For a couple hours, people had been trying to come up with nice things to say about his grandfather. They’d walk by the casket, spend the appropriate amount of time staring at the top half of the body of an old man who was wearing a suit for the first time since his wedding day, and then walk up to Cole and say, “Bill was one of a kind,” or “This place won’t be the same without him.” Both statements were true, but Cole wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with either one of them.
It wasn’t that Bill Kimball had been a bad guy. He was just a grump. A textbook curmudgeon. The emotional love child of Oscar the Grouch and pretty much every role ever played by Ed Asner. But just like Oscar and Lou Grant and Carl Fredricksen in Up, you always knew there was a heart under there somewhere. At least Cole always knew. There were probably a lot of people in Adelaide Springs who weren’t so sure about that. Plenty of kids who had feared him, far too many young adults who had been offended by his lack of verbal filter, and even a handful of peers from Bill’s generation who had long ago given up on befriending him.
And those had been the people passing by the casket. They’d made an appearance during the visitation time—out of respect for Cole, maybe, or at least so word wouldn’t get around their small town that they hadn’t bothered to show up—and then made an excuse why they couldn’t stay for the memorial service itself.
That didn’t bother him a bit. And it certainly wouldn’t have bothered his grandfather. The people who mattered hadn’t even made their way to the casket yet, but they’d been there. All day. Sitting in the pews of the little church, checking on Cole every so often to see if he needed some coffee or some help getting away from a particularly clingy half-hearted mourner. And while people stood in his space, attempting to come up with nice things to say, he kept his eye on the people who mattered and noticed that no matter how engaged in conversation they were or how focused elsewhere they seemed, they always had an eye on him.
And then there was Laila. His lifelong best friend was an eternal optimist and the sunniest person he’d ever met, but she was struggling today. Truthfully, she’d been struggling ever since Mrs. Stoddard broke the news that when she’d gone to Spruce House—the assisted living center where Bill had lived for about six months—to drop off his desserts, she’d discovered he’d never awakened from his evening nap. It was as if Laila was absorbing and carrying all of the grief she assumed Cole was feeling or resisting. Or maybe she was just expressing her own grief in a very Laila sort of way.
That’s what Cole was pretty sure he was doing. Expressing his grief in a very Cole sort of way. Which, admittedly, hadn’t yet proven to be very expressive.
Today, the “very Laila sort of way” meant she had shifted into hostess mode, and he was grateful. Not only did it take some of the pressure off him to meet and greet and be hospitable, but it also kept her busy. It wasn’t that he minded her asking him how he was holding up. He appreciated it and knew she genuinely cared. But how many more times would he have to tell her he was fine before she believed him?
He was fine. Whether Laila believed him or not.
“How are you holding up?”
Cole groaned and faced her as she stepped up beside him and checked in on him. Again. “Lai, the man was ninety years old and had had two strokes in the past six months. He ate pie and ice cream with every meal—quite often for every meal—for the last ten years. Yes, he was my grandfather, and yes, I loved him. Miserable old man that he was, I’m going to miss him. But this is not a traumatic loss. I knew it was coming.”
She studied him intently, and he knew she was surveying the damage. Looking for chinks in the armor, imperceptible to anyone but her. He smiled in response to her concerned, compassionate eyes, his momentary irritation with her forgotten.
“I really am fine. But thank you for caring so much. Thanks for all you’re doing.”
She wrapped her arms around him and leaned her head on his chest. “Of course I care. And I’m not doing anything you wouldn’t do for me.”
He smirked against the top of her head. “I have done it for you. Or are you forgetting the top-notch buffet I prepared for Happy Gilmore’s celebration of life?”
She pulled back and looked at him, humor and lightness radiating from her shimmering eyes for the first time in days. “That kitty litter quinoa was delicious . . . no matter how disgusting the name.”
The fact was Laila had had to say goodbye more often than he had. And not just to cats—though there really had been so many cats. There had also been beloved grandparents, aunts and cousins who had died far too young, and a mom who hadn’t died but whose departure after divorce had required its own grief and period of mourning. And each time, Cole had been her shoulder. Her rock. When they’d felt deserted by friends, it had been their loss, each time. And each time, Laila had mourned in her Laila sort of way, and Cole had mourned in his Cole sort of way. In those situations, the Cole sort of way had always been easy to define: take care of Laila and find healing as he helped her find healing. Until now, he’d never been alone at the center of the loss. He supposed it wasn’t surprising, really. Laila had always had more to lose.
“How are you doing, kid?” Doc Atwater came up beside them with a refreshed cup of coffee in his hands. After years of pumping his bloodstream full of the stuff—black and “strong enough to press a man’s shirt from the inside”—he had given in to the mounting pressure from his daughter Addie and Jo Stoddard (the only person in town who never hesitated to give medical advice to the town’s doctor) and made the switch to decaf a while back. Cole could tell from the bold aroma emanating from the cup in his hands that Doc had determined today was not a day for trifling around with the stuff from the pot with the orange lid.
“I’m fine.” He turned toward Doc as Laila focused her attention on straightening the late-season wildflowers arranged on the casket. “I’m good, actually. I mean, if one more person who didn’t really know him tells me my grandfather was a teddy bear, I may no longer be able to resist a very inappropriate outbreak of laughter, but otherwise . . .”
Doc chuckled. “Bill certainly wasn’t the unfeeling man he wanted everyone to believe he was, but a teddy bear he was not.” He took a sip of his coffee and paused long enough to savor it. “He sure loved you, though.”
Cole looked down at the shoelaces of the fancy boots he’d had to buy as part of his wardrobe as Sebastian’s best man. The boots he’d thought he would hate but had ended up loving. He hadn’t given Sebastian enough credit—and he’d temporarily forgotten that the man had somehow found a way to fit into Brynn’s high-class, star-studded, designer life without ever letting himself (or Brynn) lose touch with the slower, methodical simplicity of Adelaide Springs. The boots could have been the mascot for their combined life.
Cole hadn’t been looking forward to his grandfather’s funeral, of course, but he did have to admit he was glad to have another opportunity to strap on the boots. And right now, they were proving especially useful as something to focus his attention on.
“I know he did, Doc. Thanks.”
“And he was proud of you. I hope you know that.”
He was pretty sure he did know that. Not that his grandfather ever would have come right out with those words. That wasn’t his way. But things would slip out every now and then. A smile that seemed to be reserved just for his grandson when no one else could see. A “Yep, that’s what I would do,” in response to the way Cole had handled a situation with a food vendor or a drunk customer at Cassidy’s. Sometimes Cole would show Bill the profit-and-loss statements for the restaurant and be met with nothing more than a nod and a firm slap on the shoulder. It may not have been much, but Cole knew what was being communicated.
Bill had owned Cassidy’s since the 1970s, and for more than thirty years, it was just a bar. A hole-in-the-wall, backwoods bar for locals. But from the time Cole was a teenager, he’d always dreamed that it could be more. The building itself was a beautifully built corner-post log building, fortuitously surrounded by some of the most beautiful pine trees and aspens on earth on a secluded but easy-to-access piece of land, just off the main road. For years, Cassidy’s—much like Adelaide Springs, and maybe like Bill Kimball himself—just existed for itself. After Cole’s grandmother passed away when he was sixteen, his grandfather started spending all his time there. Not drinking. No, Cole couldn’t remember ever seeing his grandfather drink more than a sip for a New Year’s toast. Work was how he numbed the pain.
It was around the time of high school graduation that Cole finally mustered up the courage to share his dreams for Cassidy’s with his grandfather. What if it was more than just a bar? The huge storeroom could become a kitchen. They could refinish the floor, which had been scuffed up beyond recognition during country line dancing’s heyday, and add a few four-tops. Maybe a six-top. There weren’t a lot of food options in town, after all. Andi had just opened the Bean Franklin, but that was only for breakfast and lunch. Maxine Brogan made the best tamales you’d ever tasted, but you couldn’t exactly count the way she sold them (wrapped in aluminum foil, out of an original Igloo KoolTunes cooler under an umbrella on her porch) as a legitimate business. Cassidy’s had a real opportunity to make a mark.
Cole’s ideas had been shot down, of course. Time after time after time. So, in his early twenties, he left home for the first time in his life and went to Boulder to get his culinary arts degree. His thought had been that he would pick up more knowledge and improve upon his natural ability in the kitchen, and then he’d go somewhere else to live out the dreams he’d had for Cassidy’s. His stubborn old grandfather was never going to come around, after all. But his two years in Boulder—just 173 miles away as the crow flies, though the drive took nearly six hours—had clarified for him that his window had closed. Not his window for being able to leave Adelaide Springs, but his window for wanting to.
Not that he ever told his grandfather that. Not when the man who had helped raise him suddenly seemed willing to consider implementing some new ideas if it meant his only grandchild—the last family he had in Adelaide Springs—wouldn’t go away again.
He’d been silently staring at his nothing-that-costs-this-much-is-supposed-to-be-this-comfortable boots long enough that Doc read the cues and changed the subject.
“Is your mom going to be able to make it back in time?”
Cole caught himself and turned a disappointed sneer into an indulgent grin before he looked up. “You know how she is, Doc. ‘Funerals are just a stopgap toward closure, and the souls of our loved ones deserve to be released from the burden of our sadness.’ Or something.” He shrugged. “She’s been checking in with me a lot, but as far as actually showing up . . .” That sneer sure was determined. “I don’t think that’s exactly her style.”
The oak double doors at the end of the aisle groaned open for the first time in a while, and Cole looked up with his well-rehearsed smile—the one that said, “I’m just barely holding it together, of course, but seeing you has made everything a little bit better”—to see who had shown up for their tour past Old Man Kimball’s casket. He couldn’t imagine there were many people left in town.
He hadn’t expected to see two of his favorite people, who were supposed to be somewhere off the Amalfi Coast right about then. Laila gasped behind him. Cole didn’t gasp, but he felt the same sort of surprise at seeing Brynn and Sebastian walking toward him, all in black. Surprise, yes. And gratitude. Love, certainly. But also the tiniest bit of frustration.
“What are they doing here?” Cole muttered.
He met them halfway down the aisle. He hadn’t quite formulated words in his head yet. He wanted to say something about how he couldn’t believe they were letting his grandfather’s death ruin their honeymoon. But before he could say anything, Brynn was on her tiptoes, and her arms were wrapped around his neck.
“He was a miserable old man who seemed to look for every opportunity to torment me,” she whispered before she pulled away and looked into his eyes. “From the time I was six years old, I can’t remember him ever saying a kind word to me, and I’m sure he was awful before that too. I just can’t remember. He was quick to point out my mistakes, and he never commended me on a job well done. And yet . . . somehow . . . I knew he was looking out for me. You know? I knew he was cheering me on. Somewhere. Deep down.” She cleared her throat. “I’m really going to miss him.”
Cole chuckled and wrapped his arms around her waist to pull her against him again. “I know. Me too.”