They Left Me at the Canyon, So I Came Back for the Wedding novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: The Tin Barrel

By Wednesday night I had slept eleven hours at Rachel's and eaten four meals standing up.

I had also filed a police report, which the officer called a civil matter and then looked at his shoes.

Rachel took one look at me and said I needed a drink.

"Not here," she said. "I don't want you drinking in my kitchen. I want you drinking where the bartender knows your name."

"Nobody knows my name."

"They will by Friday. You're on a neighbor's phone with four hundred thousand views."

I had not looked at the number.

I had looked at the clip once, of me taking a ring off a woman's finger on a porch, and I had put the phone in a drawer.

Rachel drove me to a bar on the east side called the Tin Barrel.

It had a long scarred counter, a pool table, and a jukebox playing something with a fiddle.

I sat at the end of the bar with a beer I didn't want.

My right hand hurt.

I'd cut the heel of it on a splintered corner of the record shelf, hauling the shelf off the lawn, and Rachel had put a bandage on it that was already peeling.

A woman came out from the back with a tray of glasses.

She had auburn hair in a braid and a flannel shirt over a gray tee.

She stopped.

So did I.

"Caleb," Carrie said.

"Carrie?"

"My mother lives in Dayton. The park shut for the season yesterday, and this is my cousin's bar." She set the tray on the counter. "I was going to call you tomorrow."

"I'd have picked up."

"I know." She looked at the bandage. "What happened to your hand?"

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