The Time in Between

by Kristen Ashley

  “She dropped everything to be here. You dropped everything to be here.”

  “She lost hope in you just last year. Think on that. All that went down, just last year, Caylen. That’s your sister. So think on that. But do it later. Because one thing I know, it’d cut Cady deep for her to think this is on your mind right now. She knows you have enough on your mind. So let it go for now. She doesn’t live far from you. You want to build something with your sister, I think she’s already proved that door is open.”

  “I’m moving back to Denver to be near my family.”

  “And that’s the first time I’ve ever seen you behave like a decent man. I don’t say that to be a dick either. I say it to encourage you to keep that shit going because right now there are a lot of people who are going to need to depend on it.”

  Caylen looked back out the window.

  Coert kept going.

  “And her family lives in Denver, so if you’re here when we’re visiting I’m sure she’d love to see you.”

  His face was hard when he turned it again to Coert. “I am her family.”

  “Prove it.”

  Caylen looked like Coert struck him.

  “It won’t be hard, Caylen,” he told him. “All you gotta do is let her be there for you. I think you can probably manage that, don’t you?”

  Something changed in his face, started crumbling, and Coert’s neck got tight.

  “I have no excuses,” he whispered.

  “Cady isn’t about excuses. She isn’t even about explanations. She’s about heart and soul and looking forward, not back.”

  “I’m not just talking about her. I’m talking about Alice. Orson. Camilla.”

  Orson, his son, twelve, very sick with leukemia. Camilla, his girl, she was ten. Neither of whom Cady had met yet.

  “I’m not the man who can help you,” Coert told him honestly.

  Caylen turned back to the window.

  And Coert watched him, thinking it sucked that he gave a shit that Caylen Webster no longer wanted to be the island.

  It also sucked what he had to say next.

  “But Cady can help you.”

  Coert saw the man swallow.

  “And just to say, she might reject it but it wouldn’t hurt you to give it a shot, go over there and try to sit with your ex-wife.”

  Caylen’s eyes slid to him briefly before he nodded, turned and made his slow way to where Alice was sitting next to her mother, with Kath, Pam and Shannon hanging close.

  The mother and Cady’s sisters eyed him as he approached.

  He didn’t totally go for it. He just sat next to her and patted her hand awkwardly before he put both of his in his lap and stared at the floor in front of him.

  The mother looked like she wanted to rip his throat out before she hid it.

  But Alice reached out to grab his hand and pulled it to the arms of the chairs they were sitting in and held on.

  Coert moved back to the man huddle.

  “And he’s a miracle worker,” Pat muttered under his breath, swinging his gaze from Caylen and Alice to Coert.

  “Man’s coming to terms with four and a half decades of being a supreme asshole and doing it when his twelve-year-old son is in bad situation. So it tastes funny, but feel for the guy.”

  “That funny taste is bile considering you’re trying hard not to puke,” Mike murmured.

  “Yeah,” Coert agreed, wondering if it was in spite of himself or the fact they were seriously alike that he liked the guy so much. Then he suggested, “You men wanna go get us a table somewhere? Leave the women here. When Cady’s done, we’ll meet you for an early lunch.”

  “He doesn’t want us here,” Daly surmised.

  “He’s a man dealing with a lot of bad shit and the worst of it is out of his control but the rest of it is a pile of crap he built himself so he’s in a bad way, and Cady wouldn’t thank any of us for making that worse.”

  “Las Delicias,” Pat stated. “I noticed you have no Mexican food in Magdalene and not only will that be our gift to you, Cady loves it there, and once we remind you of that, it’ll guarantee at least once a year you’ll bring her back to us.”

  Coert was not hungry.

  He still said, “Sounds good.”

  The men moved to Caylen and Alice (mostly Alice, but as Caylen was in her vicinity they couldn’t ignore that) and said a few words before they went to say goodbye to their women and took off.

  Five minutes later, Cady came out.

  He moved to her and grabbed her hand, walking next to her as she went to Caylen and Alice.

  Alice hopped up. “How’d it go?”

  Cady gave her a sweet smile and said, “We’ll know soon.” She looked to her brother. “And you have my number and we’re sticking close so whatever happens . . .”

  Caylen had risen to. “Right, Cady.”

  “Thank you,” Alice said.

  “Of course,” Cady replied.

  “No . . . I . . . no . . .” Tears filled Alice’s eyes. Then she whispered, “Thank you.”

  Cady let him go to move in and give Alice a hug.

  Kath moved into Coert to slide an arm around his waist.

  He put one around her shoulders.

  Cady let Alice go only to turn to her brother and give him a hug.

  She pulled away but didn’t break away.

  She said, “I’m on the other end of the phone, yes?”

  He stared her in the face like he’d never seen her before for long moments before he nodded.

  She gave him a visible squeeze then came back to Coert.

  He took her hand and made a flash decision.

  “We’re going to lunch,” he shared. “Would you all like to come?”

  Cady’s fingers tightened around his.

  Caylen cleared his throat and said firmly, “Alice and I need to get back to Orson. But thank you.”

  Alice’s lips had parted as she looked to her ex-husband.

  “Right. Then take care,” Coert replied.

  “We’ll come for a visit later, if that’s okay,” Cady said.

  “Yes, that’d be okay. Maybe when Camilla is out of school?” Alice suggested. “She comes every day to visit her brother. You can meet them both then.”

  “I’d love that,” Cady said softly.

  The women smiled at each other.

  Coert (and it would also be Kath) gave them a moment before Coert opened his mouth but Kath beat him to the punch.

  “Right, time to get these kids to food,” she stated, tugging on Coert’s waist. “You’re in our thoughts.”

  Gratitude was expressed.

  Coert moved Cady out.

  Her sisters gathered close.

  And Coert walked the women to his and Cady’s rental in order to get his Cady some lunch.

  Coert was trying to tamp down some pretty intense anger as he drove Cady back to Pat and Kath’s that evening.

  Caylen had done that to her, what she just went through. It had been Caylen who put her in the position of meeting that sick boy while he was in a hospital bed, his little sister who wore confusion and pain on her face like it had been etched there since birth. Caylen had made it so Cady had no idea what to do, what to bring, what they liked, and the circumstances were so dire it didn’t matter what gesture she made, nothing could make it better.

  But Cady had spent years around kids. None of them sick and frail and hospitalized after enduring months of intense radiation and chemotherapy, or mystified with no hope of grasping how life was so unfair it’d do that to your brother. But just like she took to Janie without hesitation, sure in herself and how to be around kids (apparently of all ages), she brought them bucket loads of candy of all kinds, Rubik’s cubes, puzzle books and fun pencils and pens. Nothing that would take energy. Just a bunch of stuff that let them know she went out of her way and gave a shit.

  Even so, it had been the most uncomfortable, saddest hour he’d spent in his life and he’d been a cop for twenty-three ye
ars. He’d seen people at their worst. He’d had to deliver news that would change lives forever in the cruelest ways imaginable.

  But he’d never been with a family that broken, watching the woman he loved become a part of it knowing that there was a good possibility she’d never catch up on the twelve years she lost, no matter how much candy she bought or how fast she ran.

  “I’m okay,” she whispered.

  He glanced at her to see her staring out the side window of the car and with just a glance he knew she was not okay.

  Topper: the results were in and Cady wasn’t a match.

  “All right,” he murmured, squeezing her hand that he held on his thigh.

  “Alice is sweet,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he agreed, and she was, and Coert wondered how Caylen had scored that woman even if he didn’t have to wonder how he’d lost her.

  “We’ll go back to see them tomorrow,” she told him. “Then dinner with your friends tomorrow night. But I think we should leave after that. They don’t need to feel like they’re entertaining and there’s no purpose for us to be here now.”

  There actually was. Caylen had one person in his corner and that was Cady.

  But Coert wasn’t going to suggest that.

  “When we get back to Kathy and Pat’s, I’ll get online and get our tickets,” she said.

  “I can do that,” Coert replied.

  “No, I—” she started but stopped when her phone rang. She didn’t let go of his hand as she dug it out of her purse before she muttered, “Verity,” took the call and put the phone to her ear. “Hey, honey.”

  She listened for a second and Coert listened to nothing while she did, and he listened hard.

  He hadn’t told her he’d visited Elijah. She’d had too much on her mind.

  With life the way it was, Verity’s call could be anything.

  He just hoped like hell it was going to be what it should be.

  “I’m all right. Just met the kids. Too much for now but I’ll call in a couple of days. I’m not a match, honey, so I can’t be of any help. We’re going to stay another day and come home,” Cady said into the phone.

  She listened again.

  He felt Cady’s fingers clench his spasmodically before, “I’m sorry?”

  She listened again.

  Coert put on the turn signal and was preparing to execute a turn when he felt Cady’s gaze come to him.

  “I . . . he’s there?” A pause, “Right now?” Another pause and then, breathy, “Oh my goodness, honey.”

  That sounded good.

  Coert made the turn smiling at the windshield.

  Another squeeze of his fingers before she asked. “He did?” She listened and then, “No, I didn’t know.” She squeezed hard. “He didn’t tell me.”

  Coert kept smiling.

  “Yes,” Cady said into the phone. “Yes. It’s fabulous. I’m so happy for you. You say Walt gave him the week off?” She waited for her question to be answered and then said, “Wonderful. Yes. Of course, yes, come up that weekend. Do you want me to send you a plane ticket?” She listened, then, “All right. Okay. Have you told your mom?” Silence then, “Okay, a week seems a long time but you’ll find at the end that it isn’t, so you go be with Elijah and I’ll see him next week and you the weekend after that. We’ll have a belated birthday cake.” Pause. “Yes. Absolutely.” Pause. “Absolutely, Verity. This is marvelous. Tell Elijah, Coert and I say hi and talk to you later.” Pause. “Right. Love you too, like crazy. ’Bye.”

  Out of the side of his eyes he caught her dropping her phone and then he got another clench of her fingers.

  “So, apparently you had a few words with Elijah,” she remarked.

  “Life’s too short,” he grunted, now fighting back his smile. “I take it Verity welcomed him with open arms?”

  “They did it on the floor by her front door about two seconds after she opened it to him.”

  Jesus.

  “Too much information,” he muttered.

  “She’s straight with me,” Cady told him.

  “Still too much information,” Coert repeated.

  “They used protection.”

  “And now more too much information,” Coert growled, though he was glad to know Elijah was the man he knew him to be and took care of that.

  Cady giggled.

  Thank Christ.

  He glanced at her when he felt her leaning toward him and she stayed that way when she said, “She’s very happy.”

  “Good,” he said to the windshield.

  “Do you know how wonderful you are?” she asked.

  He bumped her hand against his thigh and answered, “You holding my hand, I got a clue.”

  He felt her warmth hit him at his words.

  “He’d never have done that, made that journey, if you hadn’t encouraged him to,” she declared.

  “He might have gotten there.”

  “No. He admires you. You two may have had a rocky start but he thinks the world of you. You talking to him about that was just the push he needed. He might have stayed stuck if it wasn’t for you.”

  “I barely encouraged him to go before he was eyeing his truck, antsy to get in it and go to her, Cady,” Coert informed her. “He was looking for an excuse. I just gave him one.”

  “Well, even if it was only that, which it wasn’t, I’m glad you did it.”

  Since Cady was happy and Verity was happy, he was glad he did it too.

  “Life,” she said softly, righting herself in her seat. “We didn’t get one match we needed today, but we got another one.”

  “Yeah,” he replied.

  Her fingers gave his another squeeze. “Love you, Coert.”

  “Love you most.”

  “Honestly, honey,” that time she leaned deep into him and kissed his jaw, finishing what she was saying when she sat back, “I think that’s impossible.”

  Coert drove her back to her brother’s house thinking she was wrong.

  “They opened fire?”

  “They opened fire. I tackled Tod, who was, I’ll repeat, in drag, and then Tex . . . you have to come to my store and meet Tex. He’ll make a coffee for you. He’s a genius barista and a total wild man. You’ll love him. But anyway, and then Tex grabbed me and threw me at Lee. Like, threw me. Through the air. At Lee!”

  The women around Malcolm Nightingale’s table all started cackling at Indy’s retelling of a pretty freaking scary story.

  These women included Malcolm’s wife, Kitty Sue, his daughter, Ally, his daughters-in-law, Indy and Roxie, and Tom’s girlfriend, Lana.

  The men, Coert noted, were not cackling. They weren’t even smiling. What the women found a hilarious memory the men did not look at the same way.

  Coert was right there with them and he hadn’t even lived through the night of gunfire at a gay bar.

  Coert caught Malc’s eyes, and when he did Malc shook his head.

  “I see Indy hasn’t changed,” Coert noted.

  “A week ago officers were called to her location for disturbing the peace at a Starbucks,” Malcolm returned.

  “That wasn’t me,” Indy declared. “That was Tex too.” Indy looked to Cady. “He doesn’t like Starbucks.”

  “Why not?” Cady asked.

  “Because he’s Tex and you won’t understand that’s actually a thorough answer until you meet him,” Indy replied.

  “You didn’t have to egg him on,” Lee put in. Lee was Indy’s husband and Malcolm’s middle child, now very much a grown man and not just because he was old enough to have a wife.

  “I didn’t egg him on,” Indy retorted. “Daisy did.”

  “You egged him on,” Lee muttered.

  “You weren’t even there,” she snapped.

  Lee raised his brows. “Have I known you since birth?”

  “Yes,” Indy bit out.

  “Have I been covering your ass since you were about six?”

  “Yes,” Indy hissed this admission.

 
; Coert heard Cady stifle a giggle.

  “You egged him on,” Lee concluded.

  Indy rolled her eyes at Ally.

  She’d egged the unknown Tex on.

  Ally sat in the curve of her husband Ren’s arm and did it smiling.

  Totally egged him on.

  “I wish you wouldn’t curse in front of Callum,” Kitty Sue entered the conversation.

  “Mom, my son is six months old. He doesn’t know the word ‘ass’ from the word ‘hello,’” Lee stated with a smile aimed at his mother. “Give it a rest. When it’s time to teach him to curse properly, I’ll be all over that.”

  At that, the men chuckled but the women did not.

  “Lord, save me,” Kitty Sue called to the ceiling.

  This made Coert look to Cady to see her bouncing Lee and Indy’s son, Callum, in her lap.

  He was fascinated by the diamond at her throat.

  With Cady’s neck bowed and her lips to his dark-furred head, she was just fascinated by Callum.

  “What Lee’s trying to say is, you got two grown boys so maybe you should give it up with the cursing, Mom,” Hank, Malc’s oldest, waded in.

  “You could stand to clean up your language too,” Kitty Sue retorted.

  Hank sighed.

  Roxie, Hank’s very pregnant wife, laughed.

  Coert tore his eyes from Cady with a baby bouncing in her lap and caught Tom’s gaze on them when he did.

  Tom bobbed his head in a contented nod.

  Coert dropped his arm from the back of Cady’s chair to wrap it around her shoulders.

  When he did, she fell to her side and her shoulder hit him.

  And when she did that, Callum lost interest in Cady’s diamond, looked to Coert, and launched himself that way.

  When he thought he wouldn’t get what he wanted, probably because Cady’s hold tightened on him, he latched onto Coert’s sweater and grunted to pull himself into Coert’s arms.

  Coert accepted him readily, even if the second he did Callum started punching him in the jaw.

  “Totally having a little boy,” Cady whispered in his ear.

  He looked down at her before he bent to her and kissed her forehead.

  Callum punched Cady in the jaw.

  Her eyes got pretend big, she captured his hand and pulled it to her mouth, forcing his fingers open with her lips and blowing a raspberry in his palm.