Cole in My Stocking (3 page)

Jesus. He was becoming delusional. Maybe he should lie down on a cot and catch a few Z’s. Yeah, and then Stace would bust his balls for wimping out on the night shift.

Stace.

He glanced around the lot. His friend’s cruiser was two spots over. Great. She’d be on him like white on rice the second he walked into the station. “She’s an adult now, Cole,” she’d told him yesterday when he’d filled her in about Gripper’s death-bed confession and how he was supposed to relay all that messed up shit to Mandy. “If you see her again and there’s still a spark, you shouldn’t let her leave town without telling her how you feel.”

He’d convinced himself there wouldn’t be a spark. Scratch that, he’d
tried
to convince himself. Unfortunately, his pragmatic side had known better. He’d been sparking for Mandy for six pathetic years. Tonight, the second he’d seen her, the spark had shot up into the air like a frigging grand finale at a fireworks show.

The December night chill seeped into the cruiser. He should go inside and face the music.

Stace would razz him about changing Mandy’s flat. He’d known from the twinkle in her eye when she’d arrived with the WD-40 that she’d pegged him. He’d been patrolling Newburgh more heavily than usual tonight, hoping to glimpse Mandy coming back into town. Like a fool. Only he hadn’t felt foolish when he’d found her on the side of the road in actual need of assistance. He’d felt like her hero.

He snorted. Like she needed or wanted a hero. That girl didn’t need anybody. She’d proven it when she’d left town and made her own way in the world without help from her father or anyone else. Look what she was doing with her life. Look what she’d overcome. Mandy Holcomb was one remarkable woman.

And now she was back in Newburgh. Even though the timing sucked because her dad had just died, even though he was too old for her, he was already planning ways to entice her to stay.

Chapter 2

My heart sank as I turned on the lights and tried to figure out where in this disaster zone my dad had called home I was going to sleep tonight.

The scent of dust hung thick in the air. Every flat surface that could be spotted through the clutter had a coat of grime deep enough to draw patterns in. I knew because I made a smiley face on the top of the microwave between a half-empty bag of popcorn and a stack of paper plates. Pill bottles, ash trays, bowls of spare change, remote controls, pantry items, empty beer cans, insect repellent, ammo boxes and other miscellany covered the eating nook in the kitchen. Stacks of newspapers, gun periodicals and junk mail made a maze of the living room floor. Instead of bringing old coats to the Goodwill to make room in the closet, Dad had added a coatrack to the living room’s mismatched furniture. It was top heavy with outerwear—a camouflage shell for hunting, flannel shirts with worn elbows for warmer weather, a bright orange parka for plowing, a slicker for when it rained. Some of my old coats peeked from underneath. Piled on top were hats of every sort, knitted, fur-lined, ear-flapped, even a hard-hat. A breeze from walking by too fast would topple the whole thing.

I’d known my dad had some hoarder tendencies, but he’d gotten out of control since I’d been away. This made me both sad and resentful. Sad because clearly, Dad had relied on the cleaning and tidying I’d done when I’d lived here, and leaving him all those years ago had doomed him to this mess. Resentful because when I’d left, he’d been healthy and strong. He could have cleaned if he’d wanted to. But he hadn’t. And now this mess was mine to deal with.

I’d barely recovered from an accelerated undergrad track followed by three intense years of graduate study. Now, instead of settling into the job I’d been so proud to land at Philly’s acclaimed Public Health Management Center and celebrating Christmas with my friends, I was here.

Being a selfish jerk.

Suck it up, buttercup.

Maybe Dad and I hadn’t acted like family, especially the last few years, but we
were
family. Family mattered. Dad’s death mattered. I just wish I could feel the truth of that without having to constantly remind myself of it.

Leaving my suitcase in the living room, I went down the narrow hallway that led to the bedrooms and bathroom. Dad had added three rooms onto the trailer once upon a time, transforming the back half from single-wide to double-wide. What looked like a modest mobile home from the driveway was actually quite spacious and well-equipped inside.

I peeked in the rooms as I went. There was the weight room, where I’d discovered my love for running thanks to a treadmill Dad had rescued from the dump. That room also contained two storage racks full of canned foodstuffs and bottled water, Dad’s insurance against government overthrow, zombie apocalypse, or the occasional week when he never got sober enough to go out for groceries. There was the office with its roll-top desk and six-foot-tall safe filled with collectable guns and important documents. I still remembered the combination, even though the last time I opened it had been to get out my birth certificate and Social Security card before moving out. Across from the laundry area was my old room. Beyond that, across from the bathroom was Dad’s room, the trailer’s one original bedroom.

The door to my room was closed. When I pushed it open, I found everything just the way I’d left it. The dresser, beanbag chair and bedspread were gray with years of dust. Cobwebs softened the corners of the room and stretched between the floor lamp and the mirror, where I used to style my hair and do my makeup before heading out to school or parties or friends’ houses. I wouldn’t be able to sleep in here until I aired it out and gave it a good cleaning, which I was too exhausted to contemplate tonight.

Closing the door behind me, I returned to the living room, where I waded through a pile of boots and scraped a few loads-worth of clean laundry off the couch. The old three-seater was nappy and saggy, but it would do for tonight. I fluffed a decorative pillow I’d made in Home Ec. and spread one of Grandma’s afghans out for a blanket.

The phone rang.

It was quarter to one in the morning. I went to the kitchen, where a corded phone hung on the wall next to the fridge. “Hello?” I answered.

“Did you disarm the security system when you got in?”

I recognized Cole’s voice, even though I’d never spoken to him on the phone before. It felt oddly intimate, especially given the hour. So intimate I stood stunned. My brain refused to process what he’d just said.

“Mandy?”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah? You disarmed the alarm?”

Focus, Mandy.
I glanced at the ADT panel on the wall. “No. It wasn’t set.”

“You have a look around? Everything in order?”

I wouldn’t exactly say that, but the disorder wasn’t anything he’d be concerned about. He meant had anyone broken in. “The house is fine.” The deadbolt had been secure when I’d unlocked it.

“You have a look up in the shop?”

Dad’s gunsmith shop above the garage was on the same security system as the trailer, operated from the panel inside the trailer’s front door. “No.” Cole’s implication that someone might have broken into Dad’s shop made my shoulders tighten. “Should I?”

“No,” he said quickly. “Just set the alarm for motion-off tonight. I’ll come check out the shop sometime tomorrow.” He meant I should arm the door and window alarms but not the motion detector. Dad and I had called it the “at-home” setting. That’s how he would arm the system when he’d come in from the shop for the night. No matter how drunk he was, he never forgot to arm the security system.

It had been two days since he’d passed away, four since he’d been taken to the hospital after a hospice worker had found him unconscious in his bed. He would have been mortified to know the shop’s security had been reduced to deadbolted doors and top-rated window locks for a few days.

“You remember the code?” he asked at my silence.

I’d never forget it. I’d punched it in so many times after coming home from school. Dad would often still be in bed. He’d work on guns or visit with friends late into the nights and sleep away the days. “Yeah.” The phone cord reached to the door. I walked over and set the alarm. It made a series of beeps.

“Good girl,” Cole said, his voice deep and close. My toes curled in my boots. “Don’t worry, okay? It’s just a precaution.” A precaution that had made him pick up the phone and call me at nearly one in the morning. “Sleep tight.” He hung up.

“Goodnight,” I said to the dead connection.

Unease made me jumpy as I got ready for bed. I kept hearing sounds outside. Logically, I knew they were just the noises of the wooded area I’d grown up in, but I’d adapted to a new set of sounds living in Philadelphia. The city sounds of constant traffic and sirens. The apartment sounds of feet pounding up and down the stairs and voices murmuring on the other side of the walls at all hours. The creaking of towering pines in the breeze and the groans of the trailer’s plastic siding were a lost symphony, louder to me since I hadn’t heard it in six years.

Hands on hips, I frowned at the couch. I couldn’t imagine lying down to go to sleep without checking the shop first. Dad would have checked if he’d had any doubts. I would just poke my head in the door and make sure it didn’t look ransacked.

Dad kept a loaded .357 Magnum under the table beside his favorite recliner in the den. I found it and checked the chamber and safety. I wasn’t about to perform a cell phone search and rescue at this hour, and I knew better than to investigate a potential security breach with no back-up. A girl couldn’t be too careful, or so Dad had taught me.

The revolver was heavier than my 9mm Luger, which I usually kept at home but had stowed in a lockbox under the passenger seat of the beast for protection on the trip. The kick from the .357 Magnum would be a bitch if I had to use it. But it would “do the job,” as Dad would say, if a job needed to be done.

Snatching the keys from the peg by the phone, I disarmed the alarm and headed for the shop. When I opened the door and flipped on the lights, my heart lunged into my throat.

There were no obvious signs of break in. Nothing was out of place. And yet wrongness permeated everything.

Dad wasn’t here.

He wasn’t hunched over the workbench with a pair of magnifying goggles perched on his head, greeting me with a gruff “Hey kiddo” spoken around a cigarette. He wasn’t standing, feet braced apart, at the window, firing a repaired rifle into the two-hundred-foot berm he’d built out back. He wasn’t shooting the breeze with one of his motorcycle-riding buddies.

Dad wasn’t here. He’d never be here again.

The sudden pain in my heart overtook me. It stole my breath.

The first tear for my father fell. More followed. They didn’t stop until long after I’d stumbled back to the house and collapsed on the couch.

Dad was gone.

Gone.

And I’d been a terrible daughter.

* * * *

One nice thing about a New England winter is you didn’t have to bring groceries inside right away. Convenient, since I’d left five bags of frozen food, toilet paper, and cleaning supplies in the beast overnight. I hadn’t wanted Cole to see me lugging in armloads of groceries and getting out of his cruiser to lend a hand. I’d imposed on him enough with the flat.

Also, I hadn’t been sure what state I’d find the trailer in and hadn’t wanted Cole to see inside. Friday morning, as I stood in Dad’s kitchen trying not to let the enormity of the clutter dishearten me, I was glad for my foresight.

While Dad had often entertained customers and friends up in the shop, he’d never invited anyone into the trailer. I assumed he would have been embarrassed to have his friends see how he lived, especially in contrast to his tidy workplace. When I’d lived here, I’d been embarrassed by the mess, and it hadn’t been half as bad as it was now, mainly because I’d done my best to keep it as organized as possible. The clutter was part of the reason I’d never invited friends over. The other part of the reason was the unpredictability of Dad’s moods…and whether or not he’d be sober.

Shaking away the less pleasant memories of my childhood in this trailer, I pulled my freshly-washed and dried hair into a ponytail, slipped my feet into my cozy Uggs, and hauled in my bags from Shaw’s. After a breakfast of microwaved eggs and sausage and freshly ground Dunkin Donuts coffee, I grabbed a metal hanger from the closet in my room. Time to rescue a cell phone.

There were two doors to go through to get in and out of the trailer—the door to the trailer itself and the storm door on the screened-in porch, which served as a repository for even more of Dad’s clutter. I had just grabbed the handle of the main door to head out to the porch when I heard the distinctive sounds of someone stomping up the five wooden steps to the storm door. A second later, that someone knocked hard enough to make the glass pane rattle in the aluminum frame.

I glanced at the clock. It was 9:15. My appointment with Max wasn’t until 9:30. He must be running early. The cell phone would have to wait. I stuck the hanger in the coat closet and opened the main door to find a tall man in a down parka and an orange knit cap on the doorstep. A pair of Oakleys hid his eyes.

Cole.

“What are you doing here?” I blurted as I unlocked the storm door and swung it open.

Gone was the forest green statie uniform he’d had on last night. He was in civilian clothes, which included fawn-colored work boots, cargo pants, and a gray waffle-weave Henley peeking from the V of his partially-zipped parka. His cheeks were smooth with a fresh shave and rosy from the cold.

Behind him a big white pick-up truck was parked beside the beast. If his face was cold after driving over, it must mean he lived close enough for the heater not to have warmed up yet. That shouldn’t have excited me, but it did.

I’d done the math after our encounter last night. He was forty. The number sounded…advanced, especially compared to my age, twenty-four. But towering over me like a grizzly bear, filling out every inch of that parka with the bulk of a man who worked out regularly, he looked nothing short of scorching hot. I resisted the urge to tug his shades off to see if he had lines around his eyes. Last night it had been too dark to tell, though I had noticed the brackets around his mouth were slightly deeper than I remembered. Those lines only added to his hotness.