Chapter 8
eight
“Stars, hide your fires; let not light see my black and deep desires.” - William Shakespeare
Cole grunted as he hauled a case of liquor bottles off the edge of the delivery truck, carrying it in through the front door. The alley between his place and the next was too narrow for the lumbering vehicle to squeeze through, so the front was the only way in.
He didn’t mind the work. It gave his hands something to do, especially after Daniel Abbott had already stopped by that morning to bug him about selling his land—a familiar song and dance—and soured his mood.
Luckily, Terra had backed him in sending Abbott on his way by demanding he help bring the morning load in.
Not that she needed Cole’s help to get inventory shelved; the delivery guy was doing most of the heavy lifting with his hand truck anyway.
When Cole stepped back onto the sidewalk, he stopped dead. Jocelyn was across the street, walking away from Natasha’s boutique with quick, clipped strides.
Every time he saw her, it was a sucker punch to the gut—enough to rile his already short temper.
Until he caught the glint of her tears.
That had his boots moving before his brain decided anything. He crossed the street in two long strides.
“Hey,” he called, jogging to close the gap. “You alright?”
Her chin trembled, another right hook to his stomach. “Fine,” she managed, but it wobbled so hard, he worried she might lose her balance.
“Come on.” He wrapped a hand around her arm, ignoring the heat that shot into his palm at the feel of her skin. “Don’t make me drag you—we’d get the rumor mill rolling.”
She shot him a look but let him steer her toward the only decent coffee spot in town—Gert’s place, just a couple doors down.
The next town over had a chain grocery store with a Starbucks inside, but folks in Cedar Hollow would never be caught dead buying that over-roasted bean water. Not with Gert pouring shots of espresso at Southern Comfort.
He found a corner table, just in case Jocelyn wanted space to cry it out, though the place was quiet this late in the morning—after the work rush and before the teens that swarmed once school let out.
He opened his mouth to ask, but she beat him to it: “Iced latte.”
The misery in her voice twisted him up, but he gave a short nod and went to order. Gert—half-covered in tattoos, dreadlocked, and entirely out of place in small-town Tennessee—gave him a pointed look toward the table. He didn’t bother explaining, and she left it alone.
They’d gone to high school together, raised a little hell in some of the same circles.
Both of them straightened up around the same time, though she’d lit out for some hippie farm up in northern California before drifting back home to take over her aunt’s old bakery.
Turned it into the coffee shop folks kept in steady business.
Most everyone kept their mouths shut about her appearance these days. There were the gossipy old biddies who kept their pearls nice and shiny from clutching too often, but nobody with sense paid much mind.
When he came back with the latte and his own Americano, Jocelyn had dried her tears, but her attention was still fixed out the window. He slid her cup over and sat.
“If I ask again if you’re alright, would you give me a straight answer?” he asked, brow raised.
She looked down at the cup in her hands. “You already know the answer, whether I say the truth or not.” Finally, she lifted her face, meeting his scrutinizing look with a certain glint in her eyes.
Damn, she was beautiful like that—heat in her gaze, steel in her spine.
“What got you all worked up?” he asked. He’d already noticed the boutique bag by her feet; maybe she’d run into Natasha. He couldn’t picture Natasha being unkind, but stranger things had happened.
Jocelyn blew out a breath, the sound wobbling. “Oh, just Lydia Abbott.”
That tracked. Lydia wasn’t one for outright rudeness, but she could be as vicious as Kiki Womack. Just more subtle.
“What’d she say?” Cole’s tone was flat, but his blood was already warming at the possibilities.
Jocelyn rotated her coffee on the table to keep her hands busy. “She made a comment about how much I look like my mama.” Her lips flattened. “‘I suppose some things just can’t be helped,’ she said.”
Cole’s jaw ticked, but before he could speak, Jocelyn added, “It is what it is. She made it clear she suspects why I’m here.”
“What makes you say that?” His hand was tight around his own coffee cup, the heat seeping into his palm steadying his mind.
“‘Your mama had secrets, Jocelyn. Some women do.’” She nailed Lydia’s nasally drawl. “Like I should let them lie.”
“You’re not giving up, are you?”
She jerked to look at him, brows up.
“Ma thinks you deserve your answers.”
“Do you?”
The question hit him square in the chest. He shifted in his seat. “Isn’t the case closed?”
Her gaze stayed locked with his a beat longer before she looked away. “Never felt like it added up.”
Cole tapped a rhythm against the side of his cup, curiosity getting the best of him. “Like what?”
She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, drawing his attention to her mouth. He’d been ready for a list of reasons, but his mind went tripping over the thought of what those lips might feel like against his.
“It doesn’t make sense that my mama didn’t get out of her room that night.” Her eyes narrowed on that coffee cup, the clear plastic sweating almost as bad as he was trying to steer his thoughts somewhere safer. She worried at the edge of the lid with those long, easy-moving fingers of hers.
Leaning in, he focused up. “Alright, Darlin’. I’ll bite. Why?”
Taking a breath, she began: “The fire started in her room. They said a candle caught the curtain.”
He didn’t know much about the nitty-gritty of the fire. He’d been fourteen at the time and already on his path of destruction. The hubbub surrounding that night only sent him down faster.
“Okay,” he said, trying to understand the importance.
Her focus remained on the coffee she hadn’t even taken a sip of. “But she didn’t keep candles over there.”
“Maybe she moved it.”
“Maybe,” she acknowledged, but he heard the doubt there. “But how come she didn’t notice?” Jocelyn cut a look to him. “Do you know how long it takes for a house to go up?”
It was clear the question was meant to be rhetorical, this line of thought obviously well-worn.
“Ten minutes?” he tossed out anyway.
She smiled a little, having expected that. “A new build, yeah. Less, actually.”
Because he was a firefighter’s son, her knowledge trumping his irked him. There was one thing he knew for a fact: very few houses in Cedar Hollow had been built later than the 1980’s. And even though he didn’t know much about the fire, he did remember that house. It was older than most.
“That house wasn’t new.”
Her smile grew, even if it was grim. “No, it wasn’t. It would’ve taken closer to twenty minutes for it to be fully engulfed.”
He squinted at her. “Wasn’t it at night? She might’ve been asleep.”
“Chief Ward said the call came in sometime around ten. I woke up around then, and your dad got me out before the fire truck arrived. By the time they pulled in, the whole house was on fire, and they couldn’t get in.”
He tapped the tabletop with a finger, trying to nail what it was she was getting at. It felt just out of reach, so he grasped onto the details he could follow. “So probably started sometime around 9:30-9:45.”
She was excited now, pink brightening her cheeks and lighting up her eyes. “Right. Tell me, what time would the average adult go to bed?”
He clicked his tongue, her point solidifying. “Around that time—if they’re early-risers.”
She was leaning forward now, too, breathing his air. “My mom was a night owl since she usually worked the later shifts at the diner.”
He shifted back, not wanting to let her proximity get to his head again. “You don’t think she was asleep.”
“No, I don’t. Ward tried to feed me some line that she’d been drinking. I’d seen her drink a glass of wine myself, but that was a pretty regular thing for her, and she didn’t like being drunk.”
It was only a faint shadow, the doubt easy enough to ignore. Plenty of others had. “Then what do you think happened? She was there when it started, didn’t try to put it out, didn’t come for you.”
Her shoulders lifted. “That’s why I’m here. To do the math myself—because none of it adds up.”
He studied her. “None might be stretchin’ things.”
The brightness in her face dimmed like a lightning bug going out as her walls slammed back into place.
“I’m just playing devil’s advocate, here, Darlin’,” he said, softer now, a little mad at himself for putting out that light.
“Hell, all I know about that fire is everyone wanted a piece of Pop. It stole him away from me for a long time.” He hadn’t meant to say that last part and looked away when her expression softened.
She took the hint and sipped her coffee.
“I’m just sayin’,” he went on after a minute, guarded again, “folks agreed with what was in those reports for a reason.”
Her scowl said she didn’t think they should’ve. “Yeah. They would.”
The bitter words stung his skin, wending their way into his chest, oddly deep. Like she was indirectly accusing him of something, though she wasn’t. Couldn’t be.
“That supposed to mean?”
Her chin jutted forward. “You know what they called my mama?”
A flash of irritation shot through him. Layers of cemented anger and resentment were coming to the surface, decades of history that she was holding onto like he should take it, too. But he had enough of his own to lug around.
“No, can’t say as I do.” He sure could guess, though, based on Henry Wetzel’s comments the other day.
“White trash.” She shook her head, the anger simmering like a flame in her dark eyes. “Only time anyone treated her well was when she dated my dad in high school.”
“Daniel Abbott,” he said. He didn’t know much, but he knew that.
She nodded. “Golden boy quarterback. Parents owned half the town and couldn’t abide that kind of mark on their family. Sent him away to college, and he came back with Lydia on his arm—someone they approved of.”
Cole watched her expression change, watched the way she nibbled on her lip again, how she twisted her fingers together. The emotion was there, staring him in the face. Her upset about Lydia’s words made sense.
It never occurred to him how much drama there was surrounding her life—aside from the blaze.
He was a few years older, and their paths never crossed back then.
The whispers about him around town made it easy to miss what they might’ve said about her.
Made him realize how selfish he’d been as that angry teenager.
He leaned back, tongue in his cheek, trying to fit the pieces into the puzzle he only knew a small portion of.
High school sweethearts, but Daniel had married someone else.
He knew Daniel’s other daughter well. Natasha was about the same age as Jocelyn, if he remembered correctly. Within a year or two, which meant…
Jocelyn raised a brow, knowing what he must’ve been realizing. Daniel had been a very busy man. So who was first?
The fact that he was married to Natasha’s mom, Lydia, told the truth there.
Jocelyn waved her hands back and forth like she was trying to erase that part of the story. Maybe she wished she could.
“That’s a therapy session for another day,” she muttered.
His mouth quirked up, though she didn’t smile at her own quip.
“Even if people’s opinions of my mama weren’t at play—and don’t tell me it’s not when they were quick enough to believe she was so drunk that she didn’t wake up to a fire in her room—there’s still one big thing not mentioned in any of the news stories.”
He picked up his coffee for a sip. “And what’s that?”
“There’d been a string of fires around town at that time. Suspected arson.”
Cole froze, coffee halfway to his mouth.