“Sheriff Murphy fingerprinted my car. It looks like I haven’t washed it since I bought it. Dust everywhere. But there were so many prints; whole palm prints in some places. If I hadn’t been so”—she shrugged while she searched for the right word. Confused? Angry? Terrified? Nauseous and resisting the urge to cry?—“upset, it might have been more interesting. But all I kept thinking was, Is that dusty stuff going to scratch up the paint on my car?” Her laugh was small but it was all she could muster at the moment. “After that, he called Lonny and had him tow it back to his shop.”
“Lonny.” Elizabeth McCarren didn’t seem to know the name.
She had, however, set Sophie at ease the moment she and Drew arrived at the sprawling two-story colonial home. The place screamed lavish comfort and livability in an understated style—plenty-o-money but not bragging described it best, Sophie decided.
Cordial, courteous, and engaging—and not nearly as assertive or intimidating as she’d been made out to be—Mrs. McCarren was as graceful and put together as she’d appeared the morning of Arthur Cubeck’s funeral.
Plus, she was an artful conversationalist . . . or interrogator—both applied. The cross-examine went exactly as Ava had predicted and was just as painless; and she’d diverted the dinner dialogue from any disturbing topics until after dessert and coffee were served in the airy living room with its high ceiling, huge stone fireplace, and the expanse of windows showing dusk settling on the low, rolling countryside.
“Lonny’s Service and Tire?” Sophie said, as if feeding her clues. “In town? On the corner of Poplar and Main?”
“Yes, of course, I know Lonny’s. I simply assumed the sheriff would send a guest to our town to a more, well, more modern, up-to-date facility for this sort of thing.”
“He probably would have,” Sophie said, recalling Mrs. McCarren’s influence in town. “He’s been very kind and helpful—the sheriff. But I asked him to call Lonny. His place is close to Jesse’s and I’d actually stopped to get gas there yesterday morning.”
“But he’s such an ornery old curmudgeon. He simply refuses to deal with that pile of used tires behind his shop.”
Sophie smiled; she didn’t care about his tires. “I liked him. He’s . . . wise. And I trust him,” she added—a monumental matter at the moment.
Sophie was a blooming paranoid in a garden of unfamiliar foliage. She was taking another look at everyone she’d come in contact with since she arrived in Clearfield—remembering and reassessing everyone in her head. At one point, she’d even considered canceling her dinner plans with Drew and his family, fearing she’d be one of those idiotic women in the horror films who walk straight into a basement full of ghouls and maniacs.
Frankly, it seemed to Sophie that simply knowing that such idiocy existed was her protection against it . . . plus, she’d wanted very much to meet Drew’s parents.
“Yes, of course. And clearly his tires are as good as anyone’s,” Mrs. McCarren said, a jovial jab at the unsightly pile behind Lonny’s station. She scored three half-smiles. “It does concern me, however, that the incident is getting so little attention, as if it was no more than some random event.”
“Oh, Mother.” Ava shook her head, clearly weary of her mother’s meddling.
“I’m serious. Taken with the Palmeroy murder, it seems to me to be extremely calculated and purposeful . . . a direct attack against Sophie. I don’t know why the sheriff hasn’t put her in protective custody or something.”
“Don’t start jumping to conclusions, Mother. Please. Especially ones so frightening,” Ava said with a quick glance at Sophie. “There’s a big difference between killing someone and an act of vandalism. Not to mention what a huge step down it is. Murder then tire slashing.” She used her hands to show the weight of the crimes. “Murder. Tire slashing. It doesn’t make sense. Besides, who’d want to hurt Sophie? What motive would they have to target her? It’s a coincidence, not something to scare the wits out of Sophie with. For once, I think Freddy’s attention is right where it ought to be—on Cliff Palmeroy’s murder.”
“I don’t believe in coincidence. I believe things happen for a reason.” Elizabeth paused, then added, “And please don’t call the sheriff Freddy. He doesn’t like it.”
“Then he shouldn’t act like a Freddy. Do you know it’s been twenty-four hours since Drew and Sophie found the body and he hasn’t got even one good suspect yet?”
“Without a witness it takes some time. Isn’t that true, dear?” Elizabeth looked to Drew for confirmation—and it had the same effect as shaking him awake.
“Of course.” He tipped his head to one side, still deep in thought. “But I’m with you this time. This is more than a cosmic accident—Sophie’s tires, her pictures in Cliff’s truck. I don’t like it.” Sophie was glad to hear him say it. She didn’t like it, either. “And I don’t like that the sheriff hasn’t whittled down a short list of suspects yet. Cliff was a dick. He made an enemy every time he left his house. The sheriff should be doing a top-ten countdown by now, but he says he’s still looking at the evidence and keeping an open mind.”
“Open like a wind tunnel. Who elected that guy?” Ava looked pointedly at her parent. “Mother?”
“He’s a good, fair, honest man.” Elizabeth would always support her candidate. “He’ll get to the bottom of this.”
“Well, my bet’s on the enemies Cliff made at home.” Ava set aside her barely touched dessert and picked up her coffee. “Carla could have easily slit his throat . . . if she took him by surprise. He never would have imagined it—never would have seen it coming. But I don’t think she’d cut Sophie’s tires. What would be the point? And I don’t think she’d have the strength anyway.”
“Nonsense. A woman is quite capable of deflating a tire—simply unscrew the cap on the valve and press on the widgie-doodle in the middle and the air leaks right out. Easy.”
“Sophie’s tires were cut, Mother,” Drew said.
“Oh. Yes, of course. Well, I still think a woman could manage it, even one as small as Carla. Not Carla, naturally, she doesn’t have the disposition for it,” she said carefully. “But a woman of her stature. The tire walls, near the hubcaps, aren’t nearly as thick as the tread. With a good sharp knife and some elbow grease, I feel certain a woman could do it.”
A full five seconds passed as everyone in the room sat staring at her curiously.
“Am I wrong?” She seemed willing to debate it, but Sophie didn’t know her well enough to play the devil’s advocate, and the others apparently knew her too well to try it.
“Fine. Whatever.” Ava dismissed her mother’s vote for feminism. “But my money is still on the family—one alone or all together.”
“Are you going to borrow money for that wager? Because I hear you’re broke again, baby girl.” A tall, very thin and blond young man entered the room; loose-limbed and laid-back as he bent to kiss Elizabeth on the cheek and take a gentle swipe at Ava’s hair, flipping it up and across her face before it settled back in place. Great hair, Sophie noted once again. Like everyone else, she watched him pose at the opposite end of the couch from Drew.
His siblings could not look more unrelated, and not in just their physical features and builds. He was wearing dusty, bagged-out jeans and old flip-flops with an open navy blue short-sleeved shirt over a gray T-shirt. If this was Billy McCarren, he was indeed an orange among apples—not as crisp or smooth or as polished as the others. But he did have the family poise and self-confidence in a fashion all his own. The apples didn’t overwhelm him; he was unquestionably comfortable in his bowl.
“Not to mention,” he continued. “If you don’t want to be sued for slander and defamation, you shouldn’t make those kinds of bets with anyone but family.” His pale blue gaze drifted toward Sophie. “No offense.” She shook her head; he was right. “You’re her, the girl?”
“I guess so.” Being called a girl by a man so very near her own age didn’t bother her nearly as much as the way he said it—as if she wasn’t what he’d pictured the girl involved in a peculiar bequest, a murder, and a tire slashing to look like; as if she didn’t live up to her hype.
“Sophie Shepard,” said Drew. “My brother, Billy.”
“Hi.”
“Pleasure,” he said, managing the effort to make it seem so. “I have offended you. Sorry. But ‘that girl with the red hair’ is the hottest topic in town these days . . . I was just checking.” He smiled to smooth out any feathers he may have ruffled. “No one mentioned that you were hotter than the gossip or I wouldn’t have had to ask.”
She was more uncomfortable than pleased by the statement. The way he was able to turn his charm off and on like hot and cold water from one observation to the next irked her. Sophie’s smile was small as she took furtive glances at the others, who looked to be holding a collective breath.
Drew grimaced a smile that begged forbearance. And Ava laughed. “See, Mother? A compliment. Those etiquette classes are paying off after all.”
Mrs. McCarren smiled at her guest. “Sophie, the real compliment here lies in the fact that he showed up to meet you at all. I didn’t even have to threaten his inheritance.”
“Ah, yes. Here we go,” Billy drawled. “And as you might have guessed, Sophie, this Blast Billy game is one of the many reasons why I come around so seldom. Amusing as it is to us all.” And yet there would be no need for games if you had better manners, she thought. Then, as if to put his family in an equally awkward and uneasy position with their visitor, he boldly said, “But speaking of inheritances: What do you think yours is all about? Any idea what the old man was up to with that?”
“Billy.” Drew’s voice cautioned him.
“I have no idea,” she said simply, refusing to allow her pleasant evening to turn tense—or to give him any satisfaction. “But Hollis and I should have the results of the paternity test back sometime tomorrow. I . . . as surprised as I am about it, I find myself hoping he is my brother. I like him very much. But deep down, I don’t think he is. I wish, but I don’t think so.” A small unhappy bob of her head. “I guess we’ll know for sure tomorrow.”
“I’m sorry, dear,” said Mrs. McCarren with great sympathy. “I’m prying, I know, but it seems very peculiar to me that Arthur left you no explanation for his actions, no letter. . . . It’s very cryptic and illogical, and very unlike him. Might he have sent a letter to someone else? Left one somewhere? A safe-deposit box, perhaps?”
Sophie shook her head to mean “maybe” and “I don’t know” at once, and then spoke the obvious. “Hollis and Mr. Metzer know more about him than I do, and they’re just as confused.”
“And it doesn’t bother you to know that you might be someone’s unwanted love child?”
“Billy.” Drew scowled at him.
She shrugged. She’d had an answer to this question most of her life. “No. I actually prefer to think I was created from love—all children, planned or not, should at least have their roots in love. And my parents always made sure I knew I was their child and they never let me feel unwanted. So, no. That part doesn’t bother me.”
“What part does?”
“Knock it off.” There was a feral growl in Drew’s warning.
It was good to know he had her back, but she could handle Billy. She was flint, Sophie reminded herself. Flint. And besides, if she couldn’t confront whoever was planting evidence and doing these hateful things against her—well, Billy McCarren was good practice.
“The destruction of old Mr. Cubeck’s good reputation bothers me. Your community thought highly of him. I’d hate for that to change. Hollis says he wouldn’t mind having a half sister, but I’m sure finding out that his father knowingly gave his own child away would disturb him. And that would only be speculation anyway, because without knowing who my birth mother was, we’ll never know if he knew about me early enough to stop her from giving me up. So I’m worried about him—Hollis. BelleEllen bothers me—I don’t want it. And, of course, if it turns out that Mr. Cubeck isn’t my father, that opens a whole different box of bees.
“Like why he left BelleEllen to you if he wasn’t your father.”
She nodded. “Yeah, like that.”
He squinted at her. “I’m betting he’s not.”
“Why?—”
“There’s betting?” his mother broke in, clearly disapproving.
“Absolutely,” said Billy. “And don’t bother looking surprised, Mother. You know the best odds are out at your club. All those old guys chewing on their cigars, riding around in their golf carts, betting on everything from their game that day to who’ll win Survivor.” Billy grinned. “I suspect all you ladies are equally as enterprising, but you’d never admit it and your friends are too afraid of you to even whisper about it—”
“Knock it off, Billy.” Drew turned his attention to his mother, exasperated. “One night without his mouth was asking too much? Sophie could have come to town and left again without ever knowing he existed.”
“Hey. You’re not afraid she’s going to like me better, are you?” Billy laughed and winked at Sophie. “Cuz I don’t think that’s gonna be a problem, man. She can’t stand me.”
“Do you blame her? Isn’t that what you wanted?” Drew turned to him, more baffled than angry. “Why do you do this? You’re better than this, Billy. You’re a great guy. You’re smart. You’re talented. Why do you choose to be like this?”
“Whoa!” Billy stretched out his arms in exaggerated dizziness. “Déjà vu. I’m out there, man. Seriously. I feel like I’ve had this same conversation with one family doctor or another for the last ten years.” He sobered abruptly. Anger smoldered in his eyes. “Doctors who think they know all about me—how I think, what I feel, who I am. You’re unhappy. You’re depressed. You’re weird. Here, take this fist full of drugs. Do it for yourself, not because we think you’re nuts and the neighbors are complaining. Why do I choose to be like this?” He pointed to himself with both hands. “Because this is who I am. This is it, man. This is me.” All of a sudden he remembered Sophie. “Wanna know what bothers me, sweetheart?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Normals and nuts. Who’s to say which is which, you know? Maybe I’m the normal one and they’re the nuts.” Pretending to be shocked and appalled, he got to his feet. “Did I say that out loud? Did they hear me? Are they reaching for their nets and straightjackets? I’d better jet. I feel a new label coming on. Not just bipolar, but Bipolar with Paranoid Delusions and Chronic Bad Manners. What’s that in Latin, brother?”
“Billy, don’t go,” Ava said, disappointed and pleading. “Stay. Stay and . . . be nice.”
Looking at his sister seemed to trigger an inner valve that caused his anger and aggression to physically drain from his posture. His connection to her was clear—and strong. He gave her a half-smile and glanced at his mother before turning back to Sophie looking almost ashamed.
“I beg your pardon, Ms. Shepard. I’ve upset and offended you and I apologize. My family and I have diverse opinions—many of them—none of which have anything to do with you. I have behaved badly. I’d like . . . I hope if we meet again I can redeem myself. Good luck with,” he flipped his hand vaguely, “you know, everything.” He stalled a moment then blurted. “Good night.”
“Billy.” Ava reached out a hand to stop him and he gave it an affectionate squeeze as he walked past her.
“William?” His mother’s voice cracked when he left the room without a blink to mollify her. She rose to follow him, but Drew stopped her with a simple and clearly well established, “I’ll go.”
With both men out of the room, but not far away as the low peace-making voices in the foyer indicated, Elizabeth, Ava, and Sophie looked from one to the other in silence. They all spoke at once.
“Billy isn’t always . . .”
“My son suffers from a . . .”
“I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet . . .”
When they all stopped short, the McCarrens were happy to step back and let Sophie finish.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet the other Dr. McCarren tonight. I’ve heard so many good things about him.”
“Yes. Thank you, dear. He was sorry to have to miss meeting you, as well, but doctors don’t always get to pick and choose their work hours.”
“Good thing, too, or they’d never be around when the rest of us need them,” she said, too cheery and upbeat . . . too kindergarten-teacher. “Though I’m sure it’s very hard on them and their families—a lot of sacrificing on both sides.”
“Oh, yes. It can be quite a challenge sometimes. Especially when there are young children at home. In fact, that was my only concern when Andrew indicated he wanted to become a doctor like his father—that he’d never have a normal home life. It was such a relief when he chose to go into cancer research. I thought it would be more of a nine-to-five job like a dermatologist or a proctologist; but, no, he was at it for twelve and sixteen hours a day for months at a time between the hospital and the lab. His social life was pathetic.” She gave a sad, but dignified shake of her head. “Nonexistent really. But I recall one woman in particular, considerably older, who had a thing for Andrew . . .”
With Mrs. McCarren chewing on a tasty bone for the moment, Sophie took the opportunity to check on her friend, Ava, who also took that instant to assess her—and after a second or two they grinned, knowing Billy’s behavior had changed nothing between them. So the uneasiness she might have felt when Drew returned to the room was minimal—and as his gaze caught and held hers, a swift easy flow of understanding and relief passed between them effortlessly.
“Oh, you’re back,” his mother said. “I assume all is well with your brother?” He nodded, keeping his eyes on Sophie. “I was telling Sophie about that strange woman you worked with . . . Jade or . . . Jane? Julie?”
Frowning now, he turned to her. “Jasmine?”
“Yes! And when baking him cookies and knitting him scarves didn’t produce the reaction she’d hoped for, she started following him around New York.”
“No. I told you. It was coincidence. And she wasn’t strange. I was always glad of her company when she showed up. She was a nice, lonely woman. A friend.”
“Who appears out of nowhere while you’re having dinner with your mother? Asks any number of personal questions about you? Fawns like a schoolgirl. She had the most grating giggle.”
“Mother.”
She sent Sophie the mother-knows look. “She was stalking him. Can you imagine it?”
“No. But lonely people can do odd things sometimes. It’s a sad state to be in. Happens to all of us now and again.” She could see that the subject was annoying Drew. “I didn’t know you did research. You didn’t say.”
“Because I don’t anymore. Haven’t for a while.” And because her “oh” was soft and left hanging in the air, he added, “It wasn’t for me. I did my residency at Langone—NYU Medical Center—in Internal Medicine and it seemed, in light of my interest in cancer, that my next logical step was to accept a hematology/oncology fellowship to the cancer institute there, with an eye toward being a research physician.” He shook his head slightly and his tone warmed to the subject. “The work was phenomenal, brilliant—the true scientists, the biochemists, the molecular biologists—their thoughts and ideas were so outside the box. It was like they had an entire universe of possibilities inside their heads. Even the failures, one after another, were considered minor successes because they eliminated each new hope-filled path as an option, steering the research in an alternate direction, down another hope-filled path. But. . . .” He shrugged.
“It wasn’t for you?”
He smiled. “No. It wasn’t. For a couple of reasons.” His pause was more comic than dramatic. “Is it wimpy for a man to admit he was homesick?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I was. Horribly. I’d been up there almost seven years by then. I missed the quiet. Central Park had trees and grass and birds, but there were people everywhere and you could still hear the traffic and the sirens. Too many people; too much noise. The noise inside the utility closets at the hospital was subtle and muffled, but it was still noise. And not good noises like crickets at night and the wind in the trees and babbling brooks and—”
“I feel a yawn coming on,” Ava announced.
He made a face at her and then raised one shoulder. “Turns out I’m lousy at failure, too. I don’t like to lose.”
“What. You mean lose to cancer?” Sophie asked.
“Well no, not cancer itself. I know it can be a killer and it’ll take some of my patients no matter what I do. But I feel like I have a little more control of it by taking one patient at a time, doing everything possible to help him or her to survive—even if it’s recommending them for a clinical trial at Langone when all else fails. But if nothing works, if I’ve exhausted every avenue, then I want to help them die. In peace and without pain.” He sighed. “But during the cancer studies . . . we wouldn’t even start clinical trials until our hopes were so strong for each new therapy, we were sky high with confidence and dusting off places to put our Nobel prizes. And to lose, to fail . . . again?” He paused, humbled. “It takes a toll. On the patients, on the team. On me.”
And it wasn’t hard for Sophie to understand his reluctance to pay the fee, having been on that roller coaster ride herself not so long ago. It was tortuous.
“Of course it does, darling.” His mother soothed him. “The medical profession is costly to everyone connected with it. It can be detrimental—devastating—particularly on the dynamics of even the strongest family ties and personal relationships.
“Why, I remember one time, very early in our marriage, before I entirely realized what I’d gotten myself into by marrying a doctor—oh my, I was young, barely twenty-one.” She gave a soft wistful sigh, smiled and shook her head. “And I was foolish. His life was erratic the whole time we dated, but for some reason that I must attribute solely to my youth . . . and love-blindness, too, I suppose . . . I truly thought it would be different, more stable, and more normal once we were married.” She laughed and gradually sobered. “This one time, early on, Joseph took me out to dinner. I’d been moping and complaining that he’d been neglecting me for weeks, so he planned this delightful evening out for us. He got someone else to take his calls. A lovely, lovely surprise for me. And a complete disaster. Halfway through dessert this other doctor calls, very apologetic, but they were getting ready to do an emergency surgery on a patient of his with some sort of problem that included the heart valves—someone perfect for a special repair technique Joseph and a group of surgeons were working on at the time involving the restoration of the patient’s own heart valves as opposed to replacing them with pig or mechanical valves. Fascinating . . . but not to me at the time, naturally. Joseph didn’t even wait for the check. He simply gave the waitress too much money when we passed her on our way out and drove straight to the hospital. He gave me money for a cab and left me sitting in the doctors’ lounge in my lovely new cocktail dress.”
She closed her eyes, took a breath, and opened them again. “It’s been, what,” she looked at Drew to make a quick calculation, “over thirty years and it still sets me off. And that wasn’t the worst of it. While I sat there fuming, I developed the most ungodly headache. It felt like someone was trying to unscrew the top of my head. Understandable, right?”
Sophie nodded—as did Drew and Ava, who’d obviously heard the story before, as they looked bored.
“I became nauseous, wave after wave, and my stomach was cramping horribly. That’s when I decided I needed to calm myself down before I had a stroke. But the harder I tried, the sicker I got. I felt dizzy so I lay down on the floor—much better than falling to the floor, in my opinion, but quite a bit more noticeable than sitting in a chair and suffering in silence. Anyway, when I finally vomited, Grace Levol was with me—she later became my pediatrician; a fabulous woman. She and a nurse got me a wastebasket to be sick in, stayed with me, called Joseph. It wasn’t long before I wasn’t worried about dying anymore . . . I wanted to. I was so sick and so embarrassed and so angry—and do you know what Joseph’s response was from the operating room? He told his nurse to tell the other nurse to tell Grace to admit me to the medical floor, keep me hydrated with IV fluids, and he’d come as soon as he was finished. I cried. And that’s when I knew where I was on his list of priorities.”
She nodded her head emphatically and laughed. “It was some time, let me tell you, before I could reconcile myself to the fact that his career and his family were equally important to him . . . like he and my children are to me. I don’t love one more than another, but sometimes one will need more of my attention than the others. My husband’s work is crucial to so many people and we all make sacrifices—me, the children, and him—so that he can continue to save lives. I often felt like a single mother—”
“Okay.” Ava interrupted, animated and astute. “Short story long, I think Sophie gets it, Mother. It’s tough being a doctor’s wife. But Drew hasn’t even asked her to be one yet, so let’s try another subject . . . like Egypt.”
Her mother’s smile was closed lipped and crafty. “Let’s talk about jobs first.”
Drew chuckled and bent toward Sophie to whisper, “I think that’s our cue to move on. Are you ready?”
She gave a nod and sent Ava her sympathies. There were worse things than having to discuss the long-overdue necessity of finding a job with an overtaxed parent—but not too many.
“He’s a crapshoot,” Drew said of his brother, taking the winding country roads at a moderate speed back toward town. His tone was not wholly apologetic; more simply stating the facts. “We hardly ever agree on anything, but he’s the first person I’d call if I got in a pinch. The last one I’d try to borrow money from, though, piker.” He chuckled softly, fondly. “My mother and sisters like to say he has an artistic temperament because he’s been high-strung and moody for as long as we can remember. But my dad and I are fairly certain it’s a mood condition; we think he’s bipolar. We’ve strong-armed him into taking medication from time to time for the depression, but he flat out refuses mood stabilizers. He says they interfere with his creative process. And they might; who’d know better than him?” He glanced at her briefly. “I’ve never known him to be violent—to himself or to others—but he can be cruel with that mouth of his. I hope—”
“No. It was okay.” He didn’t need to make excuses for his brother. “I was angry at first but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle, and by the time I realized it wasn’t . . . well, it was over and he’d left the room.” And thinking it once again, she said it out loud. “He’s so unlike the rest of you—you, Ava, and your mother. Does he look more like your father?”
“Pam, Ava, and I look more like him than we do Mother. It’s been generally decided that Billy looks like my grandfather’s younger brother, Charles. Mother says they could have been twins when he was younger.”
“Uncle Chuckle.”
He laughed. “That’s the one. Ava called him that when she first started to talk and it suited him so well, it stuck. Some of the people in town called him Uncle Chuckle—to his face even. He loved it. He died in his sleep, at least a dozen years ago—he was ninety-eight.”
“Gramma York, my mom’s mother was ninety-six. Unfortunately, she didn’t know who anyone was for the last seven of them. That’s a horrible way to grow old—Alzheimer’s. Can you imagine how confusing and lonely it must be for them? Mom was so worried about getting it herself.” A pause for thought. “That would be one good thing to know about my birth parents—their medical histories. Oh, and my nationality, maybe. We always said it was Irish. You know, because of the hair? But it could just as easily have come from Scotland . . . any of the northern or western European countries actually. Do you know there are Polynesian redheads? They’ve even found Chinese mummies with red hair.”
He squinted to see her in the low light from the dash. “I think I’d throw out Chinese and Polynesian right off the bat.” She sent him a look that said smartass. “And what if you’re not Irish? That could really throw a wrench in your St. Patrick’s Day plans.”
“That’s true. . . .” She tried to sound worried.
“But if you’re German, you’d have Oktoberfest to look forward to every year. And there’s that maypole thing in Sweden—Midsummer’s Eve . . . or maybe Day, I forget.” He glanced at her. “At least you won’t be without an ethnic holiday of some sort.”
She laughed. “And I can always fall back on being just a plain old American and I’d have the Fourth of July.”
“And Mother’s, Father’s, and Grandparents’ Days.”
“Columbus Day.”
“Labor Day.”
“Presidents’ Day.”
“April fifteen.”
“April fifteen?”
“Tax Day.”
“Oh, right. How could I miss that one?” She laughed. “How about Black Friday? That one’s huge.”
“Don’t forget March Madness!”
And so the conversation went, light and amusing, until they pulled up in front of Jesse’s B&B and Drew turned off the engine.
“I’m impressed,” he said after a brief silence in which Sophie tried to decide how to make her exit—or if she wanted to.
“By what?”
“The last woman to comply with a command performance for my mother came away in tears. I had to give her a Xanax and call a friend to stay with her before I could leave. You took it like a trooper.”
She shook her head in disbelief. “You and your sister are awful. Your mother’s very nice. Billy’s something else, but your mother was nothing but kind and generous.” She chuckled. “Ava warned me that she’d give me the third degree but that’s understandable. A stranger in town; hanging out with her children—she’d be a negligent mother if she didn’t check me out.”
“Even if we’re adults who can make our own decisions about the people we spend time with?”
Barely two seconds went by before she answered. “Sure. Why not? Don’t we all do it, to one degree or another, to everyone we meet. Where are you from? What do you do?”
“Sure, but not: Do you attend church regularly? Why have you never been married—and in the same breath, Do you have any children? My personal favorite? Teachers don’t make much money, do they?”
“Was that a real question? I thought she was making a statement. I agreed with her.” She laughed but didn’t hesitate. “Teacher wages suck. Big time. Do you know that in Ohio, I’ll have to work ten to fifteen years before I make as much as a building inspector? Or a dental hygienist? A web designer or even a funeral director? I’ll never make as much as a nurse and yet teachers mold the minds of tomorrow. We teach children to use their minds to question and create, and isn’t that just as important as keeping their bodies alive?” She took a breath. “I do make more than a fireman, though, and I don’t have to run into burning buildings. And despite the fact that it sometimes feels like the exact same job, I do make more than a zookeeper. So there’s that. . . .” She tipped her head to one side and smiled. “And I love what I do, so there’s that, too— What?”
“Nothing.” He looked away but was still grinning. When he could look at her again, her scowl wasn’t hard to read. “I was enjoying you all righteous and worked up. I like discovering new things about you. You’re quite a bag of mixed tricks, Sophie Shepard.”
“Oh, yeah? Like what?” She knew it shouldn’t matter what he thought of her. But didn’t everyone wonder about the world’s general perception of them?
Not that he was becoming her world or anything . . . or even a part of it, really. All it took was: Oncologist, hospital, more than 400 miles from home to put him back into a proper perspective.
He adjusted his weight to face her more directly. “Like you appear to be most people’s dictionary definition of a kindergarten teacher: cheerful, upbeat, enthusiastic—”
“Don’t say perky.”
“Wouldn’t—perky implies a certain ditziness you don’t have. I’d say energetic, full of life. And very compassionate. A stranger, who doesn’t get the chance to unburden his heart before he dies, brings you to tears. You’re sympathetic to a son’s need to know and understand the extraordinary actions of a father he loved and look up to. I did notice that you were a little shaky when we found Cliff Palmeroy’s body, but if I hadn’t been trying so hard to impress you with my cool, calm, and collected doctorliness, I might have fallen apart altogether.”
“Oh, please. That’s a lie and a half and you know it.”
Smiling, he shook his head. “I was still mighty impressed. No hysterics or screaming and only that short cry afterward, in the face of that kind of trauma? Pretty amazing.”
“Ha. Trauma,” she said, scoffing, choosing not to remember. “Obviously you’ve never had to deal with a five-year-old who’s accidentally wet himself during his brain vacation.”
“Brain vacation?”
“Mm. Young kindergarten people are far too grown up for baby things like quiet time or the dreaded nap. But I think it’s important to give them a little downtime to unwind and relax a bit after lunchtime. I read online about calling it a brain vacation—we all just let our brains relax before we begin our lessons again. They can look at picture books or do puzzles or just lie there and think nice thoughts. At the beginning of the school year they often fall asleep—twenty-minute power naps. By the end of the year most read or color . . . or whisper to their friends until I catch them.” Her laugh was tender and affectionate. “You change, grow up a lot in kindergarten.”
“And you show them how.”
Her shrug was unpretentious. “It takes a village. . . .”
He drew in a deep breath and let it out slow. “Don’t move.”
She went statue, then barely wiggled her lips to ask, “Why?”
“I need to kiss you.” He moved his face up to hers. She felt his breath on her lips when he murmured, “You have two seconds to protest.”
Two seconds? That’s hardly enough time to even—his lips brushed hers—think.
Then there was nothing to think with as her mind teetered and started to reel; her stomach lurched in anticipation. He cupped her right ear to secure and support her head; she touched his cheek to make sure he was human, real, and not a dream.
It wasn’t a long kiss. It wasn’t a sloppy wet or an open-mouthed-and-down-the-throat kiss. It was the gentle press of lips; a slow, careful exploration of their shape and size and softness; a quick test of elasticity and give. It was a shock and a stir and then it stopped.
Her eyes came open to his, deep and dark with only the dim and distant glow from Jesse’s porch light.
“I wasn’t going to do that.” He swept her lips with his again. “I wanted to the second I saw you, but . . . you were supposed to be gone in twenty hours and I—”
“Twenty hours?” A distracting number to pull out of his pocket.
“Mm. At most. We talked at about four o’clock in the afternoon. Jesse’s checkout is eleven A.M. so I figured, at the latest, you’d be gone by noon the next day. Twenty hours.”
A lot of spur-of-the-moment math for someone with a kiss in mind, she calculated.
“But I didn’t leave.”
A slow wag of his head. “No. You didn’t.”
“And we kissed.”
“We sure did.”
“And it was nice.”
“It sure was.” Another pass. “Very.”
“And probably a big mistake.”
“Probably.”
“But that’s not going to stop us.”
She was aware of his chest rising and falling on a sigh. “I hope not.”
Sophie grinned at hearing her own wishes out loud and he kissed her again—hot and sure and with every indication of it becoming a new leisure pursuit.