Cole in My Stocking (8 page)

“Got everything you need?” he asked.

I patted my purse. “Good to go.”

“You ever get that phone out from between your seats?” He jerked his chin toward the beast.

“Yeah.” I’d done that after he and Max had left on Friday. Finding eighteen texts, four voicemails, and numerous social media well-wishes from my friends back in Philly had lifted my spirits. It was like having a lifeline to the home I’d chosen for myself while I was stuck in the home I’d left behind. Since then, I’d been on the phone every day with my closest friend, Heather, and texting back and forth with my other friends. Maybe I’d been reaching out to them so often to help keep my mind off a certain hot cop.

I was surprised he remembered I’d dropped my cell phone.

“Good,” he said. “Don’t be afraid to use it, you get any trouble around here.”

Ah. He was worried about security. Dad used to worry too. If he was going to be away for a hunting trip or a weekend ride with his biking brothers, he’d quiz me on the emergency protocol a hundred times before leaving.

“You haven’t had anyone come by wanting to get up in the shop, have you?”

I shook my head.

He nodded with satisfaction. “’That changes now that word has spread about your father’s funeral, you dial nine-one-one. Better yet, if I’m off duty, you call me.”

“I don’t have your number.”

“Give me your phone.”

I pulled it from my pocket and gave it to him.

He entered some info with large, agile thumbs. “You got my cell and my desk. I’m off duty, you call me. I’m on duty, you call nine-one-one, and then you call me. I don’t care if you know the person or not, anyone tries to talk you into letting them upstairs, you make a call.”

That seemed kind of extreme. “Why would anyone want up in the shop?”

His eyebrows went up above the rimless Oakleys like I was missing something obvious. “Gripper’s got like fifty guns in the safe up there he was either working on or done working on. Most of his customers are fine, upstanding citizens. Some aren’t. Gripper didn’t discriminate. Money’s money. But I don’t want you dealing with everyone your dad dealt with. Guys wondering when they can pick up their guns, guys demanding the ammo your dad ordered for them, guys claiming your dad owed them a refund. You don’t need that right now, yeah? Didn’t Waverly tell you all this? I thought he was handling the business stuff for you.”

Max had put me in touch with a lawyer who closed down businesses for a living. I was going to meet with him after the holidays. “He said I wouldn’t
have
to do anything with the business, not that I
shouldn’t
do anything with the business.” Max had made it seem like something I didn’t need to worry about. Cole was making it sound like something I should worry about.

“Then I’m telling you. You shouldn’t do anything with the business. ’Kay?” He patted my knee and threw the truck into reverse.

My skin burned from his palm—in a way that felt way too good, considering I was on my way to my father’s funeral and had decided I’d be ignoring any more-than-friendly feelings directed at Cole. Instead of dwelling on my tingling knee, I tried to be annoyed with Mr. Overbearing for telling me what to do.

Nope. Couldn’t manage it. Not when I’d been dreading dealing with Dad’s customers.

Not a week went by growing up where some new customer hadn’t knocked on the storm door, assuming they’d find Dad in the trailer despite the sign with the arrow pointing toward the stairs to the shop. I would poke my head out the main door and say, “Shop’s around the front. Over the garage.” I’d point then shut the trailer door, not giving them a chance to respond. If they kept knocking at the locked storm door, I would call Dad’s line up in the shop. “Yo, you’ve got a genius down here who can’t read a sign.”

Dad would say, “Thanks, kiddo. Be right down,” and I would swear he’d have a smile in his voice.

My eyes started to burn.

“So what have you been up to the last few days?” Cole asked.

I swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat. “Cleaning and estate stuff, mostly. Max set up an account I’ve been using to pay outstanding bills. He thinks he found a buyer for the property. It’s a guy in Vermont with a chain of gun stores. He’s interested in Dad’s equipment and might be willing to buy the business and property in one lump sum, vehicles, trailer and all.”

While dealing with the entire estate at once would simplify the transaction, I would have a far smaller chance of inheriting anything than if I sold it piecemeal. I couldn’t make up my mind which I wanted more, the express route out of Dad’s estate—and therefore out of Newburgh—or the scenic route, which would require a lot more time and effort than I was inclined to invest. I’d told Max I’d think about it and let him know whether to move forward with the Vermont guy after Christmas.

“How about you?” I was pretty sure he’d worked a couple of shifts, since I’d recognized his Oakleys through the windows of the state patrol cruiser that had coasted by a few times on Monday and Tuesday. Knowing Cole was at least keeping an eye on Dad’s place had lifted some of my melancholy at his not paying attention to me. Which was exactly what I told myself I wanted: Cole’s inattention. “Do any more Christmas shopping?”

“Some,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road. “Worked the last two days. Have today and tomorrow off.”

“Nice. Christmas Eve and Christmas off? Did you have to sell your soul to a coworker to get that deal?”

He chuckled. “Not this time. Got lucky. That’s just how the schedule fell this year. Don’t worry, though. I’ll make up for it working a double shift on the thirty-first. A friend of mine wanted New Year’s Eve off, so I said I’d work for her even though I’m already doing the day shift.”

“What kind of hours does a statie work? What does a double shift mean? Like sixteen hours? Twenty-four?” I asked because I didn’t want to think about whether this friend he was doing a favor for might be Officer Busty. Also, if a double shift meant twenty-four hours on the clock, I worried that wasn’t healthy.

“Staties in New Hampshire work in two-week rotations. Week one, you’re on duty five days out of seven, twelve hour shifts. The next week, you’re only on duty two days out of seven. Those weeks, you get a three day weekend, which, I’m not going to lie, is pretty sweet. It works out to eighty-four hours every two weeks. I do two weeks of days then two weeks of nights. This is week one on days. Today and tomorrow are my two-off. Rest of the week, I’m on duty six a.m. to six p.m., but next week is my light week. I’ll have plenty of time to help you with your dad’s estate stuff. If you want.”

My heart leapt at the possibility of seeing a lot of Cole next week. “I want,” I said before I could run it through the filter of appropriateness. Shoot. I covered my eagerness with, “I’ll take all the help I can get.” A little voice in my head added,
And all the Cole I can get.

Shut up, stupid voice. We don’t do relationships, remember? We especially don’t do relationships with anyone from Newburgh.

“So, when’d you become a statie?” I asked.

“Oh-eight,” he said. The year I graduated high school and booked it out of Newburgh.

That was weird. I hadn’t heard anything about him wanting to be statie, not that I would have been privy to Cole’s career goals. “Why the change?” I asked.

He shot me a glance behind those shades, and the air in the truck got heavy. He was quiet for so long, I thought he hadn’t heard me. Then he blew out a breath and said, “You don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“About me leaving Newburgh PD? Your dad didn’t tell you?”

“Dad and I didn’t talk. Like ever. I sent him cards a couple times a year. That’s how he knew all my news. But I never heard from him. Not about you or anything else. I didn’t even know he was sick.”

A muscle in his jaw ticked. I thought I heard his teeth grinding. “You stay in touch with any of your friends?”

I shook my head. My “friends” had all written me off after that party. Part of the fault lay with me. I became way less fun after my assault. Part of the fault lay with the way my reputation had gone from questionable to outright bad after I’d been seen leaving a party drunk and with three grown men. Several of my friends admitted their parents forbade me from coming to their houses anymore.

“You haven’t been in touch with anyone from Newburgh since you left?”

“Not until the letter Max sent letting me know Dad had died. Why?”

Cole cursed.

“What?”

He shook his head.

I stared at him, willing him to say whatever his stony expression refused to reveal. My stomach shrank into a prune. Something bad was growing between us. “What don’t I know, Cole?”

“Later, honey. I’ll tell you later.”

Cole Plankitt just called me
honey.

I couldn’t read his face, but I could read his voice. Regret. Surprise. Anger. It was all there. I wished I knew why.

The tension rolling off him made me dread whatever we would be talking about later, but the promise of a “later” with Cole gave me a thrill. A thrill I resented. Why couldn’t my body be on board with the friends plan?

As Cole pulled into the blacktop parking lot of Hansen’s Funeral Home, I analyzed that
honey.
Had it been
honey
as in,
I still think of you as my buddy’s kid, so I give you a child’s endearment,
or had that been
honey
as in,
I notice the woman you’ve become, and I want to get to know that woman better?

I could make a case either way, but secretly, foolishly, I hoped it meant he was into me. I thought back to that moment we’d had in Dad’s kitchen. I thought I’d glimpsed vulnerability in him, like he was searching for something and maybe that something was me.

“Here we are.” Cole parked the truck in a space close to the awning-covered double doors. White Christmas lights and potted poinsettias added a festive air to the green-trimmed, white Victorian house with its somber black doors.

I should have been thinking of my dad. Instead, I was obsessing about a hot cop I had no business obsessing about. Mentally shaking my head at myself, I jumped down from the truck. Cole and I walked to the main entrance, hands buried in our pockets.

Based on Cole’s truck being the only vehicle in the lot, I expected to find the doors locked, but when Cole trotted up the steps and tried the handle, the right-hand door swung open to a dim foyer with an empty coatrack.

He held the door so I could go in first. Once we were in the warm foyer, his hands found my shoulders and eased my coat down my arms. I shivered.

I wanted to ask why we were here so early, but my tongue was glued to the roof of my mouth.

A tall, gray-haired man in a black suit came up a set of stairs. Gregory Hansen, the owner and operator of the funeral home. He held his hand out to Cole. “Officer Plankitt. Good to see you. Good to see you.” The men shook, and then he faced me, hand outstretched. “Mandy. How are you this morning?”

“Fine, thanks.” I shook his hand, wondering why he had greeted Cole first. Maybe they knew each other outside the context of Dad’s funeral.

“Everything ready?” Cole asked. He’d left the Oakleys in the truck. His eyes were intense but cordial.

“Of course.” Mr. Hansen turned to me with a warm smile. “I placed your father in the visitation room. You may take all the time you need.”

I blinked, unsure what we were talking about. “For what?”

“To say goodbye.” He opened one of the double doors leading into the main reposing room, which resembled a chapel with rows of chairs and a raised platform with a wreath-adorned podium at the front. The white and red carnations I’d picked because Dad’s truck had been red and his Harley had been white, lined the platform and surrounded the podium. The spot where the coffin should be was empty. “Right this way. You enter the visitation room through the side door up front.” He started down the center aisle.

“I’ll wait out here,” Cole said, his eyes crinkling at the outer edges. He lifted his chin, encouraging me to follow the funeral director.

When Cole and I had made arrangements for today, we’d argued about whether I should check the box on the form for using the visitation room before the funeral. The form had explained that if desired, close family could have private time to pay their respects to the deceased before the other guests arrived. Despite Cole’s suggestion that I check the box, I’d decided not to. I couldn’t imagine being in a room by myself with my dead father. Just the thought of it left me feeling scooped out and hollow.

Cole had arranged this against my wishes.

I stared at my shoes. My face burned with anger.

I heard Cole’s voice at my back. “Give us a minute.”

“Of course.” Mr. Hansen did an about-face and went back down the stairs.

I could feel the heat coming off Cole, but he didn’t touch me.

“You have no right to push me into this,” I told him.

I don’t know how I knew, but I felt him nod behind me. It was like the skin on the back of my neck was sensitized to the air between us, and I could feel the disturbance of his agreement.

“I know,” he said. “You don’t have to take advantage of it. We could just sit in the main room until the funeral starts. Or out in the truck. Or I’ll go out to the truck if you want to be alone. It’s just I know for a fact your dad regretted not seeing you one last time before he died. I don’t want you to regret not seeing him, getting a chance to talk to him, before he goes in the ground.”

I turned to face him. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him to butt out of my life, but the look on his face stopped me. It was sad. Weary. For once, he looked within five years of his age.

That look reminded me that yeah, I’d lost my dad and I didn’t know what to do with that information yet, but Cole had lost his friend, and maybe he felt just as empty and adrift as I did. Maybe he felt even worse than I did. He’d been a million times closer to Gripper than I’d been.

I felt my shoulders slump as all the anger drained out of me, replaced with shame. I’d tried to run away. Again. And someone I cared about against my better judgment had caught me, dragged me back, and was trying to give me a second chance.