Steel Glances (Rocky Mountain Novella Series #1)

  Chapter 2

  As Kristen pulled onto the highway, she could tell it would take much longer than her normal twenty minutes to get home. She checked the time on the dash and hoped she would still be able to make it home before Adam arrived. She would need time to get out of her soaking wet clothes and once again make herself look presentable.

  With the rain and the traffic, not to mention the visit she had just had with her father at the cemetery, Kristen couldn’t help but be reminded of the last time she saw her father alive.

  They had been having a weekly lunch together ever since she moved back to town after graduating from the University of South Alabama. During the five years she was away at school, she only got to come home a handful of times. Once she returned back to Colorado, Kristen wanted to bridge the gap that being so far away for so long had created. Sure, they talked all the time, but she wanted them to see each other, face to face.

  She could remember the first time they had met at Daphne’s Café for lunch. She hadn’t seen her father in over a year and she took a cab straight from the airport to the café. Their plan was to have lunch, after which, her father would take her home before returning back to work. “My baby girl,” Thomas said as he walked through the restaurant to his daughter’s table.

  “Daddy,” Kristen greeted her father as she stood and waited to embrace him. She didn’t say it, but she thought he had aged so much in what felt to her like such a short amount of time.

  Even though they lived together for the next year, they still kept up their tradition of going to Daphne’s Café for lunch every Saturday.

  The Saturday of her father’s death, Kristen had some errands to do near her father’s house so she told him that she’d pick him up. “So, you’re going to be my chauffeur?” Thomas teased from the other end of the phone.

  “Don’t go getting spoiled, Daddy. It’ll just be this once,” Kristen teased back.

  That afternoon, after she finished shopping at the mall for a tasteful cocktail dress, she made her way to her father’s house. As usual, he wasn’t ready. It was surprising that Kristen was so punctual, because her father was always getting lost in one project or another. So lost that he would shut out the rest of the world and time would just seem to stand still for him. Kristen never recalled making a conscious choice to always make sure she was on time, but it was probably something deep in her subconscious that was determined to be just the opposite of her father when it came to punctuality.

  Noticing the dark clouds that were rolling in, Kristen reminded her dad to wear a hat. “And, if you have an umbrella, you should bring that as well,” she shouted from the kitchen as she checked the fridge and pantry to make sure her dad was eating right.

  “You know I’ve never owned an umbrella,” he father replied before entering the kitchen and telling her to get out of his pantry.

  It was true. Kristen never could remember her father using an umbrella, or gloves, or even sunglasses. He always said, “If you don’t have it, you should be able to live without it.” At the time, the saying seemed like a bunch of nonsense to Kristen, but that afternoon her father finally explained it to her. All he meant was that it was better for a person to be okay without having certain conveniences rather than be inconvenienced because they didn’t.

  As always, Thomas ordered the half sandwich and soup combo, opting for the club sandwich with tomato soup and his daughter ordered a strawberry chicken salad.

  “You’re going to fade away if you keep eating nothing but that rabbit food,” Thomas said, but his daughter knew he was just teasing her. Kristen was thin, but she knew she could still stand to lose a pound or five. As gruff as his voice sounded, Thomas Casey was a man without a mean bone in his body.

  Rather than sit outside on the deck, Kristen and her father sat inside, catching up on each other’s weeks as they listened to the crackling of thunder. Their lunches normally lasted longer, but with the storm coming in, Kristen figured they had better cut their visit short. As always, Thomas insisted on paying for his daughter’s salad, and as always, she snuck twenty dollars into his coat pocket as she reached to retrieve it from the hook beside the exit door.

  “Wait here, Daddy, while I pull the car up,” Kristen told her father. And, though he tried to argue, she insisted he stay on the sidewalk out of the rain.

  Coming back to the present, Kristen found herself on the exact same mile long stretch of highway where she lost her father that day.

  They were driving back to her father’s house when they saw a bright flash of light in the rear-view mirror. Kristen thought it was lightning, and counted slowly to see how long it would be before the corresponding thunder would sound. She had no idea if there was any truth to it, but her father had told her as a young girl that however many seconds it took after lightning before you heard the thunder, that’s how many miles away the lightning struck.

  Kristen barely reached two before she heard the loud boom. But, it wasn’t thunder. At first, she didn’t know what it was. Before she could even think about it, the car was jolted forward and her head was thrown into the steering wheel.

  As she lifted her head, Kristen felt groggy. Had she just been in a car wreck, she wondered? Around her, she heard sirens and saw red flashing lights. It hurt to lift her head, but she managed. “Dad, are you….,” she began before stopping mid-sentence. She had lifted her hand and it was covered in blood, but she didn’t feel a cut on her hand. She looked in the mirror to see if her head was bleeding, but it wasn’t. It was protected during the by the airbag. It was then that she turned around and saw her father. She wanted to scream, but no sounds would come out. Her father sat motionless as blood ran down his face.

  “Ma’am? Are you alright?” Kristen heard as her car door was opened. She was in shock. Inside she was yelling at the voice to check on her father. No words actually escaped her mouth though.

  She saw the passenger door open as someone was carrying her from the car. Finally, she found the voice within her. “Help my Dad,” she screamed frantically. “Help him!”

  What happened next, Kristen only heard about from the police reports and doctors. She was told that she passed out in the ambulance due to shock.

  “Where’s my father?” she asked anyone that walked by her room when she returned to consciousness, but they all just walked by as if they hadn’t heard a thing. It wasn’t until her doctor came in to check on her that she received any answers.

  That was the moment she would remember for all of time. The moment she would be told that her father was dead.

  As Kristen sat in traffic remembering that awful day from weeks earlier, a car horn honked snapping her back to reality. She released her foot from the brake and chastised herself for not paying attention. Even though the police told her there was nothing she could do to avoid the accident, she still wondered if maybe she could have been paying closer attention that day.

  It was then that Adam and Kristen grew closer. Up until that point, they had gone out on a few dates, but Kristen kept herself distanced. She had never allowed herself to get close to another man since her divorce. Kristen still hadn’t even introduced Adam to her father, which she regretted, because now she never would have the chance.

  After the wreck, Adam was all Kristen had, though. He was there to help her deal with the pain of losing the only family she had left. He kept her strong when she thought it was impossible. It was probably because of the loyalty and strength he showed during that time that Kristen accepted his proposal just a few weeks later. Kristen was instantly without any family but told herself that Adam could be her new family. And, so she said, “Yes,” when he asked her to marry him.