The Light Between Us Box Set

A Light in the Dark-2

Before he answers, I feel the warmth of his body behind me, a handshake away. His breath smells like warm bread and spun sugar on my neck.

I think I am imagining all of this, but when I turn to face him, I nearly knock into his aquiline nose with mine. Startled, I back up and slam into one of the high-back kitchen chairs, pulling in a deep breath, as if someone has taken the sails out of me.

“This is one of my favorite rooms in the house,” he says, oblivious.

I mask the shooting pain in my lower back by staring down at my feet. I nod, adding with a blush, “Thank you.”

“Do you cook?” he asks, leaning in with what looks like slightly parted lips, as if he is going to kiss me without my permission. But as I sidestep him, handling the moment as politely as I can, and slide out from beneath his towering masculinity, I notice he is only trying to suck out a piece of food from between a gap in his bleached teeth with his tongue.

I saunter to the kitchen counter and pull down two coffee mugs from the top shelf. “I don’t cook as much anymore.” And I remember Russ and me boiling pasta and kneading dough for homemade pizzas over our three-day weekends. I lean against the counter for support and feel my eyes start to sting.

I hear Sheriff Erickson’s deep voice behind me, yanking me out of my trance. “Something wrong, Christian?” I wrench my slumped posture into an upright position, dab at the zigzag lines of tears streaming down my cheeks, and respond with an authoritative voice, “How do you take your coffee, sheriff?”

Barely audible. “Black.”

Sitting across from each other at the kitchen table, we settle down with our mugs, sharing enough eye contact it begins to feel like a staring contest.

Before we get down to business about my heartless neighbor, Sheriff Erickson insists that I call him by his first name.

Like the force of two magnets pulling together, I struggle to peel my stare away from his trusting eyes. Sheepish, I say, “I’m sorry…Philip.”

“Don’t apologize. Besides,” he adds with a shrug, “we’re no strangers to each other.”

Translation: May I take you to dinner?

But I might be jumping the gun.

I swallow a gulp of piping hot coffee and ask, “Can you charge Bret Hicks with animal cruelty?”

Philip fingers the mug’s handle as if the edge is too hot to touch, and slowly raises his heavy eyes to me.

His expression tells the grim story. He snakes his spidery-long fingers around the mug and shakes his head. “But you might be happy to know that one of Hicks’s buddies ratted Bret out to me about stealing booze at the 24-hour convenient store in town on Leonard Street early this evening.”

“You don’t say.” I lean in closer, resting my chin in my cupped hands for leverage. “Why would he do that?”

“Not sure the twerp knew what he was saying. He was drunk off his ass.”

I smile and say mostly to myself, “Ah, youth.” I lean my head against the back of the chair. “How fast it all goes by.” My exclamation must age me twenty years.

“With age comes experience,” Philip says. “Something those young men don’t have.” He jerks a thumb in the direction of my neighbor’s yard. His voice drops to a whisper, as though someone might overhear us. I can smell his coffee breath and sweet cologne. I bite down on my bottom lip to control the restless urgency growing inside me. “Something good came out of tonight, though,” he says.

I say, “Not for Darth Vader.”

He smirks at the Huskie’s name. “I got to share a good cup of coffee with you. The station’s brew reduces me to tears. It may have contributed to my ulcers over the years.” He lifts his mug. “Please don’t tell Cora.”

We both laugh and drink our coffees in silence.

A few minutes later, I offer him another cup of my dark brew, but he declines, standing and pushing in his chair like a gentleman.

At the door I say, “I’m really worried about Darth.”

Over a smirk, Philip quips, “With a name like that, you have nothing to worry about.”

“I can’t report the incident to Bret’s mother until she returns home on Monday,” I tell him. “By then, I’ll be up all night worrying about the poor dog.”

As if he has had too much to drink, Philip straightens himself beneath the yolk-yellow porch light, shifting from one foot to the other, until finding a comfortable stability. Finally, he raises his eyes to me and holds my gaze. “You have my cell number. Use it. Call me, no matter the time. I’ll be up to my neck in petty crimes tonight. Cabbage Night.” He rolls his eyes. “Pranksters with too much free time on their hands.”

“Sounds like my neighbor.”

“Goodnight.”

I exhale a pent-up sigh and mumble, “Night.”

“If it makes you feel better, I’ll patrol the area until my shift ends at eight,” Philip says.

I swallow the hard lump in my throat. “I appreciate it, Sheriff…Philip.”

His lips split into a lingering smile. “Enjoy the rest of your evening, Chris.”

Chris. Not Christian, I observe, but Chris.

We’re no strangers to each other.

Amused, I think back to when I interviewed the sheriff for a double homicide on the south side of town during my second year of living in Milestone County. It was a hectic week at The Milestone Review and I was running around town questioning witnesses to the murders, trying to keep levelheaded.

Sheriff Philip Erickson and his young deputy were the official chiefs on the case and I had my hand on something more than a hot story during that busy afternoon. But I didn’t know it at the time.

Sheriff Erickson, a brooding, virile presence, put me at ease, answering my questions professionally and with straightforward candor. He treated me with respect. But it wasn’t until he asked me to join him for a cup of coffee down at the police station and thank me privately for my investigative reporting on the double homicide that I knew I felt differently about him. The way he winked at me and when he shook my hand after the interview, his handshake lingered for a tad longer than expected. But I squashed the silly idea because of my loyalty and love for my then boyfriend, Russ.

Philip’s voice jerks me out of my daze. “I lost you again,” he says taking a step over the threshold, back into my shut-in life.

I have to look up to meet his eyes. “Sorry. My mind is elsewhere tonight.”

The weight of his right hand on my shoulder reassures me. “Everything will be fine. You know where you can reach me, if need be.”

I nod and my movements feel stilted. What a dork I am.

“Even if you feel like just talking,” he says. “Call me.”

He removes his hand and I feel naked and alone. I watch him turn and stroll to his car at the foot of the driveway. His body sways lithely like he is dancing with himself in the dark.

When he reaches the end of the drive, he stops, turns, and says, “By the way, Chris, I enjoyed your book recommendation of Anne Perry’s new novel.”

His words transport me back to the time when he had waited in line for almost an hour at our local bookstore, The Book Nook, for a signed copy of one of my books. I had seen him staring at me from the back of the long line. And when he finally reached me at the table where my books were being displayed and autographed, our gazes locked. It felt like a familiar flicker of energy swelling through my body, as if we had known each other for a long time. We are not strangers. His smile was warm and pleasant. He was out of uniform, wearing a polo shirt and tight fitting jeans, worn-out at the knees and buttocks, and I noticed his hands were soft and clammy when he brushed my fingers as we passed the books.

Now, I c**k my head to the side and stare at him in the dazzling light of my front porch. The burden I’ve been feeling lately suddenly lifts like fog. I recall the recommendation I made in the book column I write every month for our local newspaper, The Milestone Review, along with the occasional front-page feature story.

With that, I wave and thank Sheriff Erickson for his house call.

“Get some sleep,” he yells back.

And before I close the door and slip between the flannel sheets for a good night’s rest, I get the impression Philip wishes I had offered dessert with coffee.

He’ll never know, but our thoughts are one and the same.

* * * *

At 10:45 P.M. I lurch awake, gasping for breath. My heart hammers in my ribcage, and a clammy perspiration feels like glue on my skin.

Another nightmare. I reach for the lamp on my nightstand and am surrounded in a warm glow. I rake fingers through my hair and pull back a hand saturated in sweat. When I lift my eyes, I see my reflection in the floor mirror twenty feet across the room. My face looks haunted, spooked by flashing images of Russ.

I gulp from the half-filled glass of water on my bedside table. It is when I place the glass on its coaster that I hear a faint, far-off noise. I’m immediately aware that my nightmares are not my worst problem at the moment.

The sound of a door being opened stirs every nerve in me. Then glass shatters, crashing to the hardwood floor in the foyer. Shuffling of feet, creeping to the edge of the stairs.

My heart is thrumming. My palms are greasy. My impulse is to call Sheriff Erickson. But my body is paralyzed in fear, too frozen to move.

A mixed-bag of sleet and rain hits the windows all around me, like birds falling from the sky. A jerk in my leg prompts me to reach across the king-sized bed for my cell in the pocket of my jeans. I dig inside the front pocket and, with hands shaking, dial Sheriff Erickson’s number from memory.

As the phone rings, I hear the thudding feet climbing the stairs. My right hand quivers and I almost lose the phone in the disheveled sheets.

At the sound of the sheriff’s gruff voice, I toss the sheets off me and climb over the edge of the bed to the floor, peering up at the closed bedroom door.

“H-hello?” Philip’s voice sounds different half-asleep.

I yank the lamp cord out of the wall and whisper into the mouthpiece, “Philip—this is Christian.”

And before I can murmur another word, my bedroom door bangs open, smashing into the dresser behind it. In the moonlight streaming through the windows, I see the scarecrow silhouette of Bret Hicks in the doorway. He wears a Halloween pumpkin mask too big for his head. He looks bizarre.

My worst nightmare: an intruder.

His breath is rigid and hurried from climbing the stairs in his drunken condition. When he speaks, his words are slurred, disguised by alcohol, underneath the latex mask. I deduce he is trying to say my name, but it comes out sounding like Christ instead.

Slowly, I reach beneath my bed for Russ’s signed Derek Jeter baseball bat and grip it with my free hand. The touch of the weapon steadies me.

Bret stumbles toward the bed, as if he has perfect night vision, and falls face first into my balled-up comforter. What comes out as a muffled “sorry,” sounds like “soirée” in the jumble of bed sheets.

I hear Sheriff Erickson on the line, his voice blaring, “Chris, are you all right? What’s happening?”