her arm back was gone, replaced with a stillness Amelia remembered from when they were kids—anger.
With a swift and unexpected flick of his foot, he kicked the ground, sending hundreds of tiny pebbles spraying out in an arc. They tinked against the metal body of the truck and thunked against Amelia’s bare legs, leaving little stinging spots where they hit. “Steve is going to flip out. They got all four tires this time.”
“What do you mean ‘this time’? And who do you mean ‘they’?” Amelia asked, examining the tire closest to her. It looked like a typical flat tire.
“Look,” Caleb said, kneeling beside the truck and sending up a burst of dust. “Right there.” He glanced up, meeting and holding her gaze for a fraction of a second longer than usual as he pointed at an inch-long puncture in the sidewall of the tire. “Someone sliced these tires. Happened last week on a work site in Traverse too. Only got one of the tires, then. Steve thought it was just some punk kids, but now . . .” He ran his fingertip over the gash again. “It can’t be a coincidence.”
Amelia moved in closer to Caleb and mimicked his investigation with a burgundy fingernail, her urgency to leave morphing into an urgency to figure out why someone was targeting their family roofing business. Caleb was right: Steve was going to have a fit that he not only had to buy a new set of tires but that someone had come to his home to do the deed.
“We’ll have to call the police, I guess.” She was used to sacrificing her music for Steve, for their business, for their kids, and, more recently, for her dad. Why should today be any different? “And they’ll have to live with a string trio.”
“I don’t think that’s a real thing.” Caleb stood up and stepped toward Amelia, hand in his pocket. The knees of his jeans were covered in dirt that he didn’t even try to brush off. “You should still go.” He withdrew his hand from his pocket and presented her with a set of keys. “Let me take care of this with Steve. He’s gonna be pissed, and you don’t need to deal with that. Take my car. It’s no BMW, but it should get you to your performance. I can help you get Bessie in the trunk.”
Caleb had been driving the same car since senior year—a black Geo hatchback with purple and green race stripes down the side. Due to an inordinate amount of attention from his skilled mechanical hands, the car looked nearly new and ran even better. But the last time Amelia rode in it was on the day of her father’s stroke.
Now, she found climbing into Caleb’s car one more time not only cramped, the passenger seat covered in stacks of paper, but also nostalgic. Maybe that was the wrong word. “Nostalgic” sounded positive, like the gray seats and the sagging ceiling fabric brought back happy memories. Maybe “ominous” was more accurate; the feeling was more like a sense of foreboding.
Caleb slammed the rear hatch, making the top of Bessie’s case bump against Amelia’s shoulder and snapping her back into the present.
He leaned against the open car window, his forehead glistening. “If you use the speed limit as more of a guideline than a hard-and-fast rule, then you should make it to the reception only a few minutes late.” He leaned across Amelia and turned the keys until the engine roared to life and then pulled his arm back quickly, a blush crawling up his cheeks.
“Thanks, Caleb. I owe you one.” She put the car into drive. “Let me know what Steve says. I’ll be home for dinner. Ellie should be bringing Dad by to eat. Your brother is coming too. Hey, you want to join us?”
He shrugged, stood up, and took a step back from the car. “I’ll see how furious Steve is first.” He rubbed the top of his head, this time a small smile crinkling up one side of his face.