Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Luke
Deke’s Service Station was rusting from the inside out.
Not the cars parked all around, though, half of them waiting for repair, the other half just waiting.
Maybe for a meteor to hit.
The place was a little bit of everything up here in the mountains: gas station, convenience store, diner, coffee shop, auto repair, and in a pinch, Deke could officiate at a wedding and notarize a mortgage refi.
Small town life meant being a Jack of All Trades.
Luke was a police officer, occasionally worked security for big events in Manchester, was on staff at the summer camp before it closed two years ago, and acted as a ref for soccer tournaments in a pinch.
A fourteen-week bartending course in college gave him that skill, too, and after EMT certification, he’d even gotten his phlebotomist’s certificate to help with Red Cross blood banks.
He could do everything but cheat death.
Give him enough time, and he might succeed.
But not soon enough for his late wife.
The bag next to him on the front seat of his car held exactly sixteen articles of clothing: two pairs of socks, two pairs of underwear, two shirts, two pairs of pants, two pairs of shoes, one standard-issue red leather Luview police officer’s jacket, and a big, red, fleece-lined rain poncho.
Amber had worn that poncho for years, loving to go on long walks in the rain, one of the many quirks he’d adored about her.
Until it, and a gentle old man having a heart attack at the worst possible moment ever, had led to her death.
All sixteen articles of clothing had been on Luke’s or Amber’s body the day he’d found her.
By accident.
Training Jude DiPalma that day had meant driving him around the county, pointing out the basics, the new cop as green as a freshly cut maple tree.
Twenty-one then and unable to grow a mustache, Jude needed to be cut, chopped, stacked, and seasoned before he could be unleashed on the citizens of Cambridge County, Maine.
And Jude got one hell of a first-day crisis.
In the form of Luke’s dead wife.
The shock of red laying in a ditch was bad enough, freakishly beautiful against the fresh white snow, but some piece of Luke knew, before his mind could even form the thought, that it was Amber.
Thanksgiving Day had been a rainy one, and the car smashed into the tree next to her let off a terrible sound, like a dying loon, as the horn malfunctioned.
The sound was so loud, it cut through time.
“Just feel it,” he muttered aloud in the present. The words were forced and halting but he said them anyhow, just like he trudged through whatever life threw his way. It was who he was, steady, reliable, and unflinchingly grounded in reality.
Until reality cracked in two.
The grief specialist he and Harriet saw for months after the accident told him that experiencing emotions in the moment was how to get through the mourning, stressing that then-four-year-old Harriet would be confused.
“Children are masters at feeling emotions in the present. They haven’t learned to tamp them down yet.
Let her express what she needs to and just be there with her.
It’s enough to hold her. You don’t have to have all the answers.
Your presence and love are the answer,” Maura Kirkendaal had stressed.
She was still a constant in their lives, though he’d left counseling a year ago.
Harriet really was a pro at processing her emotions.
Luke? Not so much.
A white puff of air filled the space between him and the steering wheel, and he realized he’d sighed. How long had he been sitting here, mind and memory in the past? Shoving his hands into gloves, he opened the rear door, grabbed the white plastic bag, and made his way to the front of the bin.
Determined, focused, and grim: That was Luke Luview these days. A bad match for a town that existed to make people feel good about love.
Living in Love You, Maine–heck, being a Luview–was never harder than when you had a broken heart.
Time to let go of some of the pain.
“AAAAAAooooooooo,” called out a band of coyotes in the distance, making Luke jolt. His personal weapon was at home. He didn’t carry it in the glove compartment or on his body when he was off duty, but as the coyote population grew in the area, maybe he should.
A few feet from the donation bin’s front, he looked at the lever to pull down, squeezing the bag slightly. A whiff of Amber’s perfume caught his nose, so faint he almost imagined it.
Colleen had washed all the clothes a few weeks ago, so he knew he imagined Amber’s scent. Didn’t matter. He’d take the illusion. That was how much he hurt.
A skitter inside the box made him frown.
Damn animals. They got in those bins all the time. He felt sorry for the poor sap who emptied these metal boxes, carting all the goods to the warehouse in Manchester where they cleaned and sorted, getting it all ready for the second-hand retail stores.
Just do this, he thought, swallowing hard as the coyotes mated in the distance. The sound was violent and creepy, but for whatever reason, it felt fitting.
Throwing the tangible reminders of that terrible day into the donation box felt dangerous, too.
“I love you, Amber,” he murmured. “But I have to let you go. Have to let that day go. Harriet needs a daddy who isn’t tied down by grief. Just because I’m doing this doesn’t mean I love you any less, though.”
Tears pricked his eyes. “Why is this so hard? Because it’s hard,” he said with a huff.
“That’s what you would say if you were here.
You’d hug me and comfort me and tell me feelings are meant to be felt or they’d be called something else.
You’d have all the right words. I don’t have any.
I just have a big hole in my life, Amber.
And you’re never going to fill it. Colleen says I can’t feel guilty for moving on. I don’t. But I sure do feel weird.”
And then he reached for the handle, pulled it down, and threw the bag in while calling out loudly, “I love you.”
To his utter shock, she replied from the darkness of the box, “I’m in here!”