Page 4 of Blue Norther
“Okay. Tell me about work. Are you still ghostwriting?”
We fell into easy conversation after that. Violet slowly opened up, talking about the summer she spent in Colorado right after our divorce was finalized. About the manuscript she finished while living in a tiny cabin in the woods. It was all hers, and she beamed while talking about it. I tried my hardest not to panic when I heard just how remote the cabin was. After all, she wasn’t living there anymore, and she seemed to be in one physical piece in front of me.
We talked about my family, about how things were going in Clarence County. I told her about some of the renovations I’d worked on—but not all of them. I knew that hearing I was still checking projects off her honey-do list wouldn’t make things better. So I skipped over those things.
I couldn’t tell how many hours had passed as we sat there talking. Everyone just let us be until the sun grew hazy outside the windows. People milled about and dwindled away, until we were almost the last people left.
“Honey?” Pete walked towards us from the altar, where he’d just taken the last of Jennie's pictures down. His arms were wrapped around the frame, pressing it against his chest like he was giving her one last hug goodbye. “We should…we should think about heading home.”
Violet nodded, her hand slipping off my arm.
“Colt, would you like to?—”
“He has a long trip home, Dad. We should let him go.” Violet’s eyes dropped to the floor, her open body language shutting down in an instant.
“I don’t have to go,” I offered, my hand reaching out to rest on her arm. “I’d actually love to stay.”
But the Violet I’d just been talking to was gone, and in her place, the wife I’d held in the shower as she broke down in my arms was back. And I knew the door had closed once more.
Still, I opened my arms, praying she would give me this one last moment to hold her. One last moment to wrap my arms around her. She hesitated, but only for a second.
Her body still fit against mine perfectly, but of course it did. Because even if she didn’t want to remember, the universe made her for me. Just like it made me for her.
My head fell against hers. I heard her father walking away, the door to the room creaking open, then clanging shut as he allowed us to have this last moment together.
“I love you, Vi. I know you think there’s a day when I’ll move on, but there isn’t. The door will always be open. You’ll always own every piece of my heart.”
“Don’t say that.”
I lifted my head, tipping her face to meet mine with my thumb under her chin.
“Darlin’, it’s the truth. Just because I set you free, doesn’t mean I don’t pray every damn day that you’ll return to me.”
Colt
SEVEN YEARS LATER, PRESENT DAY…
I was a grumpy bastard. Was officially diagnosed by my family long before my own friends fucking agreed. Not that I cared. I’d known it my whole goddamn life, and I wasn’t shy about showing people just how grumpy I could be. But as the firstborn son of a ranching family in Texas, yeah, you better believe that hard ass attitude was drilled into me every waking moment of my entire childhood.
Now, that childhood was well over thirty years behind me, but as a deputy with the Clarence County Sheriff’s Department, it still served me well.
“You’re a dick, Colt.” Lucas Mandarano thrashed back and forth in my hands as I led him towards the cell he’d be spending the weekend in.
“I’m not the idiot who got drunk at noon and started a fight at Davney’s, now am I? You’re lucky Gunner and Gage stepped in when they did. Heard you were fixin’ to throw a stool through a window—and I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that could have easily caught you a third degree felony charge.”
“Fuck them, and fuck you, too.”
“Mm. Enjoy your stay at Casa Clarence County. It’s going to be a lovely weekend outside, fall’s really setting in. Too bad you’ll be stuck in here with a fucking terrible hangover.”
I slammed the cell door a little louder than necessary, chuckling at the grumbles coming from Lucas. It made up for the fact that my shift was meant to be over an hour ago.
“Colt, you got a minute?” My boss, Hank Porter, stood with his arms across his chest. Hank wasn’t the warmest person, either, but ever since his wife Daisy came into his life, he smiled from time to time. It still was eerie as shit when it happened. I no longer had my wife, so smiling wasn’t something I had to worry about anymore.
“Yeah, of course. What’s going on?”
“I figured we could do our turnover brief now. I know you’re on your way out the door, but since you have to be back here bright eyed and bushy tailed tomorrow at 7:00 AM, I figure it’s now or never.”
Right. Turnover. Hank was leaving for two weeks…a family vacation with his wife and kids. And as the chief deputy, that meant I was taking over in his absence. I tried not to groan.
