by Hope Ramsay
In the kitchen Gabby was frantically opening cabinet doors. The box that Claire had brought was sticking conspicuously out of the trash can. The dementia or not? Sara wondered. She liked to think not. At least she wouldn’t be returning anything to Australia.
“What’s going on?” Sara asked.
“I snuck some icing,” Gabby said. Nonna’s homemade brownies sat stacked on an old-fashioned milk glass cake holder, looking pretty and perfect.
“So what else is new? You’ve been doing that since you were three.”
“Sara, the icing tastes terrible. I’m no baker, but it tastes like Nonna must’ve put flour in it instead of powdered sugar.” She gestured to the bag of flour sitting next to the icing bowl. “I’m looking for the powdered sugar so we can make more really quick.”
Sara swiped her finger into the bowl and tasted it. “Oh my God,” she said, making a face.
Then she joined her sister in the search.
The powdered sugar was not in the cabinet reserved for baking supplies. They finally found it shoved on top of some canned goods in the pantry.
“Do you remember the recipe?” Gabby asked, then pulled out her phone. “We can Google it.”
“I remember it. Powdered sugar, cocoa, butter, vanilla, and a little milk.” Sara whipped up another batch while Gabby scraped all the bad stuff off each brownie. They’d just finished re-icing and restacking every brownie when Nonna walked in.
“I came in for the sauce. Oh, I thought I iced those already.”
“Gabby licked one and so we just repaired it a little,” Sara said. “Right, Gabby?”
Gabby shot Sara a dark look.
“Gabby! My goodness, dear,” Nonna said. “Poor thing, you must be starving. Dinner’s ready. Come eat some real food.” Nonna linked elbows with Gabby and tugged her toward the dining room. “Bring the sauce, Sara, sweetie. It’s time to eat.”
Sara took a deep breath. She thought about a hospitalist position in New York City she’d been offered by one of her mentors. She could’ve been very happy taking that and telling her family it was too good an offer to pass up. She could have avoided her opinionated dad and the fact that her sisters, even Gabby now, seemed settled in relationships. She’d never have had to face Colton or Tagg’s parents or even Tagg himself, or the fact that she’d never find anyone in this one-horse town.
Yet she loved Nonna fiercely. And Nonna needed her help. Her gut told her in a way she’d never experienced before that she’d made a difficult decision, but the right decision.
As she carried the old aluminum pot into the dining room she realized it was the first decision she’d made for herself in a very long time.
Chapter 5
It was early evening when Colton pulled up the driveway of the little pale blue cape where his grandmother and eighteen-year-old sister Hannah lived. The teenage boy he’d hired to paint the house, Aiden Cross, was still here, judging by the once-red-but-now-faded-to-rose, somewhat rusty Toyota Corolla parked in the driveway. A ladder leaned against the side of the detached garage, which Colton could see was already half-scraped. The kid was a good worker, and apparently still hard at it on a Sunday evening at seven p.m.
Colton parked his police cruiser in the driveway and walked toward the garden. On his approach, Cookie, his paternal grandmother, rose from where she was kneeling, tying up a row of tomato plants, a bright-red fisherman’s hat over her gray hair, matching red garden clogs on her feet. “Hello, sweetheart,” she said, kissing him on the cheek. “I’m sorry about not fixing dinner tonight. Hannah’s in the kitchen grabbing something between her waitress shift and dance class. Did you eat?”
“Hannah and I are capable of fending for ourselves, Cook.” Cookie deserved a break after caring for him and his sister all these years, and he didn’t want her to feel guilty for going to lunch with her friends. “I grabbed a pizza with a couple of the kids at Lou’s, and there’s leftovers for Hannah if she wants them.”
Colton believed in keeping a heavy presence at Lou’s, a local pizza joint with a couple of pool and Ping-Pong tables that tended to attract a lot of teens. It was a fun place where the kids could hang out and stay out of trouble, and he wanted to keep it that way. It also happened to be where Hannah worked, so he was able to pop in and keep an eye on his little sister too. Which she didn’t much appreciate, but hey, curse of the big brother.
“You need to get off the clock some too,” Cookie said. “It’s Sunday.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Don’t tell me, young man.” She gave him a shrewd once-over, noting his ball cap, his sweaty appearance, and his grass-stained clothes. “You spent the afternoon clearing that plot of land, didn’t you?”
“I’ve got plans for it, Granny,” he said, smiling. “Besides, it’s not work. It’s…fun.”
“I wish you’d just move into our house, Colton, once I move to the condo and Hannah leaves for college,” Cookie said. “It’s a nice house, and the yard is fantastic. Isn’t that better than living in that apartment all by yourself?”
Colton had moved into his own place after he’d gotten the chief job a year ago. Not that he didn’t love Cookie and Hannah, and he did try to spend nights off with his grandmother as often as he could, but he was thirty, and he didn’t want to have to explain his comings and goings to either one of them. But even the idea of living in Cookie’s house alone didn’t appeal. The house was dated in a seventies-ranch sort of way. He didn’t mind that it needed work but the seventies vibe just wasn’t his thing. Even if the yard was great and had played host to many a ball game when he was younger.
“I’m sorry, Cookie.” They’d been through this before. The land he’d bought six months before was in the middle of town, next to the park, surrounded by woods, and it had become available when the grandchildren of an elderly couple had decided to sell off a couple of parcels of a twenty-acre allotment. The adjacent plot, which was also for sale, held a dilapidated century-old colonial that looked like something out of Hoarders. He had no use for the disaster of a house but for a guy with a job that sometimes made him feel like he was living in a fishbowl, that hidden plot of land seemed like a magic oasis. Even if it was a wild mess.
“Well, OK, but don’t say I didn’t offer,” she said.
“You’re not going to be thinking much of this place in January when you’re basking in the sun in Palm Beach while we’re up to our butts in snow here.” That was her plan. A little condo across town, snowbirding in Florida for the cold and icy months. No one deserved it more.
“So Sara Langdon’s back in town. Have you run into her yet?”
Of course it had taken Cookie about ten seconds to change the subject and mention Sara. “Sure did. She’s the one who stitched me up last night.” He stuck out his arm, which he was keeping wrapped with gauze, just like Sara had instructed him. As far as he could tell, things were healing up pretty well. Unlike their relationship, which was just as prickly as ever.
Cookie glanced at the bandage. “So did you ask her out on a date while she was stitching you up?” His grandmother would never give up on this topic. She’d always had it in her head that Sara was the one for him. He would never understand the vagaries of granny matchmaking.
“No, Grandma, I did not. That would be a little awkward, seeing as the woman can’t stand me.” He called her “Grandma” when he was a little irritated, and “Granny” as an endearment. Other than that, even though her name was Charlotte, she was Cookie. To everybody.
“Oh, pish,” Cookie said, waving a hand dismissively. “Now that she’s free of that idiot, you’ll make her see what a real man is like.”
For once he didn’t jump to defend Tagg. Which said a lot, because Tagg and his family had taken Colton under their wing when he was an unruly teenager and shown him that he could succeed despite his messed-up past. Tagg had helped him study in high school and catch up after the years when he’d lived with his mom and school had been hit or miss. His family had taken Colton
places like amusement parks and on vacations that Cookie could never have afforded, plus Dr. Milhouse, Tagg’s dad, had counseled him about college and helped him apply for the police officers’ scholarship after he’d busted up his knee and his football scholarship fell through.
He’d always be grateful for all of that, even though as adults, Tagg and he lived very different lives. Besides, in the last year, Colton had truly come to believe the idiot remark was accurate. He’d only talked to Tagg a few times, and had gone out with him even less, making excuses when he could. “Thanks for the encouragement, but I’m not looking for a relationship.”
“Nonsense. Everyone’s looking for love, and you’re not immune. Sara may be a little angry right now, but you’ve got to make her understand what really happened. Sometimes it’s hard to believe people you love are dumb enough to do stupid things like that all on their own. It’s easier to blame someone else.”
“Do we really have to talk about this now?” If Sara needed to take her wrath out on Colton, so be it. It wouldn’t be the first time.
He’d been a smart-ass with a chip on his shoulder for anyone who’d had all the benefits and opportunities he’d never had. Yes, he’d called her Brain and teased her for being smart and nerdy and uncool. But once when one of his football buddies tripped her on purpose and her glasses went flying, he’d rescued them. And noticed for the first time she had the most vivid green eyes, even if she had turned as red as the town’s new fire truck when he handed her glasses back. But after she’d thanked him, in typical Sara fashion she then delivered a lecture on why he shouldn’t hang around with assholes.
That’s how it had always been with them. She’d always been able to grind down to the raw bone to irritate him. That hadn’t changed in all these years.
But she’d certainly looked good in those boxers this morning.
Cookie was still talking. “I want to see you settled. You and Sara would make such a nice couple. And I want to see great-grandchildren before I die. It’s my right as your substitute mother. And your grandmother. Double reasons to get going on that.”
Cookie had taken them in a few years after Colton’s father, a Chicago city cop, had died in a gunfight during a bank robbery when Colton was eight years old. His mom hadn’t done well without his father, going from bad job to bad job and from bad to worse men. Hannah had come along when he was twelve—they’d never known who her father was—but by then his mother was on a downward spiral. She needed a new liver after four years of pickling hers in alcohol, but despite three bouts of rehab, she couldn’t stop drinking long enough to get one.
By the time his mother passed and Cookie brought them to Angel Falls, Colton had become his sister’s protector. He was determined to do anything to give her the future he didn’t get to pick for himself. And he was determined to give Cookie the break she’d never had because she’d spent her time raising them.
Suddenly Hannah ran out of the house, dressed in yoga pants and a T-shirt, ready for her job as an assistant dance instructor at the ballet studio downtown.
“Thanks for the eggs, Cookie,” Hannah said. “I washed up the pan. Hey, Colton, I’ll see you later if you’re around, OK? Or maybe not. A few of us are going out for pizza and a movie after class.” She gave them both quick kisses on their cheeks, then let her gaze trail to the detached garage at the side of the house. “And wow, how long’s the hottie here for?”
Colton steered her from her position staring at a shirtless Aiden’s wide, tattooed shoulders as he stood on the ladder scraping paint off the side of the garage.
“His name is Aiden,” Colton said, “and he’s earning some extra money by helping me out.” Note to self: Aiden had to put a shirt on. ASAP.
Hannah rolled her eyes in a way Colton knew only too well. As a much older sibling, he often straddled the line between big brother (which was cool) and parental figure (which was absolutely not). “I know his name, and he’s very nice, and he just graduated, just like me. Not to mention he’s gorgeous. And a bad boy, even hotter. But you must like him to bring him here to work, huh?”
“It doesn’t matter if I like him. He’s here to work and stay out of trouble. That means no fraternizing. This one’s got ‘Stay away from me’ written all over him.” As soon as the words left his mouth, he regretted them.
“Hmm,” she said with a smile. “Intriguing.”
“Don’t you have to get going to work?” he asked, steering Hannah along the driveway to her car.
“Geez, you’re such a killjoy. I’m allowed to look at boys. Maybe someday I can even date them like normal girls whose brothers don’t do background checks on them before they can come within a five-mile radius.”
Colton frowned. As was so often the case with his sister, words failed him. He owed her parental guidance because a) he was responsible for her and b) he didn’t think Cookie would be blunt enough. But every time he tried, his tongue got tied up in knots. “I want you to be safe. Date someone nice.” Actually, not dating at all would be his preference.
“Geez, Colt, do you think I’m going to be a virgin forever?”
He blanched. “Maybe just until you’re thirty.” He tried to smile, but to him it wasn’t really a joke. “Have a nice day at work. Don’t talk to any boys.”
She saluted. “Aye, aye, Chief.” But her eyes slid back to Aiden.
Aiden was ripped, he’d give him that. He was tanned and muscled, and he wore a ball cap backward as he worked. Exotic tattoos covered his shirtless chest, back, and arms and disappeared beneath the waistband of his jeans. He was also destined for trouble unless someone intervened. He’d been busted for smoking pot with his deadbeat buddies, most of whom already had criminal records. His dad was a drunk and his mother was gone. Colton had first noticed him doing his community service hours at the park, picking up litter. The kid had filled five large trash bags in a half hour while the other kids were whining and complaining it was too hot.
Colton had decided to give him a chance, just as Chief McGregor, the former police chief, had given Colton a chance when he was an insolent, angry kid all those years ago. He’d taken a parked car for a joyride on a dare and gotten busted for it. The chief had made him do a hundred community service hours, but more than that, he’d taken Colton under his wing.
“Run along, Hannah,” he said, giving his sister a gentle tug toward her car.
“No fair, Colton.” She pushed out her lower lip like she’d done when she was three. “I’m enjoying the view.”
“Time to go teach those little girls how to do pirouettes,” Colton said, opening her car door. And to stop noticing ripped guys with tattoos.
“Bye, Cookie.” She waved to her grandmother and blew Colton a kiss. “Love you both!” she called as she drove down the driveway.
“That girl’s going to be the death of me,” he said, clutching his stomach. Judging from the little jabs of pain he was experiencing, maybe he was getting an ulcer.
“You’ve got to let her grow up, Colton,” his grandmother said. “She’s going to be living on her own in just a few months.” Hannah would be starting college at Ohio State in the fall. Wasn’t it yesterday that she’d been a sweet, big-eyed toddler with chocolate ice cream dripping all down her chin?
“How do you know she’s going to make good decisions?”
“You don’t. You just pray a lot and hope what we’ve taught her sticks.”
He cracked a little smile. “Did you worry about me like that?”
Cookie shook her head and laughed. “A thousand times worse.”
He wrapped his grandmother up in a hug. It couldn’t have been easy, taking in a thirteen-year-old boy and a one-year-old baby. He’d been argumentative. Disrespectful. And so angry over his mother’s succumbing to the addiction that had taken over her life after his father was killed. How had his grandmother ever dealt with him?
Cookie patted him on the back. “But look how far you’ve come. Your father would be so proud, do you know that?”
/>
He drew back from his grandmother’s embrace. “I don’t know what my father would think about me being a small-town cop. Maybe he’d be disappointed.” Aw hell, he shouldn’t have said that. Cookie would think he was fishing for praise.
“Nonsense. Don’t even think like that.” Of course she would say that. Cookie was Colton’s biggest fan.
“Have I ever thanked you for everything you did for me?” he asked.
“Sweetheart, you thank me every day by letting me see what a good man you’ve become. And as far as your job, no person should ever underestimate their influence. You’ll know if you’re in the right place. Your heart will tell you. Just like it will when you’ve found the right girl.”
“Yada, yada,” Colton said, starting to walk toward the house.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to go tell this kid to get a shirt on. Especially when Hannah’s around.”
“I’m off to book club. If you’re hungry, there are bagels on the counter.”
He gave a wave to his grandmother and approached Aiden, who was down from the ladder and taking a swig from his water bottle. “How’s it going?” he asked the kid, extending his hand for a fist bump.
“Great,” Aiden said. “I’ve been here since eight, but it was raining, so I went and bought the paint. And I’ve got most of this side scraped.”
“Looks great. Hey, why don’t you pack it up for the night? It’s already seven.”
“I want to get a little more done before it starts to get dark. I’ve got to work at the discount warehouse tonight so I might not get back here until noon tomorrow.”
Colt knew Aiden stocked shelves at night and parked cars on the weekends for events at a big hotel in downtown Cleveland. The kid was a worker, he’d give him that.
“So, have you given any thought to your plans for the fall?” Colton asked.
“If you mean college, it’s not for me.”
“I thought you wanted to be an electrician.” He owed it to the kid to press him, just as Chief McGregor had gotten on Colton’s case when he was a kid. The chief had been his dad’s best friend, and his investment in Colton had made all the difference.
