have it, Cooper was sitting on the porch in the late-afternoon sun. When he saw Jack he folded the USA TODAY on his lap. Jack got out of his truck and approached warily, putting one booted foot on the step just as Luke came to the doorway and stood there. Watching. Listening.
“Jack,” Luke said in greeting.
“Hey.” But then he directed his attention to Cooper. “This is a real small town.”
“I’ve been giving you plenty of space,” Coop said.
“What I came to say is—you have as much right to enjoy this town as I do. I don’t know what your plans are, but just because we don’t see eye to eye doesn’t mean…” He paused and looked down briefly. “Look, besides you, Luke, Colin and me, only a couple of people know about our situation—my wife and my cook and his wife. And not having been there at the time, they aren’t convinced you’re guilty of anything, so there’s no reason for you to be scarce. Know what I mean?”
“I’m not going to be around much longer,” Coop said. “I’m hanging out long enough for our buddy, Ben, to show up for a little hunting. Then I guess we scatter again. And when we scatter, it takes us a while to meet up. Next time, maybe we meet somewhere else.”
“Well, hunting is good here,” Jack said. “Next couple of weekends the Cavanaughs have their orchard open to the public—pick your own apples, get some of their cider, hang out with friends. But this town—folks tend to gather at things like that, so even if you’re not that interested in apples, it’s a good way to socialize. Then there’s the pumpkin patch party out at Jilly’s farm the next weekend. Some people dress up. You could just go as, you know, a grump. That would work.”
“What makes you think I have a sense of humor about this?” Coop asked.
“I just want to say one thing, Cooper,” Jack said. “I think I did the only thing I could do back then. If what Luke thinks of you is accurate, you’d have done what I did—try to take the woman to get medical help, call the police. What happened after that was completely out of my hands. I shipped out the next day—I was just there with a Marine squad for Airborne training—we don’t hang around Army posts that often. You’d have done the same thing.”
“Might’ve,” he relented. “I don’t know that I would’ve thought the worst of someone I knew nothing about.”
“Why’d she tell me she was in a bad relationship? Abusive?” Jack asked, a curious frown drawing his heavy brows together.
“Maybe because we dated for a while and fought like crazy,” Coop said. “Arguing, that’s all—nothing physical. She wanted to get serious, wanted to come with me to Ft. Rucker, and she also wanted to hang out with a lot of different guys, so we stopped going out but she kept calling me and I slid back a time or two, so—”
“Slid back?” Jack asked. And to add insult to injury, he laughed.
“I was twenty-two!”
Jack ran a hand around the back of his neck. “Yeah, I vaguely remember twenty-two…” He chuckled a little. “I’m a big enough man to admit, my brain was not between my ears.”
“I never hit a woman in my life,” Coop said.
“Wish I could say the same,” Jack said. “I grew up with four sisters and the two older ones… Hell, they tortured me. If I could get one off on one of them, I did—but that stopped when I was about twelve.”
“I have two older sisters,” Coop said.
“I have two younger, too.”
“I have one younger,” Coop said. “But she’s a doll. And I grew into the older ones eventually.”
“What the hell were you doing at her house fifteen years ago?” Jack asked. “Sliding back?”
“Hell if I know. I woke up on a picnic table in the park across the street with the biggest headache I’ve ever had. I was probably looking for any familiar place because I was not driving anywhere. And everything went to hell from there.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “Well, hell. Listen, about these town parties, it’s a good time. Not long after Halloween it gets too cold for things like that and right up until Christmas, we’re driven inside. The Riordans who don’t already live here usually show up now and then. You shouldn’t