by Linda Warren
Cole knew Bo wasn’t going to stop. “She...she has Grandpa eating out of her hand. She ignores his grumpiness and deals with him like I’ve never seen anyone deal with him. She even has him talking about the past.” Cole told him about what he’d heard at lunch.
“She brought up the pictures?”
“Yes, and he even let her use Jamie’s high chair.”
“Wow. She has some amazing powers.”
That rolled around in Cole’s head. That’s who she was—amazing Grace. He shook the thought away. “I tore a strip off her for interfering in my life. I’ve adjusted to the pictures being everywhere, and I don’t need her to stand up for me.”
“I think she’s getting under your skin.”
“I gotta go,” Cole said. He didn’t want to talk about Grace anymore.
“What are you going to do about the case?”
“Talk to Ms. Bennett and see if she can explain what’s in the file.”
“Parker won’t do anything until after Thanksgiving, so you have some time if you feel so inclined.”
“Yeah. Stephanie wants me to meet her parents on Thanksgiving.”
“Whoa, where did that come from?”
“She’s been pushing me a lot lately for the big C, and I’m not sure I’m ready. I really like her...”
“If there’s a question in your mind, then you’re not ready.”
“There’s so much going on in my head with Grandma dying and Grandpa’s crankiness. I don’t need anyone else making demands on my time. I need space more than anything.”
“Remember the pact we made when we were about, what? Eighteen?”
“Yeah, when Becky said if you leave and join the Army, you could kiss her goodbye because she wasn’t waiting for you.”
“Did you have to bring that up?”
“She meant it.”
There was a long pause on the line. “Yep. I think we need to reinstate the pact—stay bachelors for the rest of our lives.”
“I’m clicking off on that.”
“Let me know how this turns out.”
Cole laid his phone on the desk, mulling over everything he’d learned. Now he had to confront Grace once again, and it wasn’t something he was looking forward to. Bo was right. She was getting under his skin.
* * *
GRACE FELL ASLEEP on the couch. She hadn’t intended to and was startled when she woke up and didn’t see Zoe in the playpen. Glancing around, she saw she was in Mr. Walt’s lap, waving her hands and smiling at the old man. Grace relaxed and wondered where Cole was. Turning her head, she saw him in the kitchen at the table eating coconut pie and drinking coffee.
What must he think of her taking a nap? She never took naps. Maybe it was cooking all that rich food and then eating it. She got up and walked into the kitchen.
“Would you like another cup of coffee?”
He glanced up. “Grace, you’re not the maid around here. And I’m capable of getting my own food.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And don’t be smart.”
She wanted to make a face, but he was staring right at her with his steely blues. She wondered if they ever warmed up.
“I brought the rest of your things from your car.” Cole pushed to his feet. “I’ll bring them in.”
“Oh. Thanks.” She was always startled by his brusqueness. It was like someone slapping you and then kissing your cheek. She was never sure where she stood with him.
Cole brought the stroller into the house as Grandpa came into the kitchen with Zoe in his arms. Zoe seemed to recognize the stroller, waving her arms and blowing bubbles with her lips.
“She wants to get in it,” Grandpa said. “Let’s take her outside for a while. I have to check on the animals.”
Grace was eager to go outside and away from the house. The pictures on the walls were depressing the daylights out of her. She couldn’t imagine what it was like for Cole. But then, he’d said he’d learned to live with them. Maybe he had. Maybe she was blowing it out of proportion.
They all bundled up, and she pushed the stroller out the back door. Cole was bringing firewood in for the night, and they left him behind. The temperature was in the forties, and it was nice to breathe in the fresh, cool air mixed with an earthy scent. Huge live oak trees surrounded the house, and shrubs grew against the farmhouse along with wintry-stiff rosebushes. The flower beds were clean and manicured. White and red chickens pecked in the dirt. A red barn with a rusty tin roof wasn’t far away. The sun glistened off it. An old wood corral was attached. It was a rustic country scene with the feel of olden days.
A red rooster rushed out of the barn and cock-a-doodle-dooed his head off. Rascal barked at him.
“That stupid rooster,” Grandpa grumbled. “He’s so old he can’t remember when morning is, so he just crows anytime he wants.”
The rooster flapped his wings and seemed upset.
“He won’t hurt Zoe, will he?”
“Nah. He’s just a lot of hot air.”
“Does he have a name?”
“Otis.”
The rooster excited Zoe. She tried to stand up in the stroller, and Grace had to hold it so she wouldn’t flip it over. It was good to see Brooke’s baby so happy.
Mr. Walt went into the barn, and Grace pushed the stroller closer to the corral. There were three animals inside: a potbelly pig, a mule and a ram goat with big horns. Mr. Walt dumped feed into a trough, and the animals ambled toward it. What a hodgepodge of creatures!
“Where did you get these animals, Mr. Walt?” she asked, hanging on to the fence.
“One by one they wandered here. We fed them and they stayed. They fight sometimes, but mostly they get along. They’re old, too, and I guess nobody wanted them.”
“Did you name them?”
“Yep. The pig is Goober, the donkey is Gomer and the ram is Barney.”
“Wait a minute. Those are names from an old sitcom I used to watch with my grandmother.”
“It sure is, Andy Griffith. Cora and I watched it all the time, and it’s still on. We watch it every night after supper. She’s gone now and I...”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Walt.”
“Mmm...mmm...mmm.” Zoe waved her arms to the animals and wanted to get closer.
Grace leaned down to her level. “You want to pet the animals?”
Zoe bounced up and down.
Rascal barked and stuck his nose close to Zoe. She slapped at his face, and Rascal didn’t move. He was enjoying the attention. Zoe giggled, and the sound floated across the lovely afternoon. Grace felt as if she was in paradise, a place where no one could hurt her—where no one could take Zoe away.
Zoe was beside herself with excitement, pointing to Mr. Walt. She wanted the old man to take her.
“Yes. That’s Mr. Walt. He’s busy right now.”
“She calls me Grandpa,” Mr. Walt stated.
Grace looked up. “She doesn’t talk.”
“You just can’t hear her.”
“Mr....”
“Figure that one out,” Cole said from behind her. She hadn’t even heard him walk up. “Or don’t try to figure it out, because you never will. My grandfather is in another time zone. His own.”
The trio of animals came out of the corral and gathered around Zoe, as if to get a close-up look at the tiny human. She turned her neck this way and that way, trying to look at all of them. But they were a little too close for Zoe’s comfort zone. She stuck out her lip and started to cry.
Grace patted her back. “It’s okay. They won’t hurt you.”
Zoe blinked back tears and watched as the animals moseyed away.
“Where are they going?” Grace asked.
“To the pond,” Cole told her. “They like the water there, but they’ll be back and go into the barn for the night.”
“What are we having for supper, Grace?” Mr. Walt asked.
“Leftovers” was her immediate response.
“I don’t like leftovers.”
“Then I guess you won’t eat.”
Mr. Walt frowned. “Are you going to be like that?”
“Yes. We have a lot of food left over, and we’re going to eat it. Everyone is. Clear?”
“Ah, I can’t get nothin’ past you.”
Mr. Walt took the handle of the stroller and pushed Zoe toward the house. She and Cole walked behind. As she walked she had a sense of being part of a family here on this farm. It was ridiculous and she didn’t know where it had come from. She wasn’t a part of the Chisholm family. She was only a guest.
* * *
AFTER SUPPER, COLE was biding his time, waiting for a moment to talk to Grace alone. Grandpa was asleep in his recliner with the TV on. Grace was putting the playpen in a bedroom for Zoe so she could put her down for the night. He sat nursing a cup of coffee, waiting.
Finally, Grace came into the kitchen. Her shirtsleeves were rolled up to her elbows, and water had splattered the front of the shirt. She tucked her hair behind her ears. “She’s finally asleep. She’s usually easy to put down for the night, but she was so excited about seeing the animals. That was a real treat for her.”
“Can we talk for a minute?” he interrupted, thinking she might just go on and on and on.
“Sure.” She sat facing him. “I know Mr. Walt’s getting attached to Zoe, but...”
“That’s not what I want to talk about.”
“Oh.” She was genuinely confused.
“I want to talk about your sister.”
“I told you everything I know.”
He scooted forward, his hands on the table. “You lied to me.”
“What?” Her eyes were huge, and he realized not for the first time just how beautiful they were. He was mesmerized by them for a brief second. “I didn’t lie to you.”
The only way to deal with this was to ask questions. “How often did your sister see Zoe?”
“She stopped by every day after work.”
“What hours did she work?”
“She worked from seven in the morning until seven at night. Those were long, hard days and she was exhausted by the end of them, but she always stopped by to see Zoe.”
“How long did she stay?”
“An hour or so.”
“Then she’d go home to Briggs’s?”
“Yes.” Her voice was getting clipped and angry, but he had to keep pushing.
“So I’m guessing with Austin traffic and all that she probably arrived at his place before 9:00 p.m.”
“I suppose.”
“What did she do on her days off?”
“Usually she’d come and get Zoe and spend some time with her, like taking her to the park or something.”
“All day?”
“No. She...huh...she wanted to spend some time with Joel.”
“Did she ever take Zoe to see her father?”
Grace fidgeted in her chair, but she didn’t hesitate in answering. “No. Not that I’m aware of.”
“Doesn’t that seem a little strange to you?”
“I told you,” she shot back. “Joel was abusive, and she didn’t want Zoe around him.”
“Why? Joel is the father, and if your sister was there to watch him, why wouldn’t she want Joel to spend time with his daughter? Why wouldn’t she want him to see her? That’s a reasonable question, isn’t it?”
Grace bent her head, her dark hair falling forward. She looked down at the table as she dealt with the question. “I can’t answer that. I don’t know what was going on in Brooke’s head. I kept telling her if she and Joel were trying to work things out, Zoe needed to be a part of their lives. She told me to stay out of her business. So I let her live her life the way she wanted. As long as Zoe was safe, I was okay with that. I couldn’t change Brooke’s thinking.”
As Cole listened to Grace, he knew without a doubt that she was a patsy in all of this. Her sister used her as a babysitter to get what she wanted. What that was Cole wasn’t sure about just yet, but he had to tell Grace the truth if there was any chance of her keeping Zoe. And Cole felt the chances were very slim.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“YOU’RE NOT SAYING ANYTHING,” Grace prompted when Cole sat there staring at his hands on the table.
He raised his head, and she saw a flicker of light in his eyes. “This case is complicated and there’s something you need...”
“What?”
“I don’t believe you lied to me.”
“Why would I? You’re trying to help me.”
“You didn’t know your sister all that well.”
“Of course I did!” she snapped. “I’ve known her all my life, and I know everything about her.”
His eyes captured hers, like a trap captures a criminal. “Did you know she worked as a cocktail waitress?”
Her mouth fell open, and she immediately closed it. Fury gripped her, and she had to take a deep breath. “W-what?”
He pulled out his phone, pushed some buttons and slid it across the table. A young girl with long dark hair wearing a skimpy skirt and a halter top was in the photo. Her eyes were dark and sultry. Grace hardly recognized her. She shook her head. “That’s not my sister.”
“Take a closer look.” His finger moved the screen to more photos of the same girl.
She put her hands over her face. “Stop it.”
“You didn’t know she had a second job?”
Grace removed her hands, gulped in a deep breath and forced herself to admit that the girl was Brooke. Her sister. Zoe’s mother. It didn’t make any sense, and she didn’t know how to explain it.
“No.”
He gave her a moment and then said, “There’s more.”
She tucked her hair behind her ears, as if somehow that would give her strength. “Like what?”
“The place is a high-class gentlemen’s club, and the men are known to touch. We get calls there regularly. The detective on the case said that’s what they were fighting about that morning. Briggs’s friend had gone into the club, and he called Briggs the next morning and told him about Brooke. He confronted her, and they had a big argument. He told her she had to stop, and she refused. He admits he slapped her, but according to him, she slapped him back several times. She ran from the apartment and slipped on the stairs. The detective believes Briggs.”
“He’s lying.”
“They don’t have any evidence to prove otherwise.” The words were aimed at her with as much force as possible.
She had no response. Thoughts ran helter-skelter through her head, and she couldn’t make sense of any of it.
“Think about it,” Cole said. “Did Brooke need money?”
“I don’t know.” She buried her face in her hands again. “She had a good job. I don’t see why she would need more money.”
“Usually it’s drugs,” he slipped in like the seasoned detective he was.
“Huh...” Grace thought back to the last few weeks of Brooke’s life. She always seemed to be in a hurry and not to have any money. And she hadn’t been able to pay her half of the mortgage lately. She didn’t think anything of it at the time, but now... “She asked if I could buy Zoe’s diapers and things—she said that she was behind on her car payments and she would pay me back.”
That’s when righteous indignation or whatever people called it exploded in her. She wasn’t going to sit here and listen to him making her sister a druggie. Brooke wasn’t like that. And she would prove it. She got up and grabbed her purse from the den and marched back to the table.
She pulled out her phone and quickly found pictures and placed it in front of him. “This is the Brooke I know.” There were photos of Bro
oke and Zoe and several of her and Brooke. Two sisters, side by side, looking very much alike. Then she showed him more pictures—Brooke with bruises on her face and on her arms.
“He hit her. See the bruises? That’s when I called the cops. They gave him a warning. That should be on record. He wasn’t this nice football player that everyone loves. He was dangerous and violent, and I didn’t want Zoe near him. I didn’t force Brooke or push her to take Zoe to him. I didn’t think it was a good idea. Brooke is not this person they’re portraying.”
Grace ran her hands up her face, a new kind of pain cozying up to her heart. “It was easy for her to let Frannie and me take care of Zoe until she got her life straightened out.”
“You said Zoe was nine months old. Brooke had a long time to figure out that the relationship with Briggs wasn’t working. I don’t get what was keeping her from raising her child.”
Grace gritted her teeth, not able to hear one more bad word about her sister. “Brooke wasn’t like you’re thinking. She loved Zoe. She wouldn’t do that. I know it. He must’ve forced her.”
“How could he force her? All she had to do was walk out and go home to you.”
“I don’t know.” But then what did she know? It seemed as if she barely knew her sister. “I don’t know. I don’t know.” She choked out the last word and forced herself not to cry.
Cole got up and came around the table. She took a step backward. “Tomorrow I’m going into Austin to dig a little deeper, and you have to be prepared for whatever I find. But the bottom line is if they close the case, Joel Briggs will get his kid.”
“Cole, please don’t let them do that. He hasn’t wanted her in all this time. I don’t understand why he wants her now. You can’t let them take her. Cole, please.” The tears she’d been fighting slipped from her eyes, and she quickly brushed them away. She was stronger than this, but the fear inside her was a powerful thing that held her in its grip.
“Hey, hey.” Cole held her at the elbows, and his touch instilled in her a strength she hadn’t expected. His touch was light and gentle. “You can’t fall apart now. This is just starting.”
“It’s...”