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The other man paused, then his shoulders slumped. He suddenly looked years older. “You know how cops are. We keep everything compartmentalized. Focus on the job, push everything else to the background.”
Wes’s fingers curled in Kodi’s fur. That sounded far too familiar. He had become an expert at boxing up feelings and shoving them onto mental shelves where he didn’t have to look at them.
“My wife died about two and a half years ago. Cancer. I took care of her in her final months and it just about destroyed me. Nothing harder than watching someone you love die and not being able to save them, especially for a cop. We fix things, right?”
Wes had no answer for that. He wasn’t doing a very good job of fixing anything in his own life right now.
“When my daughter lost her husband just a year later, I figured, okay. I can fix this for her and the kids. I took over everything. I thought I was doing the right thing.”
His sigh was long and heartfelt. “Bu she and the kids didn’t need a drill sergeant. She needed her dad, they needed their grandpa. Now I just want to find her so I can tell her I love her and will do anything she wants. Anything. If only she will let me into their lives again.”
Wes exhaled. “You can’t go around surveilling an innocent woman and two kids. It’s not okay, retired cop or not.”
“I know,” Ed said. “I do. I just . . . need to find my daughter. Do you know where she is?”
Wes bit back his answer. He knew exactly where Morgan was. He’d watched her cry with joy at seeing her kids in a hospital consult room days earlier.
But Morgan had had the chance to tell this man where she was. She hadn’t. That had to mean something. He didn’t feel like he had the right to override that choice.
“I can’t tell you where she is,” he said finally. “Not on my own. But Hannah, the woman you’ve been following, might be willing to talk to you.”
He opened his door. “Come on. Let’s go talk to her.”
With Kodi at one side and Ed on the other, he walked back toward the Goodwins’ place. The house looked exactly as it had when he was younger. White siding, green shutters, a big wreath on the front door, warm light glowing through the sheers in the front windows.
Walking up those steps tugged him straight back to another lifetime, when he’d spent half his evenings here, ostensibly to hang out with Micah and Asher but always, always tracking Hannah with his eyes, no matter what she was doing.
He had left a lot of memories on this porch. Too many of them weren’t good.
He rang the doorbell. Ed stood slightly behind him, Kodi planted solidly at Wes’s other side.
A short wait later, the door opened.
Paula Goodwin stood there, framed in the warm light of the entry. The blond hair her daughters had inherited had touches of gray now but her eyes were the same lovely blue. While they were usually kind, right now her expression was far from welcoming.
“Wesley,” she said, her tone cool. “I heard you were back in town.”
He shifted, deeply uncomfortable. “Mrs. Goodwin,” he said stiffly. “Is Hannah here? I need to speak with her.”
She studied him intently, then seemed to notice the man at his shoulder.
“Hello,” she said, her voice polite but cautious. “I’m Paula Goodwin.”
Ed cleared his throat. “Edward Walker, ma’am.”
“Are you a friend of Hannah’s?” she asked, looking curiously between the two men.
Ed shook his head. Wes didn’t elaborate. This wasn’t the time to lay out the whole messy story.
Paula’s eyes narrowed slightly, but she stepped back and let them inside the entry of the house. She directed them into the small front room Wes remembered the family jokingly called the front parlor because it was always spotless, ready for company and almost never used by the family.
“I’ll get her. Wait here.”
A minute later, the door opened wider and Hannah walked in, saw Ed and stopped short. Her gaze flew to Wes, full of startled questions.
“I found your stalker,” he said, nudging Ed gently forward. “This is Ed Walker.”
The retired cop looked decidedly uncomfortable, his shoulders tight, his hands shoved into his jacket pockets.
