| |
––––––––
“SO YOU KNOW what she said then?” I sat with Dom at one of the wood-and-chrome bistro tables next to the big picture windows at Janey's Place, facing Main Street. It was late morning and the lunch crowd had yet to descend. Behind the counter, Cheyenne texted nonstop on her phone with one hand while wiping incessantly at a nonexistent smudge with the other.
I’d gone into the shop for my usual papaya-ginger smoothie and had run into Dom. The Janey's Place headquarters where he worked were across town, but he’d dropped by the store that day as he often did, to check up on the flagship operation and relive the good/bad old days by slipping behind the counter and whipping up a Mediterranean quinoa salad or a predigested-looking tofu scramble for some lucky, pasty-skinned lettuce chomper.
Dom was struggling with the timeline. “Was this before you called Bonnie or after SB peed on the cat statue?”
“Both.” I sucked up the last of the smoothie, a noisy operation that earned a lopsided smile from my ex. He’d always loved to feed me—it was how Janey's Place had been born. He’d felt certain that once I’d experienced bunny food in all its multifarious scrumptiousness, I’d become a lifelong convert to healthful eating. We all know how that turned out. “SB tried to pee on the cat,” I said. “I didn’t let him. It was starting to drizzle by then, so I shoved the base of the statue right back into the ground.”
“Smart.” Dom forked up a great big wad of something that looked like it had been peeled off the side of the road. Didn’t smell half-bad, though. “Protecting whatever evidence might remain after all these years. Is that when you called Bonnie?”
I nodded. “While Sophie was making sure Norman got home okay. But first, let me tell you what she said.”
“Sophie?”
“Of course Sophie. She told me that Dean, way back when they got married and he was living there? Dean insisted she get rid of the cat statues.”
“Why?” Dom asked.
“The real why or his excuse?”
“Let’s try both.”
“Well, he told Sophie it was because he’s allergic to cats and they creep him out and all that nonsense,” I said.
“How do you know it was nonsense?”
“Well, the creeped-him-out part makes sense. If I’d bashed in someone’s skull with a hunk of marble, I’d be creeped out every time I looked at it too. Plus he was probably worried that he’d left evidence on it.”
“I take it Sophie didn’t let him toss out the statues,” he said.
“She told him she wasn’t allowed to, that they’re an inviolable part of the history of her house. You know, it’s on the National Register of Historic Places. Of course, that’s total BS. I mean, yeah, the house is a historic landmark, but Sophie can do whatever she wants with those cats. They might be old, but they’re just lawn ornaments.” I shrugged. “But she likes them, so they stayed.”
“Aren’t you getting a little ahead of yourself with this Dean business?” He gave that condescending smile I’d forgotten he was so good at. “From trying to ditch some old lawn ornaments to murder? Leave the investigation to the experts, Janey.”
“Because they’ve done such a great job so far,” I sneered.
“Hey, it’s only been what?” he asked around a mouthful of vegetarian roadkill. “A week and a half? And the crime is more than three decades old. Give Bonnie a chance.”
Something about the way he said that last part pressed a little alarm button inside me.
Don’t judge me! It’s complicated, like Sophie said. And anyway, I’m allowed to be conflicted about my ex. After seventeen years. And five months.
He said, “Speaking of which, did you call—”
“Yes! Yes, I called Bonnie! I told you I called her. Jeez.”
“You could use a calming drink,” he said.
I perked up. “Hey, it’s five o’clock somewhere. Is Murray’s Pub open yet, you think?”
Dom’s indulgent chuckle said he knew I was kidding. Yeah, that’s me, Jane the Kidder. He turned toward the service counter. “Cheyenne?” He waited. “Cheyenne!”
She glanced up from her phone, her dull-eyed annoyance revealing not the slightest comprehension of Dom’s importance to her continued employment, or what her probation officer might have to say about the loss of said employment. She waited.
“Please pour Janey a cup of lavender tea,” he told her.
I reared back in disgust. “Lavender? Why don’t I just get my bridal bouquet out of mothballs and gnaw on that?”
My ex stared at me for a long moment while my face roasted to a nice, even shade of Holy Crap Did I Really Say That. In a murky little corner of my brainpan, I bitch-slapped the heck out of myself.
At last he said, “You still have your bridal bouquet? After all these years?”
The part he kindly left unsaid, which only amped up my mental self-flagellation, was: After all these years, our divorce, my two subsequent marriages and three kids, and your pitifully lonely and childless state?
“I, you know, had it freeze-dried.” I gave an elaborate shrug
He opened his yap to say, And you still have it. If he hadn’t had the sense to snap it shut without speaking, I’d have had to grab another damn chair and hurl myself though another damn window.
After first beating him to death with the chair.
Not that I needed a calming damn beverage or anything.
“The bouquet’s somewhere in the house.” A careless toss of my hand. “Or not. You know what? Yeah, I think I tossed it out when I moved into that little basement apartment after the divorce.”
It certainly wasn’t parked in my attic in a fancy glass display dome, double-boxed with bubble wrap and Styrofoam peanuts, and plastered on all sides with big red stickers reading FRAGILE! THIS END UP! KEEP DRY!
Cheyenne plunked a steaming mug in front of me. No joke, it smelled like lavender. Seriously, these people had issues.
“That’ll be three ninety-five,” she said.
Dom, the soul of patience, smiled at the girl. “It’s on the house, Cheyenne.” Her head tipped slightly to one side, and I swear her ears twitched at the mention of her name. He could have been talking to Sexy Beast.
“No charge,” he explained. “For my friend.”
At last, some animation. “So we can, like, give our friends stuff for free? Nobody told me.”
“No, it’s just...” It’s just that I get to treat my friends because I own the place? I could see the instant he decided it was time to pass the buck. “Ask your dad to explain it.” Cheyenne’s father, Patrick O’Rourke, was the manager of the store. Not that Patrick needed a paycheck after a hefty recent inheritance, but he knew his own weaknesses well enough to welcome structure and responsibility into his life.
Cheyenne shrugged. “Whatever.”
After she’d clopped away on her rhinestone-studded platform sandals, Dom reached into his wallet and slapped a healthy tip on the table. My lopsided grin accused him of being an old softie. His lopsided grin was accompanied by a helpless shrug.
If a clergyperson had been sitting at the next table, I would have married Dom again right then and there.
A priest, a rabbi, and a minister walk into Janey's Place. Insert your own punchline.
“So you called Bonnie...” Dom prompted, rolling his hand to steer me back on track.
“So she came out to Sophie’s, and I could tell she thought I was wasting her time—until she laid eyes on the squared-off base of that cat statue,” I said with a grin of satisfaction. “Then she went all crime-scene on us and got people out there and they set up this tent and lights and everything.”
“Wow,” Dom said. “Looks like you might have found the murder weapon.”
“They’re hoping to get evidence off the statue or the dirt it sat in. I mean, that thing has never been moved in all these years.”
“DNA evidence?” he asked.
I nodded. “If they find hairs or, I don’t know, dried blood or something, they can compare it to Ernie’s skeletal remains—a tooth or whatever—and look for a match.”
He nodded toward the lavender tea. “Drink up before it gets cold. Oh, don’t give me that look. I bet you’ll like it. Here.” He plucked two raw-sugar packets from the table dispenser, tore them open, and stirred the beige crystals into the hot liquid.
“You’ve got some nerve calling this stuff tea.” I slid the mug across the table to him. “I say it’s potpourri soup, and I say it’s all yours.”
He sighed and lifted the mug. “Well, I’m glad you were able to help Bonnie with the investigation.”
There it was again. That little alarm bell. Maybe because he directed his words to the mug rather than to my face.
“Oh yeah,” I said, “she expressed her appreciation very eloquently. Her precise words were, ‘Don’t tell me how to do my job, Jane.’ I’m telling you, I got all misty-eyed.”
Dom lowered the mug. “I know I’m not getting the whole story here.”
“I told her what Norman said about Dean being there the day Ernie died. She blew it off, said Norman’s senile and besides, Dean was in Boston that day, which Sophie had verified by calling him at his hotel. And did I think Dean was in cahoots with Porter, because Porter’s definitely the one who moved the body and made the murder look like suicide.”
Dom spread his hands. “Well, is she wrong about any of that?”
“First of all,” I said, “I hate that word, ‘senile.’ Norman’s short-term memory is shot, it’s true, but his recollection of stuff that happened way back when is spot-on. And hey, you know what? If Norman hadn’t remembered about replacing the cat statue in the ground thirty-two years ago, Bonnie would never have found the murder weapon.”
“If it is the murder weapon,” he said. “Bonnie was right about the rest of it, though.”
“Boston’s, what, a four-hour drive from here. You’re telling me Dean couldn’t have slipped away from that seminar long enough to come down here and off Ernie? It’s possible, right?”
“I thought he flew to Boston,” Dom said. “He didn’t have a car at his disposal.”
The look I gave him was a plea not to go stupid on me. We both knew that if Dean had wanted to get hold of a car in Boston, he could have.
“Well, it was Porter who engineered the fake suicide, right?” Dom asked. “Not Dean.”
“Yes,” I said, “because he thought he was covering up for his wife. He thought Lacey murdered Ernie. He had no idea Dean had been there earlier.”
“Maybe Lacey did murder Ernie,” he said, “and maybe—”
“Yeah, I know, maybe Dean never left Boston that day.” The simplest explanation was usually the correct one. Norman’s eyewitness account was beginning to look like the delusions of a confused mind.
“Look,” Dom said, “I know you like Norman. I like him too. But you have to admit he’s not the most reliable witness. Short-term memory, long-term memory, whatever. A lot is at stake here. Someone’s going to go away for life.”
“Well, I still think Bonnie should bring Dean in for questioning,” I said, “but she practically bit my head off when I suggested it. And she refused to even discuss the accusation Dean made—you know, about Sophie and Porter doing in Ernie.”
I had become accustomed to Bonnie’s cool civility toward me, her ex-fiancé’s ex-wife. But the evening before, in Sophie’s backyard, that polite façade had shown signs of wear. Which reminded me of watching her cozy up to Dom after the town meeting a couple of days ago. At least they’d looked darn cozy from where I’d stood.
Dom said, “A police detective can’t be expected to share all the details of an investigation, Janey. You know that. How’s Bonnie supposed to solve the case with some civilian running around playing—” He clamped his mouth shut.
I leaned back in my chair. “No, go ahead, Dom, finish the thought. With some meddlesome civilian running around playing detective and making a mess of the whole investigation.”
“I didn’t say ‘meddlesome.’”
I scraped my chair back, shot to my feet, and grabbed my purse. Dom rewarded that with a gusty, put-upon sigh.
As satisfying as a grand exit would have been just then, my mouth had other plans. “Are you sleeping with her?”
His head jerked up. “What? Sleeping with who?”
A priest, a rabbi, and a minister walk into Janey's Place. They restrain Janey’s ex while she pours hot potpourri soup into his lap.
I commenced the grand exit. Dom leapt to his feet and clamped his fingers around my arm. “No!” he said. “No, I’m not sleeping with her. Why would you even ask that?”
Behind the counter, Cheyenne stared at us unashamedly, thumbs poised over her phone, while her texting buddy impatiently awaited the next L8R or CU46.
Oh, please. Just sound them out.
I stared straight into Dom’s bottomless espresso eyes, willing him not to guiltily look away. He held my gaze, but his next words were far from comforting. He released my arm and said, quietly, “Bonnie wants us to get back together.”
His words squeezed my chest. After a moment I said, “And what do you want?”
“You know what I want, Janey. I’ve waited three months for your answer.”
Amateur, I wanted to shoot back. I waited seventeen years for you to come around. But Dom wasn’t used to being single. He was a man who needed a woman. For him, three months without a significant other must have felt like being stranded on the moon.
A few months ago I’d been so certain my long... infatuation? Was that word even appropriate when referring to one’s ex-husband? I’d been so certain my long, hopeless, helpless infatuation with Dom was a thing of the past. For the first time in my adult life, I didn’t need this man in it.
And all he’d had to do was crook his finger at me for all that maturity and personal growth to evaporate. One part of me howled, Why are you even stopping to think about it? He’s the love of your life. You’ve waited the better part of two decades for this. That part had never stopped fantasizing about a baby with Dom’s dark, curly hair and my pale hazel eyes.
The other part of me asked why he was the one who got to call the shots, to demand answers at his convenience. Well, okay, it could be because he had smart, beautiful, desirable Bonnie Hernandez eager to share her life with him—while I had a toy poodle with OCD. Plus, even if there were no Bonnie, the man happened to be a sweet, sexy multimillionaire, which kind of, you know, tipped the scales of power in his favor.
But all that was just noise. Strip it away and it was just me and Dom, two lower-middle-class South Shore kids who’d found each other twenty-six years ago in Mr. Bender’s eighth-grade Spanish class. One way or another, he’d always be in my life.
“Dom,” I said, “how serious are you about wanting to remarry me?”
He blinked. “You know the answer to that, Janey. I love you. We’re meant to be together.”
“I have to admit, for me, it’s not so cut-and-dried,” I said. “We have so much history. It’s complicated. If you really love me, you won’t rush me.”
A frustrated frown creased his brow. “What about Bonnie?”
“The hell with Bonnie,” I snapped. “This isn’t about Bonnie. It’s about you and me, Dom. I’m telling you I need more time. Can’t you understand that?”
“How much time are we talking about?” he asked. “A week? A year?”
“I don’t know! For crying out—” I took a deep breath. “Not a year. Come on, I’m just asking you to be patient a little while longer, a few weeks maybe, so I can sort out my thoughts without feeling like I’m under the gun. Think you can do that for me?”
“Sure, Janey.” He smiled and dropped a tender kiss on my mouth. I let him. “I think I can manage that.”
After leaving Dom, I went next door to UnderStatements, hoping for a few words with Lacey. A young saleswoman I didn’t recognize told me her boss had taken an early lunch break at the town park and wasn’t I that satanic Death Diva person who’d made their shop famous? I learned that my humiliating television debut had been great for business. By popular demand, UnderStatements had added ugly, high-waisted, full-coverage, white cotton drawers to their inventory, and the granny panties were flying off the shelves—along with sexy thongs to wear over them. Seems I’d started a trend. She pointed to a prominent display near the entrance, then tried to shove a Sharpie into my hand. The idea was for me to autograph them. People would pay big bucks to own a pair of granny panties signed by the real Death Diva.
As much as I admired her business acumen, I declined the honor.
Nevins Park—named, as was Sophie’s home, for the town’s founding family—encompassed a dog park and the beach as well as a baseball diamond and bleachers, picnic tables and pavilions, a large playground, and plenty of wide-open green space. The park was typically busy for a summer Friday. The playground I’d passed was alive with the gleeful shouts of children overseen by a handful of young mothers and nannies, plus a stay-at-home dad. Under a pavilion decorated with balloons, about twenty preschoolers dug into birthday cake. The breeze shifted, blending the briny tang of the nearby Long Island Sound with the scent of cut grass.
I found Lacey sitting alone at a wooden picnic table. A small white sack featuring Patisserie Susanne’s distinctive white and gold label sat before her and she was nursing a large plastic takeout cup filled with black coffee and ice. Another one sat next to it, this one lightened with milk.
If she was aware of being Detective Hernandez’s number-one suspect, I saw no sign of it in her calm features as she opened the sack and arranged a pair of pastries—chocolate croissants, my all-time favorite!—on paper napkins. Her placid expression closed down when she looked up and spied me heading toward her. “I don’t want company,” she said, when I seated myself across from her.
“Really?” I nodded toward the second iced coffee and the croissants. My stomach whined, despite the nice, filling papaya-ginger smoothie I’d just sucked down. “I think you mean you don’t want my company.”
“If that’s how you want to put it,” Lacey said. Was she meeting a guy here? Was it possible she’d moved on that quickly?
I knew I wasn’t this woman’s favorite person, despite my contribution to the newfound popularity—notoriety might be a more accurate term—of her lingerie store. I couldn’t expect her to be grateful to me for revealing that her own husband, rather than his dead buddy Ernie, had been responsible for the death of her beloved Tim. The bearer of bad news makes very few BFF shortlists.
“Just let me run one thing by you,” I said, “and then I’ll be out of your way.” I folded my arms on the table, squirmed my butt into a comfortable position on the hard wooden bench, and let my body language do the talking. Hey, I can wait here all day. Who are we meeting today? Is he cute?
Lacey shook her head in exasperation. “Okay, make it quick.”
Now that I had the undivided attention of the prime suspect in the three-decades-old murder of Ernest Waterfield, I was at a loss for words.
That’s right, I’d sought her out without having the slightest idea what I intended to say to her. Not a clue. Zip. Zilch. All I knew was, it was driving me crazy that Dean Phillips might be involved and that no one except Sophie and me—certainly not the detective in charge of the investigation—seemed to think the idea worth pursuing. Even Lacey’s husband, who loved her beyond all reason, logic, or good old-fashioned common sense, was convinced she’d bludgeoned his old pal Ernie to death.
See how good I am at leaving the investigation to the experts? Okay, in my head that came out “the so-called experts.” Probably in yours, too, am I right?
So that’s how I found myself sitting across the table from Miss Congeniality, trying to formulate an intelligent question while eyeing those chocolate croissants and fighting the urge to cry, Look! Behind you!
“Okay, um,” I started, “so here’s the thing, Lacey. I mean... yeah, this thing is just so...” My urbane chuckle came out as a consumptive wheeze. “Well, you don’t need me to tell you, am I right?”
She stared balefully, awaiting further elaboration on This Thing, before something over my shoulder snagged her attention. She looked up and waved. To me she said, “You can go now.”
I turned to see Porter striding in our direction, as handsome as ever in a black polo shirt, khaki shorts, and boat shoes. He appeared surprised to see me sitting with his wife. He greeted me before circling the table to lean down and kiss Lacey’s cheek.
Her gaze zeroed in on his throat. She pulled the collar of his shirt aside to reveal the dark bruise left by his homemade noose. Her brow creased in concern. “What happened to you?”
Porter’s tired eyes flicked to mine as he sat next to her. He looked worn down. I’d assumed Lacey knew about her husband’s attempted suicide. Apparently not.
“Is this for me?” He tapped the iced coffee with milk.
“Yeah. Three sugars.” She handed him a straw and one of the croissants, then seemed to notice I hadn’t vamoosed as promised. “Goodbye, Jane.”
“Don’t run off on my account.” Porter sipped his coffee.
“This is a family matter,” Lacey said. “I didn’t invite her here.”
“Yeah, well.” He tugged his collar back into place, concealing the livid streak on his neck as best he could. “Jane saved my life. I wish I could be grateful.”
“Saved your...?” Lacey’s startled gaze flew between me and her husband. “Somebody better tell me what’s going on.”
Suddenly I wished I had indeed vamoosed. Porter looked directly at his wife. “I tried to kill myself yesterday. Jane stopped me.”
Color fled her face. She stared at his throat. “No. No, that’s crazy. You wouldn’t do that.”
Sadly he said, “Yes, it’s crazy, and yes, I’m afraid I did do it. Or tried to.”
“But... why?”
His eyes briefly closed. “You know why.”
Her mouth opened, but no words emerged. Her eyes welled. Finally she whispered, “Porter. Porter, no. It’s not... That was...” Helplessly she shook her head.
“It’s not just that.” He swallowed hard, waging his own battle to retain his composure in this public setting. He took a deep breath. “They’re going to arrest you, sweetheart. I can’t protect you. I tried... I tried and I failed.”
She shook her head in confusion. “That’s insane. Why would they arrest me? You confessed.”
“They didn’t buy it. I wish to God they had. Lacey, I’m so sorry.” He took her hand. “The police know you killed Ernie.”
She jerked her hand out of his, eyes wide. “What are you talking about? You killed him. I saw you. I hid behind the rhododendrons in Sophie’s yard and watched you put his body—” Her voice cracked. “I saw you, Porter. How can you say...?”
“Jane knows, sweetheart,” he said. “You don’t have to keep up the pretense with her.”
“Pretense?” Lacey looked from one of us to the other. “This is insane. I had nothing to do with Ernie’s murder. I went there straight from Teddy’s house and saw you—”
“Wait, when did you go to Teddy’s?” He frowned. “When you left our house, you were headed to Ernie’s. You said if I wasn’t going to end our friendship, you’d do it for me.”
“Yeah, by going to his mom and getting her to set her son straight.” Lacey winced at her own unfortunate choice of words. “I figured I’d have more success going through her. I was wrong.”
I spoke up. “Porter, it’s true. Teddy herself told me Lacey visited her that day, and for just that reason.”
He appeared to be waging a mental battle, struggling to shoehorn new facts into three-decades-old assumptions. “How long did you stay at Teddy’s?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, twenty minutes, a half hour? Just long enough for her to tell me her precious boy could choose his own friends and to get lost.”
“I thought you went straight to Ernie’s.” He dragged his fingers through his hair, a habit that was becoming familiar. “After you left, it didn’t take me long to cool down and decide I was an idiot, and then I went there looking for you. I was going to cut ties with him—anything to make it right between you and me. But when I got there he was already dead.”
Lacey straightened. “You got to Ernie’s before me. When I saw your car, I parked down the road and snuck onto the property. I thought maybe Teddy had called to tell him about my hissy fit, and that you guys were having a yok at my expense. Instead I saw you putting Ernie’s body in the trunk of his car.”
“What you saw,” Porter said, “was me cleaning up after you, after the murder I thought you committed... the murder I’d driven you to commit.”
“But—”
“I know,” he said. “You went to Teddy’s first, which means you wouldn’t have had time to go to Ernie’s and kill him before I got there. And all these years I thought...”
Lacey put a hand to her mouth, overcome. “And I thought you did it. I thought one of you started a fight and you ended up killing him.”
Porter placed his hands on his wife’s shoulders. He tipped his forehead to hers. They sat like that while I turned away to study the birthday-party kids, who’d finished their cake and were now exploring the finer points of Duck, Duck, Goose.
Eventually I heard a few sniffles, some soft whispers, and what sounded suspiciously like an actual kiss on the lips.
I turned back to see Lacey gently touch the bruise on her husband’s throat. “I wondered why you weren’t dressed for work today.”
“I have to wait for the marks to fade. Officially I’m working from home for a few days.”
The look she gave him was brimming with wonder. “You confessed to a crime you didn’t commit to protect me. You were willing... you were willing to spend the rest of your life in jail. For me.”
His voice was hoarse. “I messed up so badly, sweetheart. So badly. Starting with...” His throat worked. “Every time I looked at Colin, the whole time he was growing up, all I could see was Tim, and what I’d done. I wanted so much to be a good dad to him, but I knew I’d never deserve him. He’d never belong to me.”
“Well, you picked a hell of a way to atone.” Her half smile was an amalgam of tenderness, awe, and exasperation. “I wish to God you’d trusted me with the truth.”
“I never set out to... to hurt Tim. I was young and drunk and stupid.”
She gave a slow, sad nod. “For years I could never find it in me to forgive Ernie for what I thought he did. My hatred consumed me, it poisoned me and everyone around me even after Ernie was gone. Tim would’ve been...” She swallowed hard. “He would have been disappointed in me.”
Porter stroked his wife’s hair. “This is a good time to start over, what do you say?”
A smile creased the corners of her eyes, but swiftly faded. “The police really think I killed Ernie?”
He held her face between his hands. “We’ll get the best lawyers. They have no case. It’ll never go to trial.”
“Oh God,” she breathed. “I’m scared, Porter.”
He wrapped his arms around her. I could barely make out the words he murmured into her ear. “It’ll be okay, I promise, sweetheart. I will never leave your side. We’ll get through this together.” He stroked her back in slow circles. After a while something seemed to occur to him. He leaned slightly away. “So why are we here anyway? What’s this important family matter you wanted to discuss?”
“What? Oh!” Lacey smacked her head. “My news.”
“Please tell me it’s good news,” he said.
“It couldn’t be much better.” Her smile lit her from within, showing me the girl Porter had fallen in love with all those years ago. “You’re going to be a grandfather.”
A surprised grin softened his tired features. “No kidding. You’re right, sweetheart, that is amazing news.”
Lacey said, “Speaking of fresh starts.” I knew what she meant. Here was Porter’s chance to start over not just with his wife but with his stepson, Colin, as well.
Porter cast me a crooked sidelong smile. “We haven’t forgotten you’re there, Jane.”
“Hey, don’t mind me,” I said. “I could sit here listening to good news all day.”
“While you’re listening, eat up.” Porter handed his chocolate croissant across the table.
“Mine too.” Lacey pushed hers across. “No appetite.”
It took every scrap of my self-control not to rip into those buttery, chocolate-filled pastries right then and there, but at the moment, the Vargases needed privacy more than they needed to sit there watching me stuff my face.
“Well, you won’t catch me turning down these bad boys. Thanks.” I opened the sack and stuffed the croissants back into it. Rising, I said, “I’ll eat these in the car. I, you know, have to be somewhere.” I waved and started to leave.
Lacey said, “Jane?” I turned back. Her eyes glistened. She squeezed Porter’s hand. “Thank you for saving my husband’s life.”
