in a few weeks. I’m doing some volunteer work at the shelter a couple of towns over. It’s the closest one, but it’s a drive so I usually spend most of the day there when I work. I sometimes think the distance is why pups like Daisy end up in the woods.”
“Because there’s no place close to take her.” She doubted that would change some people’s minds, but it could encourage others to help rescue abandoned animals.
“Not unless you want to drive an hour down the highway,” Zep replied. “I know the guy who runs the shelter. He doesn’t have a lot of help and he definitely doesn’t have a ton of money, so I volunteer a couple of days a month.”
He seemed to volunteer a lot. For a man who everybody treated like a joke, there were a whole bunch of people who depended on him. Or maybe she was the one who didn’t understand. She was viewing everything through her own filter, her experiences. She’d put up a barrier to protect herself, but she was starting to wonder if she needed it.
“Why did you write those hot checks?” It was time she asked. She could look at his record all day long, but it wouldn’t tell her the whys. When she thought about it, she’d started to feel differently. Yes, a crime was a crime, but it didn’t necessarily make up the whole of a person. There were reasons behind most crimes, especially when the “criminal” hadn’t repeated his mistakes. She couldn’t count the bar fights. They were kind of one of the only things for young men to do on Saturday nights besides church socials.
“It was one check. Not checks.” His eyes had flared and then he shook his head and sat back. “I guess I should have figured you would know all about my mistakes. It explains a few things.”
“What?”
“Did you find out about it before or after you decided you didn’t want to have anything to do with me?”
She had to tell him the truth. It seemed like it was a night for honesty no matter how much it hurt. “I knew about it before we spent the night together.”
“Then why would you spend the night with me? You weren’t drunk. I made sure you’d only had two beers before I approached you. I didn’t want to take advantage of you.”
“I did it because I knew I wouldn’t have a relationship with you. Because weirdly, I thought you were safe.”
His lips pursed slightly, and his eyes were on the table. “Well, I guess that’s honest.”
One of the things she’d learned about him was how he could look unaffected even when he was hurting. “I was honest with you that night. I told you it was about sex and nothing more.”
He nodded her way. “You were very honest with me that night. You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m the one who lied since I knew I wanted more from you and told you I was okay with it.”
“I was honest with you, but I wasn’t honest with myself. I was attracted to you from the moment I met you, but I didn’t want to be. It wasn’t you. I didn’t want to be attracted to anyone. The divorce was harder on me than I like to say.” It was one of the reasons dinner had put her on edge. She’d had to sit there with her parents, who’d been married for almost forty years, and her brother and her future sister-in-law, who’d turned out to have some real depth to them. And she’d known they were all disappointed in her. “I don’t like to fail and that’s what divorce felt like to me.”
“I fail all the time,” he replied softly. “I sure as hell failed at being a proper criminal.”
“What were you doing in Arizona?” She was curious. She’d asked Armie, but he hadn’t been sheriff at the time. She certainly hadn’t asked any of the Guidrys.
“I was making a fool of myself,” he replied. “I had a friend who got some work on film sets. He convinced me I should come out and try to be an actor. He had an agent who’d seen my picture and convinced him he could find me some work. I didn’t want to be an actor or a model, but at the time I did want to get out of Papillon. I got in my car and got as far as Phoenix before it broke down. Naturally I met