Fighting Fate (19 page)

“It’s nothing fancy. I just made calzones. I have a fruit salad and some iced-tea.”

He followed her inside. His eyes widened as he looked around. “Whoa.”

She grimaced. “I know. It’s called Sunshine Yellow.”

“You did this yesterday? It’s…it’s bright.”

“I let Gretchen pick it out.”

He nodded in understanding. Sarah glanced around the kitchen too. The cupboards were white. The yellow was a startling contrast. She was sure she’d get used to it eventually.

If not, she’d be going back to the hardware store for a calming blue.

“Do you mind if I wash up?”

“Go ahead. You remember the way?”

“Yeah, I’ll be right back.”

By the time he returned, Sarah had everything set out on the table. She sat down and he took the place she had set across the table from her own.

“They smell amazing,” he said as she slid a calzone onto his plate.

She smiled. “Good, because they’re deceptively easy to make.” She took one for herself.

And then an awkward silence captured the kitchen.

“Have you finished reading the employee handbook?” she asked.

“Uh…”

She laughed when he cringed. “I haven’t even started.”< cd.>

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“I figure I’ll read it right before school starts.”

“If you read it at all?”

“If I read it at all,” he agreed.

“So,” she said, “I want to know how it is that we’re going to be working together.” Even as she said the words, they were hard to wrap her head around. “I want to hear more about you.”

He finished chewing before he leaned back in his chair. He was clearly trying to gauge her mood.

“I don’t want to talk about us, where we left things. At least not right now. I just want to talk,” she said. The relief that flooded his face made her smile.

“What do you want to know?”

“Tell me what I’ve missed,” she requested.

“That could take a while,” he said with a grin.

“Then you’d better get started.”

*
*
*
*
*

By the time an hour passed, Cole had done a decent job of filling her in. He’d met with a recruiter at the end of his senior year. He met all the requirements and headed off to Texas for basic training shortly after graduation. During the time he was enlisted, he managed to take enough classes that he was able to cut a year off of college. He’d stayed in Alabama, where he’d been stationed, to work on his teaching degree.

“I thought about re-enlisting at first,” he told Sarah. “I was seriously considering it. But then Mom started having some serious health issues. I couldn’t make that kind of commitment. I used my GI Bill to help with the rest of my education. I also did some carpentry work on the side.”

Sarah sighed but she was smiling. “I’m still having a hard time believing you’re a teacher.”

He grinned at her. “Well, unlike you, this will be my first year. But yeah. I’ve always liked history.” She nodded. “So I thought that was the best way to put it to good use. Besides, I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to do more. I’ve just always known I didn’t want to end up like my dad or my brother. Hell, even my mom. I mean, I love her but her life went nowhere. I knew I wanted out, I just didn’t know how to get there. You made me think it could really happen. You and Mr. Davidson.

“I never told you that when I met with the guidance counselor about college, she mentioned the military. I took a pamphlet, even though I told myself it wasn’t really an option. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I went to Mr. Davidson because he was the only teacher I’d ever felt really cared about my grades. I asked what he thought of me joining the Air Force. I honest to God expected him to laugh at me. He didn’t. In fact, he encouraged me. He’s also the one that p che des. I asut the idea of teaching into my head. He said part of the reason was because he’d heard that I’d helped
someone
ace their final the year before. But he also thought I’d be good at relating with kids.” He shrugged. “I hope I will be. If nothing else, if I can steer just one kid in the right direction, like Mr. Davidson did for me, it’ll all be worth it.

“I moved here too late in the school year to get hired anywhere. So I’ve just been doing odd jobs. I guess that’s it. We’re caught up,” he said as he tapped his hand against the edge of the table.

There was silence for a moment as he finally came to the end of his explanation.

“And after all this time...” She hesitated, wondering how to word it. “You’re still unattached?”

He blew out a breath. “Yeah. Now I am. I was seeing someone pretty seriously for awhile. But then Mom got diagnosed. I knew I wanted to move back to Laurel when I was done with school. Mandy’s from Alabama and she knew she didn’t want to leave. So things kind of started falling apart. After that, I didn’t bother getting too serious with anyone else because I knew as soon as I got my degree, I’d be leaving. It was just dumb luck that they were hiring here in Laurel. When I first moved back here, I figured I’d be lucky if I got a job within a few hours of Mom.”

Mandy
…Sarah’s mind tried to conjure up an image of Cole with another woman. Thankfully, it didn’t succeed. She forced her thoughts elsewhere.

“So you came back to keep an eye on Karen. How’s she doing?”

“Some days are better than others. She was still living in that piece of shit trailer when I came back. I got her into an apartment. It’s not paradise but it’s a hell of a lot better than where she was.”

“And Darren? What’s he up to these days?” she asked, showing polite interest.

“Darren? He’s in prison.”

Sarah cringed though she realized she wasn’t surprised. “For what?”

“It started with an arrest for grand theft auto. After some investigating they found out he was stripping cars down.” Cole scowled. “I’m sure he’s done worse things than that. That’s just what he got caught doing.”

Sarah took a sip of her drink. She had nothing positive to say about Cole’s brother but she didn’t want to badmouth him either. Best to not say anything. But Cole was right. Darren had probably done a lot worse.

His friends, Mike and Steve, had gone to prison on a murder conviction. In light of that, grand theft auto didn’t seem quite so bad.

“And you?” Cole asked, pulling her from her musings.  Then he frowned and cast a guilty glance her way. “Or was I not allowed to ask that yet?”

“No, it’s fine,” she decided, knowing she would limit w cwouhathat she told him. “Me? In a minute or less? I left here to go to school in Crawford. I got my degree there. I completely lucked out because the woman I did my student teaching under happened to be retiring. I got the position so I stayed. This will be my fourth year.”

He looked like he wanted to ask her more. She was glad he refrained. It was obvious that she’d left Aaron out of the explanation. She pushed away from the table. “I should really get this table cleared.”

Cole stood as well. “I’ll help.”

She was going to protest but then decided…why? So she let him help. As they worked at putting everything away, he made no secret of looking around.

“I know what you plan on doing to the outside. What are you doing in here?”

She rinsed off the last plate and then turned so she could lean against the counter. “I need to paint the living room and the downstairs bedroom. I’ve finished the upstairs. Then I might tackle the floors.”

His brow furrowed. “You have any experience with that?”

She shook her head.

He studied her for a minute. “That’s going to be a big job. Let me know if you want some help.”

“How big of a job?” she wanted to know.

“Do you care if I take a look around?”

She didn’t mind at all.

He only made it as far as the ground floor bedroom before he turned to her with a curious look on his face. “What’s going on in here?”

She peered around him at the mess. She had the mattress pulled off the bed and propped up against the wall. “I want to turn the upstairs bedroom, the one Grandma used as a sewing room, into a spare bedroom. I want to turn this room into an office. But I couldn’t get the mattress up the stairs by myself. Let alone the rest of the furniture.”

He frowned at her. “I was here every day last week, including Saturday. I was here yesterday and today. It never occurred to you to poke your head outside and ask for help?”

“No,” she said honestly. Bothering him with that never crossed her mind.

He scanned the room. “The bed will be easy to move. I can help you get that up there right now, if you want.”

“Really?” she asked. “Because I’d like to get started on the walls in this room next.”

“Yeah, that won’t be a problem. But the dressers…maybe when Tom sends his guy out here this week I can have him help me. If not, I know Alex wouldn’t mind stopping out here to help. We can just push them to the middle until then. That way they’ll be out of your way until I can get someone out here.”

“I can help you,” Sarah said. “I’m stronger than I look.”

He smirked at her. “I’m sure you are. But those dressers are heavier than they look. And that staircase is pretty narrow. Just let me line someone up, okay?”

“Okay, thank you.”

“But this,” Cole said as he went in and gripped a side of the mattress, “we can get upstairs right now.”

Sarah went into the room and grabbed the other end. The mattress wasn’t heavy but it was bulky. Cole went up first and he told her to push while he tugged it up. In a matter of minutes it was sitting in the empty spare bedroom.

“Let’s get the box spring,” Cole said. “I have a toolbox out in the truck. I can pull the frame and the headboard apart in no time and get them set back up for you.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be working today?” Sarah teased.

Cole paused for a minute. “Well, I’m hoping my boss kind of likes me. Maybe she’ll take it easy on me today.”

“I bet she will,” Sarah agreed. She walked around to the far side of the bed and slid her fingers under the hard edges of the box spring.

Cole gripped his side of it. They lifted it, swinging it around on its side toward Cole so they could easily get it through the door.

“What the
hell
is this?”

“What?” Sarah wondered.

He looked at her with raised eyebrows and crooked a finger at her. She walked around to his side of the box spring, the side that was open on the bottom. Bills, in various denominations were scattered around his feet. Some were still lodged in the springs.

“Oh, good grief,” Sarah muttered.

“Your bed is raining money and all you have to say is ‘oh, good grief’?”

She began to carefully pluck out the bills that had gotten themselves wedged into the springs.

“Here, I think this is the main culprit,” Cole said as he pulled out a large envelope. He turned it over to inspect it. “I think when we tipped the box spring, it got loose. There’s more money inside.”

Sarah took it from him and began stuffing the loose bills into it. When she had pulled them all from the bed, she knelt down on the floor and began to pluck those up as well. Cole still had one hand on the box spring to keep it from tipping.

“You don’t seem all that surprised by this,” he noted.

“I’m not,” Sarah sighed. “This isn’t the first stash of Grandma’s that I’ve found.”

Cole chuckled. “You don’t sound all that excited about it either.”

“I’m not,” she admitted. “It feels wrong to be excited about money that I’m getting because she’s gon ce s> At first I couldn’t figure out where in the heck she got so much cash. But I talked to my dad and he thinks it’s from a life insurance policy that she got after Grandpa died. She didn’t like banks and she got more vocal about that as she got older.”

“That’s not completely uncommon with elderly people,” Cole said, reiterating what Frank had told her.

“The crazy thing is, she had a lot of money in the bank too,” Sarah said.

Cole grinned. “Maybe having a savings account and stashes around the house was her way of diversifying.”

“I guess,” Sarah muttered. 

“It’s hard to say why people do what they do sometimes.”

Sarah had to agree.

“Gretchen found some money in the basement,” she said as she inspected a twenty. It didn’t appear to be anything special, nor did any of the other bills that had spilled out. “Everything we found down there was pretty old. I think she’d been stashing money away for a long time. Everything I’ve found upstairs has been pretty new. I’ve sorted the coins that we found downstairs but I don’t know anything about them.”

“What do you mean you don’t know anything about them? What did you find? If you don’t mind me asking,” he hurriedly tacked on.

She stuffed the last of the money back into the bulging envelope. “I don’t mind. There were bills but a lot of coins too. Some of them are pretty old. A lot of them I’ve never seen before. I’m guessing some of them might be worth a lot. But I don’t really know. I have no idea where to even start with them because I’m not even sure what most of them are. They were all stashed away in old tin coffee cans.”

“How old were the cans?” Cole asked.

Sarah shrugged. “I don’t know.
Old
.”

“If they really are
old
, the cans themselves might be worth plenty. Believe it or not, some of them are worth a whole lot to collectors who love items like that. There’s an antique store in town that might be interested if you think you might want to get rid of them,” Cole explained. “I wouldn’t mind bringing them in for you.”

Sarah shrugged. “Sure. I mean, thank you.”

A slow smile spread across his face. “You’re welcome. Do you want me to take a look at the coins? Maybe we could sort through them together sometime.”

“Do you know a lot about old money?” she asked.

His face clouded over. “I know a lot about things that can be pawned.”

“Right.”

Cole seemed anxious to change the subject. “Let’s get the rest of this bed moved. I’ll look at the cans and coins before I go, if yo ce I0">Colu want.”

“That would be nice of you,” Sarah said. “I really appreciate it.”