Kansas City Christmas

The idea of turning around and walking away remained a distinct possibility. But the idea of explaining his cowardice to Cara or Melinda, who rested only a few yards away, was even more untenable. So he reached out and shook Atticus’s hand, grudgingly reconnecting with his family. Grief and anger and understanding passed between them. “Don’t you dare try to hug me.”

Atticus almost laughed at his grinch-like reply. But this wasn’t a day for laughter. Instead, his younger brother turned and stood beside him, watching as friends and family dispersed, ducking under umbrellas and walking down the hill toward their cars.

They stood together, like the old days, back when John Kincaid’s four sons had been invincible. Those days were long gone—for Edward, at least. The soft patter of the rain on the overhanging trees should have been a soothing sound. But Edward heard each plop against every branch like the ticking of a clock. Atticus didn’t do anything without a purpose, and he seriously doubted that this reunion was just a “Hey—how are you doing?”moment.

“You should come say hi to Mom. She knows you’re here, but it’d mean a lot to her if you made the effort to touch base.” He should have suspected Atticus’s mission before he spoke. “She’s hurting. We all are.”

Welcome to my hell.

But it was a sentiment he would never utter aloud to his grieving brother. Edward inhaled a deep breath and tried to say something appropriately sympathetic. “I’m sure Mom has invited people over to the house, but I can’t do the small-talk thing. Just give her my love.”

“Give it to her yourself. Let me get Sawyer and Holden on this. We’ll keep everyone away and you can have a private moment with her before she leaves Mt. Washington.”

“Atticus, I…” Grandma needs a hug, too. Edward ducked his head and turned away as his daughter’s sweet voice tormented his conscience.

He could wallow in grief and anger all he wanted. But he’d never been able to say no to his little girl.

His mother needed him right now. His family needed him. Edward had nothing left to give, nothing left to say. But for Cara and Melinda—and for John Kincaid—he’d find the strength to at least go through the motions. He’d find the caring that had been gutted from him somewhere along the way.

“I’ll meet you by her car in ten minutes.”

“WHEN I GAVE YOU BOYS literary names, I didn’t think you’d take them to heart.” Susan Kincaid, dedicated English teacher and loving wife and mother, patted Edward’s knee as she scooted closer beside him in the rear seat of the funeral home’s limousine, still parked on the road that twisted through Mt. Washington cemetery. “Edward Rochester Kincaid—just like Jane Eyre’s Mr. Rochester—you’ve been burned so badly by the world that you feel your only comfort is to hide away from it. He didn’t find peace until he was forced from his seclusion by Jane. He didn’t understand how much he was loved and needed, either.” Resting one hand on the folded American flag that sat in her lap, she reached over and laced her fingers together with Edward’s. “These are hellish circumstances to force you from your seclusion. But I’m so glad you’re here, son. It…soothes me.”

Soothing? Edward was shaking inside his skin with raw emotion and the uncertainty about what he should—and could—do to help his family through this tragedy.

Cocooned by the rain and three younger brothers who stood guard outside the long black car to ensure their privacy, the limo’s plush interior absorbed the scoffing noise Edward made. He breathed in his mother’s subtle perfume along with the musty dampness that clung to their clothes and took note of the slight tremor in her chilled fingers as they nested inside his broader, callused, scarred-up hand. He’d never been given much to romantic notions, not even before a killer bent on revenge had torn his life apart.

A year and a half ago Edward had been a damn good cop, one of the best undercover operatives KCPD’s drug enforcement division had ever put on the streets. Edward and his team had worked months to put one of Kansas City’s top cocaine suppliers out of business. Yet a technicality had allowed André Butler to walk away after a mistrial. Sure, Butler’s empire had been destroyed, his sources outed. But until a second trial could be mounted, the self-proclaimed modern gangster had walked out of the courthouse a free man—a free man looking for payback against the cop he’d trusted like a brother—a brother who had ultimately betrayed him.

Butler had been released on December twenty-third. His first stop after spending the night with a girlfriend and stealing her car the next morning? Edward’s front yard. According to witnesses, Melinda had been building a snowman that day, keeping herself busy while Cara loaded presents into the car for the Kincaids’ traditional Christmas Eve get-together at his parents’ home. Butler had lured Melinda out to the street, shot Cara when she tried to protect their trusting little girl and then shot Melinda to silence her wailing cries over her fallen mother. Edward had been out to pick up a bicycle with training wheels for Melinda’s Christmas present when he got the call about Butler being spotted near his own address. He’d raced and skidded over slushy, snow-packed streets in a desperate effort to get to his family.

By the time he turned the corner onto his block, Edward knew he was already too late. Butler ran to his car, turning his gun on Edward’s speeding SUV and firing off multiple shots. Edward prayed the bastard’s neck hadn’t snapped when he ran him down—that he’d died a slow, painful death. Though he’d barely felt it at the time, one of the bullets had cracked his windshield and pierced his chest, doing plenty of damage to his insides. Plowing over Butler, crashing through a line of parked cars and wrapping his engine around a tree had done even more. With both legs busted and his own blood leaving a crimson trail across the snow, Edward had crawled to the front sidewalk to try to breathe life back into the women he loved.

He’d taken out the bad guy, but he couldn’t save them.

Merry Christmas.

Yeah, any romantic notions he might have once had were long gone.

“Edward?”

His mother’s grip steadied as her soft voice jerked him back to the present. Why had he gone back to that morning? Too many beers had numbed his memory for too many months. But now that the physical mess of reclaiming sobriety had passed, every detail of that morning—every image, every hurt, every blame—stuck in his head with painful clarity.

He had no business being here, no business making this day any worse for his family than it already was. “Mom, I…”

Edward tried to withdraw his hand, but Susan held on tight.

He stared down at their interlocking fingers, resting atop his thigh. He was supposed to say something now. Unlike smoothtalking Holden, or Atticus who’d always been smart enough to figure out what needed to be said, or even Sawyer, who led with his heart and blazed ahead and dealt with the consequences later, Edward wished he was eloquent enough to either compliment his mother’s strength or console her grief. But his instincts about such things were rusty from months of lonely isolation, and the right words wouldn’t come.

They didn’t have to. Susan Kincaid hadn’t been married to a cop or raised four more for nothing. “I understand that you’re not ready to face a crowd of well-wishers. I’m sure the comparisons to Cara and Melinda’s funerals must be overwhelming. But it means everything to me that you made the effort to be here. For your family.”

Was simply showing up really enough? He turned his head and looked down into the sincerity shining from her dark eyes. No wonder his father had loved this woman so much. Edward leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Atticus can be pretty darn convincing.”

Susan stroked the neat, triangular flag that had been draped over his father’s coffin. Stress and sorrow had deepened the crow’s feet beside her eyes as she summoned a smile. “He doesn’t take no for an answer, does he.”

“Never has.”

“He’s stubborn, like your father. Smart like him, too.” Her smile faded into a wistful sigh. “Each of you has something of your father in him.”

Edward absently twirled his dark walnut cane in his right hand in the heavy silence that followed. He was more steel pins than bone from the waist down, his heart and soul gutted. What part of John Kincaid did he have left in him?

His mother didn’t need to be intuitive to sense his discomfort. She leaned her cheek into his shoulder. “Holden obviously looks like your father—sings like him and has some of that Kincaid Irish charm in him, too. Sawyer has his heart—his gentleness, his compassion—he’s just as eager to right the wrongs of the world as your father was. And you…?”

When she paused, Edward made a sound inside his chest that might once have been a laugh. “Hard to come up with something nice to say about me?”

“No. Hard to choose the right words to say so that you’ll believe them.” She turned in the seat to face him. “You’re the leader of this family now—”

“No.”

He shrugged away from her grasp and tried to retreat, but she simply followed him across the seat. “I know we’re all grownups. Your brothers are fine men and can take care of themselves. They’ve been taking care of me these past five days.”

His mother deserved better than an absentee son during a time like this. He should have been stronger. He should have been able to deal with this. “I’m sorry, Mom. I should have called. I was busy—”

“Coming to grips with the loss of yet another person you love.” Laced with a gentle understanding he didn’t deserve, the touch of her hand against his jaw was almost painful. “You were busy getting sober.”

For a moment, his eyes locked onto hers. “How…?”

Her pale mouth curved into a smile. “Your clothes smell clean. You trimmed that ratty beard. Your beautiful eyes are clear.”

“So I’m a bum who ignored my own mother in her time of need.” He turned away from her forgiving touch and intuitive gaze. “And you think I’m the leader of this family?”

She brushed her fingers across his jaw again, ignoring his sardonic tone. “Your father would be so proud of you today.”

He could pull away from the gentle touch, ignore the kind words. But the sheen of tears pooling in her eyes and spilling over did him in. Edward caught the first tear with the pad of his thumb and wiped the trail of sorrow from her cheek. “Mom…I…What are we supposed to do? Just because I’m the oldest doesn’t mean I can make sense of any of this. I can’t make this right.”

“But you can make it better. You have made it better, just by being here.”

“In a way, I can see one good thing about the girls not being here—I don’t know how I’d explain losing Dad to Melinda. She loved her granddaddy so much. I’m not eight and I wasn’t born with Down’s syndrome. And I still don’t understand this.”

“They were crazy about each other, weren’t they? John always called Melinda his little angel.” Susan Kincaid leaned her cheek into Edward’s hand. “I hadn’t remembered that. That’s a comfort to know they’ll be together again.” Wishing he had a handkerchief, Edward brushed away the new fall of tears. “Oh, Edward. I miss him so much.”

Some comfort. His mother reached for him, caught him around the waist and hugged him tight. Edward reacted before he realized what the gesture might cost him. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close as his brittle defenses crumbled and her grief and confusion and anger flowed into his. “Just cry it on out, Mom. Just cry it out.”

Several minutes passed before her sobbing sounds became erratic sniffles and then softened into steadier, more even breaths. His shirtfront was damp and streaked with her makeup as she finally pulled away. Her face became lined with a frown of confusion as her fingers probed the front waistband of his slacks. “You’re not wearing your badge.”

His KCPD badge was locked in a metal box with his guns, gathering dust on the back shelf of his closet until he could decide if he would ever be ready to be a cop again. But that wasn’t what she wanted to hear. Kincaids were cops. The call to protect and serve was in their blood. That call had taken everything Edward loved. Today wasn’t the day to explain his guilt, however. A logical excuse would serve well enough. “I’ve been on leave since a year ago Christmas.”

Confusion briefly morphed into maternal concern. “Your doctor cleared you to go back on duty, right?”