Updated Apr 12, 2026 • ~10 min read
Chapter 6: His Father
Cole
Cole hasn’t talked about his father’s death in years.
Not because it doesn’t matter—it’s the defining event of his adult life, the reason he runs Hartford Construction the way he does, the reason he can’t let this lawsuit destroy what his father built—but because talking about it makes it real again, makes him sixteen and holding his mother while she sobbed and trying to figure out how to become a man overnight.
But something about being trapped in this cabin with Quinn Fitzgerald is making him want to share things he normally keeps locked down.
Maybe it’s because she shared about her own mother yesterday.
Maybe it’s because seeing her vulnerability during the panic attack made him want to offer his own in return.
Or maybe it’s because she’s currently sitting across from him at the cabin’s small table, eating the breakfast he made—scrambled eggs from powdered mix, not exactly gourmet but functional—and looking at him with genuine curiosity instead of the judgment he’s grown used to from people who think they know his story.
“Can I ask you something?” Quinn says, and Cole braces himself because questions from lawyers are usually traps.
“Sure.”
“Yesterday you mentioned your dad died when you were sixteen. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but—” She hesitates. “The file mentioned Hartford Construction was his company. You were so young when you took over.”
“I didn’t take over at sixteen. Mom ran the company for a few years while I finished high school. I worked construction summers, learned the business, went to community college for a business degree.” Cole stares into his coffee. “Dad died on a job site. Scaffolding collapse. Safety equipment failed.”
Quinn’s face goes soft with sympathy that looks genuine. “I’m so sorry.”
“It was fourteen years ago. I’ve had time to process it.”
“Processing and being okay are different things.”
“Yeah.” He looks at her. “Yeah, they are.”
“Is that why the company matters so much? Because it was his?”
Cole considers how to explain this to someone who walked away from family money, who chose principle over legacy.
“It’s not just that it was his,” he says slowly. “It’s what it represents. My dad built Hartford Construction from nothing—started with just him and a truck doing small residential jobs, grew it into something that employs fifty people. Fifty families that depend on us for healthcare, for paychecks, for stability in a town that doesn’t have a lot of economic options.”
“The Cedar Ridge Meadows project.”
“Is the biggest contract we’ve ever landed. It’s enough work to keep every single one of our employees busy for two years minimum, with enough profit to expand the business, hire more local workers, maybe even open a training program for kids who want to learn a trade instead of going to college.”
Quinn’s listening—actually listening, not just waiting to argue—and something about her attention makes Cole want to keep talking.
“You think I don’t care about the wetlands,” he continues. “That I’m willing to destroy the environment for profit. But that’s not what this is about. This is about Jacob Moreno, who’s worked for us for twelve years and has three kids and medical bills from when his wife had cancer. This is about Sarah Chen, who’s our site manager and the only woman in construction in three counties and who’s trying to prove she belongs. This is about every single person who depends on Hartford Construction staying solvent.”
“And if the wetlands get destroyed in the process?”
“I don’t want them destroyed. I want development that works WITH the land instead of against it. But your environmental impact statement doesn’t allow for any middle ground—it’s either perfect preservation or nothing, and nothing means my workers lose their jobs and Cedar Ridge loses its only major employer and in five years this whole town is dead.”
“That’s not—” Quinn starts, then stops. “Okay, I’m trying not to break the truce and argue about the case. But can I ask a genuine question?”
“Sure.”
“Did you actually read the full environmental impact statement? Or just the summary?”
Cole’s jaw tightens. “I read the summary. I’m not a scientist, Quinn. Half of it was technical jargon about hydrology and ecosystem services that might as well have been another language.”
“What if I explained it? In actual English, not jargon.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because—” She pauses, seems to be wrestling with something. “Because yesterday you helped me through a panic attack instead of using my vulnerability against me. Because you’re feeding me and keeping me alive in a blizzard. Because I’m starting to think maybe we’ve both been seeing each other in black and white when the truth is more complicated.”
Cole stares at her.
This is the environmental lawyer who’s trying to bankrupt his company.
This is the woman who three days ago he would have sworn was just another privileged outsider who didn’t understand or care about real consequences.
And she’s offering to actually explain her side instead of just demanding he accept it.
“Okay,” Cole says. “Explain it to me.”
Quinn gets up, grabs one of the notebooks from the cabin’s shelf, and starts sketching.
“The wetlands your development threatens aren’t just ‘nice to have,'” she says, drawing as she talks. “They’re part of a system. See here—” She points to her rough diagram. “The wetlands act like a giant sponge. When spring runoff happens, when you get those massive snow melts, the wetlands absorb water and release it slowly over time.”
“I know how wetlands work—”
“But here’s what happens if you pave over sixty acres of them.” She draws more. “That absorption capacity is gone. So when the spring melt comes, all that water has nowhere to go except straight into Cedar Ridge. You’ll flood Main Street. You’ll flood the residential areas. And Montana’s getting more extreme weather because of climate change—bigger snows, faster melts, more intense storms. That flooding will get worse every year.”
Cole looks at her diagram. “The development has drainage systems—”
“That are designed for normal conditions, not for the kind of extreme weather we’re seeing now. And even if they work, you’re concentrating water flow instead of distributing it naturally, which means erosion, which means your development’s foundation will be compromised in ten years when the ground starts shifting.”
“So you’re saying the development will fail.”
“I’m saying the development as currently planned will cause flooding that damages the town it’s supposed to help AND will probably fail structurally within a decade, leaving you liable for lawsuits from the homeowners whose houses are sinking.”
Cole sits back, processing this.
He’d thought about the wetlands as something separate from the town—nature versus progress, environment versus economy.
He hadn’t thought about them as essential infrastructure that protects Cedar Ridge itself.
“Why didn’t the impact statement lead with that?” he asks. “Why make it about threatened species and ecosystem services instead of ‘your town will flood if you do this’?”
“Because it does both. The flooding is a human impact. The ecosystem collapse is an environmental impact. Both matter.” Quinn meets his eyes. “But I get that one is more immediate to you than the other. I should have led with the flooding risk when I came to Cedar Ridge instead of talking about wetland conservation like it’s abstract.”
“Would’ve been a better argument.”
“Noted for next time I have to sue someone.”
Cole finds himself almost smiling. “Is there a version of this development that doesn’t cause flooding? That preserves enough of the wetlands to maintain the absorption capacity?”
“I don’t know. I’d have to see the property, do the hydrology calculations. But theoretically? Maybe. If you reduced the footprint, clustered the houses differently, preserved the critical areas.” She tilts her head. “Why? Are you actually considering compromise?”
“I’m considering that I don’t want to be responsible for flooding Cedar Ridge because I didn’t understand the whole picture.” He looks at her sketch. “And I’m considering that you might not be entirely wrong about this.”
“Careful, Hartford. That almost sounded like respect.”
“Don’t let it go to your head, Fitzgerald.”
They’re smiling at each other now—genuine smiles, not the hostile ones from three days ago—and Cole realizes the dynamic has shifted entirely from adversaries to something he can’t quite name.
Partners, maybe.
Or at least people trying to understand each other.
“Tell me about your mom,” Quinn says, shifting subjects. “You said she has anxiety. Is she—is she okay now?”
“Better. She’s on medication that works, has a therapist, knows how to manage it. Still has bad days but they’re less frequent.” Cole hesitates, then continues. “After Dad died, she basically kept the business running on pure stubbornness and spite. Refused to let his death mean his workers lost their jobs. Worked sixteen-hour days while having panic attacks in the bathroom between meetings.”
“That’s—God, that’s incredible.”
“That’s Margaret Hartford. Toughest person I know.” He smiles thinking about his mother. “She was so angry when she found out about the lawsuit. Wanted to drive to Seattle and give your firm a piece of her mind. I had to physically restrain her from getting in the truck.”
Quinn laughs. “I would have liked to see that argument.”
“She would have eviscerated you. Mom doesn’t do polite when her family’s threatened.”
“Sounds like someone else I know.”
“Are you saying I’m not polite?”
“I’m saying you told me to invest in appropriate footwear and made me wait twenty minutes in the cold because you were being petty.”
“That was strategic delay—”
“That was you being an asshole.”
“Okay, yes, I was being an asshole.” Cole grins. “In my defense, you showed up looking extremely lawyerly and I felt threatened.”
“I always look lawyerly. It’s called professionalism.”
“It’s called intimidation. That suit probably cost more than I make in a week.”
“It did not—” Quinn pauses. “Okay, it might have. But I bought it on sale.”
“Still counts as intimidation.”
They’re bantering now, easy and warm, and Cole thinks about how three days ago he wanted nothing more than for Quinn Fitzgerald to get out of his town and never come back.
Now he’s sitting across from her in a cabin in the middle of a blizzard, learning about hydrology and making her laugh, and he can’t remember the last time he enjoyed someone’s company this much.
Which is a problem.
Because Quinn lives in Seattle.
Because she works for the firm suing his company.
Because in a few days the storm will clear and they’ll go back to being on opposite sides of a lawsuit that could destroy everything he’s worked for.
But right now, in this cabin, those problems feel distant.
Right now, Quinn is explaining how wetland plants filter water and he’s actually interested instead of just tolerating it.
Right now, he’s watching the way her hands move when she talks and thinking about what those hands would feel like—
“Cole? You listening?”
“Yeah,” he lies. “Filtering. Water. Got it.”
Quinn narrows her eyes like she knows exactly what he was thinking, but she doesn’t call him on it, just continues explaining her diagram while Cole tries very hard to focus on hydrology instead of how good she looks in his oversized flannel with her hair falling out of its bun.
This is definitely going to be a problem.
But Cole’s starting to think it might be the kind of problem worth having.
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