Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Cody
Ihalf-expected Lorcan to be a no-show. I’d texted him back that I’d see him at noon at Heritage Park, but he hadn’t responded.
The text showed as being delivered.
Nothing more came.
I pulled into the parking lot—immediately spotting him. He was huddled against a well-loved pickup truck. I slid my electric SUV into the spot next to it.
The aunt who had helped me with the down payment on my condo had also arranged the financing for this baby. I owed a lot of people a lot of money—but I was slowly building equity. Plus, the SUV was used. That helped.
I hopped out and headed his way.
He kept his hands in his jeans pocket.
“Sorry, I didn’t realize how blustery today was going to be.” I gazed toward the sun, with my sunglasses blocking the glare. “Beautiful day, though.”
“Yeah, for sure.” He squinted.
“Do you have sunglasses? I might have an extra pair—”
“Nah, I’m good.” He shrugged. “Once we start walking, I likely won’t even notice.”
I will—because I get to look at your gorgeous eyes. Something mesmerizing in the depths of those dark-brown irises had me entranced. He wasn’t classically handsome. More of a rugged attractiveness that spoke to me. “Shall we head out?”
He nodded.
And so we did.
The trail meandered down toward Hatzic with stunning views.
Kids played.
Dogs barked.
We passed an older couple who held hands as they walked. Then we scooted out of the way as a family with two strollers passed us.
I did some quick calculations in my head.
Lorcan met my gaze.
Slowly, I nodded. “That looked like two sets of twins—three-year-olds and newborns.”
“Jesus.”
“Well, they might not be from the same family.” Yet the parents had looked just harried enough that they might be. I cocked my head. “Do you want kids?” Then I mentally smacked myself upside the head. “I’ve hardly said anything, and I’m asking you about your parenting preferences.”
He chuckled. “That’s okay. That can be a deal-breaker, right? For some guys? Oh, and women as well.”
I nodded as we continued forward. “That’s true—but we haven’t even decided what we’re having for lunch, let alone our life plan.”
Again, he laughed. “I like you, Cody. You’re forthright.
” He put his hand above his eyes, like a salute, and gazed out over the sprawling hills.
“At one time, I thought I wanted kids. But we were always so damn busy with the company. Well, and at first, adopting was tougher. By the time things got easier, we sort of figured we were past fatherhood. I poured everything into the business—even knowing I wasn’t creating a legacy for a future child.
I figured we’d work hard until we hit sixty.
Then we’d sell the business and retire with our savings. ” He chuckled.
Not a happy sound.
“I’m fifty-three years old and starting again with less than nothing.”
I wanted to say something trite about having his health and a job, but those words weren’t going to soothe his pain.
He wore his hurt on his sleeve—at least with me.
In a way, I was grateful for that. I didn’t want him feeling he had to hide things from me.
“You remember I told you about my coworker, Justin?”
“Yeah. Oh, do you have some paperwork for me?”
“In my SUV.” I snapped my fingers. “Right. Rainbow said you were coming in—but she was appropriately cagey.”
“I’m seeing Justin on Tuesday night.”
“Okay. Now that all makes sense.”
We continued walking.
“So, Justin’s a relatively young guy—just a couple of years older than me.”
“Okay.”
“His husband is a fair bit older.”
“Okay.” He sounded a little less certain.
“I’m not telling you anything you wouldn’t be able to piece together for yourself. Stanley, Justin’s husband, was forty-eight when his half-brother died. The man left behind an orphaned son.”
“Christ.”
“Yep. A nephew Stanley knew nothing about.”
“Oh.” He cut me a gaze.
“Long story.” This part wasn’t mine to tell, even though Justin had offered the story openly.
And Angus—their adopted son—had mentioned something to me as well.
“Anyway, Justin and Stanley adopted ten-year-old Angus. And recently adopted a young girl they’d fostered.
Opal. Cutest five-year-old you’ll ever meet. ”
“And…?” He didn’t ask unkindly—just like he couldn’t piece something together in his mind.
“Stanley’s over fifty with a thirteen-year-old, a five-year-old, and a much younger husband.”
Lorcan stumbled.
Fortunately, toward me and despite his size, I was able to steady him. “You okay?”
He glanced back. “I tripped on the sidewalk.”
“Are you tired?” Because that was better than asking if my pointing out older men could have families as well as younger guys had startled him.
“A little.” He rubbed his face. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”
“Oh?”
He gestured for us to resume our walk. “Yeah. Like I kept thinking about counseling. What I’m going to say to Justin. And how my first week of work went really well. My boss even cut me a check yesterday, despite the fact she normally pays every other Friday and yesterday wasn’t payday.”
“Sounds like a good boss.”
“She is. And I’m worried about disappointing her.” He continued walking.
“Why would you disappoint her?”
“Because I disappoint everyone.”
I considered. “That’s a pretty broad statement. You haven’t disappointed me.”
“Nope.” He popped the p. “But I will. I always do.”
Ouch. “Why don’t we wait on that? It’s entirely possible that you won’t disappoint me—more like I find you charming and enthralling. That I want to know more about you. I’m more concerned that you’ll find me boring—what with my lack of life experience.”
He cut a sharp glance at me. “Not hardly.”
“It’s all about perspective. My family didn’t have a lot of money, so we didn’t travel much. They were insular, so I wasn’t exposed to many other cultures. They were racist and xenophobic, so I never had true friends who didn’t look like me.”
He winced. “That would suck. I lived in Vancouver growing up, and my class had plenty of kids who weren’t white. Even back then, the city was multicultural.”
“The way Mission City is becoming.”
“That’s true.”
We came to a park bench. “Do you want to sit? It’s still pretty windy.”
“Maybe turn back?”
“Sure.”
We pivoted and then started back the way we’d come.
“How did you make it to Mission City from Vancouver?”
“I met Stephen. We actually hooked up in a bar on Davie Street in the city. But he was from Cedar Valley. He was a foreperson on a build in Abbotsford, and he said how he wanted to start his own company.” He rubbed his forehead.
“I’d been on job sites for a number of years by then—mostly doing framing.
Between the two of us, we had a fair bit of know-how.
” He shrugged. “I moved into his townhouse in Abbotsford, and we built the business.”
As we continued to walk, a particularly strong gust of wind hit us.
His hair fluttered.
I wished I could feather my hand through it. Looked so damn soft.
He let out a breath. “We almost went out of business during the housing bust, but we weathered that. Kept going and expanding. By the end, I was supervising the job sites, and he was running the business behind the scenes. Then one day…poof.” He held his closed fist upward, and then opened his fingers suddenly.
As if letting go of something into the wind.
“That sounds rough.”
“Perfect and magical until the moment it wasn’t.
” He shrugged. “One Friday morning I went to work. I came home Friday night, and he wasn’t there.
I figured he was in the office, but he wasn’t answering the phone.
I drove over there, thinking, I dunno—that his phone was dead or he was working late or he’d had a heart attack.
But the office was locked, the alarm was set, and the place was empty. So I went home and waited.
“The entire weekend went by. I called the cops, and they made it clear I couldn’t file a report, and they tried to tell me that Stephen had just gone away for the weekend and forgotten to tell me.
” He snickered. “They didn’t know him. You could set a clock by his routine.
Which was why none of it made sense. I went to work on Monday as if nothing was wrong.
At noon, I went to the office. The door was still locked, and the alarm was set.
I called Bernie, our office manager. She said she’d been fired Friday morning and told to pack up her desk. ”
Pieces were slowly falling into place.
“He gave her a check, and she’d deposited it into the bank machine. I told her to call the bank. They told her it’d bounced.” He rubbed his forehead yet again.
I considered asking if he had a headache. Or if he wanted to change the subject.
He kept going. “I tried to log into our bank accounts, but all the passwords had been changed. So I drove down to the credit union and got the shock of my life.”
I could guess, but I held my tongue.
“All of it was gone. Everything. He’d maxed out the credit line, taken cash advances on the credit cards that weren’t already maxed out. He took the deposits from buyers. He took every single penny he could get his hands on. All gone.”
“Surely the bank could trace it.”
“You’d think.” He ran his hand through his hair. “I was too upset to understand what the manager was telling me. Something about crypto and—” He blew out a breath. “He kept saying I had authorized it all. I kept saying I didn’t know anything about it.”
Still, we walked.
“I had to go up to the jobsite and let everyone go—I had no way to pay them. Since the credit union folks were convinced I’d taken the money, they wouldn’t even front me enough to pay the guys.
Nothing was near completion, so it wasn’t like I could finish a house, have the sale completed, and have a bit of money. Sort of numb, I went home.”
“Wow.”
We were nearing the parking lot.
“Right? Then I figured I should get out ahead of this, so I went to the police. That was just the beginning of my nightmare.”