I’m at work, just clocking out for lunch, when Cole stops me. “Miranda, can I talk to you for a second?”
I turn around. “Sure.”
He leads me into the break room. No one else is there. Leaning against the table, he rakes his fingers through his brown hair. “I just wanted to thank you again for bringing back my Bible.”
I can’t meet his eyes. Instead, I look past him out the door to where my coworkers are clocking out. “Sure, it was no problem. I got a job out of it, right?”
“I just wanted to ask you, though . . . if you might’ve read the note that was in there.”
I think of lying to keep him from feeling awkward around me. But this could be life or death, so I embrace the opportunity. I take a step toward him and lower my voice. “I did. I wasn’t trying to pry. It was none of my business, but I was really glad when I found out that you hadn’t gone through with it.”
His eyes glisten as he pushes off from the table. “Yeah, it’s a little embarrassing. I was at a really low place. It was a couple of weeks ago, right after I lost my job. I didn’t think I could bear to go home and tell my wife what had happened, so I got a hotel room, then I just sat there all night, thinking about it.”
“Look, I know a little bit about what’s happening with you,” I say. “Someone told me and then I Googled a few articles. I’m nosy that way. I wondered if you knew that the Trendalls have done this kind of thing before.”
“What kind of thing?” Cole asks.
“I mean, they haven’t accused anyone else of abusing their child. Well, Tiffany Trendall did accuse her ex-husband of abusing her older children, during a custody battle. But they’ve sued a lot of people, and they’ve made a lot of accusations. They seem to live on the settlements.”
Cole doesn’t seem surprised. “Yeah, my attorney found a few things like that too. It’s just that I’m between a rock and a hard place. If I go back at them with public accusations of my own, I’ll look like an even worse monster than I already do.”
I stand there looking up at him, trying to see any guile in his eyes, but I don’t see any. He seems like a genuinely troubled man.
He sighs. “I just wanted to tell you that it’s okay that you read the note. But I appreciate that you haven’t brought it up to my family.”
I almost let him off the hook, but then I think better of it. “I won’t bring it up if you’ll promise me you’re not still thinking about it.”
“I’m doing what’s best for my family,” he says. “I’m going to be there for them. I don’t want them to worry I’m going to jump off a bridge.”
That last phrase is a little weak, but I want to believe it. I draw a deep breath. “It’s not worth it, you know. There’s always a way through it somehow. Even the worst accusations. I know, because there’ve been times when I’ve been accused of things I didn’t do.” I cut myself off, knowing I’m going too far.
“I appreciate your concern,” he says. “I just wanted to break the ice, get the awkwardness out of the way. If we’re going to be working together, there’s no use walking on eggshells around each other.” He reaches out a hand for me to shake. I take his hand as I hear children’s voices, and I turn to the doorway. His daughters are running through the workroom, and the five-year-old is skipping.
“Daddy, look what I learned!”
He laughs as he heads toward her, and I see what he must look like when he doesn’t have the weight of the world bearing down on him. “No way! You learned to skip!”
She’s skipping toward the break room when the toe of her sneaker catches on a crack in the concrete floor, and she tumbles forward, hitting the door casing. In one step, he’s over her, gathering her up in his arms as she starts to wail.
I stand back, watching as her mother dives toward her, checking her for injuries. There’s a red spot on her forehead, and in seconds it’s already forming a goose egg. I slip out the door, knowing I’m just in the way. I get my purse from under my workstation and glance back. The crying has stopped, and Cole is flying his daughter around the room like an airplane, distracting her completely from her fall.
It reminds me of what my dad used to do. I remember falling off my bike as he was teaching me to ride, and my mother hovered over me with hydrogen peroxide and Band-Aids, while he told me the scrape was nothing, that I could do it again and better this time. He had tried for months to get me to try, and he wouldn’t let me give up. He carried me on his shoulders back to the bike and told me that I had to show that mean old ground that it couldn’t get the best of a Cox girl. He told me there was always a crash-up before the success came.
He had me back on that bike before I even stopped bleeding. I rode my bike without his or Mom’s hands steadying me, rode it all the way down the street, and finally managed to stop and look back. He was running after me, just feet behind me all the way, dripping with sweat and cheering as though I’d just won Olympic gold.
Cole seems to be that kind of dad, and as I watch, I see his little girl forget all about that big knot on her head, and she’s asking if he has any gum in his desk.
I glance at his wife, who’s talking quietly to Cole’s mother. “They say if it swells out like that, that it’s probably not serious. It’s when it swells in that there are problems. But look at it. It looks awful.”
“Where’d she learn that skipping, anyway?”
“They taught her that at preschool.”
“Who would have thought? Skipping.”
They seem like such an ordinary family, not at all like the people you would expect to be sheltering an evil child molester.
As I go out to my car, I say a prayer for justice for Cole Whittington. But I wonder if that’s as much a pipe dream as praying for my own.