Opening His Holiday Heart, page 15
Since the former sheriff resembled Winston on a good day, Casey decided to keep quiet. Quiet was good. Quiet meant he couldn’t trip up and say something he shouldn’t.
Apparently, Horace wasn’t a fellow card-carrying member of the silence-is-golden club. “I’ve also noticed that you and Sutton seem to be getting along pretty good.”
Casey said nothing. Because, yeah, sure, they were getting along, if a person didn’t count their argument this morning, or their ongoing prank war over a plastic Santa, or just about every other interaction they’d had in the past two weeks.
“But I would venture,” Horace continued, “that it hasn’t always been smooth sailing, and I blame myself.”
That unhooked Casey’s jaw real fast. “Come again?”
“I said...” Crossing his arms over his chest, Horace leaned against the porch railing. “I blame myself for the tension that occasionally shows up between you and Sutton.”
Casey moved to the steps leading to his front yard, sat, stretched out his legs. “Whatever tension that exists between Sutton and me is firmly on the two of us, not you.”
“Disagree.” Horace joined him on the step, maintaining eye contact as he settled in. “I should have pressed you harder during my interrogation the night I arrested you.”
It hadn’t been much of an interrogation. “Press for what? I was pretty clear in my confession. I gave details. Lots of them.” Most of them true. “I even produced receipts.”
“Cash receipts. Not exactly compelling evidence. Nor was your confession, for that matter. Your story had a big gaping hole the size of the Grand Canyon.”
Casey saw no reason to respond.
“You do realize I could have cracked you like a squirrel with a brittle nut.”
A trickle of sweat slid down his back. Nope, still not talking.
“Almost from the start, I understood what you were up to, which is why I made sure your record was sealed and then expunged. What you did was noble, boy. Misguided, but noble.”
Casey picked up the ball at his feet and threw it for the puppy. “I stand by my confession.”
“Don’t patronize me, Casey. I may be retired, but I’m still a seasoned lawman with hundreds of arrests to my name. And you, my young friend, still can’t look me in the eye. It’s a blatant tell.”
“I’m not avoiding eye contact.” Head down, Casey wrestled the ball from the animal’s mouth and threw it again. “I’m exercising the puppy.”
“Uh-huh. You should tell Sutton what really happened that night.”
To what end? It wouldn’t bring Jeremy back. It wouldn’t change the past. All it would do was ruin Sutton’s memory of the man she’d married, and possibly teach Toby that his father had lied to his mother their entire marriage.
“You hear me, boy?”
“I heard you.”
“Well? You gonna tell my niece the truth?”
Casey was saved from responding when Beau’s car drove into view. The vehicle barely rolled to a stop before Toby-the-Tornado exited the back seat and zipped in their direction. All three dogs perked up. Louie, despite his short little legs and youthful clumsiness, set out ahead of his parents.
Laughing, Toby fell onto the snow-covered ground and let the little guy climb all over him. Not to be denied their piece of the action, Winston and Clementine piled on.
This, Casey thought, this is what I want. A family, a wife, and at least one little boy who loves rolling around in the snow with my dogs.
That life could be his. If, as Horace suggested, he told her the truth about that night, maybe he and Sutton could—
He cut off the rest of his thoughts.
Nothing had changed. For whatever reason, Jeremy chose to take his secret to the grave. Casey would honor his friend’s decision the only way he knew how. With his continued silence.
* * *
Sutton read Casey’s text. Toby and I are finished up here. Expect us for dinner around 6:00.
So he was holding her to her promise, after all. Good. They needed to put the past behind them. Tonight would be the night. After she’d plied Casey with his favorite meal.
Sutton was putting the finishing touches on the lasagna when the front door swung open with a bang and her son shouted from the entryway. “Hey, Mom. Mom! Where are you? I have super exciting news.”
“I’m back here,” she called out. “In the kitchen.”
Expecting to see Toby speed through the doorway, she nearly dropped the spatula when her eyes connected with Casey’s. A small part of her brain functioned normally. The rest gathered details, the whiff of motor oil, the intense blueness of his eyes, the smile that didn’t quite reach them. “I know that smell,” he said by way of a greeting. “Please tell me you made lasagna.”
“Not only that. I’m using your mother’s recipe.”
“Be still my heart. Wait.” He lifted an eyebrow. “Are you trying to bribe me?”
“Consider it an olive branch.” Remembering how he hated olives, she quickly added, “Sans the olives.”
This time, his smile reached his eyes. “Nice recovery.”
“I know!” They had a private moment of understanding, broken by Toby’s shriek of delight as he sped into the kitchen. “We’re having lasagna? That’s my favorite.”
Casey squeezed the boy’s shoulder. “Same, little man. Same.”
Toby grinned up at the man who had clearly become his hero. “This is almost my very favorite day, ever. All that’s missing is a puppy of my very own.”
“Nice try, kiddo.” Sutton picked up a spatula. “The answer is still no.”
“Aw, Mom.” Looking down, Toby scuffed his foot on the tile floor. “Louie is a great dog. He’s really well-behaved. He’d be no trouble at all.”
Patently untrue. But instead of arguing with her son, she attempted to redirect the boy’s focus. “Wasn’t there some super exciting news you wanted to tell me?”
“Oh, yeah.” Toby’s head popped up. “We finished my car today!”
“No kidding?” She posed the question to Casey. “That was quick work. I’m impressed.”
“Don’t be. We had a team of highly motivated workers.”
Sutton knew it was more than that. “You’re a good leader, Casey. The air force lost a valuable asset when you retired. Ah, well, their loss is Thunder Ridge’s gain.”
He tilted his head. “Did you just pay me a compliment?”
“As real as they come. Now go wash your hands. Both of you.” She pointed her spatula at her son, then Casey. “No dawdling.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The two saluted her. The move was so perfectly synchronized she wondered if they’d practiced it.
Dinner was a happy affair with lots of laughter.
It wasn’t until after they ate, and Toby was in his room working on his homework, that Sutton brought up her argument with Casey. “I want to talk about what happened this morning.”
Casey kept his face expressionless. “No need. You already apologized.”
“In a text.”
A frown line appeared between his dark eyebrows. “You asked for a truce. I accepted. It’s over, Sutton. Leave it alone.”
She moved closer, put a hand on his shoulder. “Please, Casey. Let me have my say.”
After a moment, he nodded.
“I need to check on Toby first, then I’ll make coffee and we’ll talk in the living room.”
“I’ll make the coffee.” Some of his previous humor returned. “I am, after all, an expert.”
“You’ll get no argument from you.”
“Har har.”
She patted his cheek. “I’ll be right back.”
When she returned, she found Casey in the living room, head bent, no coffee in sight. He held the framed photograph taken on her wedding day in his hand. They never talked about Jeremy. But he was always between them, hovering, the memory of him as real as if he were standing in the room. Sutton had no idea what Casey thought of her marrying his best friend. This was the perfect moment to find out.
She moved deeper into the room. Casey’s shoulders stiffened, but he never took his eyes off the photograph in his hand. “You look beautiful in this picture. Happy.”
“I was happy.” She touched the gilded frame, smiling softly at the image of her and Jeremy. “I married my best friend that day.”
Casey set the picture back on the mantel. “Was he a good husband and father?”
“Yes,” she said with only a slight hesitation. “To both questions.”
His eyes, a deep, searching blue, skimmed over her.
“Casey, I’ve always wondered...” She could barely form the words in her mind, but managed to speak them as they came to her. “What did you think when you found out Jeremy asked me to marry him, and that I said yes?”
He turned his attention back to the picture. “We’d broken up years before you and Jeremy married.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Emotion drained out of his face and a blank mask moved in. “What do you want me to say? That I was overjoyed with the news that my former girlfriend was marrying my best friend? That I wished you nothing but happiness?”
He didn’t sound angry, exactly. He sounded hurt. “Is that how you felt? You wished Jeremy and me nothing but happiness?”
He shrugged. “Close enough.”
“Casey, please. We need to talk about this.”
“Why?”
Here it was. The moment of truth for them both. “Because we’re growing close again. Something is building between us, something stronger than when we were kids.”
He didn’t deny it.
“But Jeremy is a part of my past and the father of my son. He will always be between us if we don’t speak about him honestly.”
“You want honesty from me? Then you give it first. Was Jeremy a good husband and father? Tell me the truth, Sutton.”
She stared at him for five full seconds, not quite sure what she heard in his voice. It was as if Casey knew something about Jeremy that Sutton didn’t, something that concerned him enough to ask a question she’d already answered.
“He was good to Toby and me. When he was home, which was rarely, because he took extra assignments whenever he could.” The words flew out of her mouth and she couldn’t take them back. “He loved his job. His dedication bordered on obsession.”
As if he had something to prove. Where had that thought come from?
“Are you saying his career was more important than his family?”
“When you say it like that, it makes him sound neglectful. He wasn’t. He was kind. But he was also driven. He had plans and goals and could be single-minded when it came to achieving them, often at the expense of his relationships.”
“I’m sorry.”
She drew in a quick breath. “All that time and sacrifice. All the lost days with Toby he won’t have to enjoy. It’s such a...” She left the rest unspoken, too choked up to continue. The tragedy of Jeremy’s death wasn’t just about her, but also her son. The loss that Toby suffered, it left her grasping for calm, and trying not to cry.
“I’m sorry, Sutton. So very sorry.”
Sutton appreciated the absence of platitudes. “He died too young. But at least he died doing what he loved.” She briefly closed her eyes, opened them again. “I find comfort in that.”
“Then I will, too.” He sounded as wounded as she felt. In that moment, she realized Casey had lost Jeremy, too, and the pain was just as raw for him as it was for her and Toby.
The tears came then, hot and fast, and she tried to turn away from Casey’s intense gaze, but she couldn’t. She didn’t want to, didn’t even try. She wanted to share her grief with someone who knew Jeremy as well as she.
She reached to Casey. He reached to her. And then they were in each other’s arms. Her head on his shoulder. Their breathing erratic yet somehow also healing.
Casey’s hand came up and he stroked her hair, the move of a friend and yet so much more intimate than had he kissed her. She had no idea how long they stood like that, wrapped tightly against one another, taking comfort in their mutual grief while letting go of the man they’d both loved, despite his flaws. Perhaps even because of them.
“Okay. In the spirit of honesty...” Casey said, setting her away from him. “I won’t lie and say I wasn’t hurt when I found out you married Jeremy. It hurt a lot. More than I cared to admit at the time, which probably explains why I...” He trailed off, shook his head.
When he remained silent, she touched the back of his hand. “Explains what?”
“Not important.”
She sensed it was important, but Casey was talking again, and she’d lost her chance to press him. “I cared about you both, Sutton. And no matter how ugly things got between us, all I ever wanted was for you to be happy.”
“It’s that simple for you?”
“Simple? No. Easy? Not even close.” He shrugged, the gesture as familiar today as it had been seventeen years ago. “It helped that I was in a serious relationship at the time. Knowing I had Victoria, and confident that we were good together, better than most couples I knew, well, that certainly took away some of the sting.”
Victoria. Casey had been involved with a woman named Victoria. “Were you and... Victoria...” Her voice tripped over the woman’s name. “How serious were you?”
“I planned to ask her to marry me.”
“Oh.” Sutton wasn’t sure what else to say. The kick in her heart wasn’t a pleasant feeling. “You loved her?”
“At the time, yes. I did. Like I said, we were good together. She was a pilot in the air force. That’s how we met.”
“You had a lot in common.”
“We did, and we were of the same mind on the important things.” He rubbed a hand over his forehead. “Or so I thought.”
Sutton saw it again, the look of regret in his eyes, and the hollowness underneath. “You were wrong?”
“We made plans to take our relationship to the next level once we were both out of the military. I left the air force ahead of her, at the end of June. She was supposed to join me here in Thunder Ridge six months later.”
Sutton did the math in her head. “Just in time for Christmas.”
He nodded. “I planned to ask her to marry me under the tree. I went all out with the decorations. But Victoria didn’t make it for Christmas. She claimed there was a clerical error with her discharge paperwork.”
She claimed. Two words that explained so much.
“One thing I learned in the military is to expect the unexpected, so it wasn’t a big deal. I could wait. And that’s what I did. I kept the decorations up and waited.”
Oh, Casey.
“When she finally showed up in early February, she told me there’d been no clerical error. She’d had a change of heart but didn’t know how to break the news to me.” A shadow crossed over his face. “She returned to the air force, her one true love. I threw out the Christmas tree and vowed never to celebrate the holiday again.”
Sutton’s heart constricted as she looked into the kind, handsome face. She noted the “no big deal” expression that was a brave front but certainly not the truth. The breakup had left him wounded. No wonder Quinn was so protective of him. No wonder Remy had dubbed him Ebenezer Grinch.
“Oh, Casey, if I’d known I wouldn’t have pushed you so hard to decorate your shop.”
The smile he gave her was full of the boy she’d once known. “We both know that’s not true. Putting Thunder Ridge on the list of top ten Christmas destinations is important to you.”
She sighed deeply, because he was absolutely correct. “True, but I would have approached the situation with more delicacy.”
“I don’t want your pity.”
“Understanding is not pity.”
He almost smiled.
“For what it’s worth,” Sutton ventured, “Victoria made a huge mistake letting you go. Huge. Colossal. Massive. Ginormous.”
He did smile then. “You buy yourself a word-of-the-day calendar, or did you confiscate mine?”
“Thesaurus, actually.”
He laughed, the sound a reminder of another time. She could still remember the boy he’d been. The laughter and the smiles meant only for her. The way she felt when their eyes met across a classroom, a gym floor, a football field. Life, even with her struggles at home, had been easy back then. Simple. But also fragile, and over too soon.
And their life together might possibly be over for good if they didn’t settle the past here and now. They’d talked about Jeremy and a woman named Victoria, but they’d skirted around the bigger issue that stood between them. “Since we’re bearing our hearts, let me say this before I lose my nerve. I was wrong, Casey. I should have stood by you after your arrest. I should have looked beyond the circumstantial evidence and trusted there was a reason why you confessed.”
Something powerful came and went in his eyes, something like hope, but then his gaze went blank. “I...thank you for saying that, Sutton.”
“It’s the truth. I let you down. For that, I’m truly sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too. I’m sorry I shut you out. But I can’t tell you anything more about that night than I already have.”
Can’t. Not won’t, but can’t. The distinction was important. She knew that now, understood it on a molecular level. “I’m not asking you to betray your friend.”
“You’re not asking me to...what? What did you just say?”
“I know you were covering for someone. No. Don’t deny it. I’ve done a lot of thinking about this. It’s the only explanation that makes sense.”
“You seem pretty certain.”
“That’s because I know you, Casey.” She gave him a soft smile. “I know that any time you do something bad it’s for something good. Like the time you painted Mrs. Corbin’s window black to keep that bird from slamming into it again.”
