I grinned. “It’s like we have one mind.”
“Get her to order it,” she commanded. “And I cannot wait to see it all come together and then see it in person.”
“Me either, sweets.”
And suddenly I felt like crying.
They were coming out for Christmas.
They didn’t like what I was doing. They were worried about me. But just like Patrick’s kids, they were supporting me regardless in every way they could do it.
“He came to the lighthouse,” I blurted, my voice hoarse, the words seeming yanked from me.
I didn’t want to share but I’d already moved forward with life-altering plans that altered everyone’s life, not just my own, doing this very soon after we all lost Patrick. I knew I’d hurt them, Kath especially, so I shouldn’t do it again.
But more, I couldn’t do this on my own.
I didn’t have her near but the way we were, she was never far.
“I’m sorry?” she asked.
“Somehow he knows I’m here. While I was in Denver, he came to the lighthouse looking for me.”
“Which one?” she asked quietly.
“Coert,” I told her.
“Not the one I’d pick,” she muttered.
I pulled in a deep breath because he was not the one I’d pick either.
Caylen would be difficult, but I’d had a lifetime of him being an ass. Mom and Dad both loved me, but they were hard on me. They had expectations of me that hurt when I couldn’t fulfill them and they didn’t back down (or Mom didn’t).
But Caylen had always been just an ass.
Coert, however . . .
“It’s not like you’re not out there for just that, babe,” she said.
“I know but I’m not ready.”
“You know the right way, Cady,” she replied.
I did.
My parents had taught me. Patrick had taught me the same. And I’d watched Pat, Kath, Mike, Pam, Daly and Shannon teaching it to their kids.
Don’t procrastinate, especially on the things that were the hardest.
Get them done and out of the way.
“Regardless of what happens, you both need to establish the lay of the land,” she decreed.
This was true.
“So he knows you’re there. Seek him out, share you want to talk, ask him out to lunch . . . or whatever,” she suggested.
Ask him out to lunch.
The very thought terrified me.
“Okay, you’re right, I . . . he knows I’m here, I shouldn’t hide. I should let him know that I know he knows I’m here and that I’d like to have the chance to explain things so maybe we could get a coffee or something,” I planned.
“Like you have anything to explain,” she grumbled.
“Kath,” I warned, not wanting to go there.
She hadn’t been there. She’d only heard the stories.
She didn’t know.
They thought Coert was the two-faced villain in that tale of woe.
But he was just doing his job.
And I was just being the me that I used to be.
He’d done his best to do right by me.
There was just no “right” in the way all that went down.
“Okay, right, it’s a good plan. Time has passed. Wounds hopefully healed. You’ve both grown up. Life is life and what happened, happened, and you’ve both matured, moved on. Go ask him to coffee,” she encouraged.
“I’ll let you know how it goes.”
“Girl, I’ll be on a plane by nightfall if you don’t.”
That was Kath and she wasn’t being dramatic.
It still surprised me, at the same time it warmed me down to my bones, all that Patrick had given me. The girl in a Sip and Save where he got his coffee on his way to work that he was always kind to. The girl he found wailing like a lunatic at the side of the building and sat with her on the dirty sidewalk next to stinking dumpsters and listened.
And then did something about it.
I had been a damsel in distress often back then, the distress part being all my own doing.
He’d also pulled me out of my bent to be just that.
Oh yes, he’d given me a lot.
“Since I’d love for you to come for a girlie weekend when things start shaping up, let’s not waste the frequent flier miles right now,” I returned. “I’ll call.”
“You better.”
“I’ll call.”
“You better.”
“I’m hanging up now,” I warned her.
“So am I. Order the tile and mirror. And if he’s a jerk, then he’s a jerk, Cady. It’s just proving what your family already knows. Let him be a jerk and then move on and make that lighthouse a masterpiece, and he’s what he’s actually been for nearly two decades. History. If he’s not then . . . well then, we’ll see.”
We’d see.
We’d see . . . what, exactly?
What did I want?
Forgiveness?
A second chance (that thought gave me a shiver)?
And what might Coert want (except the biggest probability, nothing to do with me)?
I didn’t ask any of that.
I said, “Right.”
“Love you,” she replied.
“Love you more.”
“Love you most.”
“Love you more than most,” I parried.
“Shut up and go deal with the sheriff.”
God.
Deal with the sheriff.
“Okay, Kath. Speak soon.”
“Yeah, babe. ’Bye.”
“’Bye.”
We hung up and I stared at the lane in front of me, any courage I had coming through my bond with Kath starting to dissipate immediately now that the connection was lost.
I hit the button to slide down the window, stuck my head out and looked back at my lighthouse.
Only then did I have it in me to put the car back in drive and head to town.
Unfortunately by the time I made it into town and found a parking spot outside the sheriff station, all the nerve had totally left me.
Therefore I found myself sitting in my rental, staring at the building, trying to pump myself up to do something, anything. Get out of the car, walk in and ask to speak with Sheriff Yeager. Or just grab my phone, his card, punch in his number and tell him I’d heard he’d come out to the lighthouse and I’d like him to meet me somewhere for coffee.
At the very least, if he knew I was there and this showdown was behind me, I could finally go to a shop or restaurant without worrying about him seeing me.
The problem was, that didn’t seem like very good motivation to endure the showdown.
No, there seemed about five million better reasons to indefinitely delay the showdown.
It was on this thought that I jumped in my seat and swallowed a scream when knuckles rapped on my side window.
I turned my head to see an attractive male hand disappear only to be replaced by the attractive face of Coert Yeager.
It was a sad fact that many men aged well.
And it was an absolutely dismal fact that Coert aged better than any man I’d ever known. Even Patrick, who was handsome at sixty-five and retained vestiges of that even into his eighties, giving that to all of his sons, didn’t have the staying power of handsomeness that Coert had.
I’d seen it in the pictures the private investigator took.
But having it right there beside me blew my breath clean away.
“Roll down the window, Cady,” he clipped, his angry voice also making me jump and alerting me to the fact his face was not only still beautiful, it was furious.
This was not starting well.
I should leave.
I should start the car, pull out and leave.
I turned the key enough to give the car power and hit the button to roll down the window.
“Not a good idea, casing a sheriff station,” he declared before the window was fully down.
I took my finger off the button leaving it a third of the way up.
Casing a sheriff station?
What was he talking about?
“I—” I began but I barely got that out.
“Figured when your PI disappeared that somethin’ was up, looked into it, saw your sugar daddy bit it. Shoulda known you’d make your move after the old coot was out of the way, but Christ, didn’t think after all this time even you could be that screwed up.”