The Sword and the Scythe

Chapter 15: Come Together

Charlotte got up the next morning feeling cranky and groggy after yet another night of restless sleep. The part of her that was tired enough to cry wanted to go crawl in bed with Leroy to get a good night's rest. The idea of curling up against a Grim Reaper for the night, regardless of his secrets, no longer bothered her. And that was a serious problem.

Yes, he was a Grim Reaper, but he had still been her best friend for the last four years. Sure, he'd kept his own life a secret from her, but he had never let her down. Every single time she had needed something since she'd known him, he had come through for her.

But...she had to admit that something was still different between them. The more he answered her questions about his long life, the more she wanted to know. She could tell that he was trying to build the wall back up between them—and failing. If she prodded him, she was sure that now she could get him to revisit conversations he'd previously shut down. She wanted to know everything there was to know about him.

The things she wanted to know most were the things she couldn't bring herself to ask him. About his wife, Sarah—a woman he'd apparently not been in love with. What did that mean? And who were the two people he had been in love with? She could only assume that one of them had to be Marilyn, based on his reaction watching the movie the day before.

And it bothered her. A lot. No wonder he didn't date. He'd been in love with the most beautiful woman in the world.

It was all she'd been able to think about for twenty-four hours.

She brewed a fresh pot of coffee, running her hands through her hair as she leaned against the counter to wait for it. She was being crazy. Why should it matter to her who Leroy may or may not have been in love with?

Because you like him, came a little voice from the back of her mind.

For the first time, she wondered if Brandon hadn't been on to something. Leroy was a handsome guy and she couldn't deny that she was attracted to him. He definitely stirred up dormant feelings in her. Maybe it was one of those things you had to do once to get out of your system...

The coffee pot dinged as it finished brewing and Charlotte let out a sigh of relief as she hurried to grab it and fill her mug. After a few grateful gulps, she topped it off again and tried to think of something to do. Well, that wasn't quite what she meant. She needed something to preoccupy her mind from what she wanted to do. As she passed into the living room she walked by the bookshelves and noticed for the first time that there were thick photo albums tucked into the bottom shelf of Leroy's books.

Happy for the distraction, she grabbed them and took them to the couch. Second guessing herself, she wondered if he'd get mad that she was prying into his stuff—but she'd been doing a lot of that lately and he didn't seem to mind as much as he used to. Besides, he was still asleep in his room. There wasn't any harm in looking through them—especially if she didn't get caught.

The very first picture in the album made her laugh out loud. Leroy was standing in a dingy bar and even just a single look at him told her this picture was from the 1980s. He was wearing a pair of leather pants, but instead of one of the ratty band shirts she was used to, he'd paired it with a leather vest and nothing underneath. His hair was long and feathered with a red bandana around his forehead and he was dripping in studded jewelry. She ran a finger along the photo of his chest—he'd had fewer tattoos back then.

It looked like the next chunk of photos was from the 1930s and early 1940s, judging by the neatness of Leroy's hair combed out of his face and the presence of Danny in many of the photos. It was odd to see Leroy so clean cut and so...normal and suburban. He looked like such a mundane, normal father in the pictures where his son was young. Other than his rose tattoos and a strange, bulky ring he wore in all the photos, he looked like a normal, lawnmower-pushing, khaki-wearing dad. In those photos, there was a light in his eyes she'd never seen before. As Danny grow in the photos, they looked less like father and son and more like brothers. Seeing the happiness in his eyes—absent in all the later photos—hurt her to look at. She turned the page, hoping to find a new decade of photos.