Chapter 9
Tessa settled onto the couch with a quilt tucked around her legs.
The house had grown quiet after her father headed to bed early.
She’d checked his vitals and made sure he took his evening medication before he shuffled off to his bedroom.
Now the only sounds were the occasional pop from the fireplace and the soft ticking of the old clock on the mantel.
She should be tired. Her body felt heavy with exhaustion, but her mind refused to slow down.
Too many thoughts competed for her attention.
Her father’s health. The town’s unexpected welcome.
The way Beckett seemed to fit so seamlessly into life here in Sweet River Falls.
A life that somehow felt like it should have been hers if she’d wanted it.
But, of course, she hadn’t. She’d run away from town as fast as she could after high school graduation.
The front door opened, bringing with it a gust of cold air and the subject of her thoughts. Beckett stomped his boots on the mat before stepping inside, his cheeks ruddy from the cold.
He unwound his scarf. “It’s really coming down now. We might have another six inches by morning.”
She nodded, watching as he hung his coat on the hook by the door. The same row of hooks where her father had always hung his jacket. Where her mother’s raincoat had once hung. It was strange how such small things could feel so significant.
“Stan get to bed okay?” he asked, rubbing his hands together to warm them.
“Yes. He was tired and went to bed early with a fishing magazine.”
He glanced toward the kitchen. “I was thinking of making some hot chocolate to warm up. Would you like some?”
“Sure,” she said after a moment. “That sounds nice.”
He disappeared into the kitchen, and she listened to the familiar sounds of cupboards opening and closing, the clink of mugs, the quiet efficiency of someone who knew their way around her father’s kitchen better than she did.
When he returned, he carried two steaming mugs. He handed one to her before taking a seat in the armchair across from the couch. The chocolate was rich and dark, with a hint of cinnamon that reminded her of her mother’s recipe.
“This is good. Did my dad teach you how to make this?”
A small smile crossed his face. “No. Miss Judy at the lodge showed me. She said it was your mother’s recipe.”
The revelation sent a pang through her chest. “My mother’s recipe?”
“Stan mentioned it once when we were at the lodge for dinner. Miss Judy insisted on teaching me.”
She took another sip, letting the warmth spread through her. Her mother’s hot chocolate. Another piece of her that had somehow survived all these years, passed along to others without her knowing. Passed along to Beckett, not her.
“How long have you known my father?” she asked abruptly.
He seemed to consider the question. “About seven months now. I moved in six months ago, but I met him before that.”
“And you just... moved in with a stranger?”
“Your father volunteered to be a sponsor.”
It was hard for her to fathom. The Stan Grant she knew kept to himself. He didn’t invite people in. He certainly didn’t volunteer to help strangers. “I don’t understand why he would do that.”
Beckett was quiet for a long moment, as if weighing what to say next. “Maybe he was lonely.”
The simple statement hit her harder than she expected. Had her father been lonely? She’d never considered it. In her mind, he’d always been self-sufficient, preferring his solitude. But what if that wasn’t true? What if he’d just never known how to reach out?
“You said reentry program,” she said, latching onto the practical rather than the emotional. “So you were...”
“In prison. Yes.” He said it plainly, without defensiveness or shame. Just a statement of fact.
She’d assumed as much from what Annie had said, but hearing him confirm it was different. She paused, then plunged ahead. “For what?”
“Accessory to armed robbery.”
She blinked, not expecting such a direct answer. “That sounds serious.”
“It was.” He picked up his mug again, wrapping his hands around it as if drawing strength from its warmth. “I made a mistake when I was younger. A big one. I trusted the wrong person, and I paid for it with fifteen years of my life.”
“What happened?” she asked, surprised by her own curiosity.
Beckett took a deep breath. “My father died when I was nineteen. Heart attack. It was unexpected, and I... didn’t handle it well.”
Something in his tone made her look at him more closely. There was a familiar pain there, one she recognized.
“First, I started getting into minor trouble, then I went a bit wild,” he continued. “Started hanging out with a different crowd. One of them was a guy named Mitchell. He seemed to understand what I was going through. His own father had died a few years earlier.”
He paused, taking a sip of his hot chocolate. “We became friends. Or at least I thought we were friends. One night, he asked me to drive him to a convenience store. Said his car was in the shop and he needed to pick something up.”
She could guess where this was going, but she remained silent, letting him tell his story.
“I waited in the car. Had no idea what he was planning. Then I heard shouting, and Mitchell came running out with a gun in his hand.” His voice remained steady, but she could see the tension in his shoulders. “He jumped in the car and told me to drive. I panicked. Did what he said.”
“What happened next?”
“We were caught about an hour later. The clerk had been shot, but thankfully survived. Mitchell claimed I was in on it from the beginning. That I was the mastermind.” A humorless smile crossed his face.
“The jury believed him. He had a better lawyer, a cleaner record. I got fifteen years. He got seven.”
She studied him across the space between them. His face was open and unguarded. There was no plea for sympathy in his eyes, just a quiet acceptance.
He met her gaze directly. “Anyway, you deserve to know who’s living in your father’s house. I’m not hiding who I am or what I did. Or more accurately, what I failed to do.”
“What you failed to do?”
“I failed to see Mitchell for who he really was. I failed to stop the robbery. I failed to make better choices.” He set his mug down again. “But I served my time. I’ve spent the last fifteen years trying to become someone my father would have been proud of, even if I was inside prison walls.”
The conviction in his voice was unmistakable. Whatever else Beckett Cole might be, he wasn’t trying to escape his past or pretend it hadn’t happened.
“I understand grief,” he said more softly. “I understand how it can change a person. Make them shut down when they should open up. Make them push away the people they need the most.”
The words struck too close to home. She looked away, focusing on the dancing flames in the fireplace. “Is that what you think happened with my father and me?”
“I think grief affects everyone differently. And sometimes it’s easier to blame the living than to accept that the dead are really gone.”
She felt a lump forming in her throat. “You don’t know anything about my relationship with my father.”
“You’re right,” he agreed readily. “I don’t.
But I do know Stan. And I know he keeps your graduation photo on his nightstand.
I know he saves every card you send him in a box in his closet.
I know he watches for the mail carrier on his birthday, Christmas, and Father’s Day, hoping for something from you. ”
Each word was like a small stone dropping into still water, creating ripples that disturbed the surface of everything she thought she knew.
“I’m not telling you this to make you feel guilty. I’m telling you because I think you should know that whatever happened between you two, he never stopped caring.”
She wrapped her hands tighter around her mug, trying to ground herself in its solid warmth. “After my mom died, he just... shut down. It was like he couldn’t see me anymore. Like I wasn’t enough.”
The admission surprised her. She hadn’t meant to say it out loud, hadn’t meant to reveal that old, deep hurt to this stranger.
“I doubt that was it. From what I’ve seen, Stan isn’t good at showing what he feels. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel it.”
“You sound like you know him pretty well.”
He shrugged slightly. “We’re both men who made mistakes and lost years we can’t get back.”
The parallel hadn’t occurred to her before. Her father had lost years to grief just as surely as Beckett had lost years to prison.
“I’m not asking for your trust, Tessa. I know I haven’t earned it. But I wanted you to know the truth about me. No secrets, no surprises.”
She studied him, this quiet man with his steady gaze and careful words. There was something solid about him, a groundedness that seemed at odds with the story he’d just told. “Thank you for telling me. I appreciate your honesty.”
He nodded, accepting her response without pushing for more. They sat in silence for a while, finishing their hot chocolate as the fire crackled and the snow fell outside.
“I should probably turn in. Morning comes early,” Beckett said eventually, rising from his chair.
“Do you always get up at dawn to shovel snow?”
A small smile crossed his face. “Only when it snows.”
“Which seems to be every day in December.”
His smile widened slightly. “Welcome back to Sweet River Falls, where winter is a commitment, not a season.”
The familiar local saying surprised a laugh out of her. “I’d forgotten about that.”
He collected their empty mugs. “Good night, Tessa.”
“Night, Beckett.”
She watched as he carried the mugs to the kitchen, his footsteps quiet and measured. After he disappeared down the hallway to his room, she remained on the couch, staring at the dying fire.
Fifteen years in prison for a mistake made in grief. It seemed an impossibly harsh punishment. Yet Beckett didn’t seem bitter or angry. He just seemed determined to move forward, to rebuild his life one careful step at a time.
Tessa pulled the quilt tighter around her shoulders.
She’d come back to Sweet River Falls expecting to find her father unchanged and the town frozen in time like her memories.
Instead, she’d found everything altered.
Her father was softer, more connected to the community.
The town was thriving and welcoming. And now there was Beckett, with his quiet strength and unexpected honesty.
She thought about what he’d said about grief, about pushing away the people you need most. Had she done that? Had her father? They’d both been so wounded by her mother’s death that they’d retreated into themselves.
Maybe they’d been more alike than different all along.
Outside, the snow continued to fall, covering Sweet River Falls in a blanket of white that muffled sound and transformed the familiar into something new and beautiful.
She watched it through the window, feeling something shift inside her.
Not forgiveness, not yet. But perhaps the beginning of understanding.