“What’s going on?” Matt Nichols asks. He’s been a chaplain for five years, but he’s lived in Cunningham Falls all of his life.

“We need to visit Kyle Reardon,” I reply before clearing my throat. “Kendall was killed this afternoon.”

“Damn,” Matt mutters. “Is he home this time of day?”

“I fucking hope so, because I don’t want to have to go to the school to deliver this news. School just got out for the summer, so the chances are good he’ll be home. Meet me at his place and we’ll go from there. I want to get to him before someone else calls him.”

We hang up and I’m at Kyle’s house within five minutes. Matt pulls up right behind me. I take a deep breath and stare at the small, well kept house that I’ve spent many mornings in having coffee with my friend after his kids have gone off to school. Kyle lost his wife to cancer just a couple of years ago, and now I have to deliver the news that his oldest son isn’t coming home.

Matt waits for me on the sidewalk, and I join him, then walk with him to the door. Kyle’s car is in the driveway.

He’s home. He opens the door, and the second he sees both me and Matt, his eyes fill with sadness and he gestures for us to come inside.

***

I should go home. I should absolutely not go to Hannah’s tonight. My emotions are raw. I would not be good company right now. But I can’t seem to stay away. I shoot her a quick text and ask her if it’s too late to drop by, and she immediately answers not at all.

Kyle only lives about four blocks from her, so I’m there quickly. She answers the door with a sunny smile, lifting my heavy heart just a bit.

“I’m so glad you texted,” she says as she steps back, letting me inside.

“I shouldn’t have,” I reply honestly and shove my hand in my hair, pacing her living room. “I should have gone home.”

She cocks her head to the side and props her hands on her hips. She’s in shorts and a simple T-shirt, but I’ve never seen anything so beautiful in all of my life.

“Why didn’t you?”

“Go home?” She nods. “Hell, because I’m not good company for myself either, and being with you sounded much better than pacing my house while Sadie watches with sad eyes.”

“Why are you upset?”

I rub my fingers over my lips, not wanting to put what I did today in her head.

“Dead babies,” she says and walks right to me, wrapping her arms around my waist and looking up at me with shining blue eyes. “I deliver dead babies. I have to tell women that they have cancer. Or that their child will have Down’s syndrome. Or a deformity. I have had a twelve year old girl in my office, pregnant, and terrified to tell her parents.

“I can take this. I can hear whatever it is that you have to unload.”

I drag my fingers down her soft cheek and enjoy the way her arms feel around me, then take a deep breath.

“Do you know Kyle Reardon?”

She frowns. “The principal?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think I’ve met him personally, but Grace has always had nice things to say about him.”

“His oldest son died today.”

The words sound hollow to my own ears.

“Oh, Brad.”

“Seventeen years old,” I continue and pull away from her. Not because I don’t love her touch, but because I have to pace. If I’m going to tell this, I don’t want her to touch me until it’s over.

“I’ve known Kyle all of my life. He was a little older than me in school, but we’re friends. We ski together in the winter. I’ve known all of his kids since they were born, and I mourned with him when he lost his wife two years ago to cancer.”

“Oh no,” she says, but I keep talking.

“And today, I had to show up at his doorstep with a chaplain and explain to him that his son was electrocuted in the water and was killed instantly. That there was nothing anyone could do, and that it wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was a stupid, horrible accident, and it took his son’s life.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Before I could tell him anything, I had to call his sister to come get his other three children, and then I held him while he wept. My friend, who has been through hell and back in the past few years, and was finally pulling it back together. How do you do that?”

I stop and narrow my eyes, barely seeing her now, lost in my own head. “How do you do that, Hannah?”

“You just do,” she says softly. “You do what you have to do, and you’re strong for them, and then you go home and you fall apart.”

Tags: Kristen Proby Big Sky Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net