“Doesn’t mean you don’t like her. ”
Billy nodded, hesitated. “Sorrow is special. ”
“You have feelings for her. ”
Billy nodded. Looked down at his hands on the table. There was something else.
“But there’s something else, isn’t there?” Sully prompted.
When Billy looked back up, his gaze was distant. “It’s more than just the boyfriend. ” He gave a humorless laugh. “I’m a broken man, Sully. ”
“Don’t seem broken to me. ”
“All right, not broken, but…my wife, Keri. I can’t seem to forget her. ”
Sully had some experience on that front. Not with women, no. But he was haunted by faces—dozens of them—young men who’d died while he lived. “I don’t know that we ever forget the past. Just so long as we keep moving forward. ”
They sat with that thought a moment. Billy looked like he needed to say more, so Sully just waited for his words to come.
Eventually they did. “Keri cast a long shadow,” Billy began. “She was powerful. A lawyer in the DA’s office. And man, could that woman make the most hardened felons quake. ” He smiled at the memory. “She was something else. Never would I have cheated on her. ” He laughed then. “Hell, I was afraid to disagree with her. ”
The smile bled from his face, and he leaned his elbows on the table, struggling to put words to his feelings. “It isn’t just moving on that’s hard. The feeling that I’m somehow breaking my vows if I look at another woman. It’s that I was a different person when I married her. That man is long gone. And that feels like a betrayal, too. ”
“Men change. ” As Sully said it, he wondered if it was time to make some changes himself. But he pushed the notion away to focus on the man across from him. “You’ve got to keep going. Experiencing new things. That’s how you honor her memory—by living your life. Otherwise you might as well have died with her. Something like that—losing your wife so young—it’ll make you different. You’ll live different, and you’ll love different, too. ”
“I am different,” Billy said. “There’s a quiet inside me that I didn’t have when I was with Keri. Like peace. My whole life, I didn’t realize it’d been lacking. Until I came here and met Sorrow. ”
Sully knew a little something about that. “I think some folks call that wisdom. ”
“Maybe so. ” Billy shrugged. “All I know is that, for the first time in a long time, I f
eel like there might be things out there I could look forward to. And it’s because of her. Sorrow. When I’m with her, I just feel…happy. ” He’d spoken the word as though he’d never said it before. But then a dark glint flashed in his eyes. “And I feel a whole hell of a lot more than that, too, obviously. ”
Sully recognized that glint. He growled, “I’ll have to caution you there, son. ”
Billy laughed. “Understood. ” He leaned back in his seat, looking lighter. More at ease. “You ever lost anyone, Tom?”
Sully blew out a sigh. Why hadn’t he poured them something to drink first?
“I’ve known loss,” he said carefully. “Not a wife, though. Not that. But they were losses just the same. I felt a lot of guilt when I stepped off that plane back in ’72. Coming home when so many didn’t. But those boys, my friends, they’d have wanted me to live. They’d have kicked my ass if they thought I’d given up on my own life. Strong woman like your Keri? I imagine she’d do the same. ”
“Kick my ass from the great beyond?”
“You bet,” Sully said, but then it was his turn to go quiet. He sure was free with the advice—advice he should consider taking himself. Because what he was doing—flipping Bear’s burgers day in and day out—that wasn’t exactly taking life by the horns. It was time he made a change. Time he did a little living himself, maybe ask Marlene out on a proper date.
“It’s time to let go and give in to your feelings,” Sully said, but then he paused as it hit him. Those words applied to himself as much as to Billy. He nodded, clear now on his own feelings. Billy was lucky—the guy was a kid in comparison, with another lifetime ahead of him. “You’ll never lose the grief,” Sully added, “but you’re young yet. You can move through it. It’s no dishonor to your Keri if you move on with your life. ”
Billy’s eyes met and held his. Something moved between the two men, connected them. It was respect.
The sheriff was good people. Solid. Sully could see him and Sorrow making something work. Which meant she needed to do something, and fast, before she had a situation on her hands. “Now she just needs to deal with that boyfriend of hers. ” He wished there were a way to broach it with her, have a talk like he was having with Billy, but if he brought up her love life, she’d probably look at him like he’d grown horns.
An evil smile curled onto the sheriff’s face. “I could always arrest him for something. That’d take him out of the picture. ”
He barked out a laugh. “No need to resort to that. I’ve had my eye on that girl. I’ve seen how she is with you. If I know Sorrow, that boy will be getting his walking papers any day now. ”
When Sorrow returned, she plopped next to the sheriff in the booth. “Let there be light,” she pronounced.
Talk about lightbulbs—Billy’s eyes were a thousand watts when he looked at her. “All good?” he asked.