The Best Man

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  About The Author

  The Best Man

  Copyright © 2018 by Kat Tammen.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase.

  Cover design by Jada D’Lee Designs

  Formatting by Jersey Girl Designs

  Edited by Silently Correcting Your Grammar

  First Edition: July 2018

  For William

  I lugged my suitcase over to the closet door before turning to drop my backpack on the foot of the bed. Moving in a slow circle, I inspected the room around me. Other than the space smelling somewhat closed-in, I could see my father had at least tried to tidy things before I arrived. My bookcase and the top of my dresser held no traces of dust, and there was a slightly wilted daisy bobbing its head over the edge of a small jar of water on my bedside table. I sighed, feeling instantly comfortable, surrounded by my old things.

  The familiar sound of heavy boots on the stairs caused me to turn with a smile just an instant before I was pulled into a strong-armed hug against the solid wall of a chest. I wrapped my arms around my father, returning his embrace even as I laughingly teased him about nearly crushing me.

  “Ugh! Badge...making...permanent impression,” I grunted.

  “Sorry,” my father chuckled, letting his arms drop as he stepped back. I smoothed my ponytail and looked up at him. The slight graying at the temples of his dark hair was the only indication time had passed while I’d been away. He seemed otherwise unchanged. And he still smelled the same—like traces of smoke he couldn’t ever quite wash away and his favorite candy, root beer barrels. I pushed my uplifted palm in his direction, and he chuckled as he withdrew a little cellophane-wrapped candy from his front shirt pocket to give to me.

  My father, known simply as “Sully” by most everyone, was a firefighter and EMT here in the small town of Astoria, where I’d grown up. He worked long, hard hours. It hadn’t been easy, raising me as a single father, but he’d done his best.

  “Sorry I couldn’t pick you up at the airport,” he told me, shaking his head. “Some gas cans combusted in ol’ Johnson’s shed, and we needed to take care of that before the fire had a chance to spread up to his garage.” I unwrapped the candy and popped it into my mouth, tucking it into my cheek while I shrugged.

  “It’s okay. The shuttle wasn’t bad. I’ve missed the scenery around here.”

  “It’s a big change from the palm trees you’ve gotten used to.”

  “Like a whole different world,” I agreed. “Thanks for cleaning. And for the flower.”

  “I didn’t get a chance to wash the stuff on your bed.”

  “I can do laundry,” I told him. “I’ll wait until you shower first. Are you hungry? I can make a couple sandwiches.”

  “There’s a ball game on television,” my father suggested. “Want to watch a few innings with your old man?”

  After a long day of travel, a quiet night relaxing sounded just about perfect, and I told him so before he left to change out of his uniform. I busied myself, emptying my suitcase and organizing my things while Dad was in the bathroom down the hall. When I heard him turn off the water, I bent to strip the comforter and sheets from my mattress. I stopped when my eyes landed on the simple white house beyond my bedroom window. Kneeling on my bed with a smile on my face, I touched the frayed piece of yarn that was still tied in a knot to the carpenter’s tack I’d pounded into the windowsill. At one time, that piece of yarn was much longer and connected two tin cans. It was a super-secret messaging system that ran between my window and the one facing mine on that white house next door. The string broke a long time ago, and the cans were eventually replaced by cell phones. But I’d always kept that little piece of string still tied to the tack—to remind me of those special times.

  Andy.

  Andy had been my very best friend ever since we were five years old. It would have been the worst summer I could remember if not for his family moving in next door. That was the summer Miss Clarie, from the church, had to go to Arizona to help take care of her sick sister. Until then, she’d been the one who watched me when Dad was at work. He was convinced he’d find another sitter to get us by. It would be easier when I started school. We’d be fine. I, however, wasn’t so sure.

  My mother and father had been high school sweethearts and they enrolled in college together. They were going to wait until after they graduated to get married, but I came along and changed all of that. They were newlyweds with a baby when my grandfather retired from his position as a firefighter and moved with Nan to Florida, just as he’d always promised. Still, my parents were determined to succeed on their own.

  Dad worked hard to continue his education to become a firefighter, just as Gramps had been, and Mom dropped out of school to have me. She only took a break from her studies for two years before she was ready to start attending night classes. But horrible bouts of migraines led her to make a doctor’s appointment. It was then my mother learned an aggressive brain tumor was the cause of her headaches. She passed away two weeks before my third birthday. Despite my grandparent’s offers to come back home, Dad wouldn’t hear of it. Not even at his most desperate would be have considered altering their hard-earned plans.

  And so, for those first couple of years, I practically lived at Miss Clarie’s house while my father worked to start his career. Even though he bravely insisted that we would be fine on our own when she got called away for the family emergency, his schedule would have made things damn near impossible without help from our neighbors.

  I remember sitting on my front porch, watching the movers carry in furniture from the long truck that was parked in the street in front of their house. I’d pulled the skirt of my dress down under my toes and had my chin resting on the arms I’d folded around my knees. I had been feeling miserable, worried about who my father would find to replace Miss Clarie, and I scowled as I watched a pretty blond couple holding hands while they walked up their new front steps. They looked like Ken and Barbie. They laughed and hugged each other. And they kissed each other. Worst of all? They looked happy.

  “Hi! What’s your name?”

  I blinked and looked down at the voice that called from my front yard. A young boy stood there, staring up at me through dark-framed glasses. He had freckles, big front teeth, and a head covered with loose, golden curls.

  “What?”

  “I said...what’s your name?” He repeated himself.

  “Emmy Sullivan.”

  “I’m Andy Dalton. I live there now.” He pointed over his sho
ulder to the house next door. “How old are you?”

  “Five.”

  “Me too.” He took my steps two at a time and plopped his skinny frame down to sit beside me. I stared at the tear in his jeans that stretched across one of his bony knees. “Do you have any brothers?”

  “No.”

  “I do. Samuel. That’s him over there.” I looked up in the direction in which he pointed, catching a glimpse of a tall, dark-haired boy just before he disappeared through their front door. “Any other kids live on this street?”

  “No.”

  “Do you like adventures?”

  “I guess.” I shrugged and smoothed the soft fabric of my dress down my legs.

  “Okay. Well...want to be my friend?”

  “Okay.”

  Andy stood when his mother called his name across the front yard. With a grin, he did a quick Spider-Man-style spin off the porch and landed in the grass below. I sat forward, smiling, madly impressed by his trick. It was just that easy, in that magic childhood age when the mere suggestion of being friends combined with a cool superhero stunt was all that was necessary to make it so.

  I grinned widely at the memory and jumped from the bed, concentrating on the task I had begun. I carried my bed linens downstairs and put them in the washing machine with a hefty shot of detergent. I didn’t mind the chore. I’d had to learn to do household tasks early in life. My father, God love him, had initially been clueless about how to run a home and raise a daughter on his own, despite the reassurances he’d given his parents. I never lacked for love, or for his total overprotection, but he’d come to rely a lot on Miss Clarie to take care of things for the first couple of years after my mother passed away. As I grew older, he and I had to learn to work as a team. The Daltons next door were a big part of that.

  Joy and Larry had moved to Astoria with a goal of raising their boys in a small town while renovating a riverfront restaurant into what would become Daltons’ Diner.

  “Smell that? Dad’s fryin’ fish. Do you like fish?” Andy had asked.

  “Sure.” I scrunched up my face, concentrating on removing the funny bone from the Operation game Andy had brought out to his front porch. His mother knelt on the ground in front of the flower bed below us, putting new plants in the fresh soil.

  “My dad makes the best fish ever. He’s gonna cook fish at the diner when he’s done rennerecting it.”

  “Renovating,” his mother spoke, listening in while performing her task.

  “My dad cooks better than my mom,” Andy declared, earning a chuckle from his mother. “I’ll bet he cooks better than your mom too. He cooks better than anybody.”

  “My mom doesn’t cook anything.” I shook my head and victoriously lifted the small plastic toy I’d extracted from the game with my tweezers. “She’s in heaven.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s all right. You can eat over here with us if you want. Mom, can Emmy eat dinner with us?”

  We both looked up at Andy’s mother then, waiting for her answer. She stood, her small garden trowel held loosely in her hand while she looked at me with a very strange, soft expression. Her mouth was open slightly in a little o-shape, but she didn’t make a sound.

  “Mom?” Andy asked again. “Did you hear me? I asked if Emmy could eat dinner with us.”

  “Of course,” she finally replied, shaking her head. “Of course, she can. You’re welcome here anytime, Emmy. Whenever you’d like.”

  Joy invited my father and me both to dinner that night. She had a long talk with my father and offered to babysit while Dad was at work. After that? Andy and I became virtually inseparable. Joy, who had always wanted a little girl, pulled me into her family fold immediately. Andy and I spent our days together playing, planning grand adventures, and chasing his older brother around. Samuel.

  Ah. Samuel Dalton.

  Whereas Andy had yellow hair and blue eyes like his parents, Samuel was different. His hair was darker, like chocolate dusted with just a little cinnamon at the ends, thick and straight, and always sticking up in a way that dared his mother to try to tame it with licked fingertips. Long, dark lashes curtained his golden-brown eyes that never failed to light with a smile a second or two before his mouth caught on to the notion. He was almost five years older than Andy and me, and very tall for his age. He was also kind and sweet and smart...and the prettiest boy I’d ever seen. I asked Joy once, why Andy looked so much like her but Samuel did not. She told me then that Samuel had been adopted. When I asked her what that meant, Joy said, “It means that even if he doesn’t have my hair or my eyes...he most certainly has my heart.” I guess I decided that he could have my heart too. Samuel Dalton was my very first crush.

  I shook my head to chase away the recollection. My smile dimmed but refused to be put away. I hummed happily to myself as I made a couple of sandwiches and opened a bag of chips. By the time my father returned downstairs, I had our plates set on trays in the living room and had grabbed a couple of beers from the refrigerator.

  “Here’s to you being home,” Dad said, popping the top of his can open and raising it in a salute. I nodded in his direction and took a sip of my own.

  We chatted a little while we watched the ball game. Dad caught me up on local town happenings, and I told him about the classes I planned to take in the fall. While my father wasn’t particularly talkative, it didn’t feel awkward. We stayed in touch so regularly, we didn’t have a lot to talk about. By the time the Mariners began the eighth inning, I was yawning rudely and apologized.

  “Don’t worry about it, kiddo,” my father chuckled. He leaned back in his recliner with the television remote in his hand. “You go on up to bed. It’s been a long day. I’ll be up when the game’s over.”

  “Night, Pops,” I said, kissing his cheek before leaving to carry my laundry upstairs. I remade my bed, took a shower, put on my pajamas, and was asleep almost as soon as I’d nestled myself beneath my freshly washed sheets.

  Sometime later, I blinked my eyes open, initially confused about my whereabouts. It only took a moment for me to remember I was back in my old bedroom in Astoria. It was obviously still the middle of the night, and something had brought me out of a very good dream. I glanced with bleary eyes toward the angry red numbers on my bedside alarm clock. Two a.m. I winced at the ungodly hour and closed my eyes to go back to sleep.

  Then I heard a noise again and recognized it as the sound that had pulled me from my sleep—a soft ping at my window. This time, I rolled to my knees with a sleepy smile on my face and knelt on the foot of my bed to unlatch the lock. The window lifted in its frame with a groan. It hadn’t been used in a while. I was sure that would change.

  A shadowy form stood below me on the grass with his arm bent up at an angle.

  He’d obviously been ready to launch something else at my window when my appearance stopped him.

  “You better be quiet, or you’ll wake my daddy,” I whispered loudly. “You know he’s got a gun, and he’s the best shot in Clatsop County!”

  “Then get your ass down here, before I have to climb up there to get you.”

  I left the window open and sprung from the bed with a laugh to run down the stairs as quietly as I could. Throwing open my front door, I hurried across the porch, down the steps, and around to the side of the house where I jumped on Andy’s back and wrapped my arms and legs around him from behind. “Why didn’t you climb down the trellis?” Andy laughed while he grabbed my knees at his sides.

  “I’m still half asleep! I probably would have fallen if I tried.” I giggled and kissed him loudly on the cheek. “I didn’t want to provide a literal injury to the term ‘summer break’!”

  Andy loosened his hold on my legs, and I slid down his back until my bare feet were in the cool grass below. He turned almost immediately and threw his arms around me for a hug. He had to bend quite a bit to do so. Andy was tall. He had been since his growth spurt in ninth grade. He towered over my meager five feet two inches. When he stood, he had to push the tre
ndy frames of his glasses back into proper place.

  “Let me look at ya.” He brushed my sleep-mussed hair away from my face while I grinned goofily up at him. “Nah.” He wrinkled his nose. “Just as ugly as ever!”

  “Hey!” I punched him lightly in the stomach, and he jumped away. “It’s not like you are any comparison to the sexy stranger I was just dreaming about. Whom, I will inform you, I was about to do very naughty things with before you woke me up so rudely.”

  “Still a smartass. Nice to know some things never change.”

  “You make it sound like we haven’t seen each other in years,” I scolded.

  “It’s always too long.”

  Andy wrapped his arm around my shoulder, and we turned toward the backyard. I agreed with his sentiment. Since going away to college, Andy and I made a point of traveling to spend time together whenever we could. We communicated through email, text messaging, and frequent phone calls. He and I had come a long way since talking through tin cans connected by yarn, but it was necessary. Because of our efforts, our relationship had never suffered. We remained best friends, just as we always had been.

  “How’s Lily?” Andy’s adorable girlfriend had joined us during the past spring break when we arranged to meet in St. Louis. Though it wasn’t exactly a dream destination, it was a city we’d chosen for being somewhere close to a halfway point between us. We made the best of it by signing up for skydiving classes together, and we’d rounded out the week visiting muddy-river bars and local attractions. Lily was fun and had an adventurous spirit. She and I had hit it off immediately.

  “Beautiful.” Andy’s bright smile lit up the darkness, and he dropped his arm to grab my hand as we made our way toward the old tree house in the back yard. The swing below it hung in a decrepit state. It was hard to believe the old structure in the boughs still stood. “Most of our greatest adventures started in this old tree house,” he commented. I smiled, looking up at it in silent agreement. Andy rested his body on the swing and tentatively tested the strength of the ropes while he continued speaking. “That’s why I wanted you to come home. To spend time with me here.”