Page 18 of Midnight Clear

Her hair dripped in wet ringlets around her face, and droplets ran down her back, but she was too tired to care. Her mother must have come back to check on her. Which meant if she was still in town, maybe she hadn’t slept as long as she’d thought.

But when she stepped into the kitchen, it wasn’t her mother who was standing behind the stove. It was Hank O’Hara.

He must have heard her come in because he looked over his shoulder and smiled.

“Hey, you’re awake,” he said. “You’ve been asleep forever. I was starting to get worried, but Colt said it was perfectly normal to sleep for twelve hours straight and that I should chill out. You’re still pretty pale.”

“How did you get here?”

“I drove,” he said. “Maybe you’re not ready for conversation yet. Do you feel like eating? I heard you get up so I’ve got soup for you.”

She took a seat in one of the kitchen chairs out of self-preservation. “I know you drove here,” she said. “What I meant is how did you get in the house?”

“Your mom let me in,” he said, pouring the soup from the pot on the stove into a bowl. “She’s a great lady. I enjoyed talking to her. She invited me to come visit her in Florida.”

“What?” Sophie asked. “Am I hallucinating? Is this one of those fever dreams? Maybe I’m dead.”

“You’re alive and present,” Hank assured her. “Here, have some soup. Your mom said you haven’t eaten anything since Colt came to see you yesterday. You shouldn’t take that medication on an empty stomach.”

He set a bowl of chicken noodle soup in front of her and then made a bowl for himself and sat across from her. It struck her how big he looked in her tiny kitchen. He was a man with a presence, and he was impossible not to notice.

“Butwhyare you here?” she asked.

“Because you’re sick,” he said. “And it’s nice to have friends to take care of you when you’re sick.”

“I didn’t realize we were friends,” she said, staring at the soup and wondering if it was a bad idea. Her stomach grumbled so she grabbed the spoon and dug in.

“Maybe you’ve just been so busy you haven’t had time to realize who your friends are,” he said. “Laurel Valley is a good place with good people.”

The warm soup hit her stomach and she was suddenly ravenous. Eating might have been a bad decision for the long term, but for now she felt better than she had in days. She could do anything.

“You might ought to slow down there,” Hank said.

She halfway grunted and growled at him and she heard him chuckle. And then her spoon hit the bottom of the bowl. She was so thirsty.

“You mom said to make you hot tea, even though you like coffee better,” Hank said, getting up and going back to the stove where the kettle was already hot.

“Sounds like you and my mom covered a lot of ground,” Sophie said.

“It turns out I’ve got a lot of ground to cover,” he said. “For instance, I let all these years pass and didn’t know that Christmas was your favorite holiday or that you like to play Christmas music year-round.”

“Everyone loves Christmas,” she said. “What’s not to love? Good cheer, glad tidings, the live nativity at the church, the decorations…”

“Agreed,” he said. “Though I find it interesting the woman who loves Christmas doesn’t even have a piece of tinsel hanging in her house.”

“This is the busy season,” she said. “I’m hardly at home anyway. And I get to walk through town on my way to and from work. It doesn’t get any better than that.”

“Most of my job sites aren’t downtown anymore,” he said. “So I don’t get to do it as often as I’d like. I miss getting hot apple cider and watching the skaters bite the dust.”

She chuckled. It was one of her favorite things to do as well. “I’ll never for the life of me wonder why grown men, who are old enough to know better, think they can get out there with their kids and skate like Wayne Gretzky.”

“Colt sets a lot of broken bones this time of year,” Hank said. “It’s a good thing his office is close by.”

The rush of energy she’d gotten from food was starting to dissipate and she could feel the heated flush returning in her neck and cheeks.

“I need to check in with Cori and make sure the store is okay,” she said. “We’ve got a big shipment coming in.”

“It’s all taken care of,” Hank said. “You’ve got a little extra help at the store this week. I hope you don’t mind.”

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