He’d met Dee years ago, she lived two towns over. They’d met after some football game when he’d been in his pads and jersey, walking back to the locker rooms after we’d beat her home team. They struck up a conversation that lasted about five minutes and he’d never forgotten her.

He met her again while she was at a friend of hers bachelorette party. Her girls had been doing the trawl, J&J’s came up late, about six bars in. She’d been hammered and Morrie’d just been hanging at J&J’s then, working construction. They’d struck up another conversation and he’d pitched a fit when she said she was leaving, getting into her girlfriend’s car to go to another bar. It was part that he didn’t want her to go, part that he didn’t want her to get in a car with a drunk woman behind the wheel. Even just getting acquainted, they’d had a rip roarin’ fight, Morrie won and he took her home. They were inseparable ever since – engaged within six months, married after just a year.

It was fair to say until we took over J&J’s, he doted on her and she returned the favor, even after all these years and two kids.

But now Morrie took assuming the running of the family business seriously, maybe too seriously. She’d been lost in that and she didn’t like it.

I could see her point.

“My babies are my world, but you got a good man?” Dee said. “Wouldn’t be hard for you to make do.”

“Mom said Colt and Melanie tried to make a go of it but Melanie –”

“Melanie wasn’t Juliet.”

I stared at her silent, mainly because I didn’t know what the fuck she was talking about.

Dee kept going. “Romeo and Juliet, say they didn’t die but Juliet got pissed and took off. Everyone would know it was Romeo and Juliet, would always be Romeo and Juliet, even if later Romeo hooked up with Nancy. No one ever heard of Nancy, doesn’t even sound right, Romeo and Nancy. Everyone knows Romeo’s meant to be with Juliet. Even if Romeo loved Nancy, Nancy would always know she was never Juliet.”

I didn’t want Dee to compare Colt and me to star-crossed lovers who eventually died in each others’ arms because, these days, that was way too damn close for comfort.

And I didn’t want Dee to think like that at all about Colt and me and Melanie.

“Dee –”

“She lived her life with Colt in your shadow. She wanted a baby that bad to stake him to her, ‘cause no way a woman could live her life knowin’ she wasn’t her other half’s true other half. She had to find a way to make him stay and Colt would stay, no matter what, for family. She couldn’t give him that and she couldn’t live under that cloud, wonderin’, each time you came home, when his head would turn.”

I didn’t want to be talking about this. We were treading on dangerous ground.

“He’s a man, Dee, but he wouldn’t step out on Melanie.”

I said it even though I couldn’t be certain it was true, not because of me but because Colt had a dick and that was, in my experience, the bottom-line truth of it for all men.

“Don’t matter he wouldn’t, she thought he would. She got out from under that cloud and I don’t blame her. I don’t know why she stepped under it in the first place. Made her miserable and she made Colt watch her fade away.” I opened my mouth to say something but Dee waved her hand in my direction and continued. “I like Melanie, don’t get me wrong, she’s a good gal. But she didn’t do right by him. He felt it, her leavin’ him, and that was cruel. She wanted something she couldn’t have, knew it and reached out and grabbed it anyway but he paid the price.”

Again. I knew was what she left unsaid and that unspoken word cut through me like a blade.

“Dee –”

“Everyone wants to see you two happy, Feb, together, apart, it don’t matter. Just happy,” she leaned in, “but neither of you are happy, girl, and we all know why. It’s tearin’ both of you apart and all of us right along with it.”

“I love you, babe,” I said quietly, “but with all the shit’s that’s going on, I don’t need this.”

“With all the shit that’s goin’ on, girl, you need this more than you ever did.”

“There’s things you don’t know.”

“Yeah, I know, but they happened twenty years ago, Feb.”

“But –”

“Alexander Colton touched my hand, watched my ass while I moved, got that smile on his face when he saw me laugh, especially when I was going through all kinds of hell, I’d learn to get passed whatever it was that happened twenty years ago and grab onto happiness.”

I started to say something, I didn’t know what, but I didn’t get it out.

This was because I heard an angry, male voice shouting, “You cunt!”

My head came around and every fiber of my being froze when I watched Loren Smithfield stalk across the room.

“You, fucking, cunt!”

He was talking to me. I knew this because his eyes were on me, not to mention the fact that he was pointing at me.

“Lore, what the fuck?” Al asked loudly from the pool table but his cue was at a slant at his side, held in his fist and he was starting to move closer.

Lore ignored Al, he had his target in his sights and not even Al was going to make him lose sight of that target. He made it to my end of the bar and smashed a fist into it, making a loud noise that caused me to jump. “Point the finger at me for killin’ Angie! What the hell is that?”

Oh Lord. I didn’t figure this was good.

“Lore, calm down, man,” Jimbo said, also moving in close as did Dad and, I was surprised to note (vaguely, because I was scared out of my mind at the fury twisting Lore’s face), Joe-Bob.

Dee sat frozen on her stool, her eyes locked on Lore, and Mom, Meems and Jessie stayed back.

So did I, holding my position by Dee with the bar a safety barrier between me and Lore’s rage.

Lore jabbed a finger at me. “I got kids, they hear this shit… a job, a reputation, a life in this town, people think this shit about me, you think this shit about me. Jesus, you bitch!” He leaned in, his whole body a threat, still pointing at me. “I should hack you up, you crazy cunt!”

That was all he said because suddenly he wasn’t there. Instead he was five feet back and still sailing, bumping into chairs, arms wheeling and Colt was stalking him silently, calmly, his movements slow and economical, his eyes on Lore like Lore was prey.

Lore gained control of his limbs, locked his eyes on Colt and took a stance that was defensive at the same time it was threatening. “Back off, Colt.”

“You need to go somewhere and calm down, Lore,” Colt advised stopping, not taking a stance, just standing there loose-limbed but looking alert and at the ready.

“Fuck that! She told you I killed Angie,” Lore shouted.

“How’d you hear that?” Colt asked softly.

“Marty, we were havin’ beers at Josh’s place.”

Colt shook his head in an unhappy way that I reckoned Marty just caught himself some trouble.

“She’s helping with the investigation at my request,” Colt told Lore.

“Yeah, and she fingered me!”

“February never said you did it.”

“Yeah, if that’s true why’d Chris come ‘round yesterday, askin’ my whereabouts?”

“Procedure.”

“Bullshit.”

“Chris came to you in plainclothes and asked you some questions, Lore. Don’t you get why he did it like that?” Colt didn’t wait for his answer and finished. “It’s done, let it go.”

“Fuck that, Colt, my kids hear about this –”

“They wouldn’t of, if Marty had kept his fuckin’ mouth shut and you’d kept your fuckin’ cool and didn’t come tearin’ into this bar and makin’ an ass of yourself. Now the whole town’ll know and you got no one but yourself to blame.”

“Yeah, and Feb.”

Colt’s body went from loose but alert to hostile.

“I’ll repeat, Feb was acting on a request made by me.”

“And I’ll repeat, doin’ that, she fingered me for hackin’ up fuckin’ Angie. Shit, I didn’t even dip into that dirty twat, who knows what she had swimmin’ up there after the whole town had their dicks in her? And I get blamed for killin’ her?”

“You’re talkin’ about an innocent woman who was brutally murdered.”

“I’m talkin’ about Angie.”

Colt moved and therefore so did Lore. It wasn’t exactly a surprise attack but still, Lore barely got a chance to throw up a defense before Colt had him flying through the air, one fist at his collar. Lore landed on his back on top of a table and Colt leaned over him.

“This’ll get messy, you keep talkin’ about Angie that way and you’ll be breathin’ through a tube I ever hear you talk to Feb that way again.”

This was not an idle threat and everyone in that bar knew it. Lore stared up at Colt and wisely kept his mouth shut.

Colt yanked him off the table by his collar and then with a shove sent him flying. Lore righted himself and went back on the defense, no threat this time, he was scared. I didn’t blame him, with one hand Colt had sent him flying through the air.

“We ask a citizen to help with an investigation, we do it with purpose,” Colt told him, his voice pure ice. “They think there’ll be retribution, like you just dished out or worse, they’ll hesitate or not help at all. Means we’re fucked. I don’t like to be fucked, Lore. I do the fuckin’, you got me?”

I heard Colt’s ass ring but he ignored it as he faced down Lore.

After what took way too long, Lore mumbled, “I got you.”

“Now go somewhere and calm the fuck down. You come back in here, you do it to have a drink and you have that drink after you apologize to Feb. We clear?”