But it wasn’t just her beauty, was it? As he walked out the door that morning, cup of coffee in hand, he stopped at the vase of flowers sitting on the kitchen counter.
He still couldn’t get over the fact that she’d given him flowers.
It was a strange thing to give someone like Cole, but she’d been so earnest when she pulled that bouquet out of the car—there was something sort of innocent about her that had him thinking about her wide blue eyes for the rest of the day. He’d been so distracted, he’d given up on making any progress on his truck or the bathrooms in his old cottage, and ended up crashing on the couch watching ESPN with a TV dinner.
A wasted day, all because of this waifish person who’d come crashing (literally) into his life.
Watching her now, he noticed she seemed out of place. She kept fiddling with her belt and pushing her hair back over her perfect, angular shoulders.
But her eyes never left the stage. It was like she was filled with wonder at the service unfolding in front of her.
He had to hand it to Pastor Newton and his team. It was the first official summer service. They always seemed to kick it up a notch when the tourists arrived, as if it was important to lure the summer crowd in, and maybe it was.
The message (what he’d caught of it) had been designed to entice people to come back next week. It was a feel-good message about God knowing you, your innermost thoughts, and loving you for who you are. What you did didn’t matter as much as the condition of the heart.
It wasn’t lost on Cole that the condition of his own heart left much to be desired. Truth be told, he didn’t want to be here, but family dinner at Haven House was a Sunday tradition, and Hildy’s only rule was “If you want me to feed your belly, first you let the pastor feed your soul.”
So, he came. Because he wasn’t going to turn down Hildy’s pot roast.
Not that Cole was a stranger to church. He’d been coming for years, since Hildy and Steve first got up in his business. For a long time, Cole bought everything they were selling—but after Gemma, he wasn’t sure what he believed about God anymore.
Maybe he’d had the wrong expectations when he signed up for all this faith stuff in the first place. As it was, he wasn’t sure he wanted anything to do with any of it. More to the point, after the way he’d failed, God probably wanted little to do with him either.
That was fine with Cole, so long as he got pot roast and freshly baked homemade dinner rolls.
Julianna bought all of it, but it had been easy for her. She wasn’t here when Mom left—she was off in some dance program. She didn’t have to pick up the pieces. She didn’t have to watch their father try to recover.
And her marriage hadn’t epically failed. She had a successful business, a beautiful family, and plenty of people who loved her.
What was God thinking taking her so soon?
It would’ve made more sense to take Cole—after all, his life wasn’t nearly as promising.
Beside him, AJ played with a hymnal from the back of the pew in front of him. His pudgy little hands flipped through the pages. Cole was about to quiet him down when a small, folded program from Julianna’s funeral fell out onto the boy’s lap.
AJ picked it up and flipped it over, the image of his smiling mother staring back at him. Before Cole could snatch it away, the little boy let out an ear-piercing scream in the otherwise quiet sanctuary.
Heads turned toward them, and heat rushed straight up Cole’s back, as he felt himself shrinking under dozens of watchful stares. AJ’s scream disintegrated into a sob as the little boy called out one heartbreaking word—“Mom-my!”
“Uncle Cole, do something,” Amelia said insistently.
Cole scooped AJ into his arms and moved to the end of the pew, lifting a hand as an apology to the rest of the congregation. What had he been thinking bringing his niece and nephew back here? And whose idea was it to hold funerals in churches anyway? Now, every time they sat in that sanctuary, all they would think about was the fact that Jules was gone.
In the lobby outside the sanctuary, Cole set AJ down, then knelt in front of him and leveled the boy’s gaze. “Hey, buddy.”
AJ’s bottom lip quivered, his cheeks wet with tears that showed no signs of stopping.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Cole said. “And I’m sorry about your mom.”
More crying. “I miss her.”
“I know, kiddo. Me too.” He hated this. Hated that he couldn’t fix it. Hated that he couldn’t make the pain go away. Hated that AJ and his siblings would only have a handful of memories of Julianna when they deserved a lifetime.
The service was ending, and Cole glanced back toward the pew where he’d left Amelia, surprised to find Charlotte and Lucy Fitzgerald sitting on either side of his niece. An usher opened the doors that separated the two spaces and people began to filter out. Cole picked AJ up and avoided the many looks of concern.
Through the glass, he watched as Charlotte and Lucy talked over Amelia’s head. Charlotte draped a long, toned arm across the back of the pew, nodded, and then smiled down at Julianna’s oldest daughter. Lucy turned just in time to catch him staring at her pretty friend through a Red Sea part in the crowd that now assembled in the lobby.
He quickly washed away whatever stalker-ish expression was on his face and turned his attention back to his nephew, who now stood at Cole’s side, finally calmed down.
Most people kept their distance from him these days, but Lucy Fitzgerald wasn’t “most people,” and she was walking straight toward him. When she arrived in the lobby, she hitched her bag up on her shoulder and squeezed AJ’s arm. The boy’s eyes found the floor.
Lucy knelt down in front of him, reached into her purse, and pulled out a stick of gum. “Gum?”
AJ nodded, took the gum, unwrapped it, and shoved the whole stick in his mouth.
“That works?” Cole asked.
“Gum and candy,” Lucy said. “Works like a charm.”
“Good to know.”
She stood now, eyeing him with a raised brow and a half-grin. “She’s something, huh?” She nodded toward Charlotte.
He was a few years older than the redheaded reporter, but they’d both lived in Harbor Pointe their entire lives, so he knew she had a reputation for saying what she thought, for being far too perky, and for writing articles people actually enjoyed reading.
Once she filled in for a sick sports reporter and Cole had to help her muddle her way through coverage of the high school football playoff game. It was the last kind thing he’d done, he was pretty sure.
Amazing how circumstances could turn you into someone you hardly recognized when you looked in the mirror.
Before she left that meeting, she’d said to him, “You put on this front of being this super tough, super angry football guy, Cole Turner, but deep down, you’re just a big teddy bear with a big old heart.”
He didn’t respond to her question now. Instead, he brushed past her and back into the sanctuary to retrieve Amelia, feeling like an idiot that Lucy had caught him staring.
“You should talk to her.” Lucy followed him toward the front door.
“That’s all right,” Cole said over his shoulder. I’m the last person in the world she’d want to talk to after the way I behaved yesterday.