Chapter Nine
“Did someone run over a cat?” Rutgar startled on the cot, sending his pillow to the floor and jostling his ankle enough that he howled like said feline. “What is that noise?”
A noise Nate could only describe as a caterwaul grew louder.
“I have no idea.” Nate had been perusing the bulletins regarding persons wanted for questioning in the county. He returned Rutgar’s pillow beneath the man’s swollen ankle, and then went to the door to find out what the ruckus outside was.
Before he got there, the volume increased as Flynn entered carrying a crying baby in his arms. “Ian has colic.”
“No kidding,” Nate replied in his outdoor voice.
“Julie reminded me you were good with babies.” Flynn handed Ian off to Nate and collapsed in Nate’s chair behind the desk. He rested his forehead on the blotter. “Nobody warned me about colic. Not even my sister.”
Ian’s little face was scrunched and scarlet. His thatch of reddish-brown hair was sweat slicked to his head. And his entire body shook with sobs.
“I don’t know what to do besides walk him.” Nate imitated his sister Molly’s bouncy baby walk, the one she’d used to settle Camille when she’d been upset.
Terrance opened the door, took in the scene and then turned to go.
“Not so fast.” Without stopping his rocking pace, Nate halted the widower in his tracks by shouting above the baby’s cries. “You raised five kids. We need your expertise.”
“You don’t need me.” But Terrance let the door swing shut, leaving him inside. He still wore the wrinkled clothes he’d grabbed from home last night on their way to jail. But the lost expression he’d been wearing for months? That was rapidly fading. “What you need is that baby’s mother.”
“She’s sleeping.” Flynn lifted his head and glanced at Nate’s computer screen. “Oh, man. Tell me this guy with the tattoo across his forehead isn’t on the loose here.”
They were all yelling now.
“He’s not.” Nate rock-stepped to the desk and closed the computer’s window with a keystroke.
Ian’s cries were interrupted by the hiccups. Nate shifted the poor little guy to his shoulder. “Terrance, please.”
Terrance disappeared up the stairs to Nate’s apartment. He was probably searching for a beer. Nate hoped he brought back one for everyone.
“I want to go home.” Rutgar sat up too quickly. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he flopped back on the cot, moaning.
Nate handed Ian back to Flynn, grabbed the med kit from behind the counter and hurried to Rutgar’s side. The old man still had a pulse but was out cold. Nate waved smelling salts beneath his nose. “When are we getting a doctor in town?”
“Soon, I hope,” Flynn shouted back.
Rutgar startled, and then pressed his palms over his eyes. “I had a dream...”
Ian’s cries continued to fill the jail, interspersed with hiccups.
“Someone save me!” Rutgar shouted. “It wasn’t a dream.”
Terrance returned carrying something that looked like one of Nate’s green hand towels. A wet hand towel. He took the baby from Flynn the way you’d expect a father of five to—with sure hands. Covering his index finger with the towel, he pressed it to Ian’s lips.
Ian’s cries lessened, and then he began to suckle the wet towel.
Silence rang in Nate’s ears. No one moved.
“Why would Ian respond to that and not breastfeed or take a pacifier?” Flynn whispered, collapsing into Nate’s desk chair.
“Every baby’s different,” Terrance said in a muted voice fit for a late-night visit to a nursery. “That’s why parents need a big arsenal of tricks.”
Nate pulled out a chair behind the counter for Terrance, unable to stop himself from pointing out, “Good thing you aren’t on walkabout today. We’d still be here with a screaming baby.”
“You’d have managed,” Terrance said gruffly, not looking up from the spent baby in his arms. “But you’d have managed badly.”
Slouching in the desk chair, Flynn considered Nate. “It must be bittersweet to have missed out on two years of your son’s life. The panic over colic. The joy over first smiles.”
“First smiles are always gas, son,” Terrance murmured.
“Thanks for crushing my joy, Terence,” Flynn said flatly.
Nate felt numb. He’d been upset last night because he hadn’t been told Duke existed. He hadn’t looked at it from the heart, from the emotional moments and milestones that bound a father to a son. Duke was a great kid. The years stretched out before Nate, playing like a hastily edited movie in his head. Duke playing on the school playground, his legs too long for his torso and his ears still too big. Duke bringing friends home to play video games and raid the refrigerator. Duke dating, graduating, choosing a college or a career path. Getting married. All without Nate.
He felt hollow. So hollow. Was this what he wanted?
It didn’t matter what Nate might want or long for. Duke needed a father who knew how to navigate the waters of childhood.
“I’m having a hard time imagining you leaving anyone at the altar,” Flynn said into the silence.
Terrance looked up sharply.
Nate could’ve done without Flynn’s sudden interest in his personal life.
“It’s not what you think,” Nate began. And then he restarted, “I mean, it’s kind of what you think. I was dating Julie’s sister. We were talking about what we wanted to do in the future. We both said marriage. And all of a sudden, she was hugging me and saying, ‘Yes.’”
“There’s usually a lot of time between becoming engaged and getting married,” Terrance pointed out.
“Plenty of time to stop the wedding,” Flynn seconded.
Not to be outdone on rubbing it in, Rutgar added in his loud voice, “You had to have taken her ring shopping, rented a venue, talked to a caterer and a florist, been fitted for a tux—”
“Not to mention you had a thing for Julie.” Terrance blue eyes had apparently seen the truth during those brief few minutes at El Rosal this morning. “That must have weighed on your mind—being engaged to the wrong sister.”
“I never said I was in love with Julie.” Nate’s voice rose to baby-waking volume.
“I have five sons.” Terrance looked at Nate like he was a disappointing exhibit in the reptile section of the zoo. “I know that lovesick stare when I see it.”
Whereas Nate had no clue what love looked like.
“Oh,” Flynn said, grinning. “That’s what that look at breakfast was.”
“Enough.” Nate cut them off with a slice of his hand. “You’ve all had your fun.”
“And it’s always fun,” Rutgar said gruffly. “Until someone gets their heart broken.”
They’d been too loud. Ian waved his arms and whimpered.
Terrance settled him down with a few soft-spoken words, and then he turned his attention back to Nate. “You wanted to do the right thing with Julie’s sister. But I’m disappointed you let it get that far.”
No one but Nate’s Uncle Paul had spoken to Nate like that, as if he was worth redeeming. “It won’t happen again.”
Terrance nodded.
“I have to make my rounds.” Nate headed for the door, needing space. “Can one of you stay with Rutgar?”
“I should get Ian home.” Flynn stood and took his son. “Thanks, Terrance. Hopefully he’ll sleep for a couple of hours.” He left with Nate’s towel.
Terrance crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in the chair. “I’ll stay, but I insist you go see your son and that sweet girl you can’t stop staring at while you’re out.”
“She was here already,” Nate groused. “And I have rounds.”
“Rounds.” Terrance scoffed. “I can tell you what’s going on in town. The widows are meeting at El Rosal, discussing floats for this year’s Spring Festival. The bowling team is having coffee at Martin’s. Phil’s smells like they’ve been doing too many perms. The science experiment at school was supposed to launch a rocket that would then parachute to earth, but Brad what’s-his-name aimed it at a tree on accident.” This last Terrance put in air quotes. “Oh, and Eunice convinced Jessica to make horseradish spice cupcakes.” He lowered his chin and his voice. “Not for the faint of heart.”
“Jessica likes a man who’ll try anything she makes,” Rutgar said staunchly. “Like me.”
Nate opened the door. “I guess I’ll swing by the bakery and pick up a cupcake for you, Rutgar.” Regardless of Terrance’s observations, Nate had to see for himself.
Nate made his rounds. He stopped to talk to Old Man Takata, who was sitting on his front porch not smoking a cigar—he’d quit after a health scare a few years ago. Nate stopped by the Torino garage when he noticed there were more cars than usual outside—Joe was having an oil change special. Nate stopped to see Agnes, who’d texted him about needing to talk.
When he arrived, Agnes was weeding her flower beds. She pulled off her dirty gloves and dusted off her blue jeans. Her normally lively eyes were framed with concern. “I wanted to tell you personally in case you haven’t heard. The town council is calling a special meeting tomorrow to announce candidates. We want to deal with this challenge to our power and your position as quickly as possible.”
“I appreciate that.” A black rain cloud appeared above Nate.
Agnes patted his shoulder. “You trust me, don’t you?”
“Of course.” Most of the time. It was Doris he didn’t trust. She was like the Rubik’s Cube he’d tried to solve once. The more he tried, the worse it got. “Can you tell me why Doris is so...”
“Unhappy?” The wind tousled Agnes’s pixie-length gray bangs. “Poor Doris. She was never the easiest of girls.” At what must be a confused look on Nate’s face, Agnes explained, “She grew up here, like many of us.” She clasped her garden gloves between her thumb and forefinger.
The black rain cloud swelled in size, diluting the warmth of the spring sunshine.
“Agnes...” Nate wasn’t sure he wanted to ask this question. “What were her parents like?”
Agnes closed her fingers around her gloves; her expression switched to disapproving. “They were strict. Stricter than strict.”
The rain cloud floated above Harmony Valley, somewhere in the vicinity of Doris’s house.
“And she was married?”
“For too long.” The garden gloves were bunched in Agnes’s fist now. “Maury was more closed off than her parents.” Agnes leaned in and lowered her voice, as if they were at a cocktail party and at risk of being overheard. “There were rumors. Like Maury controlling the finances. Some said he gave Doris cash to buy groceries and made her return with the receipt and exact change.”
Nate glanced skyward. He didn’t want to know anything more about Doris, about her pain or her past. She’d won her freedom from her parents and her husband. Now he understood why she considered any rule constrictive. Her vindictiveness wasn’t fair, but it had little to do with Nate.
“Nate.” Agnes stared up at him with the same tender smile many Harmony Valley residents gave him, the one that made him long for a different kind of childhood, one that made him feel deserving of love. “You have nothing to worry about with this election.”
Nate disagreed. He had plenty to worry about. He wanted nothing more than to belly up to the bar at El Rosal and order a tall cold beer. But he continued with his rounds, checking on some of the town’s shut-ins and driving the roads to make sure no one had broken down.
Finally, after he’d circled the Lambridge Bed amp; Breakfast three times, he admitted that he wanted to check on Julie and Duke. Terrance would say it was because he loved Julie. Nate would’ve countered that it was because he was simply worried about them.
Leona opened the door before Nate had set foot on the welcome mat. It was eerie how she watched the neighborhood. “Sheriff Nate. To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“We.” Reggie muscled her way past her grandmother to the front porch. “To what do we owe his pleasure?”
Leona released a long-suffering sigh.
Nate stopped on the porch. “If you must know—” and who in Harmony Valley wasn’t curious about business that wasn’t their own? “—I’m here to ask Julie and Duke to dinner.” Might just as well admit it. If he only had a week with Duke and Julie, he wanted to help them out as much as he could.
“Nay!” Duke shouted excitedly from the second-floor landing. He wore a clean white T-shirt. His hair had been combed, revealing those too-large, Landry ears. He hurried toward the steps.
“Wait for me.” Julie took Duke’s hand and escorted him downstairs, glancing up occasionally to frown at Nate.
“Looks like she’s given her answer,” Leona said, still standing in Nate’s way.
“Nothing personal, Grandmother, but you know nothing about people.” Reggie softened the ruthless remark with a hug that was so unexpected, it widened Leona’s eyes and stilled her tongue.
“Just so you know, Jules...” Nate jumped into the void with the most logical of reasons they should have dinner with him. “Most places in town roll up the carpet at about four. I thought I’d make dinner at my place.”
“How sweet.” Reggie herded Leona into the foyer.
Leona harrumphed. “A word of warning, Miss Smith. I’ve never heard anyone say the sheriff is a good cook.”
“That’s because I’ve never cooked for anyone here.” But he’d picked up a couple of steaks and potatoes at the grocery store out by the highway, and horseradish spice cupcakes for Rutgar from Martin’s. “What do you say, Jules? Steak and baked potatoes? Cold beer?”
Julie’s gray eyes were cool. “We’ll get something at El Rosal.”
“You can have El Rosal any night,” Reggie said, stepping in front of Leona, who looked as if she had a different comment in mind. “It’s not every night a man offers to cook for you.”
Nate gave Reggie a grateful smile. “I’m cooking for Rutgar, so making extra is no trouble. You can put your feet up and Duke can run around the jail. That should wear him out enough that he’ll sleep late in the morning.”
Julie’s eyes sparked with reluctant interest.
The key to compromise with Julie, Nate realized, was offering to help with Duke. Keeping his son occupied and wearing him out so that Julie could rest was as appealing to her as a chocolate doughnut with cream filling.
“Well,” Julie said with all the enthusiasm of a cat faced with a bath. “If you burn anything, El Rosal will be our backup.”
Julie shouldn’t have accepted Nate’s invitation. Despite the day’s revelation about April, he was still the enemy. But here she was, sitting in a chair in his office, feeling as cranky as a hall monitor in a school filled with free passes.
Nate should’ve been the cranky one. She and April had stolen two years of Duke’s life from him. Instead, in between turning the steaks Nate was barbecuing in the back alley, he played hide-and-seek with Duke. April would have been ecstatic.
Julie should be happy for Duke, too. He was gaining a father. But what if this, too, was short-term? What if, after eight days, Nate couldn’t commit to being a regular presence in Duke’s life?
Forgive.
April, get out of my head.
Nate lived above the jail. It was no place to raise a little boy. Not that Julie’s apartment was much better. It was a one-bedroom fourth-floor unit, no playground or park nearby. But she had Mom and her backup caregiver. Nate had no family in town to help.
“Why does the boy keep hiding under my cot?” Rutgar wasn’t fooling anyone with that put-upon air. The old man was loving the attention from Duke.
“Juju.” Duke ran over and sprawled across her lap. He was done playing. And given her little man hadn’t taken a nap today, he’d go to sleep early and sleep late, just as Nate had promised.
“I think I’m going to sleep instead of eat,” Rutgar said. Almost immediately, he began to snore.
Nate had set his desk as a dinner table. He put plates loaded with food on it. “If I’d have known Rutgar wasn’t going to join us, we could’ve eaten upstairs.”
In his apartment. No, thanks.
“This is fine.” She’d set limits. She’d refused a tour of his personal space above them. She’d declined a beer.
They ate in near silence, exchanging pleasantries about the weather, their favorite football teams, mutual friends.
After cleaning his plate, Duke climbed into Julie’s lap and fell asleep as quickly as Rutgar had.
“I never was one for scintillating conversation.” Nate gave Julie that tight half smile. “But I’ve never put so many people to sleep before.”
“I’m so full, I might have to join them.” That was the biggest meal she’d eaten since being shot.
“Go ahead and snooze. I found Terrance napping in that chair when I got back from afternoon rounds.” Nate stacked the dishes and carried them upstairs. When he returned, he pulled his chair closer so that he sat next to her.
For several minutes, they said nothing. They might just as well have been an old married couple staring at the world from their front porch, not the open door of the local jail. April would’ve been happy to sit with her thoughts and the man she loved. Julie was unsettled, unsure how she felt about Nate.
“Since you’ve been talking about a test to determine what makes a good father,” Nate said into the lull. “I’ve been thinking about my dad.”
Julie stopped rubbing Duke’s back and tried to rein in her need to interrogate. Maybe if she knew more about Nate’s history, she’d understand why he’d had doubts about April and why April had backed out of the wedding at the last minute.
“My dad’s the reason I chose to go into the army.” Nate’s words sounded as if they were being forced out past gravel. “And then into the police academy.”
“Your father sounds like a good guy.” So why didn’t Nate talk to him anymore? Why did he look like someone had died when he talked about him?
Nate was slow to qualify his statement. So slow, she thought he wasn’t going to answer. “My dad wasn’t any prize. His father wasn’t any prize either.” Nate stroked Duke’s hair tentatively, the way April used to, as if he couldn’t believe he existed. “I guess on some level, I don’t think I’m a prize, not as marriage or father material.”
Julie did a double take, needing to make sure she was still talking to handsome, successful Nate. “Spare me the tale of your insecurities.”
“Jules, I—”
“You were asked three years running to be in a calendar benefitting the police widows’ fund.” He was that good-looking.
“But I didn’t—”
“No one on the force had a bad word to say about you.”
“Jules, I—”
“And you’ve never been shy or uncertain around women in your life. You see a woman coming and you open doors and pull out chairs and basically act like a prince.” Julie was anything but a princess. She intimidated men with her bold attitude. “So don’t try to excuse your behavior by blaming it on your nonexistent insecurities.”
“I wasn’t,” he said when she stopped for breath.
Rutgar’s steady snore turned into a snortfest before he settled into a regular rhythm again.
Julie let her head fall back so she could stare at the ceiling and perhaps receive divine guidance from April. Did her sister really want Nate to have a shot at full-time fatherhood?
“I realize this is hard on you.” Nate’s deep, calm voice simultaneously riled and soothed. “I’m sorry.”
“You should have said that to April.”
“I did.” Everything about him communicated his sincerity—his posture, his tone, the way he didn’t squirm when she went on the attack.
Uncertainty chilled Julie’s veins. She traced the outline of the bandage at her shoulder.
“It’ll heal.” Nate claimed her hand.
Her hand fit in his. The chill faded.
But uncertainty didn’t fade. It increased.
Nate’s hand was strong and sure. He was strong and sure.
“And the memories,” he said softly. “The ones that keep you up at night. They’ll fade.”
The air suddenly seemed too thick. Her body too heavy. Her spirit felt defeated because he’d somehow seen her weakness. Instead of denying, she said, “How do you know?”
Nate didn’t answer. He didn’t move. But he met her gaze, his eyes the rich color of dark chocolate. She’d always been a sucker for dark chocolate and for men with jet-black hair, broad shoulders and—
“Some people think if you carry a gun to make a living, you should be able to handle the consequences of using it.” His words drew her gaze back, like a moth to a flame. Nate half shrugged, but there was nothing casual about the movement, nothing casual about his viewpoint. “Others will tell you counseling will make it better—a psychologist, a minister, a mentor.” He stared at their hands. She hadn’t realized they were still joined. “But I’d tell you… I’d tell you that after taking a death shot, you don’t sit in limbo if it haunts you. You try something until you find whatever it is that makes you feel better.”
She couldn’t look away. Because she wanted to believe and…Julie was afraid Nate was making her feel better. And that wasn’t why she’d come.
“You aren’t the kind of cop who lets things happen to her,” Nate continued in that slow, steady cadence. “Stop being a victim. April wasn’t.”
He was right. April might have shed tears, but she faced every setback head-on.
“Jules.” Nate’s voice. It tried to soothe. It tried to settle. And where it settled was a place deep inside her. “What did April do when things became too much for her?”
Nothing had ever been too much for April until...
Julie freed her hand from his, missing his warmth the moment she did so. “You mean when April knew she was dying?”
He nodded, without any indication her change in tone bothered him.
Julie was bothered, bothered by painful memories she carried like gunshot scars. Memories of her sister in those final months.
April’s gaunt face, bleached of color. Her gray eyes listless and drained of hope. Her small hands bony and lacking flesh. The more frequent nonsensical ramblings. The rare moments of clarity. The word she’d latched onto, repeating at odd times, rising from the bed to clutch Julie’s hand and whisper, “Forgive.”
The past clamped on Julie’s throat, cutting off air and speech. Cutting off the here and now. Cutting like a knife until Julie wanted to curl her body around Duke’s and gasp for air.
I miss April.
If she were still alive, she’d know what to do. She’d know what to say to chase away the nightmares. She’d know how to ease Julie’s pain.
“Jules.” Nate’s hand found hers again.
She hated him for what he’d done to April. She hated that she couldn’t remember the image of her sister’s healthy face. She hated herself for finding solace in his touch.
“Let it out,” Nate said softly. “No scab ever healed by you picking at it in the darkness.”
“She cried.” Julie held herself very still, blinking back the sting in her nose and the tears that threatened to spill. “Sometimes she wanted to cry alone. Sometimes she wanted to cry on my shoulder.” Being strong for April had been the hardest thing she’d ever had to do.
Until I was shot.
“It’s important to talk. It’s important to have someone listen.” Nate removed his hand from hers, reached into the bowl on his desk and withdrew a small black rock. “I know I’m the last person you want to talk to. But if the world feels like it’s closing in, I’d be there for you.” He pressed the stone into her palm. “And if you can’t stand the sight of my face, hold on to this stone.”
It was smooth and warm. The size of a large watch face with an indentation in the middle just the right size for her thumb. There were other rocks in the bowl, other stones worn smooth.
“My mother gave that to me when I was a kid.” Nate stared out the front door as a car drove slowly past. “It’s a worry stone. Rub it when you feel the need to find peace.” He continued to stare outside. “I took it to the other side of the world with me. It helped.”
He’d taken a rock to war. To the killing required of a sharpshooter.
Julie rubbed the smooth surface with her thumb. He’d found balance in a rock?
Could she?