The Hero's Redemption

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Nurses poked their heads in every so often. One brought him a chilled bottle of water, for which he murmured “Thanks.” He would read a few paragraphs and look up, his concentration not the best. She was under so deep she didn’t stir for nearly two hours.

  When she did, she swallowed and opened and closed her mouth a couple of times. Finally, her lashes lifted, revealing confusion. She moaned when she rolled her head to stare uncomprehendingly at him.

  The sound was enough to bring a nurse, who prompted Erin to press a button to give herself a shot of pain relief, then held a water bottle with a straw to her mouth.

  “Thank you,” she whispered afterward. “It felt like I had a mouthful of sand.”

  The nurse chuckled. “Not the first time I’ve heard that.”

  Erin fixed her eyes on Cole. At least he saw clarity in them, even if he couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Not until the nurse was gone did Erin say, “You’re still here.”

  “I am.”

  “Why are you here? Is this because you think you owe me or something?” She didn’t give him time to answer. “Because if it is, you can leave right now.” She sounded...hostile.

  Cole dropped the book into his pack, grabbed it and stood up. “If that’s what you want, fine.”

  He was ready to walk out, but her big hazel eyes betrayed too much hurt before she rolled to face the far curtain. “Up to you,” she mumbled.

  This was ridiculous.

  “I want to stay here with you. If you’d rather not talk, that’s okay. I’d still like to keep you company.” He moved his shoulders uneasily. “You should have someone here.”

  He thought she swiped at her eyes, but they were dry when she shifted back.

  “Thank you.” It was a small, husky whisper.

  “Can I hold your hand?”

  She looked at him long enough to make him nervous, but finally extended her hand.

  He scraped the chair as close to the narrow bed as it would go, then wrapped his fingers around her much smaller, too-cold hand. “Do you remember what happened?”

  Lines formed on her forehead. “Kind of.” She sounded uncertain. “I was... I went to a sort of party. Mostly people who work at the library, but some teachers from Lake Stevens High School, too. I meant to come home before dark, but time got away from me. After that...mostly I remember headlights blinding me and the jolt when I braked and the guy behind me didn’t, and seeing this big tree coming at me.”

  Of all people to have something like this happen. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  She gave a tiny nod and flinched. “Head hurts.”

  “I know.” He couldn’t resist stroking her face again, staying away from the places that were purple or raw. Her skin was irresistibly soft, the bones beneath delicate.

  Her eyelids sagged again, and he said, “Go back to sleep if you can.”

  “No.” Her voice was a little slurred. “Just... Feels good.”

  He stroked, gradually moving his hand to the nape of her neck and gently kneading. Erin made a humming sound.

  “Say something,” she murmured.

  Cole remembered how much he’d wanted to call her after he’d talked to Tom Phillips that day, and again after the college administration decided to let him take a couple of classes now instead of making him wait until winter quarter. And then, after he’d been to the classes and realized how young most of the students were, he’d been relieved when he saw a decent proportion of students his age and older.

  So he started, haltingly at first, because filling the silence alone didn’t come naturally to him. When he told her he had a good shot at being promoted to foreman, her eyes flew open and she squeezed his hand. He kept on, talking about the two classes—calculus, which he was taking as a refresher before he went on to trig, which he hadn’t taken in high school, and nineteenth century American literature, because it fulfilled a requirement he needed for his AA degree. He’d already read The Scarlet Letter and was now deep into Moby Dick. He lifted the battered copy he’d found at a used bookstore in town.

  “We can choose from a long list. All these famous books, and I hadn’t read any of them.”

  “Me, neither. Every so often, I make myself pick one up.”

  He smiled. “Even college professors have areas of ignorance?”

  “Shh.”

  Cole laughed.

  Except she looked at him in that way she had, as if she could see right down to the darkest places inside him.

  And then she said, “Will you tell me? I think it’s time. Don’t you?”

  “Time?” But that was just a delaying tactic. He knew what she was asking and it made him feel sick. He would give almost anything to be able to skip this.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  SHE WATCHED COLE’S face go blank, the way she’d seen a hundred times before. He didn’t move, just wiped away all expression. Was he going to refuse to tell her? Pretend to misunderstand, or ignore what was really a question?

  Muscles flexed in his jaw. “Second-degree murder committed during an armed robbery. I was convicted of shooting the guy working the night shift at a convenience store. Barely twenty-one years old. He died.” His mouth curled in an unpleasant little smile. “Now you know why the local cops came straight to see me after the ampm in town was robbed.”

  Her mouth fell open. She couldn’t help it. Completely blown away, she said, “But—” She tried to slot in the pieces until they fit, but—“I don’t believe it. You, shoot someone? No way.” Not the quiet, gentle, caring man she knew. “Even if you were high or something... No.” She shook her head.

  “I was convicted.” He sounded odd, his voice unfamiliar. “The prosecutor made her case, and the jury bought it.”

  Erin kept shaking her head. She’d guessed... She didn’t know what, but not murder. Not rape. The man who’d held her every time she needed him, who’d raced to help Mr. Zatloka, who’d done small favors for the old folks up and down the street without being asked, without expecting thanks...

  “No,” she said again. “Will you tell me what really happened?”

  He stared at her for the longest time before a raw sound tore from his throat and he bent forward, elbows braced on his knees, his hands covering his face. His shoulders shook.

  Shocked, Erin pushed herself to a sitting position despite the fireworks going off in her head. “Cole?” He was crying. She wanted desperately to wrap her arms around him, hold him. Well, she’d have to do it with one arm, but that had to be good enough. By slow degrees, she scooted toward the edge of the bed.

  He lifted his head, face wet. “Damn it, what are you doing? Lie down before you fall out of bed!”

  “What did I say?” she begged. “I didn’t mean—”

  He used the corner of the white hospital blanket to wipe his face. “I’m sorry. I...can’t remember the last time I lost it like this.”

  “But...”

  He was on his feet, moving her back to the middle of the bed, arranging her until he decided she was comfortable. Or so she thought.

  Then he sat back down, wiped his face with the hem of his T-shirt and gave the strangest laugh. “I should have known.”

  “Known what?”

  “I kept thinking you had X-ray eyes. That I didn’t really have any secrets from you.” He laughed again, a little more naturally. “Turns out I was right.”

  “You didn’t do it.”

  “I didn’t.” He swallowed. “Dani claims to believe me, although I wonder. Otherwise, you’re the first person who has believed me. Even my father—” Cole had to stop.

  Fury leaped as if it had been fed by gasoline. “I want to punch him,” she muttered.

  This time, he laughed at her. “You’re ten years too late. And—” he sobered “—I did commit some crime
s. I’d gotten into drugs—cocaine—and joined a crowd that was into stuff I didn’t let myself think about.” He hesitated, his gaze sliding from hers. “When a guy supposedly cheated one of my friends on a drug deal, I went along with the others and helped smash the shit out of his car. That was the worst thing I did. Got caught, too.”

  “What happened? I mean with the law.”

  “I made a deal. They don’t have room in the jail for punks. It put me on the cop radar, though. After my father hauled me home, he slammed me against a wall and I hit him. I packed my stuff and moved out.”

  “Tough guy, huh?”

  “Angry guy. I don’t totally know why. He and I butted heads even before Mom died, but it got a lot worse after. I’ve told you that. The older I was, the harder he came down on me. Dani could do no wrong, and then there was me. It was like...I was a threat to him. He became more and more rigid. I rebelled.” He grimaced. “Stupid.

  “The thing is, I never liked guns. I didn’t own one. I went to the shooting range with friends a few times, which might have been the biggest mistake of my life. I used this guy’s gun.”

  “Your fingerprints were on it,” she said slowly.

  “You got it. I asked my attorney to find out if the range kept a video that would show me handling the gun there. She claimed they didn’t keep it that long, but I think she didn’t bother looking. She was more interested in making a plea deal than in defending me.” Cole’s voice was hard now. “The trouble with the plea was, I’d have to admit I’d done the crime, and I refused. It got so I could have served as little as three years, but I kept saying no. What a stubborn ass.” He shook his head. “I was so sure I wouldn’t be convicted.”

  He talked about his shock and disbelief, about the moment he’d been led out of the courthouse in shackles, about the sentencing and hearing the words ten years.

  “Did your father support you at all?”

  “He came to the courthouse to watch the trial. But when I turned around to look at him after the foreman said, ‘Guilty as charged,’ I could tell he thought I was guilty, too. He walked out looking disgusted. A week later, he wrote a letter saying I was no son of his and that my mother would have been ashamed of me.”

  “How could he?” she said fiercely.

  His eyes met hers, so vividly blue she couldn’t look away, and he said, “The road I was on, I might’ve gotten to the point where I’d have shot someone for a hundred bucks to buy a snort of coke. I can’t say that’s impossible.”

  “It is.” Erin held out her hand in a demand he recognized. Once she had a firm grip on him, she said, “That’s not the man you are. I can’t imagine you hurting anyone on purpose.”

  He shed a few more tears, embarrassed but not trying to hide his face this time. Apparently, he could tell she was winding down, because he made her push that button for more drugs.

  She said, “You know who did kill that boy.”

  Funny, he thought, because he’d been a boy, too, although of course he hadn’t seen himself that way.

  “Yeah, only one of my friends—” irony filled his voice “—was built like me. That day at the range, I used his gun. He had a cloth in his hand when he took it from me and holstered it. The surveillance tape at the store showed the shooter wearing gloves.”

  “Did you tell anybody?”

  “You mean, did I finger him? Sure I did. I told the cops and my attorney. I didn’t owe him anything after he set me up.”

  “But they had your fingerprints, so they were satisfied.”

  He inclined his head.

  Drowsiness felt like warm waves lapping at her.

  He could obviously tell, because he kissed her cheek and freed her hand. “Thank you,” he said. “You’ve done one more thing for me.”

  The warm, contented feeling vanished as if someone had opened a freezer door beside the bed.

  He was ready to say goodbye. He was grateful for her faith in him, which was good—except for the fact that now he had to swallow one more indigestible lump of gratitude. He was right that they couldn’t build anything on that as a foundation.

  So she tried for a smile and said, “Thank you for coming. I’ll probably be out of here by tomorrow, and I know you have to work, so...” She let her voice trail off. “Anyway, I’m glad things are going so well for you. And hey, if Edgar Allan Poe is on that list, give him a try. You’ll like his stuff.”

  He rose to his feet, but not as if he was eager to escape. “How about you?”

  She held on to the smile, although her lips trembled, and said, “I guess I need to find a life, the same way you have.”

  They both heard the approaching footsteps. A nurse pushed aside the curtain. Cole looked at Erin for another long minute, nodded and left.

  * * *

  THE NEXT DAY, he had a little trouble keeping his mind on the job. The others gave him a hard time about being slow on the uptake, but in a friendly way.

  He kept thinking, I shouldn’t have left. Had she wanted him to go? Cole honestly didn’t know. He hated the idea of her being uncomfortable with him, though, which meant he couldn’t ignore her when she sent a clear signal.

  During the night, he’d briefly questioned whether she really believed in his innocence, or whether it was an act. Make Cole feel good about himself, which was in line with her determination to help him succeed. And yet... Some people might call him naive, but he knew she wasn’t pretending. Her astonishment was so open, as was her anger at his father and everyone else who’d been idiotic enough to think Cole could do something so awful.

  God, it had felt good. Even here at work, every so often he’d realize he was grinning like a fool for no apparent reason. Erin believed in him. No one else in the world had, except maybe Dani—and that was a big maybe—but Erin did.

  He made the decision to stop at the hospital to be sure they weren’t keeping her another night. The woman behind the counter checked; the computer showed that Erin Parrish had been discharged.

  He was pissed off that she’d been released so fast after being unconscious as long as she had, never mind the broken arm, cracked ribs and clavicle. How was she supposed to take care of herself? Struck by a real flash of guilt, Cole wondered how she’d gotten home. Had she called Lottie to pick her up, for God’s sake? Mr. Zatloka, who probably took half an hour to make a ten-minute drive across town? And now what? Was she without any transportation of her own, or had some rental place dropped a car off?

  So he drove by her house, too. All he could tell was that lights were on, so she was there. No rental car sat in the driveway, but she might not have one yet. Unless she’d hired someone to install a garage door opener? Even the thought made him feel shitty, but he shook it off. Whether she had transportation or not, he doubted she’d be up to grocery shopping or anything like that for a few days.

  He went back to his apartment, which didn’t feel a lot homier than his cell had, nuked a frozen dinner and turned on the TV. After a minute, he turned it back off and reached for Moby Dick. The story seemed kind of slow to him, but his focus wasn’t the best right now.

  Finally, Cole acknowledged what he’d decided to do. If his father really wanted to hear from him, he could make that call. Whether there were apologies on either side, he couldn’t see having much of a relationship with the man. Still, this was his father. Not a great one, but Cole, in his bullheadedness, hadn’t been an easy son, either.

  So he picked up his phone, bounced it in his hand a few times, huffed out a disbelieving breath and entered the number he still knew by heart.

  “Hello?”

  The familiar voice gave Cole an unexpected shock.

  “This is Cole. Dani said you had something to say to me.”

  Silence stretched. Maybe his voice had startled his father, too.

  “I’m sorry,” Joe Meacha
m said. “That’s what I wanted to say.”

  Crap. He wanted to retort, Too little, too late, and hang up. But a crushing sensation in his chest held him silent. He had to concentrate on breathing for a minute before he regained his voice.

  “Sorry for what?” If he sounded harsh, he didn’t care.

  “I didn’t listen to you.” Pause. “Chad Adelson was arrested for armed robbery the year after you were convicted. That time, the clerk he shot survived. She, uh, saw the color of his eyes.”

  Adelson had weird-colored eyes. Or not-colored might be a better description. So pale a gray they looked washed out.

  So Cole had been right. His father hadn’t concluded on his own that his beloved son would never have shot and killed someone. Nope, he’d had to be presented with hard proof.

  Still talking, Dad said, “He served barely a year. Starting two months after he got out, a series of armed robberies ended with him shooting and killing someone else. A customer, that time. Now he’s in for the long haul.”

  This was news to him, but not a surprise. All he could think was, thank God they hadn’t come face-to-face in the pen. Cole had been carrying so much rage then he was afraid of what he would have done. Maybe Chad had been sent to Monroe instead of Walla Walla.

  “It didn’t occur to the cops to wonder if they’d gotten it wrong with me?”

  “Detective Sivik tried to get Chad to confess. He was in so much trouble it wouldn’t have made that much difference, but he refused. Sivik said he laughed.”

  Man. Cole wondered if he might be having a heart attack.

  “You never got in touch,” he heard himself say.

  “I...thought you wouldn’t forgive me.”

  He was right. Cole bit back the words, though. “You changed your mind because even you couldn’t deny the obvious. What if he’d never been arrested? Or you’d never heard about it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  A quaver belonged in an old man’s voice, not his dad’s. But then...he was getting up there. He’d been almost ten years older than Cole’s mother. A moment’s calculation told Cole his father was now sixty-eight.