Chapter 22
twenty-two
“Her heart was tinder, and he the match.” - Unknown
“I’m drivin’,” Cole said.
She opened her mouth to argue.
“You know where to find him?” he challenged, tugging his keys from his pocket.
Her mouth snapped shut as she went to the passenger side of his truck.
“You said I could help,” he pointed out as they slid into their seats.
She didn’t like being reminded, but she sighed as she buckled up.
“So, why do you need to talk to Frank so bad?”
“Aside from the fact that my conversation with him the other day wasn’t that helpful?”
He gave her a wry smile. “Yeah. Aside from that.”
“Well,” she started, “when I did talk to him, he was very vague about that night, which—fine, it was traumatic for us all and a lot just goes fuzzy—but he led me to believe he’d been out with my mama that night.”
“But he wasn’t.”
“Not according to Sally Anne. She remembered him at the bar when he said he’d taken Mama out.”
He shrugged, deciding to play devil’s advocate again. “Could be he has a bad memory.”
She clicked her teeth, frustration a simmer between them. Probably could tell he was baiting her on purpose.
“Sure,” she ground out. “Except he said he couldn’t remember. He only agreed that he’d probably taken her out at my suggestion because he almost always did on Mama’s nights off.”
It seemed straight-forward to him, but there was a reason she was bothered. “You don’t believe that, then?”
“Sally said he was there, and I would tend to believe her. She was certain.”
“Alright.”
Despite the acceptance in his voice, she kept going, intent on the road before them. “Sally said he was upset about something, and she noticed that he didn’t take Mama out when he normally would.”
He considered that. “Maybe they’d had a fight.”
“That would explain some things, but if that was true, why wouldn’t he say that?”
“Makes him look bad,” Cole suggested.
“And why would it make him look bad if her death and that fire were both accidents?” She raised a brow at him.
“You said yourself they aren’t.”
She whipped her head to look at him.
“And I already told you I agree.”
“That’s all they were to everyone else,” she said, brows folding. “So he’s either lying or he really doesn’t remember.”
He heard the steel in her voice. The pain under it, too. “And you need to figure out which.”
She was quiet a moment, something bubbling below the surface. “I might’ve hedged about why I was in town, and I…”
So there was some guilt there. Part of him felt the twinge of resentment about that, about the fact that she’d feel bad misleading Frank when she came out swinging at his pop. But he also knew the questions had been chasing her for decades, and he was supposed to be helping.
“You deserve your answers, Jocelyn.”
“Do I?” she murmured. It was like she knew what he’d been thinking.
And he found himself forgiving her for asking the questions because he couldn’t shake the sadness in her expression just then.
It wasn’t quite like she regretted any of it or like she wanted to give up, and he could admire that.
Two decades was a long time to wonder about something so traumatic, and there sure had been a lot to rattle her cage the last twenty-four hours.
Unfortunate, his had to get rattled right along with.
“Frank was the closest thing to a father to me, and he was still so kind to me the other night.” Her voice rolled over him like a mist, soft and gentle, as he turned into the parking lot of the auto shop where Frank worked.
He put the truck in park and turned to her. “It won’t matter what you ask him if he cares about you, Jocelyn. But you have to ask. You have to know.”
His own words landed heavy. Came from knowing they were for himself, too. Because it was true. If he cared about her—which he couldn’t deny anymore—he had to let her do this, keep asking, keep digging, even if it hurt. She’d warned him, hadn’t she?
He’d said the words, but this was a moment when he had to decide if he believed them.
Jocelyn studied him, her posture edgy while she searched. And maybe she could see how he had to fight himself. But she finally nodded, satisfied with the grit she saw him shoring himself up with.
Cole trailed a little behind her as she headed for the shop’s front door. Not much activity was going on, though the sign told them the place was open for business. Slow day, apparently.
A bell above the door announced their arrival, and the smell of engine grease and warm metal hit him hard.
It was something familiar and foreign, tying him to other memories—taking his first truck in for an oil change because his daddy didn’t have time to teach him.
When he’d rolled that same truck and sat sulking after they’d told him it was totaled.
Instead of sitting, Cole leaned against the wall near the door, the memories making him edgy.
“Help you?” a man’s voice, grizzled and worn, called as he walked out from a back office.
Robbie Clayton had graduated with Cole, an all-state football player who’d run with the high and mighty crowd. Cole hadn’t been interested in sports, though he heard plenty about it. In a small southern town like this one, football was a religion.
Looking at Robbie’s craggy face and thin hair, the greasy coveralls over his paunch, Cole didn’t suspect it had gotten him far once they’d gotten out of school.
The other man looked from Jocelyn to Cole, his squint going tighter.
“I was looking to talk with Frank,” Jocelyn said. “Is he here today?”
Robbie jerked a thumb behind him. “Was on his lunch break. I’ll send him out. You that Hill Drive fire girl?”
Cole watched the muscles snap tight along Jocelyn’s back.
“Heard you was hangin’ around the Hollow, askin’ questions.” Robbie set his scrutiny back to Cole, sizing him up. “Heard you was runnin’ with Hauser, here, too.”
Something about the look and tone had Cole’s hackles rising, but he didn’t move a muscle. People always talked, always embellished. And he sure had plenty of experience with it taking on a negative spin. Was plain Robbie meant it that way, too.
“Jealous, Clayton?” Cole asked.
Robbie’s mouth pinched, but he didn’t move. He might’ve been a heavyweight and stacked with muscle in high school, but he’d gone soft and round over the years. Even back then, though, he’d been all air. Some things never changed.
Jocelyn gave Cole a warning look.
Frank’s rangey frame came into view behind Robbie before the conversation spiraled further. He froze when he spotted Jocelyn, and Cole saw the flash of fear in his black eyes as they shifted to him.
“Jossie,” Frank said, voice tight. “What’re you doing here?”
Jocelyn looked at Robbie, whose attention was slow to move from Cole.
But then it finally did, and he turned to Frank. “Take it outside. Don’t need y’all’s drama botherin’ customers.”
Frank looked at Robbie like the other man had betrayed him, but he headed around the counter toward the door, Jocelyn and then Cole following him out.
“I had some questions,” Jocelyn said as soon as the door closed, her voice too hard, like she was covering the guilt or the hurt.
Frank shrank down like someone had battered him. “Alright.” His gaze slid to Cole.
“I’ll be right over here,” Cole said, shifting to lean against the tailgate of his pickup. Close enough to hear, far enough to seem uninvolved, especially when he turned his face away. Frank was uncomfortable enough.
“What’d you want to ask?” Frank’s voice was still wound tight, like he suspected what she might have to say.
“I had a chat with Sally Anne this morning.”
“Heard about their fire. That where you were staying?”
From the corner of his eye, Cole caught her nod. “I was just checking in on them. We got to talking about that night.”
She didn’t have to say which one. The way Frank’s expression shuttered made it clear he knew exactly where she was going.
“She worked at the bar back then,” Frank said, heading her off.
Cole didn’t bother hiding his interest in the conversation now.
Jocelyn didn’t relent. “She said you were there that night, not out with Mama.”
He rubbed his chin. “Wasn’t I?”
Cole tracked the movement, the change in his expression.
“She remembered you seemed pretty down.”
“Aw, hell, Jossie. That night runs in with all the rest back then. Your mama, your daddy, all of it…” Frank turned to pace away from her but froze at the reminder of Cole’s presence. He made a point to turn back to her. “Not much of it’s clear anymore, but you think I lied to you about it?”
Jocelyn’s arms wrapped around her middle. “I don’t want to, Frank, but you told me a different story, and it’s not close to what she said.”
“It was twenty years ago,” he said through his teeth. Then his shoulders slumped. “The woman I loved died. You expect me to remember exactly what I was doin’ when my world came crashing down?”
Cole saw the toll those words took on Jocelyn, and he pushed himself upright, waiting for the sign she needed support.
“I don’t know.” Her voice was stronger than Cole thought it’d be. “My world fell apart, too. And I never got all the pieces. So I thought…”
“I’m so sorry, Jossie.” There was a fault line in Franks words then. “You’ve no idea how sorry I am, will always be, that she was taken from you. I wish to hell things were different. Been wishing all these long years.”
Cole could see that, too. They all knew that his life had never moved forward. He’d never been with anyone else long enough for anyone to learn her name, lived in the same old house, worked at the same place. Stuck.
“I gotta get back to work.”
Jocelyn took a breath. “I’m sorry to bother you here, Frank. I’m sorry for stirring up ghosts and old pain.”
“Can’t be helped, Jossie. They’re all over the place,” he said, turning to head back inside. His eyes flashed one last time to Cole before he disappeared inside.
Jocelyn’s pain scraped the air as she stood there, attention tight on the faded asphalt at her feet. Hurtin’ Frank had hurt her, and Cole’s urge to fix it nearly overpowered him. But all he had were his two hands, and he’d promised to keep those to himself.
“Joss,” he murmured, pulling her gaze back to his face.
She didn’t say a word, simply walked toward the truck to get in, so he had no choice but to do the same.
He let the silence hang heavy for a few minutes as he drove them back, waiting for her to roll through her feelings about the conversation. It did a heavier number than either of them had anticipated.
But maybe that’d been Frank’s goal. He sure hadn’t admitted a damn thing, and that stuck out to Cole like a city slicker in a corn field. The question was whether Jocelyn saw it yet or not.
When he couldn’t stand the quiet anymore, he asked, “Wanna talk about it?”
“Not particularly. But I probably should.”
She fell silent again for another stretch, and Cole just let her be, watching the big green trees fly by them as the highway brought them from Whitley back to Cedar Hollow.
Whitley had always been a little depressed in comparison, its population much smaller, the way of life even slower.
It barely had a business to its name. Meant most of their folks headed to Cedar Hollow for anything worth doing.
“Ned Turner made a comment about Daniel Abbott.”
Cole turned a surprised gaze on her. She sure avoided calling him her daddy at every opportunity. But Cole didn’t remember the comment. He’d been too busy keeping his eye on Ned and that shotgun.
“What comment?”
She kept her face toward the window. “He said he saw Daniel’s car in our driveway that day.”
Suspicious for sure, but he was her daddy. “That wasn’t usual?”
She shook her head. “He never publicly acknowledged us. There was no custody agreement, no relationship between us to speak of.”
There was pain here, too, deeper, more raw.
He hadn’t known that. Sure, he’d made connections about the situation—given that she and Natasha were so close in age and Daniel had only married one of their mamas.
But he hadn’t realized it was some well-known secret.
What a self-absorbed jerk he’d been back then.
“He’d come around before,” she continued when he said nothing. “But not to see me. To argue with her about giving us money.”
“To help take care of you?”
She scoffed. “Yeah, if we moved away.”
Cole sucked a breath in through his teeth. “That what he said?”
She hesitated, brow folding. “It’s what Mama told me he said.”
“Hell of a thing, no matter who said it.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, looking out the window. “But something Frank said… he mentioned Daniel, too.”
He let that sit for a moment. The question was there, waiting to be asked. But it would probably hurt, too. And he was tired of seeing her hurting when he couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
He finally dredged up the guts. “You gonna confront him about it?”
Those arms went around her middle again. Trying to keep herself together, seemed like. “Eventually.”
God, he wanted to hold her. “Nobody says it has to be now.”
She sighed and turned to the window again. “Can you drop me at Joe’s?”
She could use the rest. Hell, he needed the break from fighting himself so hard. He wanted too damn much.
“Sure, Darlin’,” he said, making a turn.
As he headed up the driveway, he thought about the one thing he might be able to do for her.
“You still got that note with the threat?”
Surprise flashed across her face, but she dug in her big bag. “It wasn’t really a threat.”
Same thing she’d claimed the other day. But he said nothing as she met his eyes.
“What for, Cole?”
“Gonna see if I can match it to what Ma’s got in her stores. Maybe eliminate one of your questions for you.”
He pulled to a stop, and she handed the scrap over before reaching for the handle.
“What about your car?”
“I’ll have Uncle Joe bring me to get it later. Maybe tomorrow.”
She sounded so sad, and that slammed him hard. He kept his hands on the steering wheel obediently, but he felt like dirt doing it.