He stepped in the outer office and flipped on the lights before he let Angie inside. Glancing around the waiting room, he tried to see it from Angie’s perspective. The room was small and beige. There were a few antique chairs, a coffee table and lamps. Nothing that would wow and amaze her.
“This is nice.” She trailed her finger along the stained-glass lamp. “I like this. Where did you get it?”
“Antique store,” he said gruffly and ignored her look of surprise. He didn’t want to explain how he wound up looking at antiques or how he bought the lamp because it had been handed down from generation to generation.
He bought the furnishings more for the story that came along with them. Every piece of furniture he had in his office and in his home had once been important to a family. He didn’t have heirlooms of his own, but he took care of the ones people discarded.
Angie stepped in front of a framed print of Norman Rockwell’s The Runaway. She looked confused and yet charmed as she studied the police officer sitting on a stool at a restaurant while talking to a runaway boy.
When she left the picture and focused on him, he felt as if she were studying something else. She was trying to understand the connection between him and the print. “What kind of clients do you have?” she asked.
It was a simple question and he could give an easy answer, but the knot in his chest tightened. “Families, mostly.”
“What do you do for them?”
“Contact missing relatives for one reason or another. I track down people who don’t want to be found or think they’ve been forgotten. A have a few cases finding heirs named in a will and a few deadbeat dads.”
Angie strolled around the room. “So the case with Heidi is different for you.”
“It’s the kind of work I want to do.”
She looked at him sharply. “Why is that?”
“Years ago, Heidi and her parents had a falling-out because of her substance abuse. They lost contact with her and they were worried. Heidi didn’t know that her family was looking for her. They didn’t know if she was alive or in trouble. Now they have a second chance.”
“I knew you were good at your job at Missing Persons, but you never explained why it was your passion.”
He didn’t discuss it because it would have brought up his family life. Working in this field was a constant reminder of what he didn’t have. There were no worried parents looking for him. He didn’t have a family who wanted him to come home. He had used his skills to find his parents, then waited years to contact them. Unfortunately, they didn’t want him to find them.
“What’s in here?” she asked as she stood by the doorway that opened into a darkened room.
“That’s my office.” He almost stopped her from going in. That room felt more personal but there was nothing private in there for her to see. He slowly followed her as she turned on the light. Cole watched her eyes widen when she saw the two mismatched sofas and a low coffee table. A laptop computer sat on a small wooden desk in the far side of the room.
“This isn’t at all what I had expected,” she said as she slowly entered the room. “I thought I would see a gun collection and a couple of fedoras. It looks like a place where people hang out and talk.”
“Most of my work is done on the computer. I use this room when I’m interviewing the families.” He spent countless hours listening to people tell their stories, their side. He saw and heard it all. The lies and the excuses. The good and the bad memories. He saw the tears and anger. The shame and the regret.
“I never thought you were a Norman Rockwell fan,” she said as she pointed at the famous print of a big family having dinner. “You think you know a person...”
He wasn’t about to explain the pictures. He didn’t think he could. Whenever he looked at them, he felt conflicting emotions. They reminded him of too many broken promises. What he didn’t have, but what he could get for others.
Angie sat down on the edge of a sofa. “Okay, I know you’re not ready to discuss it, but I have to ask. Were you a runaway? Is that the personal stuff you were going through with your family?”
“Why would you think that?”
“Your interest in missing persons,” she said as she began to tick off a list with her fingers. “The pictures in this office. The fact that your family isn’t part of your life anymore.”
Cole forced himself to remain where he stood. “And you think I chose that?” He couldn’t keep the defensiveness out of his voice.