Cole in My Stocking Read Online Free PDF Page B

sucked. It sucked so bad.
    I bit my lip as a tear leaked from each eye, warming my face as I stood in the muscle-clenching cold of a New Hampshire winter morning.
    Cole cursed on an exhale. After a beat, he said, “Is that Dunkin’s I smell?”
    I nodded.
    “You got enough to share?”
    “Yeah.”
    Cole was the last person on Earth I should have wanted to invite inside, but his solid presence at my back as I led the way to the kitchen was a balm for my soul.
     

Chapter 3
     
    I poured a mug of coffee and handed it to Cole. I couldn’t believe he was in my father’s disaster of a home. What must he think of Dad after seeing this mess? What must he think of me for running off to chase my own dreams while he lived in this squalor?
    What the heck had I been thinking inviting him in?
    He’d thrown his parka on the couch, but even without the extra bulk it gave him, he made the trailer feel like a Hobbit hole. The guy must have been six-foot-four without shoes. In his work boots, his head practically scraped the ceiling, or at least it seemed that way from my five-foot-four vantage point.
    He rested a hip on the kitchen counter and sipped the coffee. His eyes rolled back in his head. Cops appreciated good coffee. Dunkin’s was very good coffee, and I made it nice and strong.
    After he came back down from coffee-bliss, he leveled his gaze on me. “Your dad was proud of you. You know that?”
    I swallowed a gulp of sweetened coffee that was too hot. The burn in my throat was more comfortable than the awkwardness Cole’s statement made me feel.
    Dad and I hadn’t had one of those relationships where we told each other we loved each other or were proud of each other. We hadn’t been huggers. The last kiss I could remember getting from him was when I was little and Mom was still alive. As I grew up, we sort of just existed side by side, living in the same house but keeping different schedules. I hadn’t minded, since he’d usually find something to yell at me for when our orbits happened to intersect.
    “He talked about you all the time,” Cole went on. “He was over the moon about you going to grad school—a double master’s. He wouldn’t shut up about that. First person in the family to go to college, and you were getting enough degrees to make up for the lack. You finished with school yet?”
    So. Dad had read my cards. That warmed away some of the awkwardness. I nodded in answer to Cole’s question.
    “When?”
    “June.” I’d found the job at PHMC and jumped right in as soon as I graduated. Four months of working full time with benefits and I was starting to see the light at the end of the student-loan tunnel.
    “Congratulations.” He toasted me with his mug.
    “Thanks.” It occurred to me that for Cole to know all the things I shared in my cards, he and Dad must have become friends again. “I thought you and Dad had a parting of ways.”
    Cole’s eyes drifted to the side as he sipped. He took his time before saying, “We patched things up.”
    “When?” I mimicked his earlier question.
    He stared into his coffee. “When he got sick.”
    I blinked. That had only been a couple months ago. Cole had been estranged from my dad almost as long as I had. “What did you two fight about?”
    His gaze bored through me for an uncomfortable second. “That’s between him and me.”
    Maybe by asking, I’d overstepped the bounds of whatever this was, this coffee-and-catch-up session, but that had hurt. I buried my face in my mug.
    “How long you back for?” Cole asked.
    “However long it takes to wrap up Dad’s estate.” And not a second longer.
    “He leave you much?”
    I raised my eyebrows. Seemed a kind of personal question, like asking a guy what he had a falling-out over with one of his best buds. I could have told him it wasn’t any of his business, but in all honestly, I didn’t mind answering. I hardly knew Cole, and yet he kind of felt like family.
    I shook my head. “You know Dad. He