I drove a little farther up the road until I saw the next mailbox at the end of a long driveway, and I sat there for a few minutes. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see Cole, but I hated to barge in on him unexpectedly. Besides, he was probably still working, and what would he think of me snooping around his house while he wasn’t home? I finally told myself that I had to go up the driveway, thanks to Liz and her cookie trick, so I turned the car and drove forward. It seemed like at least a quarter of a mile until the house finally came into view, and I was completely astounded. It looked like a rustic mountain log cabin, complete with tall roofline and large windows, and it was immaculately landscaped. I told myself that this could not be Cole’s house, and I almost drove back up the driveway, but I decided at the last minute to at least knock and find out. I grabbed the plate of cookies and walked slowly up the beautiful log steps, trying not to look in the windows like a nosy intruder. I rang the doorbell and stood there for a minute, but no one answered.
Okay, nobody’s home. Just go, Camdyn.
I looked down at the plate of cookies and decided to give it one more try. I pressed the doorbell again.
“Just a second,” I heard from well within the house. I stood there feeling completely nervous until finally the door started to open, and there stood Cole, barefoot wearing faded jeans and a light yellow t-shirt, using a towel to dry his hair.
“Wow, you smell good,” I stammered, and then felt my face getting hot because I was such a complete idiot. “Is this a bad time? I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have barged in on you.”
“No, not at all,” he said, throwing the towel across his shoulder and leaning on the door frame. “Are you bringing gifts?”
“Actually, your mom sent these,” I told him, holding the plate out in front of me. “I’m not sure if it was a bribe for you to be nice to me, or if it was a bribe to convince me to come over here. Either way, it’s some kind of bribe, and I apologize in advance.”
“Why do I need a bribe, exactly?” he asked, taking the cookies from me. I pulled the map out of my pocket and unfolded it, holding it out in front of me.
“As it turns out, you apparently live on the same land that Willa lived on, and I was hoping I might have a look around.”
“You want me to come with you?”
Um, yeah. Isn’t that obvious by the way that I blush when you so much as look at me?
“Sure. I mean, you’d be handy to have around in case I step on a snake, or fall off a cliff…”
“Or walk into a tree,” he suggested with a smile. I instinctively reached my hand up and rubbed that spot on my chest where I had the run-in with the tree earlier in the week.
“Or walk into a tree,” I repeated, smiling.
“Just let me get my shoes,” he said, letting the door close behind him. I turned around and told myself to stop acting crazy, taking a good look at the yard. He had to have put a ton of work into it, and it was truly remarkable. When I heard the door open a minute later, I was immediately met by a young golden lab that came bounding toward me. He jumped up in front of me three times, and I finally knelt down to scratch him behind the ears.
“Pop, back off,” Cole said, tapping him on the back. “Sorry about that, he gets a little excited.”
“It’s okay, he’s cute. I didn’t know you had a dog.”
“Yeah, Charlotte gave him to me for Christmas,” he told me as we walked around the side of the porch.
“So what’s the significance of the name Pop?” I asked.
“I failed to mention that Charlotte named him before she gave him to me,” he explained with a laugh. “His name is Sugarpop Gumdrop, and I call him Pop so he can retain some of his dignity.” We both laughed, and he led me into the backyard and onto a well-worn path through the trees.
“I guess you’re out here a lot, since you have a path?” I wanted to know. He looked over at me with a sheepish grin.
“It’s where I jog.”
“I knew it!” I exclaimed. “Your sister told me that you work out every morning. I can’t believe you pretended that you couldn’t keep up with me.”
“I never said I couldn’t keep up with you,” he told me. “I knew that look in your eye, and you were not going to stop until you outdid me. I just didn’t feel like running for hours.”
“That’s very sneaky,” I scolded him.
“Well, as long as we are doing full disclosures here, I have to admit that my mom called a little bit ago and told me you were coming over.”
“So the cookie bribe was for me, then, I guess.”
“Yep,” he agreed, picking up a stick and throwing it to Pop, who was circling us excitedly. “So Rachel told you that I work out in the mornings. What else did she tell you? Or maybe I don’t want to know.”
“Let’s see, she listed all kinds of things that she said were annoying,” I began, pretending to be thinking, while he looked fairly apprehensive. “She told me that you sing all the time – while you’re cleaning, working, folding laundry…”
“How would she know whether I sing while I’m working?” he asked skeptically.
“I don’t know, maybe she doesn’t, but Jake knows what you do at work, and he said you were singing this morning,” I told him. He turned to look at me with a smirk.
“Jake? When were you with Jake?”
“I ran into him while I was with Lily at the café,” I explained. “I ditched my sandwich so the two of them would have to eat lunch together. I thought it was quite clever.” He paused for a moment and shook his head as though he was thinking things over.
“Okay, maybe I was singing this morning, a little,” he admitted. “That’s not annoying, and you do it all the time, too.”
“Wait just a second,” I argued, folding my arms across my chest. “What makes you think that?”
“Rachel told me you sing while you drive, and Rosalie told me you sing while you clean. Besides, I was over there one day messing around in the barn while you were doing laundry, and I could hear you all the way outside.”
“You could not.”
“You were singing an Aerosmith song,” he stated, and I immediately started blushing.
“Wow, you are like a full-blown stalker!” I told him, pretending to be angry. Pop ran under my feet just then and nearly sent me bowling over, but I managed to save myself at the same time Cole reached a hand out to grab my arm.
“Pop, calm down!” he said, releasing his grip as he realized I was still upright. “I am not a stalker, and I think we can both agree that there’s nothing weird about singing. What else do I do to annoy her? I am dying to know.”
“Oh, your mom says that you alphabetize everything,” I continued, my arm tingling from where his fingers had been.
“My mom?” he asked incredulously. “Okay, yes, it’s easier to find things when you alphabetize them. I’m just trying to figure out why my mom and my sister felt the need to tell you all the things they don’t like about me.”
“They were just trying to convince me that you weren’t perfect, I think,” I said, immediately regretting my words.
“To convince you that I’m not perfect?” he repeated, and I nodded. “Why would they do that?”
Oh wow, how embarrassing.
“I might have said something to that effect,” I admitted, glancing at him and shrugging my shoulders.
“Wow, that’s funny,” he laughed. “You keep using that word, but I don’t think it means what you think it means.”
“That was another thing!” I interjected. “You quote cheesy movie lines or something like that.”
“It’s like I’m under attack!” he stated. “I had no idea they felt this way about me.”
“Well, don’t feel too bad,” I tried to console him. “You should have seen Rachel’s face when she opened my glove compartment and discovered that I had toothbrushes in there. I thought she would never stop laughing.”
“No kidding?!” he asked with a smile. “You never know when you’re goi
ng to need one, right? People have been making fun of me for that for a long time. I’m glad there is another one of us out there.”
I stopped to look around, realizing that we had been walking a while and I wasn’t paying attention. I bent down to pet Pop as he circled around my legs again, and I surveyed the land that I could see, taking in the grassy fields and the tall trees. Between Pop bounding around me and Cole being within five feet of me, I was having an incredibly hard time concentrating.
“What are you looking for, exactly?” Cole asked, throwing the stick again. I stood up as Pop ran off after it.
“I don’t know, a miracle?” I suggested with a laugh. “If I could just find a tree that says, ‘Willa was here,’ or something.”
“You don’t expect much, do you?” he laughed along with me. “I honestly don’t think there’s anything. If there was, I would have noticed by now. I know my granddad’s house was where Mom and Dad’s is now, so all of that would be gone, too. Other than the weird rocks I found when I was clearing the fence line, I’ve never seen anything.”
“Weird rocks?” That sounded highly uninteresting.
“Yeah, we can go look at them if you like.”
“Okay,” I agreed, more because I wanted to stay with Cole than I wanted to look at some weird rocks, but whatever worked. We left the path and walked further into the woods until we came to a little clearing near the fence, and just under a couple of rather large trees, I noticed what he was talking about. There were two large half-buried rocks that looked like they had been placed there strategically, spaced apart from each other, and in front of them the ground was slightly sunken in. As we came closer, I knelt down by the first one and traced my finger along the top where there was a slight indention. It almost looked like a C, the way it was curved. Moving over to look at the next one, I ran my finger across the top and realized it was a W. The instant I saw the second letter, I knew in my heart exactly what the rocks were. This must have been where the babies were buried, and then they were moved later to the single grave in the cemetery. I sat down on the ground somewhat deflated and Cole put his hand on my shoulder.
“Everything okay?” he asked, crouching down beside me. “You think you know what they are?”
“Yeah, they’re grave markers,” I told him quietly. “There’s the C, and W, and there should be another one for Oliver.”
“C, W, and Oliver?” he clarified. “Camdyn, you’re freaking me out.”
Oh my goodness. I can’t believe he just said it like that: C W Oliver. Is this a sign? Now I am freaking out. What does it mean?
“There should be another one,” I repeated, trying to shake off the uneasy feeling while standing up and moving over to brush back a pile of leaves. Cole stayed behind me, watching as I moved my hands through them again and again, trying to push them back and see if there was anything else there. Finally, I felt my fingers scrape against something hard, and I lifted off the last of the wet leaves to reveal a third stone with a very large O in the center. I wiped my hand on the grass and then stood up and took a step backwards.
“Will you please tell me what is going on, because I have chills right now and this seems unbelievably weird,” Cole whispered.
“Willa and Robert lost three babies: Catherine, William, and Oliver,” I explained. “I found them all buried in one grave at the cemetery. This must have been where they buried them initially.” We stood there quietly for a minute, until finally Cole broke the silence.
“You had me pretty worried there for a minute,” he admitted. “I thought you meant that your name was chiseled in my back yard when you first said C. W. Oliver.”
“I know, as soon as you said that, I just got this terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach,” I told him. “I never noticed it before, that they were C, W, and Oliver. Do you think it’s a sign? It practically has to be.”
“No, of course not,” he muttered. “It’s nothing, just a coincidence.”
“Says the man who doesn’t believe in coincidence,” I said, feeling my chest constrict and trying not to go into full panic mode. “This book isn’t coming together, and I already had to extend my deadline. Maybe this is where it all ends, with Willa, and these grave markers are a premonition.”
“You don’t really believe that,” Cole interjected. I looked over at him and tried to stay calm as a tear slid down my cheek.
“Don’t I? I know that you have a grave marker in your backyard that says C, W, O, and that I happen to be the only person who knew what that meant. I can’t even imagine the improbability of that happening.”
“Improbable, but not impossible, Camdyn,” he said quietly, offering a slight smile.
“Are you going to tell me now that you do believe in coincidence?” I asked him as I brushed a tear away. He sighed as he looked down at the ground and shook his head.
“No, I can’t do that,” he whispered.
“So it has to be a sign, how could it be anything else?” I told him as I turned back toward the rocks. “C. W. Oliver is going to die right here, chasing Willa. It’s over.”
Chapter Fifteen
I stood there staring at the three rocks for a minute, not sure what to do. I couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that this had something to do with me, although it felt completely idiotic to say it out loud. I was fairly certain that Cole was thinking I was some sort of crazy lunatic, because he was standing behind me not saying a word. Finally, I looked over at him and offered him a smile in hopes of persuading him that I was sane after all, and he raised his eyebrows and gave me a serious look.
“I don’t want you to think I’m belittling this or anything,” he said, “because it’s definitely weird, and I get that. I just think you might be overreacting a little bit. Rachel told me your editor called while you two were in the car yesterday, so I know what happened. Maybe you’re just a bit oversensitive because she didn’t like your book.”
“I wish that was it,” I laughed sadly. “The book isn’t good; I don’t need someone to tell me that.”
“Okay then,” he continued, “why is it that you had to convince your editor to extend your deadline, but you’re not working? Why did you go shopping yesterday? Why were you hanging out with my mother? Why are you here right now? It doesn’t make sense.”
It doesn’t make sense, does it? Maybe I really am losing it.
“I feel like if I tell you, you’ll think I’m crazy,” I said, turning to face him and stare into his eyes.
“Try me,” he suggested.
“Okay,” I sighed, taking a deep breath. “Monday morning, I was pretty bummed out. In fact, I was borderline having a meltdown. I couldn’t concentrate, nothing was coming together… I thought maybe if I moved on and left Rosalie’s, something would materialize. In any case, I was trying to decide what to do when Rosalie and I got into a pretty tense discussion that ended with her saying she hoped I would still be there when she got back. After she left, I was just confused and frustrated, and I ended up praying for a long time. Afterwards, I really had this sense that I should wait and see what happened. So I have been waiting ever since. I haven’t written anything.”
“Nothing at all?”
“No, nothing. Now you can agree that I’m crazy and probably ruining my life.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” he told me. “That takes a lot of faith, to wait and see what happens.”
“I guess so,” I offered, turning back toward the rocks.
“Now I hope you won’t get mad at me, but I can’t stay here,” he said, stepping forward and putting his arm around my shoulders. “I really don’t want to seem like a jerk, but I have somewhere I need to be.”
“I’m sorry, Cole. I shouldn’t have barged in on you like I did.”
“Don’t be sorry,” he continued, “I’m glad you barged in on me. And I’m happy that you decided to wait and see what happened, or you wouldn’t be here at all. The only thing I’m a little upset about is the fact that I have to coach baseball practice
tonight.”
“Oh,” I laughed, feeling comfortable underneath his arm. “I don’t suppose you want company?”
“You want to come to baseball practice with me?” he asked, sounding surprised.
“Never mind, I’m sure you don’t want me tagging along,” I stated, shaking my head.
“I would love it if you came with me,” he told me, squeezing my shoulders. “Come on, let’s head back.”
We walked back through the woods and onto the path, neither one of us saying much. By the time we got back to the house, he had just enough time to run inside and grab his things, so I waited on the porch. He emerged a few minutes later with a baseball cap on and a huge duffel bag slung over his shoulder. I followed him over to the truck, where he opened the door for me before throwing the bag in the back. As I started to step up, he surprised me by taking my hand. I looked back at him and he smiled, pressed his lips against my knuckles, and then shut the door behind me.
I tried to make small talk with him about his baseball team, how he got started coaching, and that sort of thing. Really, I was trying not to put too much thought into the fact that he was being rather affectionate with me. I could have probably driven myself half insane thinking about it, so ignoring it altogether was a much better option. It didn’t take long to get to the ball field, and there were already several vehicles there when we arrived.
“Looks like we’re late,” he remarked, throwing the truck into park and coming around to the passenger side to open my door. I took his hand again as he helped me out, flashed a quick smile, and then grabbed his bag from the back. “Maybe with you around the moms won’t stare at me as much.”
“I wouldn’t count on that,” I said, walking quickly beside him. “I’m more afraid that they will be tempted to attack me.”
“Sorry I’m late!” he yelled to the kids, then turned to me for just a second. “I’ll see you in the dugout in a few minutes, okay?” I nodded as he jogged off toward the kids, and I realized that walking to the dugout meant walking directly past the pit of vipers. Maybe I would hold off for just a minute – I didn’t need them shooting daggers at me just yet. I casually walked over to where the moms were sitting and said a breezy hello, sinking down on the first empty bleacher.
A Reason to Run (The Camdyn Series Book 1) Page 21
