by Loree Lough
Hunter Stone was one of their emergency contacts. She would never understand how that man had become close to Beth and Kent. For years it had been a wedge between the two sisters, and now Beth was gone, along with any chance to apologize.
“If you have any questions,” the deputy repeated, “call me. Anytime.”
And though it seemed ridiculous to thank him for calling, that was exactly what she did.
Connor’s sleepy sigh whispered over the baby monitor as she hung up. The kitchen clock counted the seconds, and the muted chimes of the family room mantel clock signaled the quarter hour.
She noticed the notes she’d taken on the whiteboard as the deputy had explained everything she needed to do to bring Beth and Kent home. The black scrawl didn’t look anything like her handwriting. Brooke turned off the overhead light.
A shaft of moonlight slanted through the windows, painting a silvery stripe across the room and illuminating the whiteboard.
Eyes burning, she slumped to the hardwood floor and drew her knees to her chest. She hid her face in the crook of one arm and let the tears fall.
When a stiff neck roused her, the kitchen clock read 4:05. Brooke stood at the kitchen sink and splashed cold water on her face. As she reached for a paper towel, she glanced out the window, where, in a tidy brick-lined flowerbed, the blue-gray light of dawn picked up the purple shoots of Beth’s roses.
Farther out in the yard, she could just make out the yellow bucket swing Kent had hung for Connor.
Beyond that, the trio of birch trees Brooke had bought the couple as a housewarming gift had already begun to bud. She couldn’t see them now, but she’d noticed yesterday.
Yesterday.
She swallowed past the lump in her throat, remembering that when her mother was killed during a convenience store holdup, staying busy had helped.
Brooke started a pot of coffee. Threw a load of towels into the washing machine. Made her bed.
“Gram is right,” she muttered, emptying the wastebaskets. “A trained monkey could perform monotonous household chores.” It was still dark when she backed out the front door, fumbling with the garbage bag’s red drawstrings.
“You’re up and at ’em early….”
The voice—deep and vaguely familiar—startled her. She turned to find herself face-to-face with Hunter Stone.
Hunter Stone, who’d been asleep in his squad car when he should have been in the store, stopping the gunman who killed her mother. Hunter Stone, who’d spent a good part of the fifteen years since then trying to atone by playing big brother to Beth and best friend to Kent.
He held her gaze for a blink or two—long enough for her to read remorse on his face.
Hunter took the trash bag and jogged down the driveway, adding it to one of two metal cans with SHERIDAN on their sides.
He was wiping his hands on a white handkerchief when he returned to the porch. “Look,” he said, tucking it in his back pocket, “I realize I’m the last person you want to see today of all days, but I wanted to ask if there’s anything I can do.”
Today of all days? So he’d heard about the crash? When she’d only just found out an hour ago? It meant his name wasn’t just on her sister’s emergency contacts list by the phone; it had also been with them while they’d traveled. He was just that important to them. In disbelief, she reached for the doorknob.
“Have you told Connor yet?”
She stopped but didn’t look at him. “It’s four-thirty in the morning.”
He checked his wristwatch and did a double take. Seemed embarrassed. “Guess you have some tough decisions to make in the next few hours, huh?”
Starting with how to get you off this porch.
“I can take Connor off your hands while you make arrangements. He’s used to me, so…” Hunter shrugged. “But if you’re more comfortable leaving him with Deidre, I could drive you…wherever.”
I’d sooner crawl.
But he was right. She needed to set up appointments with the bank, the funeral parlor, a lawyer who’d help her protect Connor’s future. The nightmare had just begun.
“Do I smell coffee?”
Brooke couldn’t believe her ears.
Hunter pinched the bridge of his nose. “I hope you won’t take what I’m about to say the wrong way….”
Everything about him rubbed her the wrong way.
“I know you and Beth haven’t exactly been on the best of terms lately—”
She pressed her lips together.
“—so I thought maybe I could bring you up to speed over a cup of coffee.”
Fists balled at her sides, she willed herself not to react.
Obviously, he’d mistaken her silence for an invitation; Hunter made a beeline past her into the house and directly for the kitchen, to the cupboard where Beth kept the mugs. She slowly followed him. “You drink yours black, as I recall.”
On the few occasions when they’d attended barbecues or birthday parties at Deidre’s or at Beth and Kent’s, she’d stayed as far away from Hunter as space would allow. And yet he knew how she liked her coffee. Was he aware she liked to cool it with ice? she wondered, opening the freezer.
If she dialed 911 and reported him as an intruder, would he leave quietly?
One of her grandfather’s favorite maxims came to mind: keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Maybe during one of her sister’s friendly sharing sessions with him, Beth had divulged something that would help Brooke find the will, so she’d know what sort of funeral to plan.
Funeral.
Beth was gone.
Brooke’s heart beat double time as the dizzying truth struck her. If she didn’t get hold of herself quickly, she’d break down. She took a deep breath, grabbing a handful of ice.
“Beth loved this time of year,” he said sadly, “because she could throw open all the windows.” Then he turned on the TV like he’d been doing it for years. Hunter tuned to Channel 13 and adjusted the antennas…
…and brought Beth and Kent’s wedding portrait into focus.
“A local church is mourning the loss of two well-loved congregants this morning,” said the anchorman.
Brooke gasped.
Hunter fumbled with the remote, and when it failed to turn off the set, he yanked the plug from the wall. “Sorry,” he said. “I just thought…background noise would help….”
Brooke couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. Seeing Beth and Kent’s smiling faces—in living color on the morning news—hit her like a roundhouse punch to the gut. One by one, the ice cubes clattered to the floor.
She took a step toward the paper-towel holder, but Hunter blocked her path. “Leave it,” he said, his fingers closing around her wrists. “It isn’t going anywhere.”
She looked up into his face, seeing for the first time how haggard he looked.
Dizzying, disjointed thoughts spun in her brain. Call her new boss, ask for an extension on her start date; call the new landlord to plead for a refund of her deposit. Find Beth and Kent’s will and their checkbook; call Deidre to tell her about Beth. How would she tell Connor?
Never in her wildest dreams could Brooke have foreseen herself leaning into Hunter, sobbing.
CHAPTER THREE
GROWING UP THE youngest of four boys, Hunter hadn’t had much experience with touchy-feely stuff, but when Brooke melted against him, his arms automatically held her.
Unexpected? To be sure. Uncomfortable? Most definitely. Because the DVD in his inside jacket pocket was the only reason he’d come here today. When her brother-in-law handed it to him the week before their islands vacation, he’d sworn Hunter to secrecy. No one could know about his living-color will, not even Beth.
Listening to Kent’s vindictive portrayal of Brooke almost made him sorry he’d agreed to carry out its terms…and made him feel like a voyeur. “A woman like that,” Kent had said, “should not be allowed to raise my kid just because she’s connected by blood.”
Kent had left nothing to chance. In
the note tucked into the DVD case, he had written:
In the event that something should happen to Beth and me on our trip, you, Hunter Stone, are to deliver one copy of this disc to a family court lawyer of your choice and another to my sister-in-law. You are then to immediately and permanently remove my son from her care.
Frankly, Hunter didn’t understand that level of hostility, because it seemed to him that Brooke was crazy about Connor, and the feeling was mutual. If she was guilty of anything, it was stubbornness and grudge-holding…against him.
So no, he didn’t understand Kent’s attitude, but after fifteen years of dodging Brooke at every O’Toole function, it would probably feel good to have the upper hand for a change.
At least, that was what he’d thought until he saw her on the porch, damp-eyed and rumpled, and couldn’t bring himself to deliver it. Finding out that her sister was dead, seeing the video, losing Connor all in the same morning? Only a heartless heel would do that to her.
So he’d left the DVD in his jacket pocket, told himself there would be plenty of time after the funeral to hand it over. Plenty of time to get a handle on his own grief at losing the friends who, for eight of the past fifteen years, had been more like family than neighbors. Time to find ways to support Brooke any way he could, because it was what Beth would have wanted.
He searched his mind for a word, a phrase that might comfort her, that wouldn’t sound phony or trite. Ironic, he thought, that his contractor’s toolbox was full of gadgets and gizmos, yet he didn’t know how to fix the brokenness in Brooke.
She spared him by stepping back. Way back.
“Sorry for soaking your shirt,” she said, plucking a napkin from the basket on the table.
Those eyes, sad and scared, looked so much like her mother’s that he could scarcely breathe.
“Nothing to be sorry for,” he said, meaning it.
“Next time you come over, bring it with you—”
Even her hair, illuminated by the fluorescent ceiling fixture, reminded him of that night.
“—so I can wash and iron it. It’s the least I can do after blubbering all over it.”
Brooke blew her nose, hard, then tossed the napkin into the trash can and got busy cleaning up the floor. “I’ll bet imitating Canada geese wasn’t on Beth’s ‘My Sister Isn’t All Bad’ list.”
No, but plenty of other things were. For starters, Beth had assured him that despite the way Brooke had always treated him, she was a good and loving person; her bitterness, Beth insisted, was proof that her sister’s loyalty ran deep. “Give it time,” she’d said. “Brooke will come around, just like I did.”
He hadn’t believed it then. He didn’t believe it now. Still, he got onto his knees to help her sop up the melting ice cubes.
When they finished, Brooke stood at the sink and lathered her hands. “I have to email my electronic signature to Florida before Connor wakes up.”
A hint that he should leave? He could hardly blame her for sounding less than enthusiastic about spending time in his company. Besides, he’d been in her shoes when his dad died a year ago and knew that after emailing her signature to the deputy, she’d have her hands full making appointments and searching Beth’s office for documentation to bring to the meetings.
The DVD was out of sight, but hardly out of mind. It didn’t seem fair that with it, he had a virtual arsenal of ammunition to shoot down her attempts to keep Connor, yet she had to make all the final arrangements.
“Guess I ought to go. Call me if you need any—”
He didn’t understand the anger in her eyes. Especially since, not five minutes ago, she’d soaked his shirt with tears.
If she thought he’d gotten off easy after her mother’s death in the convenience store shootings, she was wrong: he couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept more than two hours at a stretch or a night when his dreams weren’t filled with the sounds and images of the shooting. Beth had been wrong, too: Brooke would punish him with her dying breath.
As she’d stood crying in his arms, a weird thought had crossed his mind: Give her the disc. Don’t fight her for Connor. Tell her you’ll help her raise him…to prove how rotten you feel about that night. But in this moment of lucidity, he realized how wrong that would be, because Connor deserved better from life than to spend it under the thumb of a woman so consumed with hatred and bitterness.
He took a few steps closer. “You might not believe this, but I don’t blame you for hating me. I hate me for what happened that night,” he said, meaning every word. “But, Brooke, can’t you set it aside, even at a time like this?”
He prepared himself for a scathing retort.
“A time like this,” she grumbled, putting her back to him. “Connor hates eggs,” she said, grabbing oatmeal from the cabinet. “He’ll be up soon, so I need to get his breakfast ready.”
He stood, gap-jawed, wondering what any of that had to do with what he’d just said.
“I’m not the least bit hungry,” she continued, “but I’ll eat…to stay sharp. For Connor.”
She riveted him with an unblinking stare, and he felt like a bug, caught in a spider’s web. He’d been a fool to come over here; should’ve taken the disk to a lawyer, like Kent told him to, and let the chips fall where they may.
“Eat. Don’t eat,” he said. “It’s none of my business.” And he meant that, too.
“Your coffee’s getting cold. Have a seat, will you?” she said. “Because I need to get something off my chest, and I prefer to do it eye to eye, without you towering over me like Goliath.”
Oh. Great. Hunter exhaled a ragged sigh. He had a good idea that what she needed to get off her chest was about her mother and his incompetence, and he’d take it on the chin. After the funeral, he’d take off the gloves and do everything in his power to get Connor as far from her spiteful influence as possible. Unlike her sister, Brooke apparently had no understanding of forgiveness and generosity.
He sat, then looked up at her and met her steady gaze blink for blink. “Okay. I’m sitting,” he said. “Hit me.”
She leveled him with a look that made him think she might just do it.
“I thought you said you wanted to be eye to eye?”
For the second time in as many seconds, it seemed as if she might clean his clock. Then she shook her head, sat across from him and folded her hands on the table. Eyes blazing, she opened her mouth to speak…
…and the phone rang, startling her so badly that she nearly overturned her coffee mug. Too early for a social call, he thought as she got up to answer it.
“Yes, this is Brooke O’Toole….” Shading her eyes with one hand, she walked toward the sink. “So that’s it, then. You’re absolutely sure.”
He heard the catch in her voice and resisted the urge to go into the living room and pick up the extension to find out what had caused it.
After she hung up, Brooke continued facing the wall, cupping her elbows, shaking her head. Finally, she returned to the table.
“I asked for fingerprint identification,” she explained, though he hadn’t asked who had called or why. “More proof it really was them. Since Beth is a teacher, I knew hers would be on record. But it seems Kent had a record of his own.” She stared at some unknown spot on the wall behind him. Then, rubbing her eyes, she added, “The deputy thought it might be a good idea to speak with a lawyer in case Kent’s former burglary victims have a mind to sue the estate for restitution.” She held her head in her hands. “Estate. What a joke. I haven’t even had a chance to look for a will, if there is a will.”
His heart pounded out an extra beat as he thought of the disc.
“I wouldn’t worry,” he said. “That trouble Kent got into…it happened a long, long time ago, and he paid for it with months in juvie and years in the Marines. I didn’t know him back then, but I’d bet my entire business that time served is what turned him around. The military has a way of turning boys into men.”
She aimed a guarded look his
way. “And you know this because…?”
“Because fifteen years ago I enlisted in the army.”
He watched as she did the math, realized what he’d just admitted.
“And Kent was in the Marines.” She harrumphed. “Well, that explains a lot.”
“Such as…”
“Such as why Kent couldn’t tolerate a mess of any kind and went ballistic when the news reported stories about kids who broke the law.” She frowned. “And why he was so tough on me when my stupid choices came to roost at his door. I was never his favorite person.”
That, Hunter already knew. But he’d only heard things from Kent’s point of view. “Why?”
“Because I tried to talk Beth out of marrying him. And more than once, after he got drunk and threatened her, tried to talk her into leaving him. That’s why he looked for ways to discredit me in Beth’s eyes.”
Admittedly, life had dealt Brooke a pretty bad hand; hopefully, whatever she was about to tell him wouldn’t force him to lay down the card that would make her fold, here and now.
She ran a finger around the rim of her mug. “Wish I’d known he had such a rough childhood.”
“Why? It wasn’t any harder than yours and Beth’s. Different kind of hard, but no harder.”
Focusing on the spot behind him again, she winced.
Her actions and attitude told him she hadn’t yet fully absorbed the reality of her loss. He’d felt the same way after his dad died. Helping his mom make the grim plans and cope with financial concerns in addition to the shock of losing her mate had allowed Hunter to sideline his grief. If he hadn’t stepped up, any one of his brothers would have. But Deidre and Connor…they were the extent of Brooke’s family now. She couldn’t lean on a seventy-five-year-old or a toddler. And his presence wasn’t making things easier for her.
Hunter turned toward the door but her quiet words stopped him.
“Guess it’s true what they say.”
Two feet of tabletop—and fifteen years’ worth of bitter memories—separated them. He had to remind himself that Brooke wasn’t some untested teenager but a full-grown woman who’d survived disappointments and losses. She didn’t need him to protect her. So how did he explain his odd desire to do just that?