Broken to Pieces Read online

  "Are you okay?"

  She looked up and sniffled, "Yeah. I think so. This is just a lot to take in."

  Joe reached across the table and patted her knee, "I understand. A lot has happened."

  Emily could tell that he wanted to say something to her.

  "What's wrong, Sherriff?"

  He pushed back in his chair and balled his hands up together.

  "Well, word around town is that you are going to sell this place. Is that true?"

  "I've been given the option."

  "But are you planning on exercising it?"

  She looked up to his dark eyes, "Why?"

  "A lot of us would be really sad to see the Harper family leave. You guys have been a part of all of us for generations. It just wouldn't be right."

  Emily looked over to Adam.

  "I was thinking the same thing. Could you grab those folders for me?"

  "Sure."

  He hopped up and darted in and out of the kitchen. On the way back, both stacks of paperwork sat in an unstable pile on the insides of his arms. After a wobbly approach, he slammed the heavy stack down onto the table in front of her.

  "There ya go."

  "Thanks."

  "Don't worry about it," he replied and caressed the top of her head with three fingers before taking his seat again. "Are you ready to make it official?"

  She eyed the stacks and swallowed loudly, "Do you-do any of you have a pen?"

  Sherriff Joe yanked one out of his front pocket and gently set it on the table.

  "Thanks."

  Emily picked the thing up and twirled it in her fingers. It was funny, she mused, that so much in life could hinge on something as simple as a signature.

  Without making her guests wait any longer, she grabbed the pink book, flipped it open and began scribbling her name next to countless orange flags that stuck out from the sides.

  "So," Joe piped up, "what is that?"

  "This," she paused and scratched her name down again, "is the paperwork that I have to sign to take over the Inn."

  She looked up just long enough to see the sense of relief wash over his face.

  "Are you still going to run the business?"

  "Yep."

  Joe picked his hat up from the table, stood up and placed it back on top of his thinning hair.

  "You're going to make a lot of people around here very happy."

  "Don't worry," Adam responded. "She already has."

  —

  A couple of hours before the sun set, Emily took her new rifle out of her parents' room and drove her dad's truck up to where she and Tex had gone shooting months before.

  It felt like a lifetime had passed since then.

  Once there, she climbed out of the truck and gently slipped her new rifle from between the cushions on the passenger's side. It still felt odd in her hands, though the awkward sensation was already starting to wane.

  A few steps ahead, illuminated by the truck's orange-tinted headlights, Emily took up her spot on a tiny hill. She raised the weapon to eye-level and looked out over the endless run of trees and their vibrant leaves.

  It took almost a full half hour for Emily to find Tex's elusive target in a spot that she was sure she checked six or seven times before.

  "There you are."

  She fired off the first of the three rounds that were left in the magazine. It spit out of the end of the rifle and tore its way through the canopy with only a faint rustle.

  Emily took a deep breath and blinked slowly before pointing the muzzle at the can and firing again. Just as the first time, it whizzed past the painted cylinder and sent down a shower of shredded leaf bits.

  "Come on," she grunted through her clenched teeth at nobody in particular.

  Before the last bullet even left the gun, she quickly resigned herself to another defeat with a sigh and tightened her finger around the trigger.

  The metallic snap and rattle of the elusive target being hit and falling to the ground was so faint at first that she immediately dismissed it as being in her head. A few moments later, however, the young woman rested the rifle against a trunk and broke out in a full run toward the tree in which the target had been perched.

  There, nestled between two exposed roots, the little can glimmered from where the bullet had ripped away the layer of spray paint, leaving behind a golden circle that easily reflected the day's fading light.

  Emily stared down at it in silence.

  Was this some kind of divine intervention; a way for the forces that be to assure her that everything was going to work out? Or was it simply a rickety old can that just happened to tumble from its already precarious perch? Perhaps, in the end, not everything had a hidden agenda or a secret message.

  Maybe, she wondered as she grabbed the can with one hand and ran her thumbs over its tiny ridges, it doesn't have to mean anything.

  While Emily knew that nothing could guarantee her happiness, she realized in that moment that, regardless of what tomorrow held, she would be grateful simply to be able to see it with Adam by her side. With him, she finally understood, it was finally okay to just be.

  She looked down to the can again and smiled. The deep, moving sensation of her heart letting go of all the pain, betrayal and hurt at once made her feel like she was going to float away on the crisp breeze that funneled down the mountain face above.

  "Maybe you had a purpose after all," she whispered and shoved the memento into her back pocket. "Maybe you did."

  ###

  Author's Note

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  This ebook is copyrighted by Avery Stark and is protected under the US Copyright Act of 1976 and all other applicable international, federal, state and local laws, with all rights reserved. No part of this may be copied, or changed in any format, sold, or used in any way other than what is outlined within this ebook under any circumstances without express permission from Avery Stark. All characters depicted are 18 years or older and are works of fiction. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.