The Time in Between

by Kristen Ashley

  Shit, he’d made a mess.

  He’d made a mess of Cady.

  Again.

  And he was scared as hell, just like he didn’t last time, that he wouldn’t find a way to clean it up.

  Two days before Christmas Eve, Coert stood in his living room with the Christmas tree lights on, a lamp by the couch, these the only things illuminating the room.

  It should be cheery, especially since Janie liked colored lights on the tree and from the time she was two he’d taken her on a special outing and let her pick a bunch of ornaments, every one on the tree her choice. So the entire tree was of her design, childlike, unsophisticated, nothing matched, it was just bright and unpredictable and gorgeous.

  Even with the coolest Christmas tree in Magdalene, Coert was not feeling in a festive mood.

  He was staring down at his phone seeing a one-sided text conversation that he’d had with Cady the three days since she’d left.

  You get to Connecticut OK?

  You good?

  Cady, is everything good?

  You home?

  Cady, phone me.

  She didn’t phone or text back and Coert felt like a fucking stalker.

  Which was something he latched onto because it was better than focusing on the fact he was just a fucking asshole.

  He needed to go back to the lighthouse. That Elijah guy was there and that probably wouldn’t go well. And Midnight might no longer be his biggest fan if Elijah and Cady gave off that vibe, which they would. Not to mention her parents and Caylen might be there and he had no idea how they took the news she was with an undercover cop she didn’t know was an undercover cop but he didn’t like them (and he’d hated Caylen’s guts) as Tony, and since he was Tony, just Coert playing Tony, and a cop and who he was to Cady, he didn’t figure that was going to change.

  But she’d had her time.

  And her time was up.

  He was just about to pocket his phone and haul his ass into his truck when a knock came on the door.

  He looked that way and was going to ignore it when another knock came, louder and it didn’t stop for some time.

  He could still ignore it but he was the sheriff. It wasn’t frequent people showed at his doorstep—mostly neighbors thinking he was not only the sheriff but a one-man neighborhood watch that would drop everything and help look for lost dogs or get in his car and cruise the streets to find teenage girls who’d stormed off in a fit of teenage dramatics—but it happened.

  When the knocking stopped and started again immediately, Coert went to his front door, a door made out of windows, to see man he’d never seen in his life.

  He unlocked it, stepped to the side and opened it enough to put his body in it.

  “Sorry, don’t got a lot of time,” he declared.

  “Please don’t close the door,” the guy replied immediately and Coert’s shoulders grew tight when he went on, “I know this is not right. Totally not right. I want you to understand that I know that and I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t feel it was urgent that I come. But I’m Pat Moreland, Cady’s brother, and I need to speak to you.”

  Coert stood staring at Cady’s stepson, a man who was maybe a decade older than her, a man who said he was her brother.

  “Please,” the guy said, eyes locked to Coert’s. “I’ll try not to take up much of your time, but something’s wrong with Cady, something bad, we’re concerned and we’re desperate so I need to find out what it is. I need to find out so I can fix it.”

  And with that, Coert stepped back and fully opened the door.

  Belonged to You

  Coert

  Present day . . .

  PAT MORELAND LOOKED SURPRISED WHEN Coert nonverbally invited him in.

  And then he walked right in.

  Coert closed the door behind him, passed him to guide him into the living room and stopped. He turned and stood there, crossing his arms on his chest, studying a good-looking man who he now saw had a lot of his father in him.

  A man who looked worried out of his brain.

  This kept Coert quiet.

  Because this man being there was enough of a surprise.

  This man worried out of his brain for Cady gnawed at his gut so much, he had to keep his mouth shut or he’d vomit.

  “Thank you for letting me in,” Moreland said.

  Coert nodded.

  “I know that you probably don’t want to be disturbed with this at all, much less this close to the holiday,” he declared.

  Coert’s voice was not his own when he spoke, brusque, harsh and deeper than normal as he pushed out, “No offense, but you don’t know anything about me.”

  There was a tightening of his mouth and the shift of a little worry to let annoyance in when Moreland muttered a curt, “Right.”

  Coert stared at him, feeling hot and cold and sick with his palms itching and his heart thundering in his chest.

  He was about to expend the effort to tell him to get on with it when the man got on with it.

  “Mom died when I was twelve.”

  Already braced, with that opening, from head to toe Coert grew solid.

  This was not where he thought this would start.

  “She and Dad, they liked kids. Best parents you could have. Loved us. I remember her. I remember everything about her. Her smell. The way she did her hair. How she’d pull it up in a ponytail when she cleaned the house, but she usually wore it down all other times because Dad liked it like that. Probably kids do that when they lose a parent. Or at least they do if they have enough time with them. I’m glad I was old enough to have that. Daly was eight. He doesn’t remember as much as I do. And I hate that for him. I hate that for Mom. I wish he had more. But I remember. I remember how much she loved being with her family. Being with her boys. What I didn’t know until a lot later, when I was old enough to know it, when Dad felt he could share it, was how much she wanted a girl.”

  No, this was not starting as he’d expected at all.

  Coert forced himself to continue staring into the man’s eyes.

  “Dad wanted one too,” Moreland said quietly. “But he was her husband and he had to look after her. She wanted kids, a lot of them. They both did. And with three boys they were really wanting a girl. Mom liked the idea of a girl being the last. Of her having three big brothers to look out for her. And Dad having a daughter to walk down the aisle. I could see that. Mom wanting it. Dad wanting the same. He still had to stop her having more, because as much as she loved kids her body wasn’t good at making it easy for her to have them.”

  Shit, shit, shit.

  “She had three boys and two miscarriages in between,” Moreland told him. “She nearly . . . things went bad with my baby brother, Daly. So after Daly, Dad put an end to it.”

  Coert remained silent.

  But he knew where this was leading.

  He knew.

  Shit, shit, fuck.

  The man’s voice was thicker when he said, “It took her years. But he loved her. He was like that. Dad was. He was like that with everyone he loved. He gave in. Gave them what they wanted. It might take time, but if they didn’t give up, they’d always get there eventually. So she talked him into it in the end.”

  He needed to give the guy something but with the way this was going he knew he had to hold what little he had in reserve so Coert just jerked up his chin.

  “She was six months in when it happened. Died giving birth to my baby sister.”

  Shit, shit, fuck.

  “The baby lived but just for three hours.”

  Coert felt his jaw flex.

  “Her name was Katy.”

  And there it was.

  Coert looked to his boots.

  “Yeah,” Moreland whispered.

  Coert forced his eyes back to Cady’s “brother.”

  “Dad told me about her,” Moreland shared. “Cady. Months before it all happened. We were at the office. We were having trouble with one of our employees. We had a lot of those and Dad had a
ll the patience in the world but he must have been having a bad day. He said he wished all of our employees were like the girl who worked at the convenience store where he got his coffee in the morning. Where he always stopped to get gas. Not a great job. Not a job where every day you acted chipper and like you didn’t want to be anywhere but there. He said every time he saw her she smiled and was friendly, and she learned his name and called him Mr. Moreland when he came in and asked about his day and she just gave a shit.” Moreland swallowed before he repeated, “She gave a shit.”

  She did.

  Cady gave a shit about everything.

  Even that job and that job sucked. Her schedule all over the place. The other employees not caring, so she was doing overtime all the time, doing their jobs along with hers half the time.

  But she’d had plan.

  She’d had a path.

  She’d had a direction.

  And she was going to get where she was going no matter what it took.

  And then she met Coert.

  “So, obviously, when he went to the store one day and found her hysterically crying on the sidewalk, he was a little shocked, not to mention alarmed and upset.”

  Coert felt his jaw flex and dropped his eyes to his boots again.

  “He went in. That was Dad,” Moreland told him. “It wouldn’t matter, pretty girl, young kid, old lady, if someone was hurting, he’d wade in.” He paused. “He waded in.”

  He did that for certain.

  “We were not good to her.”

  Coert lifted his eyes back to Moreland.

  “We hated her,” Moreland admitted. “We saw her play. We were sure of it. Dad told us her story and he saw it a different way from us. But, I mean, her best friend had just got arrested by her supposed undercover cop boyfriend and was going on trial for murder and drug dealing? And she didn’t know her boyfriend was a cop, thought he was a drug dealer and that was okay with her? What else would we think?”

  Nothing.

  Nothing else.

  Just like Coert thought what he thought to protect himself and nothing else was going to get through.

  His mouth filled with saliva.

  “We were . . . it was . . .” Moreland cleared his throat. “It was bad. We should have known. Dad told us. But we loved him so we were protective of him and she took it. Boy did she take it. Christ,” he suddenly spat. “We hid it from Dad but we laid it on her, all us boys. Kath and I were married already, Shannon and Daly engaged, so the women did it too. We piled it on her. And she took it. She didn’t breathe a word to Dad. She just took it.”

  Coert focused on breathing.

  “Her parents were, God, her parents were . . .” Another pause then, “Did you meet them?”

  Coert jerked up his chin.

  “So you know,” Moreland whispered.

  Coert jerked up his chin.

  He knew.

  Fuck him.

  He fucking knew.

  “Dad wanted to adopt her.” Moreland gave a sharp chuckle at that that was genuinely amused. “That was Dad. She was twenty-three and he wanted to adopt her. Suggested that to her first. Knew her first name and her story and was in her life in a real way for about a day and he’s all up for adopting her. It was about Katy. It was losin’ Mom and Katy. But it wasn’t just Mom and Katy. He knew Cady and what she was about and he wanted a daughter. He wanted his sons to have a sister. But mostly, he listened to all that was happening to Cady and wanted Cady to have a family that’d look out for her.”

  Coert felt something foreign hit the back of his throat and he swallowed it down, a strange feeling at the backs of his eyes, but he beat it back.

  “She wouldn’t have it. Even if you can actually adopt an adult, and I don’t know if you can, she wouldn’t give up on them. Flatly refused. And she never did give up on them. After I met them I didn’t get that. But then I realized that was just Cady.”

  That was.

  It was just Cady.

  Obviously they’d turned their backs on her when she’d needed them the most and just months ago she was up in Waldo County trying to build a bridge to her brother.

  Yeah.

  That was Cady.

  “So he talked her into becoming a part of the family by marrying him.”

  When Moreland waited for a response, Coert just nodded.

  “It wasn’t that,” Moreland said quietly.

  Coert said nothing.

  “They didn’t even sleep in the same room together. It was never that.”

  He was getting that from all the rest.

  But still.

  Shit.

  Shit.

  Fuck.

  “We boys thought that was even more indication she was playing him.” He shook his head and ended that looking to the wall. “We learned.”

  It took some time for Moreland to pull himself together. He did that and looked back at Coert.

  “It was crazy and maybe it was wrong but it was Dad. Half the people who worked for us were ex-cons or ex-junkies or stuff like that. He just . . . he, and Mom too when she was alive, they just took care of people.”

  Private investigators.

  Cady dropping a load on renovating a lighthouse, a load she’d inherited from Patrick Moreland.

  This was not lost on Coert.

  It was just not Patrick Moreland’s job to take care of Cady.

  It was his.

  “He tried to divorce her.”

  Coert’s legs locked.

  “By then, well, we boys got it and she’d become part of the family, but she still wasn’t and she felt that. And by this time he’d also told us. He couldn’t hide it anymore like he’d been doing. It got bad, and Cady lost her mind on him and made him come out with it because she saw it, she didn’t know what was happening either and she was worried sick. So when Cady finally forced it, he told us about the cancer.”

  Christ, it just got worse.

  “And then she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t divorce him. She wasn’t a member of the family and if she wasn’t, she couldn’t have access to him at times or couldn’t help us make decisions at times. I got it sorted for her to do that legally, even if they were divorced, but she wouldn’t have it. She got it in her head and I know what it was with Cady. She was all about payback. You didn’t get something and give nothing. So she gave everything to him, the prime of her life, when she should have been meeting a man and having babies. It tore Dad up. It tore all of us up. But she wouldn’t disconnect from him. She absolutely refused. No matter how often we all talked to her about it, Dad tried to push her on it, how often we told her she was one of us, that wouldn’t change no matter what, she held on. She wouldn’t let go.”

  Coert understood that.

  She’d let go once.

  And lost everything.

  “He had a nurse for the medical stuff but the rest, Cady wouldn’t allow anyone but her to do it. He’d get better and we’d have hope. Then he’d get worse. And each time that worse was worse. I don’t know how she did it. Sometimes, and it doesn’t say a lot about me, but it’s the truth, sometimes it’d take me days to get myself together to go see him. But Cady acted like nothing was different. Like he didn’t look like he looked, didn’t get weak like he got weak. No biggie for her she had to help him walk or get to the bathroom or up his morphine because he was in so much pain. Just another day for Cady. Just another day, one after another, up and down, good and so bad it broke our hearts, for twelve freaking years.”

  Coert looked to his boots again.

  “But he beat it back, my old man. Lived past eighty, Dad did. But Cady helped with that. Cady gave him a reason to wake up every day. Cady was always there to babysit our kids in order to keep his family around him and because she loved those kids like they were her own. For every one of us, she did the birthday parties and did them up huge. Threw slumber parties Kath, Pam and Shannon were invited to, all the girls. Slumber parties. Adult women invited. God, she made every opportunity to keep that house f
ull and alive so Dad was surrounded by that. By us. By his family. Her family.”

  Coert looked at him again.

  The second he did, Moreland stated fiercely, “Best little sister a man could have. Best daughter a father could have.”

  Coert felt his Adam’s apple jump.

  “But she calls us the family. The family. Sometimes Patrick’s family,” he stated.

  Maybe it was all Coert was giving to dealing with all this.

  So he didn’t have it in him to get that.

  And his “What?” came out choked.

  “The family. Not my family,” Moreland explained.

  Shit, shit, fuck.

  “All her life, she never belonged anywhere. Not anywhere. Not with her family, who didn’t allow her to belong. Not her real family, my family, who wants her to belong. The only time she ever belonged to anything, to anyone, was when she belonged to you.”

  Coert forced himself to stand strong after that blow landed because if he didn’t, it would have rocked him back and taken him to his goddamned knees.

  “She’s always been sad,” Moreland whispered. “It’s always under the surface. But now, something’s wrong. She’s trying to hide it but she’s failing. She talked to Kath and we know something happened with you. So I’m here, not to be a jerk, not to get in your face, not to drag you into it. But because I’m worried as all hell and I gotta know what happened with you and her so I can fix my little sister.”

  “You need to get your family out of that lighthouse.”

  Coert’s words made Moreland blink.

  “Sorry?” Moreland asked.

  “Take them to dinner. If they’ve had dinner, take them out for dessert. A drive down the coast. I don’t give a crap. But I need a few hours. And during that time I need you to get them out of that lighthouse.”

  “I . . . sorry . . . what?” he asked again.

  “You lead the way, I’ll follow. You get them out. I’ll take it from there.”

  The two men stood staring at each other in the glow of a gorgeous, mismatched Christmas tree a little girl started to put together when she was two years old.

  Then Moreland asked, “Are you gonna fix her?”

  “I’m gonna try.”

  Moreland’s face went hard. “You need to fix her.”