Cole in My Stocking

by Jessi Gage

  He nodded as if none of that surprised him. “Did Gripper have a will?”

  Cole pronounced it, “Grip-ah.” That’s what everyone called my dad, Craig “Gripper” Holcomb, so nicknamed for his solid stance while firing a weapon. My dad had arms of steel. He’d been a handsome man, bearded, tatted up one side and down the other, lean and fit, even into his fifties, thanks in large part to the work-out room in the trailer. When Gripper smiled at you, you felt like a million bucks. Unfortunately, he’d saved most of his smiles for his buddies. I’d gotten his brooding glower more often than not.

  “Not that I know of.” Max told me he didn’t have a Last Will and Testament on file, but there was a chance Dad could have written something up without him knowing about it. All it took in New Hampshire was a physical piece of paper with a signature plus the signatures of two witnesses. Max encouraged me to look through Dad’s important papers to be sure. Then he’d said, “Of course no one would blame you if you didn’t look too hard.”

  As Dad’s sole beneficiary, I would inherit anything left after his creditors were paid. If there was a will and it mentioned anyone other than me, my chances of inheriting anything would drop dramatically. I’d informed Max I would look through Dad’s stuff at the first opportunity, because it was Dad’s wishes that were important, not mine. If Dad had a will, I’d find it, probably in the safe in the office where he kept things like his birth certificate, Social Security card, and the sparse Army and National Guard records he’d held onto.

  Cole sipped. He watched me watch him. His eyes were bluer than I’d thought. Whenever I’d seen him from a distance without the Oakleys, his eyes had always seemed pale and intense. Up close, they were definitely still intense, but also a surprisingly bright shade of blue, the same as the New Hampshire summer sky.

  It occurred to me this was the most sentences we’d ever exchanged. I started to feel like an awkward teenager, all warm fuzzies clashing with insecurity. Time to get him out of here. “Let me get you those keys.” He could check Dad’s shop and then go back to whatever hot state troopers did when they were off duty, which was surely more interesting than having coffee with grieving, emotionally-confused daughters of deceased friends.

  Dad’s key ring hung on a hook he’d screwed into the wall near the phone. Coffee in hand, I snagged the keys and turned to walk them over to Cole. A second ago, he’d been leaning on the counter by the microwave, but as I spun on my heel, I found him close behind me.

  I yelped and stopped short, but my coffee continued moving forward. A taupe arc of steaming liquid leapt right out of my mug and splatted onto Cole’s shirt. The gray waffle-weave darkened and plastered itself to his stomach.

  In case spilling coffee on the object of a recently revived crush wasn’t embarrassing enough, stopping short also made me lose my balance. I wobbled but didn’t go down. Because the big pale mitts Cole had for hands gripped both my upper arms to steady me.

  The keys crashed to the floor.

  “Oh, my gosh. I’m so sorry!” I hoped my face wasn’t as crimson as it felt.

  “Jeez, Mandy, you okay? Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” He took my mug and set it on the eating nook then picked up my hand and began inspecting it. “You didn’t burn yourself, did you?”

  I watched his strong fingers turn my hand this way and that. His hands were positively huge compared to mine. And so warm.

  “No. I’m fine. What about you?” I winced at the size of the stain. When I touched it tentatively, heat seared my fingertip. I didn’t know if it was from the coffee or Cole. “Does it hurt?”

  His stomach jumped. He shook his head, eyes locked on mine. “Wasn’t that hot.” The look he gave me stole my breath. Cole had always struck me as a hard man, but the look he gave me in that moment was soft, searching, almost…vulnerable.

  Dad’s trailer and all the clutter it contained disappeared with a poof. I tumbled headfirst into Cole’s blue, blue eyes.

  Outside, smart-soled shoes ground chunks of salt into the porch steps. A knock rattled the glass pane on the aluminum door.

  Still holding my hand, Cole cocked his head toward the door. “You expecting someone?”

  “Max Waverly. Dad’s lawyer.”

  He held my gaze for another heart-stopping second before releasing my hand and strolling out to the porch to answer the door like he was man of the castle.

  I scooped up the keys and hurried after him, getting there in time to see Cole open the storm door and greet Max with a terse, “Waverly.”

  In the contest for biggest fish in small-pond Newburgh, Maxim Waverly III, Attorney at Law was in the running for the top five. Either that or he was a bottom feeder. Depended on whom you talked to. Dad had liked him. They’d been friends and sometimes hunting companions. He’d been nothing but helpful to me since we’d touched base by phone, so I had no beef with him. Judging by Cole’s tone, he’d cast his ballot for bottom feeder.

  “State Trooper Plankitt,” Max said. “Good to see you. I have a meeting with Mandy.”

  “Hi, Max.” I gave a little finger wave.

  Max had to peer around Cole to see me, since Cole was blocking the door.

  The lawyer had more gray at his temples than last time I’d seen him, but otherwise looked the same—balding, rotund, friendly, but with a sharp gaze that didn’t miss much. That gaze passed between me and Cole.

  I waited for Cole to say something to dispel the conclusion forming beneath Max’s shiny pate—that we were an item. When he didn’t, I said, “Here are the keys, Cole. You can check the shop, then be on your way.”

  Shouldering him aside, I said, “Come in, Max. It’ll take me a minute, but I’ll clear a spot on the table.”

  The smaller man’s shoulder brushed Cole’s chest with a faint rasp. “How have you been, Cole?” he said amicably.

  “Fine.” Bending to my ear, Cole said, “Don’t sign anything ’til I get back.” With that, he pounded down the porch steps and disappeared around the front of the trailer, heading toward the shop.

  Max gave me a smile that plumped his cheeks like a chipmunk’s. His eyes twinkled and his eyebrows climbed his forehead in the universal expression for: Hark, there goes an asshole, but I’m too polite to say it out loud. What he did say was, “My condolences once again, Mandy. Your father will be sorely missed.”

  I thanked him and led him inside, where he plopped his boxy briefcase right in the middle of the junk all over the eating nook. He didn’t bat an eye at the mess. Either he’d seen it before or he was a master at diplomacy.

  Trying to forget the way the coffee had made Cole’s shirt mold to his abs—or the fact that I knew exactly how hard those abs were because I’d touched them—I poured Max a mug with the last of what was in the pot. Not finding a clear patch of table to set it on, I turned the mug around and put the handle directly in his hand.

  It was time to get my mind off Cole and onto all the work that had to be done. “All right, Max. Where do I start?”

  Chapter 4

  “Shit-fuck-motherfuck, Cole.” He berated himself as he pulled the door to Gripper’s shop closed behind him. What the hell had he been thinking, holding on to Mandy’s hand like that? Losing himself in the moment like a lovesick moron? Wondering if just maybe she’d gotten a little bit lost too?

  He wanted to make a move on her in the worst way, but that didn’t mean he should make a move on her. What part of keeping his distance from the gorgeous, grieving daughter of his dead buddy did he not understand? He had to cool his jets around Mandy if he was going to get through the next couple weeks.

  Time to put aside his own desires and focus on Gripper’s wishes.

  The trip from the trailer to the shop without his parka had left his hands chilled. The wet spot where his shirt clung to his stomach was even colder. After flicking on the overhead fluorescents, he blew on his hands to warm them up, then grabbed a paper towel from the corner water closet to dab at the coffee stai
n.

  He felt like a jerk for sneaking up on Mandy in the kitchen. He hadn’t meant to. The soles of his work boots were quiet, and as a cop, it was second nature to move swiftly and silently. Wished he’d clodded over to get the keys from her like a normal person. He never wanted to scare Mandy. Never wanted to give her any reason to blush with embarrassment. Before he left today, he would make sure she knew he didn’t give a damn about the shirt. The coffee would wash out. He was just glad she hadn’t burned herself because of him.

  He blew on his hands again. Gripper always turned down the thermostat before leaving for the night. Last time would have been almost a week ago now.

  Ignoring the cold, he looked around with an ache in his chest. A workbench ran the length of the wall between the two windows that faced the berm out back. In the middle of the shop, directly over a support pillar between the bays in the garage, stood the hulking lathe where Grip used to grind parts for the perfect fit. The lathe was at least thirty years old, but in Grip’s expert hands the two-ton piece of equipment was as agile as the more technologically advanced lathes in the big gun shops. Over by the indoor set of stairs that connected the shop to the far bay of the garage was Gripper’s desk, where he balanced his books or pecked out emails on his computer…or where Mandy used to do her homework.

  He’d never come up into this shop without finding Gripper standing at the bench with gun parts laid out all over or at the window, firing a repaired weapon into the berm, or shooting the breeze with a customer or a hunting buddy, an open beer ever present at his elbow.

  Grip had put his heart and soul into the gun business. Without him here, the shop was an empty, lifeless shell.

  Poor Gripper. He’d died too young. Drinking like a fish and smoking a pack a day didn’t exactly qualify as a health trend, but still, fifty-seven? Cole struggled to wrap his head around it. Gripper dead, the shop abandoned. If he hadn’t witnessed his buddy’s deterioration for himself, he might not believe he was really gone.

  At least Grip’s battle was over. Mandy’s was just beginning.

  She was too young to have to pack up her father’s life. As far as he knew, she didn’t even have anyone to help her. Her mother had died when she was young. She’d been an only child. He’d never heard Gripper talk about relatives except to say his parents had died years ago and he had a sister he never spoke to. Was Mandy in touch with her grandparents on her mother’s side? Did she have aunts and uncles? Cousins?

  Guess he’d find out at the funeral. Surely any family she had would be there to support her.

  Cole forced his thoughts from Mandy and made a cursory inspection of the shop. That was supposedly the reason he’d come up here—to make sure the shop was secure. The real reason was that Gripper had given him two tasks, one of which he’d have to tell Mandy about at some point, but not yet. She needed time to process her father’s death before he sprang Gripper’s secrets on her.

  All the points of entry were secure. Nothing was out of place. The shop was as pristine as Grip always kept it, a startling contrast to the trailer where he’d eaten his meals and slept. Cole would never forget his first time stepping into the trailer. It had been just two weeks ago, when Grip had started needing help climbing the stairs to the shop. The doctors had told him to stop working. They’d feared he’d hurt himself either on the stairs or with the heavy equipment. Cole thought maybe they worried he’d shoot himself, either on accident or on purpose to spare himself a slow, painful death. But Grip would never turn a gun on himself. He was made of stouter stuff than that. And he wouldn’t hear of quitting. He’d told Cole flat out, he’d work until he physically couldn’t any more.

  That day had come quicker than any of them had expected. The docs had given Grip three months to live. He’d only gotten two of those months. Cancer got the third.

  Time. It was a strange thing. Sometimes it droned on and on, seemingly endless, purposeless, like the six years Mandy had been gone from Newburgh. Like the six years he’d been estranged from Gripper, missing his friend, regretting the misunderstanding that had driven them apart.

  Sometimes time shot forward at light speed, like the six weeks he’d had with Gripper at the end. He still remembered the first time he’d heard Grip’s voice after so many years of them not talking. His old friend had called to tell Cole he was sick. “Got cancer,” he’d said. “Get your ass over here. We got shit to talk about.”

  Cole got his ass over there.

  He remembered walking up the stairs to the shop for the first time in years. He half expected to find Mandy sitting at Grip’s computer doing her homework, smiling shyly at him and pretending she wasn’t as hyperaware of him as he’d been of her.

  She hadn’t been there. Neither had Gripper, at least not the Gripper he’d known. The man Cole found sitting on a stool at the workbench was a harder man, a meaner man, a dying man.

  Only six years had passed, but Grip looked twenty years older. He had on an army green knit cap, but Cole could tell he was bald underneath. Even more startling than the baldness of his head was the absence of his beard. Cole had never seen Grip without a full beard. He looked alien. He looked sick. Really sick. Eyes sunken. Neck sinewy. Flannel shirt like a tent over his thin frame.

  A lump formed in Cole’s throat as he remembered seeing Gripper that way. Somehow, over the weeks that followed, Grip’s wasted appearance had come to seem normal. But that first time seeing him had been a shock.

  “Should you be up here?” Cole had asked him. He’d looked like he ought to be in bed. Or in a hospital.

  “Don’t got anywhere else to be,” Grip had replied.

  Alrighty then. “You need help with anything?” Cole had stepped up to the workbench to see what Grip was working on. He had a .45 disassembled on the bench and was cleaning the parts with his usual meticulous care.

  “Just keep me company,” he’d said. He kept working while they shot the breeze like old times.

  Grip’s hands were bony, but they were still strong and steady. He’d always been able to work magic with guns. That hadn’t changed. Cole had been amazed how quickly Grip had worked, how tirelessly. His sickness hadn’t dulled his ability to carry on a conversation while assembling small parts, making complicated adjustments, and navigating the rows of unlabeled drawers along the front of his workbench.

  After an hour or so of small talk during which they’d carefully danced around the years-long gap in their friendship, Grip had said, “They gave me three months to live.”

  Cole hadn’t known what to say, so he hadn’t said anything.

  “That was a couple weeks ago,” Grip had said.

  “Shit. I’m sorry.”

  He ran his hand over the rubber padding that kept tiny parts from rolling around on the work bench, remembering the conversation like it happened yesterday.

  “Two weeks out of three months,” Grip went on. “You know what that works out to?” He hadn’t waited for Cole to do the math. “Sixteen percent. I’ve spent sixteen percent of the life I have left trying to figure out what to say to you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah. You.” Grip set the completed handgun down on the rubber mat then turned on his stool to face Cole with his arms folded over his bloated stomach. “There was once you were like a brother to me.”

  Cole had shifted on his feet, uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation. “We don’t have to talk about the past.”

  “Yeah. We do. But not all at once. There’s only so much this dying man can take. Just seeing you today is enough. Come back tomorrow?”

  Cole had agreed. How could he say no? Gripper wanted to revive a friendship that had gone out in a blaze of glory years ago. It was a dying man’s wish. And secretly, it had been Cole’s wish too. The circumstances sucked, but he was glad to be in Gripper’s circle again, even if it couldn’t last.

  The memory faded away, replaced by a different one, the last one Gripper would ever be a part of. The o
ne where Cole had held Grip’s hand and listened while, between labored breaths, his old friend made a confession that had made his head spin. Then Grip had given him a job to do. Two tasks.

  He was wasting time. It was doubtful Mandy or Waverly would come up here and catch him in the act of fulfilling Gripper’s last wishes. But the longer he took, the stranger it would look later, when the shit hit the fan. He had to make this quick. Then he’d return to the trailer and make sure Waverly did everything by the book. Far as he could tell, Mandy didn’t have anyone looking out for her, making sure no one took advantage of her situation. She might not care for it, but he planned on being that person. He owed it to Grip.

  Dragging a step stool up to the filing cabinet, he sat down and pulled out the bottom drawer. He thumbed through the files, noting Grip’s blocky, all-caps handwriting. Bingo. He stopped at the tab that read, WILL.

  “Can’t believe I’m doing this for you, old man,” he muttered. Then he removed the file and tucked it in his waistband. He’d take it home and destroy it there so as not to leave any trace of it in Grip’s shop. Technically, destroying someone’s will without them being present, even if the testator asked you to do it, was illegal. Unfortunately, Grip couldn’t be present. He was dead.

  That was why no one could ever know about this aspect of Gripper’s last wishes. Not even Mandy. Keeping something of this magnitude from her rubbed him the wrong way, but what else could he do? Not betray his old friend, that was for sure. He didn’t like breaking a law, but he was doing it for a good reason. This was the right thing to do. He knew it in his heart of hearts. No regrets.

  Now for the second half of the job. He faced off with the gun safe. Referring to his pocket-sized notepad, where he’d scrawled the combination Grip had recited, he worked the wheel. The safe didn’t open. He spun the wheel a few times and tried again. Still wouldn’t open. Shit. Carefully, he tried a third time, working the combination flawlessly. The safe still wouldn’t open.