Last Chance Christmas (Last Chance #5)(17)
Author: Hope Ramsay

“Are you making small talk?”

“Uh-huh.” His words turned to steam in the cold air.

Damn him. He was so even-keeled now. So strong and manly and Carmine-like. Carmine would never have let a lady walk to her car in the dark either. It was infuriating.

They walked in silence down the block for a few moments before he spoke again. “I take it, from some of the things you’ve said, that your last couple of assignments have been tough.”

Her feet faltered on an uneven bit of pavement. Stone grabbed her upper arm. “Steady there,” he said, his warm breath spilling over her cool cheek.

She shrugged off his hand. “I’m okay.”

“Are you? Really?”

“Look, I’m sorry I got all holier-than-thou on you earlier. You really ticked me off when you started yelling at your kids. Like I told you, helping Haley and Liz put up a Christmas tree made me happy. Your daughters gave me something to laugh about. And I haven’t had much to laugh about recently.”

He stopped.

She stopped.

The feeble light from a streetlamp lit up the threads of gray in his hair and sparkled in his eyes. “I’m sorry I lost my temper.” He took a deep breath. “I seem to have to apologize every time we talk, huh?”

She shrugged. “It’s okay. I’m tough.”

He jammed his fingers into the pockets of his jeans. “Yeah, I get that. It was just that, see, I was surprised is all. I heard the piano…” His voice trailed off, and then he coughed to cover whatever weakness might have been exposed by his words. “Anyway, I’m glad the kids cheered you up. I can see how Haley adores you. And Lizzy thinks you walk on water. And, well, I get this feeling that maybe you understand stuff about me. Stuff no one does.”

“You were a marine, weren’t you?” she asked. “I’ve known a lot of marines over the years. Maybe that’s why. What division were you in?”

“Sixth Marine Regiment,” he said. “We breached the Saddam Line in 1991. It was a pretty big firefight. I was barely nineteen.”

Stone spoke in short sentences, but his words packed a wallop. He’d seen things in 1991 he wanted to forget.

She suddenly wanted to tell him all about what had happened this morning out in the swamp. She wanted to talk about how she was scared of her camera.

What was it about Stone Rhodes that made her feel so brave? It was probably his uncanny resemblance to Carmine Falcone.

Man, she needed to get away from him. Now.

She turned without saying another word and headed toward her father’s big SUV.

“You okay living at the river?” he asked. “It’s kind of remote out there.”

“I’m really okay. And I’m sorry about what happened.”

She got into her father’s car, slammed the door, and peeled away from the curb. She allowed herself one glance in the rearview mirror. Stone stood under a streetlight, wearing a pair of jeans and a sweater. He looked like her deepest fantasy.

Which meant that he wasn’t for real.

The Sorrowful Angel came into Haley’s room and sat on the bed. The bed kind of sank on one side when she sat down, just like when Granny or Daddy sat on the edge.

Haley opened her eyes and looked up at the angel. She wasn’t weeping or wailing.

“I tried to make changes,” Haley whispered, “but Daddy got really, really mad. And then that lady made him even angrier. I’m sorry. I stink at this.”

“No, you don’t. You made changes. You certainly got your Daddy out of his rut. Now your daddy needs to learn how to laugh again,” the angel said.

Haley stared at the shimmering angel. “You really think my changes were good?”

The angel nodded.

“How am I supposed to make Daddy laugh? Daddy never laughs,” Haley whispered.

“Tell him jokes.” The angel stood up and drifted through the wall that separated Haley’s room from Daddy’s.

Boy, Daddy was too mad about the changes she’d made in the living room furniture to laugh at any of the jokes that Haley already knew.

She was going to have to get some much better jokes.

Chapter 10

Sharon’s grave was near a towering magnolia that perfumed the Christ Church cemetery in the summertime. But today the place smelled of winter. Someone had put a Christmas wreath by her headstone.

Stone squatted down, studying the yellowing evergreen decorated with pipe cleaner ornaments and fading glitter. He swallowed hard.

Clearly Haley’s handiwork, probably with the help of Stone’s sister-in-law Jane. A folded piece of fading construction paper with a crayon picture of a Christmas tree was tucked into the wreath. He opened it to find a single piece of double-lined paper with Haley’s carefully printed words:

Dear Mother,

How are things in Heaven? I am OK. Can you ask Jesus to help the angel get back to Heaven? I think she is homesick. That is all I want for Christmas.

Love,

Haley

Stone choked on his emotions, and he had to squeeze his eyes shut and pinch the bridge of his nose to keep from breaking down.

“You want to talk about it?���

Stone turned and stood in one motion, chagrined that someone had snuck up on him. Aunt Arlene was standing there with a gotcha look on her face.

“Uh, hi, Aunt Arlene. I, uh, I gotta go.” Stone pocketed Haley’s note, then strode down the path toward the church parking lot.

“Stone, wait,” Arlene called after him. “Come sit with me for a minute. I think you need to talk about Haley’s note.”

“I don’t want to talk.”

“Okay, then, why don’t we talk about Roy Burdett’s new bass boat. I saw it yesterday. It’s pretty cool. It’s all composite, has a package of fishing electronics to die for, and it’s a pretty shade of blue. Laura-Beth picked the color.”

Stone turned around and stared at his aunt. Before Uncle Pete died, Arlene and Pete used to spend half the summer fishing up at Lake Marion. The walls of Arlene’s den were covered with fishing trophies, mounted fish, and photos taken over the years. “Don’t you let Roy Burdett turn your head with that boat.”

She giggled. “Honey, I know how to fend off married men. I wrote the book on that a long time ago.” She strolled forward, took him by the arm, and half led, half dragged him over to a small concrete bench not far from Pete’s grave site.

“So,” Aunt Arlene said, “what brings you out here on a nice morning like this?”

Stone took Arlene’s hand in his. “How’re you doing, Arlene?”

“I’m fine. I play bridge every week. I go to the book club meetings every other Wednesday. I have my hair done on Thursday. And I have church on Sunday. I work every day at the store. I have friends. I get lonely, sometimes, but it makes me feel nice when Roy Burdett comes in and flirts with me. When was the last time you flirted with anyone?”

“It’s been a long time.” Of course, last night he’d wanted to flirt, but had messed it up entirely by talking about combat and Sharon’s piano. Too bad he had yelled at Lark before he decided that flirting with her was what he wanted to do.

Boy, he was confused.

“Catch any fish lately?” Arlene asked. “I hear you do a lot of fishing down at the pier on the river.”

“Arlene, you know good and well that I don’t use bait or a lure.”

“Why is that? I can’t think of anything more boring than fishing without bait. It’s mighty peculiar, if you want my honest opinion.”

He laughed. It felt good to laugh. “Yeah, it is.”

“So why do you do it?”

Stone thought about it for a moment. He thought about his behavior last night, yelling at the girls. He thought about Lark Chaikin with her dark eyes fired up with indignation. Even a city girl like her knew it was crazy to fish without bait.

He gulped down air and spoke. “After Sharon died, when I was offered the job here, one of the perks was knowing that the chief of police was welcome to fish from the pier anytime. So naturally, my first week on the job—this was about six weeks after Sharon’s accident—I went down there with a can of worms and my fishing rod.

“I baited my hook, and I threw the line in. And durned if I didn’t get a hit right away. It was a little panfish, about yea big.” He measured out about five inches between his index fingers.

“Not big enough to keep,” Arlene said.

“Yeah. But the damn fish had swallowed the hook.” His voice wavered. “I worked for five minutes to get the hook out, but by then the fish was dead.”

“It happens.”

“Yeah, I know. And I never had any problems with it before. But I couldn’t deal with that dead fish. I didn’t want to be responsible for it. If I were a stronger man, it wouldn’t have bothered me. Or maybe, I would have just given up fishing altogether. But I couldn’t do either.”

“So you fish without bait.”

“It’s not bad. The best part of fishing isn’t catching fish. It’s the casting and the reeling in.”

“Ain’t that right. Pete used to say that a man could hear himself think out in a bass boat. Once, your uncle told me that it was amazing what he could hear in the silence.”

Stone patted Arlene’s hand. “Well, it’s been nice talking fishing with you, Aunt Arlene, but I gotta go.”

“Stone, they have a grief counseling group that meets on Thursday night. I’ve found that it’s very help—”

“You’re the third person this week who’s suggested that I need grief counseling. But I’m not much for talking in a group setting, and certainly not to the people I’m supposed to be serving and protecting. I don’t need people gossiping about my feelings. They already gossip enough in this town.”

“I suppose that’s fair. But you should talk to someone. Maybe—”

“I gotta go.”

Arlene grabbed his hand with a fierce grip. “You listen to me, son, and you listen good. I didn’t understand what you’re going through until recently. But I’ve learned something by losing Pete. We all have a hole inside us. Every single person on the face of the earth.”

That stopped him. He turned. “A hole?”

“Yeah. You can’t be angry at God for making you that way. You have that empty place for a reason.”

Stone could feel his brow lowering in a scowl. “Aunt Arlene, I didn’t take you for one of those holy rollers.”

“I’m not. I’m not trying to get you to come back to church on Sundays. I’m just trying to point out that you’re hoarding yourself and pouring your love into something that can’t give you anything back. Sharon is gone. Uncle Pete is gone. We loved them both when they were here, and they loved us back. But I sure know that your uncle would be disappointed in me if I went out on Roy’s bass boat and fished without any intention of catching a fish. That’s living half a life.”

Arlene shook her head in disgust. “Fact is, Pete would be horrified. Son, you’re holding on so hard to Sharon that the empty place inside is about to swallow you whole. Only love can fill that empty place inside. You have to let go. I think the Buddhists would say that you have to transcend.”