CHAPTER
Seven

Phase 1 of Willow’s Enhancing of Nora Bradford? Wardrobe.

Phase 2 turned out to be eyebrow sculpting. Whenever Nora had seen people at the mall reclining in chairs and getting their eyebrows “threaded,” the treatment had appeared peaceful. When you were the one in the chair, however, it hurt. Nothing peaceful about it. She’d been limp with relief when it was finally finished and she was handed a mirror.

At first, Nora had been concerned about the reddish areas above and below her eyebrows. The redness had quickly faded, however, and as it had faded, her appreciation for her newly sculpted brows had grown. Her eyebrows hadn’t been shoddy before. But the wizened gentleman had taken her from looking like a person with a pleasant face to a person with a fashionable face.

Phase 3? Makeup. Willow had ushered Nora to the MAC counter at Nordstrom in downtown Seattle. The staff there had instantly recognized Willow and, of course, been agog over her. The consultant who’d done Nora’s makeup had collaborated over every part of the process with Willow as if the two of them were trusted co-workers and Nora was their joint project.

Nora was once again handed a mirror when the job was complete. Her fears that she’d end up resembling a geisha had come to naught. The consultant had highlighted her best features while camouflaging her flaws. The natural, sheer colors they’d picked for her eye shadow, blush, and lipstick complemented her light complexion and fiery hair.

Nora mulled over her makeover from the passenger seat of Willow’s Range Rover as her sister drove them back toward Merryweather. She was now a woman with updated clothing, eyebrows, and makeup. It surprised her how much these superficial improvements meant. As their shopping day had progressed, she’d caught herself standing straighter, walking more purposefully, finding plenty to like when she caught sight of herself in mirrors and shop windows.

Was it unchristian of her to be enjoying her spruce-up as much as she was? The Lord looked at the heart, after all. He didn’t care a bit about what she looked like. Duly noted. Inarguable. Yet, she didn’t think the Lord would begrudge her some new outfits and improved eyebrows.

Glossy water slid by far below them as Willow steered across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.

Her reaction to her updated appearance made Nora suspect that her self-image may have been decimated by The Dreaded Harrison’s betrayal more than she’d realized until now. She’d never thought much about how their breakup might have colored her feelings toward herself. She’d thought a great deal about how it had wrecked her relationship with Harrison. She’d thought quite a bit, too, about how it had dented her relationship with God.

Up until Harrison had broken her heart, her faith in God had been clear-cut. So much so that not even her early-childhood trauma had shaken it. She’d been unable to imagine why anyone wouldn’t trust God. Childlike faith had seemed to come with nothing but upsides. While Harrison had loved her and wanted to marry her, it had been easy to affirm that yes, God’s will was best. Absolutely!

Then one day Harrison hadn’t loved her or wanted to marry her anymore. He’d chosen someone else over her. The pain of that had been so excruciating that Nora had lost hold of her certainty in God’s will.

She still loved God. Undoubtedly she did. However, life and Harrison had weathered her. In the months that followed her broken engagement, her childlike faith had been replaced by something more adult, more jaded, and a whole lot less naïve. After Harrison, it no longer seemed safe or wise to depend on God to provide the sort of happy ending He’d never guaranteed her in Scripture anyway. It had seemed proactive to take more responsibility for her own life.

She could trust herself. That, she knew. So she’d decided to make her own happy ending. Forging ahead, she’d worked hard and pursued success doggedly, fueled in part by a deep desire to save face and prove her worth. She’d dug her nails into her dignity and refused to let anyone see how much Harrison’s dismissal had shredded her on the inside.

At least that was what she’d thought she’d been doing. Despite her determined efforts not to, she may have been inadvertently wearing Harrison’s rejection and her defiant “I’m the smart one and that’s enough for me” message around town like a scarlet letter thanks to her appearance. Which was too embarrassing to contemplate.

Nora swallowed and rubbed her fingertip along the car door’s armrest. Back and forth. Back and forth.

Over the last three years, she’d told everyone—most of all herself—how content she was in her singleness. But was that really true? Down deep? At gut level? Or had that mantra mostly been motivated by that same insecure need to save face and prove her worth?

Shame burned her stomach like acid because she didn’t like the truth.

Man, this was hard to admit even to herself because she wanted wholeheartedly to be content in her singleness. Instead, ever since Harrison had consigned her to the single life, she’d felt as though she’d been handed a ticket to a second-class ship cabin when she’d paid for first class.

What a horrible thing to confess! God was all she needed. Singleness was not second-best. She had to get her head straight on those facts before she could consider dating again.

Dating. The word alone roused fear in her, confusion as to how to begin, and—worst—a disgusting, chilling whisper that assured her she wasn’t attractive enough or woman enough or whatever enough to keep a man long term.

Yikes. Um . . . no wonder she’d been hiding behind dowdy clothes and her beloved spinster persona.

It was time, past time, to stop hiding. To move beyond the scars Harrison had left. To repair her self-image. And to step into the future wearing a pair of fashionable high heels.

John’s sense that he and Nora were destined to be friends was no fluke. No, it was a fact that became more and more clear to him over the next two weeks.

They met every few days to work on their search for Sherry. Together, they dug up all the thirty-three-year-old school directories and yearbooks they could find. No luck locating Sherry there.

They called or visited each of the churches that had been around thirty-three years before. No luck.

They hunted through old Shelton newspapers in hopes of coming across a mention of Sherry or Deborah. No luck.

They searched for marriage announcements and marriage certificates for either woman. No luck.

Their efforts had hit a frustrating wall. That didn’t mean, though, that the time they spent together was frustrating. For John, the time they spent together was golden. Nora cracked jokes. She charmed every person they came in contact with. She used ridiculously big words. When he was with Nora, he forgot for whole spaces of time about his diagnosis. When he was with her, he could breathe.

He began to think about Nora even when they weren’t together. At work, driving home, or running on the treadmill, he’d find himself wondering what Nora was doing and whether she was busy or happy or tired.

He and Nora both behaved professionally and respectfully. They said nothing that fell outside the boundary of friendship. They did nothing Allie would disapprove of. Each time he saw Nora, he talked to Allie about their meeting and updated her on the progress of the search.

So while he didn’t exactly feel guilty about Nora, he did sometimes wonder how much time he should be spending with her. How much was okay? How much was too much? When you put hours of concentration into something or someone, you got to know that thing or that person well. He’d spent a lot of hours with Nora, and every meeting, every text message they exchanged, every phone call they made to plan strategy had helped him know her. In fact, he knew Nora better after a month of friendship than he knew Allie after more than six months of dating.

That wasn’t a slam on Allie. There were just some people you felt close to after an hour because you had chemistry with them . . . and others you felt the same amount of closeness to after a year. Maybe it also had to do with the difference between friendship and dating. Friendship was more relaxed. You weren’t hung up on trying to impress the other person.

John prayed over it. He didn’t hear God leading him to call off the search or to limit his friendship with Nora, which was good because he didn’t want to hear God leading him to call off the search or limit their friendship.

When they’d tried everything Nora could think of to turn up information on Sherry, and failed at all of it, it started to look like the decision to call off the search might be taken out of John’s hands. Nora had told him that first day at the Historical Village that if she could no longer help him, she’d pass him off to a private investigator or an organization that handled cases like his. She hadn’t suggested either of those things to him yet. But John could feel those options coming for him, like two buses he didn’t want to ride.

Nora wasn’t good at accepting failure. However bad she was at it, he was worse. He was the guy who hadn’t rung the bell during BUD/S.

How about we return to Regent Street? he asked Nora at the end of May via text. We can go back and knock on the doors of the neighbors who weren’t there the first time.

It’s worth a try, she wrote back. Let’s go in the early evening this time. In my professional opinion, we’re long overdue for a break in this case.

“Yes, I knew Deborah. My husband and I have lived here for forty-five years.”

Nora stilled. After this house, she and John only had two houses left to try on Regent Street. They’d received so many blank looks and so many friendly and unfriendly “Sorry, but I didn’t know Deborah or Sherry” responses so far this evening that Nora had grown accustomed to disappointment. She hadn’t expected the cute little lady at 3423 to be the needle in their haystack.

Goose bumps shimmied down her arms. “You . . .” Nora chased after her thoughts, which had raced off excitedly in all directions. “You knew Deborah?”

“I did,” the woman answered. “Deborah and I were friends.” She extended a hand. “I’m Sue Hodges.”

Nora and John took turns exchanging handshakes with her.

Sue looked to be in her mid-seventies. She had curly light brown hair and a slim build. Her outfit of jeans, white shirt, and a royal blue sweater came across as both informal and classy. “Come in.” She encouraged them to make themselves comfortable on her floral sofa, then disappeared into the kitchen to prepare glasses of ice water.

Great Scott.

The man who’d led worship at their church since Nora and her sisters were young often peppered his speech with a hearty, “Great Scott!” Nora, Willow, and Britt had adopted the phrase and also taken to calling the man himself Great Scott, though his name was Arnold.

Whenever Nora spoke with him after the service or ran into him around town and he tossed a “Great Scott!” into the conversation, she had to pinch the inside of her elbow to keep from laughing. If Nora spotted Great Scott while with one or more of her sisters, she’d rush them into the nearest restroom until danger passed. They all knew that the tiniest knowing glance from a sister in response to a “Great Scott!” would be enough to bring on a storm of inappropriate giggles.

Of all the words Nora knew, Great and Scott were the two that seemed most equal to today’s state of affairs. Their patience had finally paid off!

Nora met John’s eyes. “A lead,” she whispered.

“Maybe.” He gave her an uneven smile. “Possibly. It depends on the data.” A five-o’clock shadow cast a faint darkening across his cheeks. He was looking at her with his rock-in-a-clear-mountain-stream hazel eyes and projecting his usual aura of competency.

“I stand corrected by my own protégé,” Nora said. “Everything will depend on the data. That’s very true.”

“In order to be your protégé, wouldn’t you have to be older than me? And wouldn’t I have to be interested in becoming a genealogist?”

“Ah, protégé of mine. There’s much you don’t know.”

“There’s much you don’t know.”

“About Navy SEAL-type stuff?” The phrase had become an inside joke between them.

His smile widened. “About the definition of protégé.”

“Shh! Here she comes.”

Sue placed two tall glasses on the coffee table for them, then took a seat in one of the chairs opposite. “What was it you said when I answered the door, about why you’re looking for information on Deborah and Sherry?”

“We’re researching the genealogy of one of their relatives,” Nora answered.

“We’ve hit a dead end,” John added.

“Which relative are you researching?” Sue asked.

“Sherry Thompson’s son,” John answered.

“Mmm.” Sue nodded. Her gaze appeared to focus on a point beyond her living room window. Though if Nora had to guess, she’d say Sue was actually focusing on a point several decades before. “Deborah and I were around the same age, so we naturally gravitated toward each other.”

If Deborah was around the same age as Sue, then Deborah was also the right age to be Sherry’s mother and John’s grandmother. “Do you have a best guess as to how old Deborah would be now?” Nora asked.

“Seventy-seven, maybe? I like to think we would have become close if our schedules had been more alike. Deborah was single and worked long hours. I was married and a full-time mom. My husband, Adam, and I have three kids. They were in high school during the years when Deborah lived on the street.”

“I see,” Nora said. Her heart thumped eagerly. She and John had been working hard to uncover information on Deborah and Sherry without a shred of success. Concern that her best efforts at guiding him might not be enough had been keeping her up at night lately because she wanted, badly, to provide him with the information he sought.

“Deborah and I would visit whenever we saw each other out in the yard,” Sue continued. “She came over a few times for dinner parties Adam and I hosted. She was a nice person. A generous person. I remember that she used to run a garage sale at her church every year to raise funds for church programs.”

“Which church was that?”

“Bethel. It closed down long ago.”

Which explained why their investigation into local churches hadn’t paid off.

“Deborah was successful,” Sue said. “She had a wonderful career going.”

“What kind of work did she do?” John asked.

“She worked in banking. She always wore suits.” Sue chuckled fondly. “In those days, professional women like Deborah wore power suits and had, you know, big hair and”—she gestured expressively—“big shoulder pads.”

“Do you know which bank she worked for?” Nora asked. She took a drink of water to be polite, even though she was technically too riveted by Sue’s revelations to be thirsty.

“She worked for Myer Bank. It’s gone now, too. So many things have changed.”

“Do you know why she sold the house down the street?” John asked.

Nora peeked at him proudly. He was actually beating her to some of the questions. The way a protégé might.

“Deborah moved because she was offered a promotion in Elma. We sent each other Christmas cards for a few years after she left, but then I’m afraid we lost touch.”

“Would you happen to have her Elma address?” Nora asked.

Sue paused, thinking. “I might. In my old address book. I’ll go and check.”

Sue made her way to the office across the hall. Nora had a direct line of sight into the small room. She watched Sue bend and open a desk drawer.

Her intuition tingled the way it did whenever she was on to something with one of her searches. Finding a birth mother brought with it a different set of challenges than did tracing a person’s ancestry. But the two pursuits also had plenty in common. In both cases, you followed one piece of information to the next to the next. And along the way, you typically needed fortune to smile on you a time or two.

Sue was carefully copying something onto a piece of paper.

Nora reached over and squeezed John’s forearm with exultation.

He froze, and instantly regret flooded Nora. What had she just done? The corded power of his wrist and forearm brought back sensory details from the day he’d carried her through the faux office building. The feel of him . . . of touching him . . .

It wasn’t like she’d taken hold of his hand. Even so, this was way too intimate. Too dizzying. A mistake.

Awkwardly, she patted his arm twice in a motherly way, then returned her hand to her lap. She didn’t dare look at his face. “I think Sue has the address,” she whispered.

“Maybe,” he said. Was she imagining the strain in his voice? “Possibly. It will depend on the data.”

Sue handed Nora the sheet of paper before returning to her chair. “I’m surprised that I did still have Deborah’s address in Elma. No wonder Adam calls me a pack rat.”

“Thank you.” Nora trained her attention relentlessly on Sue while willing away the blush that threatened. She’d just squeezed John’s arm, something she had absolutely no right to do. “Do you know where Deborah was from originally?”

“Oregon. Let me think for a minute.” The older woman tilted her face toward the ceiling. “The name of the town will come to me.”

Nora sure hoped so. Oregon was a big place.

She was excruciatingly aware of John’s big body sitting beside her motionless, his weight dipping down the sofa cushions.

Sue snapped her fingers. “Blakeville. She was from a town called Blakeville . . . I think.”

“This is so helpful. I can’t tell you how much we appreciate your time.” Nora pulled a pen from her purse and wrote Blakeville, Oregon on the back of the paper containing Deborah’s Elma address. “Do you think you might have a picture of Deborah somewhere?”

“No, I’m afraid I don’t. I didn’t take as many pictures back then, before cell phone cameras.”

“What did she look like?” Nora asked, curious.

“She was nice-looking. Very much so. Dark blond hair, down to about here.” She indicated her shoulders. “Average height and build.”

“What about Sherry?” John asked. “Do you remember her at all?”

Sue peered at John for a few moments, clearly trying to dredge through her memory. “Vaguely.”

Based on the fact that Sherry had been just twenty-two at the time of John’s birth, it was possible that she’d been away at college the first few years that Deborah had lived at the house.

“She kept to herself.” Sue shook her head. “I can’t remember now if we ever spoke or not. She was pretty, I do remember that. She had long, dark hair.”

“Was Sherry Deborah’s daughter?” John asked.

Sue’s eyes widened at the suggestion. “No, no. Certainly not. Deborah had no children.”

“Yet again, the computer searches I’m running are yielding nothing,” Nora said.

John could only see the upper half of her face over her laptop’s screen.

She growled. “Arrgh. So frustrating.”

Had the librarian just growled? He would have laughed, except he didn’t think Nora would appreciate him laughing in the face of her irritation.

They’d driven straight from Sue’s house on Regent Street to the nearest coffee shop, and John had carried her big bag inside for her. While she’d gone to work on her computer, he’d ordered a tea for her, a water without ice for himself, and two plates of what the girl behind the counter had told him was their specialty: cinnamon apple cake with cream cheese frosting.

He moved the last of the items from the tray to their table. “I’m starting to think you don’t know how to run computer searches.”

“That’s exactly what I’m afraid you’ll think! You’ll have to trust me when I say that, despite the evidence to the contrary over the last few weeks, I’m excellent at running computer searches. A search is only as good as the records in the system. If there are no matching records, then the search yields nothing.”

“Thanks for explaining that, Nora. When you have a moment maybe you can explain why two plus two equals four.”

“Oh, John,” she murmured apologetically.

He leaned back in his chair and smiled across the table at her. “Do the people around you need for you to explain every little thing to them? Or do you just enjoy explaining things?”

“To be honest, it’s probably more that I enjoy explaining things. Sorry for talking to you like you’re a first grader.”

“A sixth grader, maybe.”

“It’s only that I want you to think I’m adding something to this process so you won’t fire me.”

He stilled in the middle of sectioning off a bite of cake. “You are adding something. There’s no way I’m going to fire you.”

Her shoulders relaxed.

“We wouldn’t have found out anything that we have so far if not for you,” he said.

“My inability to generate new information these past few weeks has been hard for me to accept. I’m a high achiever.”

Yeah, he’d noticed. He’d also noticed that her brown eyes were the exact color of gingerbread. That she always fidgeted with her teacup until the handle was positioned exactly to the side at a right angle. That she clicked her key fob twice to lock her car as if the first time hadn’t already successfully locked it. That she loved ice cream. “I feel like I’m a low achiever as your employer,” he said.

She blinked at him. “How so?”

“I’m not paying you enough.”

“How about you let me work for free? Please? After all, I’ve hardly helped your search along so far.” She slanted her head hopefully. “What do you think?”

“No way. Send me another bill. I can’t imagine why you’d want to continue working on this without getting paid.”

“Because I’m fascin—really interested in your . . . case, of course.”

“Send me another bill, Nora.” He took a bite of cake.

Turning her focus to her computer, she scrunched her nose and thumped her fist on her keyboard lightly, as if scolding it. “I ran searches for Deborah and Sherry in both Elma and Blakeville. It looks like Blakeville only has a population of two thousand, so there’s no telling how much information they’ve made available online. Admittedly, hoping for a hit there might have been a bit of a stretch.”

Admittedly. It amused him, the way she talked.

“Elma is slightly bigger, so I was hopeful. Alas.” Who said alas these days? “No trace of Deborah or Sherry there, either.”

He nudged her plate toward her. “Eat cake.”

“You bought me cake?”

“You’re just now noticing?”

“Yes.”

“I bought you cake and tea.”

“Thank you.”

“Sure.”

He watched her admire the dessert, then take a few bites. She ate in a ladylike manner, spine straight, one hand and her napkin politely in her lap. A strand of her hair had fallen out of her bun. It rested against the side of her neck, curling a little. Red hair against that pale skin—

He looked away. Drank water.

When she’d grabbed his arm back at Sue’s house, the contact had felt like lightning. Ridiculously powerful. He’d drawn in a breath without meaning to and braced against it.

On the spur of the moment, Nora had squeezed his wrist. That’s all. It had been harmless.

Her action, anyway, had been harmless.

It was his reaction that had him concerned. Even now, he had no idea why he’d overreacted to such a small, innocent thing.

Nora was the sort of woman who’d feel right at home as a Jeopardy! contestant. He was the sort of man who’d feel right at home rappelling from a helicopter onto the deck of a ship in the dead of night. They were nothing alike. He’d have a hard time explaining the reason for their friendship to anyone who asked. He’d have an even harder time explaining why her hand on his arm had messed with his head the way it had.

“Why do you think Sherry would have been living with Deborah if they’re not mother and daughter?” Nora asked.

“I don’t know. It seems strange that a twenty-two-year-old woman would have been living with a relative in her mid-forties.”

Nora sipped her tea. “If Sherry was a teacher at the age of twenty-two, then she must have been a first-year teacher. Or maybe even a student teacher. I guess it’s plausible to think that she lived with a relative right out of college, while she was still getting her feet under her as an adult.”

No one could have paid him to live with a relative after he’d graduated college, but that was him.

“There’s another possibility that occurs to me,” she said.

“I’m listening.”

“Back in the day, unmarried women were occasionally sent away when it was discovered that they were pregnant. Some families were so ashamed that they wanted to cover the whole thing up.”

His gut tightened. He didn’t want to think his conception had been so unwanted that Sherry’s family would have taken that step. “If a woman had a family like that, wouldn’t they have pressured her to abort the baby?”

“A lot of these families were religious. So it was a catch-22. The families were strongly against abortion. But their daughter’s pregnancy out of wedlock wasn’t acceptable, either. So the pregnant woman would leave her hometown and stay, sometimes several states away, at an outreach for expectant mothers or with a relative. Have her baby. Give the child up for adoption. Then return home.”

“And pretend that nothing had changed?”

“Oftentimes, yes.”

“That’s crazy.”

“The case studies have shown that many of the birth mothers had a hard time. They were expected to forget about the baby they’d put up for adoption, but of course, they couldn’t forget. Even if everyone around them never mentioned it again, something major had happened to them. Stuffing it down and ignoring it didn’t make it go away.”

She wasn’t talking about him, but her words hit him in the chest anyway. Stuffing it down and ignoring it didn’t make it go away. Stuffing it down and ignoring it pretty well summed up how he’d been getting through the days since his diagnosis. If he really thought about his condition long enough, it grew so big and black that he’d begin to feel like he couldn’t get enough air into his lungs.

“Sherry might have grown up far from here,” Nora said, “and stayed in Shelton for the months leading up to your birth. Then returned home.”

“And who was Deborah to her? An aunt?”

Nora shrugged.

He was getting tired of waiting for the data. He was ready to start speculating. “Since they have the same last name, Deborah might have been Sherry’s father’s . . . sister?”

“It’s possible,” Nora allowed. “With the age spread between them it seems like too much of a leap to think they could have been sisters.”

“A big leap,” he agreed. “What’s our next play?”

“Blakeville. It’s our most likely source of new information. If Sue was right and Deborah really is from there, that is.” She took another thoughtful sip of tea. “I’ll call whatever kind of city office I can find in Blakeville tomorrow. I’d like to know whether they have a collection of city directories and, if they do, if they’ve been digitized.”

“What kind of information would we be able to get from a city directory?”

“The names, addresses, and occupations of every resident of the town. If we can find Deborah’s family in a city directory, then we might be able to begin to assemble a family tree. And a family tree would be enormously helpful.”

“How likely is it that Blakeville has city directories?”

“Seventy thirty? Many towns had them. Up until about fifty years ago, anyway.” She set her cup back on the table, carefully adjusting the handle so that it lined up directly to her right.

“The woman I spoke with in Blakeville told me that they do have city directories, but they aren’t digitized. Their town library closed, so now they store the books inside their courthouse,” Nora informed John the next day over the phone.

She was making a work-related phone call to relay information! However, even before she’d started dialing John’s number, her breath had gone a little shallow with anticipation. Hearing his deep, resonant voice on the other end of the line was causing her blood to rush with the swoony, heady joy of her crush on him . . . which hadn’t abated in the least. No, it had only grown more stubbornly insistent.

“None of Blakeville’s records are available online?” he asked.

“Not only are they not available online, they’re located in what I’m very much afraid might be the bowels of Blakeville’s courthouse.”

He laughed. “The bowels?”

“Indeed.”

“So let’s call back and ask someone to go into the bowels of the courthouse and find the city directories for us.”

“I already did ask that, and the lady who answered my call said that the same budget cut that cost them their library also cost them their librarians. Blakeville’s small. The courthouse staff is miniscule. The employees were spending so much of their time digging around in the basement trying to answer people’s requests for information that her boss finally put a stop to it. All the documents in storage are available to the public, and anyone who wants to search for information is welcome. But if we want to go that route, we’ll have to help ourselves.”

A long pause. “There’s no one there I can strong-arm into doing some research for us?”

“You can try,” she said doubtfully.

“Will you text me the number of the lady you spoke with?”

“Sure.”

“Thanks. I’ll call you right back.”

They hung up and Nora watched the clock on her office computer screen tick off the passing of two minutes.

Her phone rang. “We need to drive to Blakeville,” John said.

“No success at strong-arming?”

“That woman was about as flexible as a rock. She kept insisting in that sweet way of hers that rules are rules.”

“We could try another line of inquiry instead.” Nora was working hard to remain impartial toward the possibility of a trip to Oregon in order to compensate for the impartial part of her that wanted, very much, to hang out with John all the way to Blakeville and back. That much time in his presence would be the decadent equivalent of a visit to the world’s best spa. “What do you think?” she asked. “Do you have any ideas?”

“Elma?”

“I called Elma to make sure their records are all online. They are. I can’t find any evidence of Deborah or Sherry in Elma.”

“Then we go to Blakeville.”

Quiet settled between them. She bit the side of her lip.

“It’ll take us about five hours to drive there,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Can you leave tomorrow?”

She hadn’t expected him to be in a hurry. Maybe the search for his birth mother had sunk its hooks more deeply into him than she’d understood. “Are you free? Can . . . you leave tomorrow?”

“I’ll have to move some things around at work, but yes. My staff can cover for me. Can you go tomorrow?”

It occurred to her that admitting that she could go, that she could easily reschedule her work, tomorrow night’s planned date with Northamptonshire, and quality time in front of the mirror trying to master the art of eyeliner, might make her seem pitiful. “Yes. My staff can cover for me, too.”

“If we leave at nine in the morning and make one stop for lunch, we’ll get to Blakeville in the afternoon. That’ll give us a few hours before the courthouse closes.”

“Right.”

“In case that’s not enough time, I’ll find us a hotel and book two rooms. So pack for two days. Okay?”

Two whole days with him. Two. Whole. Days. “Mm-hmm,” she murmured weakly.

John was Allie’s boyfriend. Allie was John’s girlfriend.

Nora had once suffered a huge amount of agony when The Dreaded Harrison had broken up with her because of Rory. There was absolutely no way that she’d allow herself to become a Rory. Please! As if John would ever give you a chance to be a Rory.

Nora would go to her grave respecting John’s relationship with Allie. Respecting herself. Upholding her half of a very platonic interaction with John.

There was no reason to feel badly because she’d gotten exactly what she’d secretly hoped for.

“I’ll pick you up in the morning. . . . Oh, wait,” he said under his breath.

“What?”

A few seconds of humming silence. “My Suburban’s a company car, and the guys will need it over the next few days. I also have a 1968 Plymouth Road Runner Hemi—”

“Hmm?”

“—but we don’t want to take that on such a long trip.”

“I can drive,” she automatically offered.

“You don’t mind?”

Had she really just volunteered to chauffeur John Lawson, the man of Uncommon Courage fame, into the heart of Oregon? Her? Even amongst her family members, she was almost never nominated to drive. “No,” she said. “I don’t mind.”

John’s conscience pricked him painfully as he set his phone onto his desk at work. Meeting Nora for an hour here or there was one thing. But driving with her all the way to Oregon?

So? So what if they drove to Oregon?

Male/female coworkers traveled for business together all the time. This was no different. He talked to Nora about Allie. He knew for a fact that she supported his relationship with Allie.

Nora was his friend!

His friend who’d frozen him yesterday with a single touch.

It’s okay. He’d had a day to think about yesterday. He’d concluded that moments of attraction to people you weren’t dating or married to happened. It was how you responded that mattered. If you were an ethical person, you guarded yourself. You made the right choices. You refused to act on the attraction.

He didn’t expect to have to deal with attraction to Nora on the trip to Blakeville. But if he did, he had faith in his ability to handle it.

These second guesses of his were wasting his time and energy. Blakeville was the best lead they had, so they’d travel there together. It was as simple as that.

She was just his coworker. She was just his friend.

Text message from Willow to Nora and Britt:

Willow

Grandma’s on board with a birthday dinner party the evening of July 3rd. Here’s your mission, should you choose to accept it. (And you better.) Britt and Valentina will oversee the caterer. Nora will handle invitations and RSVPs. I will handle the renting of party tables, chairs, dishes, linens. Together, we’ll visit the florist to pick out flower arrangements and together we’ll decide on a gift.

Britt

Aye aye, captain!

Willow

Nora?

Britt

Nikki came by the chocolate shop this afternoon and told me that Nora’s preparing for a road trip to Oregon tomorrow with the Navy SEAL. I’m guessing Nora’s away from her phone, planning.

Willow

What Navy SEAL?!

Britt

One named John Lawson who once was awarded a little thing called the Medal of Honor.

Willow

WHAT!!!

Britt

She’s helping him investigate his ancestry.

Willow

If two sisters exclude the third sister from juicy information, that’s a serious infraction of the sisterly code. I might have to petition the court to grant me two new sisters.

Britt

The information wasn’t juicy enough to be mentioned to you for one simple reason. John has a girlfriend.

Facebook message from Duncan to Nora:

I see no green circle by your name, Miss Lawrence. You’re not online and I have to confess, it’s very depressing to come to Facebook in search of you and find you absent. Insomnia is bad enough. But insomnia without you?

Unacceptable.

I’m bereft, Librarian Extraordinaire.