Hunter took the trash bag and jogged down the driveway, adding it to one of two metal cans with SHERIDAN on their sides.
He was wiping his hands on a white handkerchief when he returned to the porch. “Look,” he said, tucking it in his back pocket, “I realize I’m the last person you want to see today of all days, but I wanted to ask if there’s anything I can do.”
Today of all days? So he’d heard about the crash? When she’d only just found out an hour ago? It meant his name wasn’t just on her sister’s emergency contacts list by the phone; it had also been with them while they’d traveled. He was just that important to them. In disbelief, she reached for the doorknob.
“Have you told Connor yet?”
She stopped but didn’t look at him. “It’s four-thirty in the morning.”
He checked his wristwatch and did a double take. Seemed embarrassed. “Guess you have some tough decisions to make in the next few hours, huh?”
Starting with how to get you off this porch.
“I can take Connor off your hands while you make arrangements. He’s used to me, so...” Hunter shrugged. “But if you’re more comfortable leaving him with Deidre, I could drive you...wherever.”
I’d sooner crawl.
But he was right. She needed to set up appointments with the bank, the funeral parlor, a lawyer who’d help her protect Connor’s future. The nightmare had just begun.
“Do I smell coffee?”
Brooke couldn’t believe her ears.
Hunter pinched the bridge of his nose. “I hope you won’t take what I’m about to say the wrong way....”
Everything about him rubbed her the wrong way.
“I know you and Beth haven’t exactly been on the best of terms lately—”
She pressed her lips together.
“—so I thought maybe I could bring you up to speed over a cup of coffee.”
Fists balled at her sides, she willed herself not to react.
Obviously, he’d mistaken her silence for an invitation; Hunter made a beeline past her into the house and directly for the kitchen, to the cupboard where Beth kept the mugs. She slowly followed him. “You drink yours black, as I recall.”
On the few occasions when they’d attended barbecues or birthday parties at Deidre’s or at Beth and Kent’s, she’d stayed as far away from Hunter as space would allow. And yet he knew how she liked her coffee. Was he aware she liked to cool it with ice? she wondered, opening the freezer.
If she dialed 911 and reported him as an intruder, would he leave quietly?
One of her grandfather’s favorite maxims came to mind: keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Maybe during one of her sister’s friendly sharing sessions with him, Beth had divulged something that would help Brooke find the will, so she’d know what sort of funeral to plan.
Funeral.
Beth was gone.
Brooke’s heart beat double time as the dizzying truth struck her. If she didn’t get hold of herself quickly, she’d break down. She took a deep breath, grabbing a handful of ice.
“Beth loved this time of year,” he said sadly, “because she could throw open all the windows.” Then he turned on the TV like he’d been doing it for years. Hunter tuned to Channel 13 and adjusted the antennas...
...and brought Beth and Kent’s wedding portrait into focus.
“A local church is mourning the loss of two well-loved congregants this morning,” said the anchorman.
Brooke gasped.
Hunter fumbled with the remote, and when it failed to turn off the set, he yanked the plug from the wall. “Sorry,” he said. “I just thought...background noise would help....”
Brooke couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. Seeing Beth and Kent’s smiling faces—in living color on the morning news—hit her like a roundhouse punch to the gut. One by one, the ice cubes clattered to the floor.
She took a step toward the paper-towel holder, but Hunter blocked her path. “Leave it,” he said, his fingers closing around her wrists. “It isn’t going anywhere.”
She looked up into his face, seeing for the first time how haggard he looked.
Dizzying, disjointed thoughts spun in her brain. Call her new boss, ask for an extension on her start date; call the new landlord to plead for a refund of her deposit. Find Beth and Kent’s will and their checkbook; call Deidre to tell her about Beth. How would she tell Connor?
Never in her wildest dreams could Brooke have foreseen herself leaning into Hunter, sobbing.
CHAPTER THREE
GROWING UP THE youngest of four boys, Hunter hadn’t had much experience with touchy-feely stuff, but when Brooke melted against him, his arms automatically held her.
Unexpected? To be sure. Uncomfortable? Most definitely. Because the DVD in his inside jacket pocket was the only reason he’d come here today. When her brother-in-law handed it to him the week before their islands vacation, he’d sworn Hunter to secrecy. No one could know about his living-color will, not even Beth.
Listening to Kent’s vindictive portrayal of Brooke almost made him sorry he’d agreed to carry out its terms...and made him feel like a voyeur. “A woman like that,” Kent had said, “should not be allowed to raise my kid just because she’s connected by blood.”
Kent had left nothing to chance. In the note tucked into the DVD case, he had written:
In the event that something should happen to Beth and me on our trip, you, Hunter Stone, are to deliver one copy of this disc to a family court lawyer of your choice and another to my sister-in-law. You are then to immediately and permanently remove my son from her care.
Frankly, Hunter didn’t understand that level of hostility, because it seemed to him that Brooke was crazy about Connor, and the feeling was mutual. If she was guilty of anything, it was stubbornness and grudge-holding...against him.
So no, he didn’t understand Kent’s attitude, but after fifteen years of dodging Brooke at every O’Toole function, it would probably feel good to have the upper hand for a change.
At least, that was what he’d thought until he saw her on the porch, damp-eyed and rumpled, and couldn’t bring himself to deliver it. Finding out that her sister was dead, seeing the video, losing Connor all in the same morning? Only a heartless heel would do that to her.
So he’d left the DVD in his jacket pocket, told himself there would be plenty of time after the funeral to hand it over. Plenty of time to get a handle on his own grief at losing the friends who, for eight of the past fifteen years, had been more like family than neighbors. Time to find ways to support Brooke any way he could, because it was what Beth would have wanted.
He searched his mind for a word, a phrase that might comfort her, that wouldn’t sound phony or trite. Ironic, he thought, that his contractor’s toolbox was full of gadgets and gizmos, yet he didn’t know how to fix the brokenness in Brooke.
She spared him by stepping back. Way back.
“Sorry for soaking your shirt,” she said, plucking a napkin from the basket on the table.
Those eyes, sad and scared, looked so much like her mother’s that he could scarcely breathe.
“Nothing to be sorry for,” he said, meaning it.
“Next time you come over, bring it with you—”
Even her hair,