by Lucy Score
Now, she had a hole in her heart that no man or similar distraction could fill.
“How are Vanna’s wedding plans coming?” Margo called from the depths of the kitchen.
“Good,” Bristol yelled back. “Had our dress fittings a couple of days ago, and the good news is none of us gained forty pounds and ripped out the seams.” Dress day had been an emotional one. Hope had been there the day Savannah chose her wedding dress, and they’d settled on the bridesmaid dresses. In fact, it had been Hope who encouraged Savannah to try on the fussy lace gown with the beaded bodice. And Savannah, the coolly logical woman who weighed all of life’s big decisions with a detailed pro and con list, burst into tears when she saw herself in the dress.
There’d been tears again this weekend, but of a different kind. Hope’s dress was there hanging on a hanger with no one to claim it.
The generally stoic Savannah had tearfully confessed in a dressing room that she didn’t want to get married without Hope there. She’d hoped that a happy occasion would help the family heal. But now she was worried that what was supposed to be the happiest day of her life would end up being a painful reminder to everyone who was missing Hope.
“Do you still like your dress?” Margo asked, bustling in with a huge mixing bowl of sourdough pancake batter tucked under her arm.
Bristol nodded and bit her lip. “I did something probably really stupid,” she confessed.
“Oh, Lord. You didn’t change your mind and go with that tangerine sequined prom number did you?” Margo asked, mixing rhythmically.
“Oh, this is way worse,” Bristol warned her. “Vanna was feeling pretty down about Hope after the fitting, so I went home and wrote a letter.”
“To who? Hope?” Margo frowned.
“To the organ donation program at the hospital.”
“Uh-huh,” Margo said warily.
“The program is anonymous. So recipients don’t know who donated and vice versa,” Bristol explained. “But they allow both parties to write letters, if they so choose.”
“And you so chose?”
Bristol nodded. “I wrote a letter to her heart recipient, and I…” she started to lose courage and trailed off.
“Oh, boy.”
“Yeah. I invited the recipient to the wedding.”
Margo stopped mixing.
“Did I make a huge mistake?” she asked.
Margo began to mix again. “The way I see it is there’s three outcomes. One, you hear back from the recipient and they’re a horrible human being, and your family is devastated. Two, the recipient is amazing, and your family finally gets some peace. Or, three, you don’t hear anything from anyone.”
“Well, let’s hope it’s not option number one,” Bristol said dryly.
Margo patted her arm. “Honey, I think it was a beautiful sentiment and could do you all a lot of good.”
“Thanks, Margo,” Bristol said, feeling relieved.
“On the other hand, Hope’s heart could be beating in some mafia hitman’s chest as he rots in prison and passes the time selling drugs to other inmates.”
“Thanks, Margo,” Bristol groaned.
“I’m just messin’ with you, honey. It’s Hope’s heart. Of course it went to someone who deserved it,” Margo said with a conviction Bristol wished she felt.
There was a knock at the glass door, and Bristol waved a hand at the duo on the other side as she tied on her apron. “Ready for chaos?” she asked Margo with a grin.
“Bring it.”
They opened at six sharp and closed up at eleven every morning, seven days a week. The hours gave Bristol the flexibility to be there for Violet after school and in the evenings. Not that her workday was ever over in five hours. There was always paperwork, ordering, accounting, and a thousand other things to manage. But Bristol loved it.
She unlocked the door for Deanna and Eli, firefighters just coming off a call from the looks of their tired, dirty faces.
“Morning, guys,” she said, waving them both in the direction of Margo’s fresh coffee.
“Hey there, Bristol,” Deanna greeted her with a tired smile. Her light brown hair was escaping from the low ponytail that had been tied hastily at some point during the night. She had a smudge of soot on her chin.
“There’s a face worth being awake for at this ungodly hour,” Eli said with a wink. He breezed in just under six feet with dirty blond hair and a crooked grin that had the female out-of-towners blushing until closing at JT’s Roadhouse. He was an incurable flirt, but beneath his charming exterior was a really nice guy who’d shoveled Early Bird’s walk every snowfall since Hope died.
Both carried the acrid smell of smoke with them.
“How was the call?” Bristol asked.
“Car fire out on the highway,” Deanna yawned and stretched her arms overhead. “No injuries, thankfully. But there’s no way I’m dragging my ass to Lucky’s class this morning. I need to fuel my body with something cheesy and carby.”
“I think we can hook you up,” Bristol said with a grin.
Bristol hustled back behind the counter and prepared for war as two more customers wandered in. Hope Falls may have been limited when it came to nightlife, but it sure put on a show for the early morning crowd.
She and Margo were Early Bird’s only full-time staff. They filled in the schedule with a handful of solid part-timers who kept the place running at its highest efficiency. By seven every weekday morning, they found themselves running at full speed and stayed that way until nine or ten. Brunch on Sundays was growing steadily, and Bristol had been toying with the idea of adding another cook. But, as with every other decision this year, she’d found herself unable to pull the trigger.
Her world had been shaken, and there was no bouncing back from it. She was still just hanging on. Maybe someday she’d find that energy and drive that had her staring at a dusty pile of bricks and seeing a thriving enterprise, a happy home.
But for now, she’d hang on by her fingernails and hope for the best.
CHAPTER TWO
“Good job, Vi!” Bristol shouted through her gloved hands as the little blur in purple skates hurried after the puck on the rink.
“Was that good?” Bristol’s mother, Mary, asked next to her. The woman was wrapped under a blanket and enjoying a thermos of coffee rather than braving the Kirkwood Ice Arena’s subpar hot chocolate.
“I have no idea,” Bristol shrugged. “If she would have picked basketball or gymnastics, I’d at least have some idea of what’s going on. And we’d be indoors.”
She glanced around at the other fans crowding onto the metal bleachers and pulled her cheery red parka closer. The Hope Falls U-8 Polar Bears were battling the neighboring Longview Ice Picks in a dramatic match-up, at least according to the yells and stomps of the fans. Personally, Bristol thought people were cheering just to keep warm. Even with her limited knowledge of the sport, she knew the Polar Bears were terrible. But it was the first thing Violet had shown any interest in since Hope’s death, and she was willing to do whatever it took to encourage that interest.
A particularly rousing cheer went up from the bleachers as little Noah Barnes skirted around Violet with the puck.
“Did we score? What was that?” Bristol demanded, coming to her feet with the rest of the crowd.
“Woo!” Her father pumped a fist in the air. “Vi just smashed that kid into the boards, and Noah got the puck.”
“Is that good?” Bristol gaped. Sure enough, little number thirteen with her pigtails was leisurely skating away from a kid struggling to regain his footing on the ice. “That’s not allowed is it?”
Bob grinned. “Way to go, Vi!”
“Maybe beating other kids up will help pull her out of her funk?” Mary offered hopefully.
“Gee, thanks Mom. That’s exactly what I need, Vi to start kicking kids’ asses on the playground,” Bristol protested, but she waved back when Violet skated by waving and grinning. Smiles had become a rare occurrence in their h
ome, and Bristol vowed then and there to let her little girl smash as many kids into walls as she wanted if it meant she got to see that dimple appear.
The ref blew a whistle about something, and Bristol sat back down and scanned the crowd again. There were familiar faces everywhere. It’s what happened in Hope Falls. Strangers were only strangers for the 4.2 seconds it took Sue Ann Perkins to wheedle their life stories out of them. And speaking of strangers, Bristol spotted one leaning against the boards lining the rink angled her way.
He was tall with a chest and shoulders that looked broad enough to bench press a small vehicle. His hair was neither dark nor light from what she could see under his cap, but his neatly trimmed beard was brown with hints of red. He was well prepared for the November weather in a gray wool coat and boots. And that face. It may have been the few drops of Washoe blood in her that had her thinking it, but the man looked like a warrior.
He didn’t look friendly. He looked… intense, Bristol decided. And hot. Really, really hot.
The action on the ice had started again, but the stranger was still looking in her direction.
“It looks like you have an admirer,” her mother hissed making a show of nodding in the man’s direction. Subtly was not in Mary Quinn’s vocabulary.
Bristol felt the color rise on her cheeks. “He’s looking at someone behind us,” she insisted, dragging her gaze away from his face and back to the ice.
“Mmm-hmm,” her mom placated. “You know you’re going to have to eventually start dating and having a sex life again someday, right?”
“Mother!” Bristol clapped a gloved hand over her mom’s laughing mouth.
“Stop picking on our daughter, Mary,” Bob warned without taking his eyes off the ice.
Mary laughed, her eyes sparkling under the knit snowflake headband she wore over her forehead and ears. “He’s still looking, and it’s definitely at you.”
But before Bristol could argue or, better yet, sneak another peek in the man’s direction, Violet’s coach stole her attention.
Freddy “Tubs” Nelson had earned his nickname with his decades-long dedication to all foods fried and all fats trans. He visited Early Bird twice a week for his classic bacon with a side of bacon breakfast.
And he was currently clutching his left arm and going gray in front of her. “Coach?” Bristol called out, already on her feet. But he didn’t answer. He was too busy going down like a slowly deflating balloon in the Macy’s Day Parade.
Bristol scrambled over the last two bleachers and jumped into the team bench. He was all the way down on the cold concrete. She rolled Freddy onto his back. His eyes were closed, and his jaw was slack. She felt for a pulse then, remembering her gloves, yanked them off, and felt again.
“Call 9-1-1,” she ordered without looking up. “Crap, crap, crap.”
She brought up last year’s CPR training in her mind. She loosened Freddy’s coat and leaned in listening for breath. “No breath. No pulse,” she muttered to no one. “Okay. We can do this, Freddy.”
Bristol interlaced her fingers and positioned the heel of her bottom hand at the center of his chest. “Here we go,” she whispered. “One, two, three…” She counted off each compression, pretending it was the rubbery dummy from the class Hope had dragged her to at the fire station.
“Come on, Bristol,” Hope had urged. “Everyone needs to know how to do this.”
Well, she was doing it, and Bristol prayed she was doing it right. “Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.” She paused, checked for breath. Finding none, she tilted Fred’s head back and breathed into his mouth. His chest rose, and she gave him another breath before returning to compressions.
She knew there were people gathered around her, but she couldn’t tell who they were or what they were saying. Her parents would keep Violet safe and away from the scene, and she hoped the parents and fans would do the same for the rest of the kids.
Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen…
She soldiered on through compressions and breaths until her arms felt like they were coming out of their sockets and her lungs were screaming. “How much longer for the ambulance?” she gritted out.
“Seven minutes,” a chorus of worried voices responded.
Seven minutes? Hell, she and Freddy would both be dead by then.
It was on her fourth round of compressions that a pair of boots entered her field of vision followed by a portable AED defibrillator.
“Twenty-nine, thirty.”
As soon as her hands left Freddy’s chest, someone else’s were yanking open his shirt. It was the stranger, she noted, as she took advantage of the break to wrestle out of her coat. A half-dozen hands behind her freed her from it, and she felt the winter air immediately cool the sweat that ran like a waterfall down her back.
“Check him for breath,” the man ordered, his deep voice gruff but calm with authority.
She leaned in and then shook her head. “Still nothing.”
The man quickly readied the AED. “I’m going to give him a shock, and then we’re going to check him, okay? If there’s still nothing, we go back to compressions.”
We. We. We. The word echoed in her head along with her pulse. It made them a team, and right now, she liked that.
“Yeah, okay,” Bristol nodded and helped him attach the pads to Freddy’s bare chest.
“Everybody clear,” the man ordered. He hit the button.
It was only after another round of compressions and the second shock that Freddy took a gasping breath on his own and his heart kicked back to life.
A few seconds later, his watery brown eyes fluttered open. “Hey there, Bristol,” he whispered, his voice a wheeze. “How’s about some of that maple candied bacon tomorrow?”
“How about an egg white omelet with a spinach smoothie?” she countered with a relieved smile.
“Party pooper.”
Bristol gratefully sank down on the frozen ground as the EMTs hauled ass onto the scene. Her arms felt like overcooked spaghetti, and she had one hell of a headache brewing.
She caught the sad smile of the older paramedic. Raoul had trained Hope when she’d volunteered the summer before college, and he’d been the one to certify Bristol in CPR. He crouched down in front of her. “You did good, Bristol. Real good. She’d be proud of you.”
“Thanks, Raoul,” she said weakly. “Is Fred going to be okay?”
“He wouldn’t dare die on us after all that hard work you two did,” Raoul said, winking at her.
It was only then that Bristol looked around for her partner in life saving, but he was nowhere to be seen in the mob of people.
“Mom!” Violet’s voice held the edge of panic that all mothers hate to hear from their child. Her daughter was trying to peer over the wall of boards that surrounded the rink. “Mom!”
Bristol climbed to her feet with the aid of a few helpful hands that also shoved her back into her coat. “I’m right here. Everything’s fine, Vi,” she promised.
“Is Coach Tubs okay?” Violet demanded, her blue eyes wide with worry beneath the plastic cage of her helmet. “Mr. Luke says if we don’t have a coach, we have to forfeit. And Noah says that means lose on purpose. And I think that sucks.”
“Violet!”
“Stinks. Sorry. Whatever. Mom, we need a coach!”
Luke Reynolds, Hope Falls’ second professional snowboarder and volunteer Pee Wee hockey ref skated up to the boards next to Violet. “We’re going to need an adult volunteer to step in or the team forfeits,” he confirmed.
“Isn’t that just making the situation even more traumatic for the kids?” Bristol asked. “Can’t we just wrap it up now?”
Luke shook his head regretfully. “League rules. Either both teams have a coach, or it’s a forfeit.”
“Sam is going to kill you if she hears about this,” Bristol said, referencing the holy hell Luke’s wife and fellow professional snowboarder, Samantha Holt, would bring down on him for destroying the hopes of an entire hockey team of chi
ldren.
“That’s why I’m looking at you really hard right now with sad eyes so you’ll volunteer,” Luke said, showing off his matching dimples.
“Go, Polar Bears,” Freddy wheezed from the gurney, his arm raised high. The kids on the rink cheered and slapped the ice with their sticks. The crowd erupted at the display of life.
Bristol looked around her and saw a sea of parents avoiding eye contact. One didn’t live in Hope Falls without knowing that one would eventually be dragged unwillingly into some unfortunate community service. “Crap. Fine. I’ll coach. But just for the rest of the game.”
––—
It was a blood bath. Literally. One of her kids got a bloody nose, though Bristol suspected it was from picking, not pucking. She’d assumed the other team would go easy on them seeing as how the Polar Bears had watched their coach almost fade from existence, but no. The Longview Ice Picks had ice in their hearts and methodically picked apart what defense a bunch of six-to eight-year-olds could muster with a coach who didn’t even know how long a game… match… rampage lasted.
One of the players on the Picks looked like he was thirteen. He was a full head and shoulders taller than all of the other kids, and she wondered if the parents over in Longview fed their little hockey brats steroids. Bristol clearly heard him taunt Violet as he plastered her into the boards in front of the team bench. “Your coach almost died! Ha!”
Little bastard.
Apparently there was no mercy rule in hockey. The Bears took a beating, 3 to 11 by the time the final buzzer mercifully sounded.
“That sucked, Mom,” Violet grumbled as they shuffled through the gravel parking lot.
Bristol didn’t even bother to correct her. It had sucked. “Yeah, but try not to use that language around Lissa, okay? She’ll think I’m slacking in my mom duties,” Bristol said, guiding her slump-shouldered eight-year-old toward her stepmother’s SUV.
“What are we going to do? We need a coach, Mom.”
“I’m sure someone will volunteer,” she said, hoping it was true.
