45. Kiara
forty-five
Kiara
W hen we leave, most everyone is still there, singing the night away. But we’ve been up since dawn, and honestly? I need to be naked in Colton’s arms to make the world go round again.
He catches my shiver as he starts his truck and takes his coat off to wrap me in it. Won’t listen to my feeble protests. “You’re exhausted,” is his answer. He cranks the heat up. “Shoulda started the truck earlier,” he mumbles.
I close my eyes and let the rocking of the engine lull me. Taking a deep breath, I try to talk myself out of rehashing the confusing feelings of my father’s death by reliving the day’s events. It was, by all accounts, one of the best Laskins we’ve had. Clear skies, no snafus that I could notice. A beautiful parade. Something I’ve been meaning to tell Colton but never found the right time for resurfaces. “I think I know who the egg bomber is.”
He glances at me. “Really?”
I nod. “While we were at the bakery, looking from their front steps, I saw Isaac’s sister leave through the delivery entrance.”
“Chris’s apprentice? The one whose father got in trouble last spring?”
“Yeah, I think his father’s in jail now. I’m sure it was his sister. I recognized her coat—it has a tear on the back. That and how she walks.”
“That’s not a lot to go by.”
I know it was her. She recognized me too. The way she looked at me when our eyes locked? There was fear in her gaze. “Doesn’t matter. It’s not like I’m going to turn her in.”
“I guess,” he grunts. “Dec might wanna know, though. He seemed—What the…” he interrupts himself, taking his foot off the gas.
Ahead of us, slowly crossing the road, is a cow. A big cow. The size of Daisy. Except this one is…
Purple.
Colton brings his truck to a slow stop so we don’t skid.
“Oh—fuck. Is that Daisy ?”
The truck merely six feet from Daisy, Colton takes his phone out and snaps a picture. “Sure looks like it,” he mutters. His phone wooshes with the sound of a text going out.
Daisy is staring at us, nostrils billowing with plumes of her angry exhales. “Isn’t it kinda cold for her?” I ask.
Colton’s phone rings. “It’s Dec. Can you call the farm?”
He means King Knoll Farm, where Daisy lives. Where she constantly escapes from. Where she’s driving the whole King family crazy since, apparently, she found out she was not a Jersey like their other cows, and that her breed—Angus—was raised for meat. “Hey, Lynn,” I say, talking over Colton’s discussion with Declan.
“Honey, what’s wrong? Did you need to talk more? I’m sorry we left already, we were bone tired—”
“Thank you, Lynn, but that’s not why I’m calling. I-we came upon Daisy—”
“Again?” Lynn interrupts me, sighing. Clearly she’s gotten used to her now-pet cow’s escapes, if this is no longer a topic of panic like it used to be. Granted, there aren’t many flowers to graze on in December.
“Y-yeah. She’s on Spruce, you know where it dips before the big oak tree?”
“Oh dear,” she sighs. “Boys!” Her holler is muffled by her hand on the phone, but loud enough that I can hear it. Then her voice comes back clearer as she has me confirm the location, relaying it, I assume, to her two younger sons, Hunter and Logan. “They’re on their way. Are you with Colton? Shannon just heard from Ms. Angela that he called it in. You’re with him, right?”
“Yeah, he was-we were driving home.”
“Oh good, good. Welp, the boys are out, should be down there in a little bit. Call me if you need anything!”
We spend the next ten or fifteen minutes daunted by the vision of Daisy, eerily detached against the white backdrop, her purple paint turning dirty as the falling snow melts it away, her eyes glinting in our headlights.
Headlights come from behind us, right as a snowmobile and a horse come down the hill. The car behind us stops, and so does the snowmobile, shutting its engine off. Only the horse and her rider walk toward Daisy.
A knock on Colton’s window startles us. Declan is scowling at us. Colton opens his window. “Hey, Dec.”
Declan clears his throat. “How did this happen?”
“She’s been here the whole time. Staring at us.”
“Tell me you didn’t do this.”
“Do what?”
“Paint her purple.”
“Seriously?”
“I have to ask.”
“Do you really?”
“The two of you are always where trouble happens. Always the only ones to see it hap—”
Leaning over Colton, I try to interrupt Declan. “We didn’t see it happen.”
Declan ignores me. “—and the ones to report it. No one there to corroborate the facts.”
Colton waves between us. “We corroborate each other.”
Declan leans on Colton’s door to look inside the car. “Is that what they call it now?” he jokes, then squints. “Sorry, guys, that was out of line.” He unfolds out of our space, straightens, and takes long strides toward Daisy, his voice coming to us in a low, even tone.
“What is he doing?” I whisper.
“He’s talking to her.” Colton chuckles. “Fuck. The life of a small-town cop.”
By then Lynn’s two sons are with Daisy, and the one on the horse (I can’t tell who is who) has her roped in. Declan seems to be stroking her.
“Is he…” Colton says.
“…collecting evidence?”
Declan turns around, fussing with a ziplock as he gets back to us while Daisy follows the horse without an issue.
“I might have you come by the station for questioning,” Declan tells us sternly, then continues onto his patrol car.
“Seriously,” Colton mutters as he drives us back to Sunrise Farms.
“Can we sleep at your place tonight?”
He folds my hand in his. “Sweets, you don’t need to ask. That’s what you want, that’s what we do.”
He pulls me up the staircase to his apartment, unlocks his door, and throws his keys on his kitchen counter. I’m a little numb from tonight’s events, but being in Colton’s apartment stirs something primal inside me. A few dried coffee grounds on the kitchen counter, a rumpled throw on the couch, the TV remote on the floor—all this always felt familiar to me. Now it feels more. It feels like home.
Later, after he’s made gentle love to me in his bed, his fingers roaming up and down my bare back, he says, “I got two random questions and you don’t need to answer either. How long we gonna keep two apartments, and should I just pretend you never told me anything about Isaac’s sister?”
I snuggle deeper in his embrace. “I never told you anything about Isaac’s sister,” I say, and fall asleep.