A Coldwater Warm Hearts Wedding

by Lexi Eddings

  “Really? I hope they didn’t employ unnecessary force.” Judith hoped the exact opposite. Police seeming to overstep their bounds stirred the pot and made for good, controversial television.

  “The folks around here didn’t ask how the sheriff did it, but they were glad he did. One day the bikers were roaring around the Square and the next they weren’t. I suspect folks would say whatever force was used was necessary. Protecting the kids in this town is high on the list for everyone.” Lacy smiled. “Even those of us who don’t have any yet.”

  “What about school shootings?” Judith persisted. On the surface at least, Coldwater Cove was coming over as a cross between Mayberry and Lake Wobegone. Surely there was some hidden black stain on this little town’s soul.

  “We haven’t had any. Again, thank God. Well, not unless you count the time Junior Bugtussle was dropping off his kids for school, and spotted an eight-point buck grazing on the football field,” Lacy said. “He pulled the rifle out of the gun rack in his pickup and brought it down with one shot.”

  “Oh!” Gun violence! Now we’re getting someplace. “I hope the man was arrested for endangering children like that.”

  Lacy shook her head. “Junior’s a dead shot. The only thing in danger was the buck. But you’ll be happy to know he did get a citation. It wasn’t quite deer season yet.”

  Where’s the outrage? Judith’s face heated. “Still. Even having a gun so close to a school. Surely there’s a law against that. Was the rifle confiscated at least?”

  “No.” Lacy referred to the map again, pointing out the school grounds and their proximity to the rising hills. “What if it hadn’t been a deer on the football field? There are a few mountain lions and bears up in the Ouachitas, and once in a while, they wander down our way. The school kids would be in more danger from one of them than Junior Bugtussle with a Browning.”

  Judith shuddered. Give me London any day. Not even the bobbies carry guns there.

  “Anyway, Junior donated half of the meat from the buck to the food bank, so everyone seemed satisfied.” Lacy moved across the room, checking the dates penciled on the drawer labels. “The write-up about the incident would be in the September 2013 or ’14 file. I’m not certain of the year since I only moved back to Coldwater Cove last spring.”

  “No, no. That’s not what I’m looking for.” She had to get Lacy Evans back on topic. Then once the woman found a usable file or two for her, Judith would casually ask her if she had any siblings in the area. “Have any bad accidents happened to teenagers?”

  “Well, aren’t you a ray of sunshine?”

  “I don’t ask out of morbid curiosity,” Judith said. “It’s a sociological construct that when one young person is seriously injured, it impacts that person’s entire peer group.”

  There. That sounds properly scientific even if I am just making it up as I go along.

  Lacy was silent for a moment. “You’re right about that. We were all devastated by Jessica Walker’s death.”

  “Oh?” Judith’s vulnerability detector pinged.This could be the secret Michael Evans didn’t want to talk about.

  “She was in my class at school. It happened a few weeks before graduation.” Lacy rifled through a file cabinet and came up with several yellowing editions of the Gazette. “This should get you started on it.”

  “Why don’t you tell me about it instead?” Judith urged.

  “No. I’d rather you read the official report. I can’t be objective. Jessica Walker was my best friend’s sister.”

  Better and better. And if her brother had something to do with it, when I get to the bottom of things, the destructive ripples will just keep rolling.

  Judith checked the date of the paper. The incident fell into the right time period. This Walker girl had died in the spring of the same year Judith had met Michael Evans. Cold winds had been whistling down the man-made canyons of Manhattan when she first laid eyes on him.

  His scar had still been angry then.

  Maybe he got it in the same accident that killed Jessica Walker.

  Judith crossed her fingers and started reading.

  Chapter 16

  People always wonder what they’d do in a

  real emergency. Would they be the hero or the goat?

  I wish to God I didn’t know the answer to that question.

  —Not quite a month before Michael Evans

  surprised everyone and actually

  graduated from high school

  About a decade ago . . .

  The sun hadn’t risen yet, but it was on its way. The eastern sky was painted a telltale shade of yellowish gray. Michael quickened his pace through alleyways, across yards, and over fences. He’d carefully left the back door to his house ajar when he’d sneaked out last night. He slipped into it now.

  Wincing at the overly loud sound of the click, Mike latched the door behind him. Then he toed off his sodden shoes to keep from squelching across the mudroom. He pulled off his torn, wet T-shirt and jeans and stuffed them into the washer.

  He couldn’t start a load yet. The pipes in the old house banged something terrible when anyone used hot water. But in an hour or so, he could pretend to rise from bed and dump some detergent into the washer before his mother rose. She’d be pleasantly surprised that he’d started a load of clothes before he left for school. He usually avoided doing his laundry until it was either face the suds or face going around town buck naked.

  But soapy water was the best way to get rid of the evidence.

  He was still bleeding badly. The jagged cut across his ribs probably needed stitches. Lots of them. Michael pulled a beach towel from the line strung across the laundry room and wrapped it tightly around himself. He didn’t think there was a gauze pad in the family medicine chest upstairs big enough to cover the wound. If he raided his sisters’ stash of “lady pads,” he might be able to tape a couple to the gash and stanch the bleeding.

  The trick was getting up the old house’s creaky stairs.

  It was lighter now. Michael wouldn’t have to flip any switches to see where he was going. He tiptoed into the kitchen, but froze almost immediately.

  In shades of gray, Michael could make out his dad. He was standing at the sink, filling the coffeepot. His father must have felt eyes on him, for he turned and gave Mike a long, narrow-eyed glare. He frowned, probably at the fact that his only son was wandering around the house wearing nothing but tighty-whities and a beach towel at oh-dark-thirty in the morning.

  Then light filtering through the plantation shutters on the front of the house began to strobe in flashes of blue. A sheriff’s cruiser had pulled into the drive.

  How did they connect me with Jessica so quick?

  At least the cops didn’t have the siren on. That would have brought the entire neighborhood out to see what was going on.

  It was a small mercy, but he knew it wasn’t on his account. The sheriff played poker with his dad on Wednesday nights, and the pair of them took turns being the president of the Rotary Club. He wouldn’t embarrass Michael’s dad if he could help it.

  His father sighed. The weight of disappointment in that sound nearly crushed Michael to the ground. And the worst of it was, there was tons more to come as soon as the county mounty came through the door.

  Mike didn’t think he could bear it.

  “Anything I should know, son?”

  The last thing he could tell his father was the truth.

  Present day . . .

  Time to see if the truth really does set you free. It’s likely to be the only thing that’ll square me with Heather, Michael decided as he parked his Harley in the hospital lot. For good measure, he stopped by the gift shop on his way in and bought the biggest bear on the shelves. He didn’t see the charm in it himself, but if the advertisements around Valentine’s Day were right, women were supposed to go crazy for the fuzzy things.

  Deciding not to wait for the elevator, he headed up to the second floor, taking the stairs two at a time. />
  Look out, Heather Walker. I may not want you to know who I was, but I’m about to tell you who I’ve become.

  He hoped it would be enough. She wasn’t the sort to be impressed by the money he made. He was sure of that, but she’d understand that he had responsibilities. He wouldn’t have blown her off if it hadn’t been absolutely necessary. His meeting with the investors’ group had gone better than he’d hoped. MoreCommas had the backing it needed to move to the next level. The people who depended on him for their livelihood were as secure as he could make them.

  He stopped when he reached the second-floor landing and looked through the window in the door. The nurses’ station was about fifteen feet away. Heather was there, head bent as she studied a chart. She tucked a lock of hair that had escaped her cap behind her ear. Mike wished he could nuzzle that sweet lobe. Her lips moved, and the other nurse standing next to her nodded and then hurried away.

  Probably to do her bidding. Give me a chance, Heather. I can do your bidding too, girl. Say the word, and I’ll Aladdin you off wherever you want to go.

  He started to push the door, but then the elevator opened and Glenda Scott stepped out. She hurried over to Heather, clearly distraught and jabbering a mile a minute.

  Michael took a step back from the window, lest Heather catch him watching her. She might think he was being stalkerish, which, if he were honest with himself, he sort of was. But he had a good reason. Since he had a serious apology to deliver, he wanted to make sure he had a clear field to talk with her uninterrupted for a few minutes. Long enough to get her to agree to let him take her out after her shift ended.

  He’d wait until Glenda was gone.

  In the meantime, there were worse ways for a guy to spend his time than watching Heather Walker.

  * * *

  “I’m so, so sorry. Honest. I’m hardly never not on time,” Glenda said, leaving Heather to sort through the bewildering maze of double negatives and qualifiers. “I hate being tardy. Always have.”

  The CNA tugged off her cardigan and draped it over the back of her chair. Then she typed in her password and started updating charts. “Since I started working here, I haven’t been late before, no not once.”

  “Take it easy.” Heather placed a hand on her shoulder. The woman was trembling. “It’s OK.”

  “It’s just I want you to know I’m not the type to be late without a good reason.”

  “I know you’re not. That’s why I’ve been covering for you.” Heather handed her the rest of the charts Glenda was supposed to update. Actually, she’d been grateful for the mind-numbing task. It helped her take her mind off the fact that Michael Evans was a shiftless, lying . . . At this point, she was tempted to veer off into bed-pan contents metaphors and decided she needed to change her thoughts.

  “O’ course, I can’t claim to have good reason today,” Glenda admitted.

  “Have you at least got a bad one?”

  “It’s a doozy.” Middle-aged Glenda blushed like a tween in the throes of a first crush. “It’s all Lester’s fault.”

  “You were with him.”

  The blush again as she nodded.

  Oh, my gosh! I wonder if that means she was really with him.

  “What’s he doing at your place on a Friday morning?” Heather asked. “I thought he only came over to mow on Sundays.”

  “He did. He does,” Glenda answered, still clearly flustered. “But this morning, he turned up at my house just after sunup, and started pounding away on the garage roof. I was hoppin’ mad at him making such a racket so early.”

  “Well, they say that’s the best time of day to do roof work. It gets too hot later on, even at this time of year.”

  “Yeah, that’s what he said.” Glenda’s eyes went soft and dreamy. “But it wasn’t his argument that shut me up. Once I got a good look at him, all the wind went out of my sails. He cut his hair, you see, so he doesn’t have that silly man bun thing anymore and he was clean shaven for a change.”

  Heather hid her smile. She’d happened to run into Lester at the Green Apple and mentioned how much Glenda disliked his new look. Evidently, he’d taken her words to heart.

  “Anyway, he looked so much like the man I fell for all those years ago and . . . oh, I don’t know what it is about a guy swinging a hammer, but I do love to see a man work up a sweat, don’t you?”

  Heather wondered how Michael would look chopping wood or building something with his very capable hands. Judging from the way his body had felt next to hers on her sofa, he was pretty ripped. But then she remembered how crappy he’d made her feel and decided, whether he sported a six-pack or not, he just wasn’t worth the misery.

  “Isn’t Lester supposed to be working at the hardware store on Fridays?”

  “Mr. Cooper gave him the morning off so he could repair my shingles.” Glenda sighed, a totally smitten sound. “Lester promised he’d do it before winter comes and by golly, he did it.”

  “I’m glad he’s keeping his promises. Trust but verify, you said.” That puts a formerly homeless recovering alcoholic miles ahead of Michael Evans. “But how did he make you late for work?”

  “W-e-e-l-l,” Glenda said, knotting her fingers together. “Seeing as how he was there so early, I went to the trouble of fixing him eggs and bacon just the way he likes it. I had the best of intentions, Heather. Honest. I was going to make him eat it on my front porch, just like I make him drink his iced tea outside when he mows the lawn. But I set out a TV tray for him this time, because I was feeling kind of mean about making him stay outside. I mean, he’s showed up faithfully every Sunday to mow all summer. I told him so and you know what he says to me?”

  “What?”

  “‘Glenda Scott,’ he says, ‘I’d rather sit here on your porch and eat whatever you make for me than dine in splendor with the Queen of Sheba.’ Guess they’ve been studying about Solomon in his Sunday school class so that’s why he was talkin’ so fancy about queens and all.”

  Heather chuckled. “I’m still not hearing anything that would have made you late.”

  “I’m getting to it,” Glenda said, touchily. “Well, after he ate his breakfast, he asked if he could come in and wash his plate and stuff. I’d done the cooking so it was only fair for him to do the cleaning.”

  “That sounds reasonable.”

  “Exactly.” Glenda nodded vigorously. “So I let him. Only I said I’d wash because I’d fed him on one of my grandma’s china plates and didn’t want it to get nicked. So Lester dried.”

  That was a major tell. Glenda wouldn’t have laid out her good china if she didn’t care for him. No wonder Lester had asked to come into her house. She’d practically rolled out the red carpet.

  “You’re such a neatnik,” Heather said. “I’m sure you always wash your breakfast dishes before you come to work and it doesn’t make you late.What was different about this time?”

  “Well, I was all done washing up and somehow or other, I couldn’t get the bung out of the drain. It’s an old house and I never did have one of those fancy metal stoppers. So Lester reached into the soapy water to help me and our fingertips sort of accidentally-on-purpose touched.” Glenda’s eyes closed and she sighed deeply. “And . . . oh, Heather, it was like I was seventeen again. You know what that feels like.”

  I wish I didn’t. Then maybe I’d be smart enough not to care when a guy who makes my insides flutter more than an aviary stands me up.

  “ ‘Glenda, love,’ Lester says to me. And let me tell you, when that man said my name, it sent shivers into places I forgot I had. ‘I know I don’t deserve a second chance,’ he says, ‘but I want to warn you that I’m gonna do everything I can to win you back.’ And then”—she paused for effect—“he kissed me.”

  “No,” Heather said in mock surprise.

  “Yes, he did, too, and before I knew it, I was kissing him back.”

  “What’s wrong with that? After all, you are still married to the man,” Heather said. “Technically.”
>
  “Yeah, but we haven’t ‘technically’ shared a bed—I mean, a roof—since our son was in high school.”

  “So you’re saying you shared a bed with Lester?”

  The tips of her ears turned red as a beet. “Without even drawing the blinds to make the bedroom darker.”

  Heather stifled a giggle. “Well, I can see how that would make you late for work.”

  “Are you going to write me up?”

  Glenda was a hard worker. She deserved some happiness—provided Lester could be trusted not to destroy that happiness again. When the Warm Hearts Club had appealed to Judge Preston with a detailed plan for rehabilitation that would keep the old veteran out of jail, Lester had grabbed the lifeline with both hands. He was working steadily for the first time in years, probably because he was going to AA meetings and staying clean. He even volunteered at the senior center so he could pay it forward by giving to others.

  But could he keep it up?

  Glenda’s a big girl. Guess she can decide for herself if she’s ready to let her ex back into her life.

  Heather shook her head. “I won’t report you for being late. Just tell Lester to come for supper instead of breakfast next time.”

  “Oh, there’s not going to be a next time. I told him as much. He just caught me in a moment of weakness, that’s all. We have miles to go before I take that man back.”

  “Good. Play hard to get. Men like the chase,” Heather said, repeating the advice Lacy had given her. Too bad it hadn’t worked on Michael. “But you are planning to forgive him eventually, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, I’ve already forgiven Lester for what he did to me and our boy.”

  Heather’s breath hissed over her teeth in surprise. From the little she knew about the situation, Lester had not only been a drunk, but an abusive drunk. It was a mercy to his family when he abandoned them. The fact that he’d never been treated for acute PTSD after his tour in Vietnam was a mitigating factor, but still . . . Surely a few months of mowing lawns and fixing a garage roof couldn’t make up for years of pain.