Читать книгу Heart Of A Cowboy: Creed's Honor / Unforgiven - B.J. Daniels, B.J. Daniels - Страница 15

CHAPTER EIGHT

BRODY WAS DEFINITELY up to something, though damned if Conner could figure out what it was. He’d helped himself to a pair of Conner’s own jeans, Brody had, and one of his best shirts, too, and he’d shaved for the first time since his return to Lonesome Bend. If his hair hadn’t been longer than Conner’s, and way shaggier, they’d have been mirror images of each other.

And if all that wasn’t bothersome enough, Brody not only had the coffee on by the time Conner wandered into the kitchen, after making the run into town to check on Natty McCall’s pipes, he was cooking up some bacon and eggs at the old wood-burning stove.

Conner meandered over to the counter, took the carafe from its burner and poured himself a dose of java. He’d been thinking about Tricia ever since he’d scared the hell out of her at the top of Natty’s basement steps that morning, and irritation with his brother provided some relief.

“Mornin’,” Brody sang out, as if he were just noticing Conner’s presence.

Conner squinted, studying his brother suspiciously. He’d gotten used to living his life as a separate individual since Brody left home, and it was a jolt to look up and see himself standing on the other side of the room. Gave him a familiar but still weird sense of being in two places at once.

“Since when do you cook?” he asked, after shaking off the sensation and taking a sip from his mug. Only then did he take off his coat and hang it from its peg by the back door.

Brody laughed at that. “I picked up the habit after I left home,” he replied easily. “Believe it or not, I find myself between women now and then.”

Conner rolled his eyes. “So then you just knock some hapless female over the head with a club and drag her back to your cave by the hair? Tell her to put a pot of beans on the fire?”

Brody slanted a look at him, and there was a certain sadness in his expression, Conner thought, unsettled. “I didn’t mean it like that,” Brody said, his voice quiet.

“Right,” Conner said, his voice gone gruff, all of a sudden, with an emotion he couldn’t name. He looked his brother up and down. “So what’s up with the clothes?”

Again, the grin flashed, quick and cocky. Brody speared a slice of bacon with a fork and turned it over in the skillet before looking down at Conner’s duds. “All my stuff is in the laundry,” he said. “Hope you don’t mind.”

Conner scowled and swung a leg over the long bench lining one side of the kitchen table, taking more coffee on board and trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

“Would you give a damn if I did mind?”

Brody didn’t say anything; he just went right on rustling up grub at the stove, though he did pause once to refill his own coffee cup, whistling low through his teeth as he concentrated on the task at hand. That tuneless drone had always bugged Conner, but now it really got on his last nerve.

“If you insist on staying,” he told Brody’s back, “why don’t you bunk in over at Kim and Davis’s place?”

Brody took his sweet time answering, scraping eggs onto a waiting platter and piling about a dozen strips of limp bacon into a crooked heap on top.

“I might have done just that,” Brody finally replied, crossing to set the platter down on the table with a thump before going back to the cupboard for plates and flatware, “except that they’ve already got a housesitter, and she happens not to be one of my biggest fans.”

Conner stifled an unexpected chuckle, made his face steely when Brody headed back toward the table and took one of the chairs opposite. They ate in silence for a while.

Kim had mentioned hiring somebody to stay in their house while she and Davis were on the road, Conner recalled. Most likely, it was Carolyn Simmons; she was always housesitting for one person or another.

“Carolyn,” Conner said, out loud.

Across the table, Brody looked up from his food and grinned. “What about her?”

Conner felt his neck heat up a little, realizing that there had been a considerable gap between Brody’s remark and his response. “I was just wondering how you managed to make her hate you already,” he said, somewhat defensively, stabbing at the last bite of his fried eggs with his fork.

“I didn’t say Carolyn hated me,” Brody explained, the grin lingering in his eyes, though there was no vestige of it on his mouth. “I said she isn’t one of my biggest fans.”

He paused, finished off a slice of bacon, and finally went on. “We have a—history, Carolyn and I.”

To Conner’s knowledge, Brody hadn’t been anywhere near Lonesome Bend in better than a decade, and Carolyn hadn’t moved to town until a few years ago. Which begged the question, “What kind of history?”

Brody sighed deeply, crossed his fork and knife in the middle of his plate and propped his elbows on the table’s edge, his expression thoughtful. Maybe even a little grim. His gaze was fixed on something in the next county.

“The usual kind,” he said, at some length.

“How do you know her?”

Why, Conner wondered, did he want to know? He liked Carolyn, but things had never gone beyond that, attraction-wise.

Brody met his eyes with a directness that took Conner by surprise. “It’s a small world,” he said. After a beat, he added, “You interested in her? Carolyn, I mean?”

Conner made a snortlike sound, pushed his own plate away. “No,” he said.

“Then why all the questions?”

“What questions?”

“‘What kind of history?’” Brody repeated, with exaggerated patience. “‘How do you know her?’ Those questions.”

“Maybe I was just trying to make conversation,” Conner hedged. “Did you ever think of that?”

“Like hell you were,” Brody scoffed, with a false chuckle. “You can’t wait to see the back of me and we both know it. But here’s the problem, little brother—I’m not going anywhere.”

Something tightened in Conner’s throat. He might have said he was sorry to hear that Brody was staying, but he couldn’t get the words out.

Brody shoved back his chair and stood, picking up his empty plate to put it in the sink, the way Kim had trained all three of “her boys” to do after a meal, from the time they could reach that high. “I could tell you a few things, Conner,” he said hoarsely, “if I thought there was a snowball’s chance in hell that you’d listen.”

With that, Brody turned and walked away.

He set his plate in the sink and banked the fire in the cookstove and slammed out the back door—after shrugging into Conner’s flannel-lined denim jacket.

* * *

FOLKS WERE LINED up all the way to the corner that next Saturday morning when Tricia and Sasha drove past the community center and circled around back to park in one of a half-dozen spots reserved for volunteers. They’d already stopped by River’s Bend, where every camping spot and RV hookup was in profitable use by the annual influx of visitors, just to make sure everything was in order.

Although they’d spent much of the previous day helping to set up for the big sale, and were therefore in the much-envied position of having seen the plethora of merchandise ahead of time, Sasha was impressed by the size of the crowd.

“There must be a lot of hoarders in this town,” she said. “Why do they want to buy the stuff other people gave away?”

Tricia chuckled, then squeezed the Pathfinder into the last parking space and checked her watch. “It must be the thrill of the hunt,” she answered. “Or it could be the chili. Natty’s been offered a small fortune for the recipe.”

Sasha considered the reply, still fastened into her booster seat, then observed, “It was funny, how you made all those other ladies turn their backs while you put in the secret ingredients.”

After consulting Natty by telephone the day before, Tricia had run the family chili recipe to ground and memorized the unique combination of spices some ancestor had dreamed up. She had indeed insisted that all present look away while she extracted various metal boxes and sprinkle jars from a plain paper bag and added them to the massive kettles of beans already simmering on the burners of the community center’s commercial-size stove.

Her great-grandmother’s cronies, tight-lipped at all the “folderol” involved in keeping the formula a secret, had agreed only because the event just wouldn’t be the same without Natty’s chili. Indeed, Minerva Snyder had allowed, there might even be a riot if they failed to deliver.

Chuckling at the memory, Tricia got out of the rig and went to help Sasha release the snaps and buckles holding her in the booster seat.

Sasha’s eyes twinkled with excitement. She’d sneaked a peek at the mysterious items while Tricia was doctoring the chili the day before and, given the child’s IQ, Tricia had no doubt that she could have recited the recipe from memory. “Remember,” Tricia said, putting a finger to her lips, “Natty doesn’t want anybody to know what’s in that chili.”

After jumping to the ground, Sasha nodded importantly. “Well, there are beans and some hamburger. Everybody knows that part.”

“Yes,” Tricia agreed, going around behind the Pathfinder to raise the hatch. “Everybody knows that part.” They’d left Valentino at home, contentedly sharing his dog bed with Winston while they both snoozed, but Tricia, feeling inspired, had scrounged up a few more donations the night before, including the pink furry slippers Diana had given her, tossing them into a cardboard box with some other stuff. She’d put the slippers at the bottom, hoping Sasha wouldn’t spot them and report the incident to her mother the next time they talked or texted.

Just as Tricia turned around, having hoisted the somewhat unwieldy box into both arms, juggling it awkwardly while she shut the hatch again, Conner Creed walked up to her. Her breath caught, and the box wobbled in her arms.

Conner took it from her just before she would have spilled its contents into the dusty gravel of the parking lot.

How did he manage to startle her the way he did? Tricia wondered, bedazzled, as always, by his ready grin. It was an unfair advantage, that grin.

“Hello,” she said stupidly.

“Howdy,” he replied, holding the cumbersome box easily in his two muscular arms. He looked down at Sasha and winked. “Hey,” he greeted the enthralled little girl. “Are we still on for the trail ride tomorrow afternoon?”

Sasha nodded eagerly and then blurted out a happy “Yes!” for good measure.

“Good,” Conner said, heading toward the back door of the community center, which was propped open with a big chunk of wood that had probably served as somebody’s chopping block, sometime way back. People in Lonesome Bend liked to put things to use, no matter how ordinary.

Tricia locked the Pathfinder with the button on her key fob and followed Conner and Sasha, who was practically skipping alongside the man, toward the rear entrance.

“More stuff?” one of the women in the kitchen chimed. Several volunteers had stayed through the night, keeping an eye on the simmering pots of chili. “That Kim. She always donates twice as much rummage as anybody else in town!”

Conner, his back still turned to Tricia, chuckled at that. “True,” he said. “But Tricia brought these things.”

Tricia peeked around him, waggled her fingers in greeting. Some of Natty’s friends, like a flock of old hens, still had ruffled feathers from yesterday’s intrigue involving the spices for the chili.

One or two straightened their apron strings, and another harrumphed, but these were small-town women, basically sociable, and they wouldn’t hold a grudge—not against Natty McCall’s great-granddaughter, anyway.

Conner seemed to know where to set the box down—there were plenty of last-minute donations, it appeared, even though the door was about to open to the anxious public.

“Thanks,” Tricia said, as Conner passed her, doubling back toward the kitchen.

“You’re welcome,” he told her, with a nod of farewell.

She hadn’t really expected Conner to hang around the rummage sale all day—it was a rare man who did—but Tricia felt oddly bereft when he’d left, and when Sasha tugged at her hand to get her attention, she realized she’d been staring after the man like some moonstruck teenager.

Carolyn Simmons turned up just then, greeting Tricia with a smile and a gesture toward the front of the building, where the waiting customers were already pressing their faces to the windows, ogling the chicken-shaped egg timer, the row of ratty prom dresses, the chipped teapots, and the dusty books and the jumbles of old shoes piled on the table marked, “Everything 50 Cents!”

“Looks like we’re in for another big year!” Carolyn said. Her attractively highlighted blond hair was pulled up into a ponytail and, like Tricia, she wore jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and sneakers.

“Looks that way,” Tricia agreed, while Sasha sat down on the lid of a donated cedar chest, which had been découpaged at some point in the distant past with what looked like pages torn from vintage movie magazines, and folded her hands to wait for the onslaught.

The whole thing probably seemed pretty exotic to a little girl raised in Seattle, Tricia thought, with that familiar rush of tenderness. What a gift it was, this visit from Sasha, and how quickly it would be over.

Evelyn Moore, one of the women from the kitchen, bustled to the foreground, holding a stopwatch in her plump hand, and a great production was made of the countdown.

“Three—two—one—”

New Year’s Eve in Times Square had nothing on Lonesome Bend, Colorado, Tricia thought, amused, when it came to ratcheting up the suspense.

At precisely nine o’clock, Evelyn turned the lock and took some quick steps backwards, in order to avoid being trampled by eager shoppers.

The next hour, naturally, was hectic indeed—at one point, when two women wanted the same wafflemaker and seemed about to come to blows, Tricia and Carolyn had to intervene.

“It probably doesn’t even work anymore,” Sasha observed, with a nod at the small appliance. She’d been helping to bag people’s purchases, and when Tricia’s pink slippers went for a nickel, she hadn’t so much as batted an eye. “And, besides, the cord is frayed.”

“The hunter/gatherer phenomenon,” Carolyn explained, though she looked as mystified as Sasha did.

Tricia gave one of Sasha’s pigtails a gentle tug. “Let me know when you’re ready to try the chili,” she said.

“We just had breakfast,” Sasha reminded her, casually horrified.

Tricia laughed and then there was a rush on the prom dresses and they both went back to work.

“Look,” Sasha said, when the rush had subsided a little, sometime later, “Conner’s back.” Her forehead creased into a frown. “Who is that woman with him?”

Tricia, feeling that annoying tension Conner Creed always aroused in her, turned to see a couple just coming through the main door. She blinked. The tension ebbed away.

The man smiling down at the beautiful red-haired woman, his hand pressed solicitously to the small of her back, wasn’t Conner. It was Brody.

Tricia couldn’t have said how she knew that, because the resemblance was stunning; Brody was a perfect reflection of Conner, right down to his clothes and a very recent haircut.

Back in the day, the Creed brothers had been infamous for impersonating each other and, not knowing them well, Tricia had been fooled, like almost everyone else.

Now, he approached her, the lovely Joleen Williams trailing behind him, bestowing her breathtaking smile on all and sundry. “Tricia,” he said, with a little nod.

Her hand tightening slightly on Sasha’s shoulder, to keep the child from blurting out something Tricia would regret, she replied, “Hello, Brody.” She looked past him, nodded. “Hi, Joleen. It’s been a long time.”

“Yes,” Joleen said thoughtfully, sizing Tricia up with a slow sweep of her emerald-green eyes. “So long that I can’t remember, for the life of me, who you are.”

“Tricia McCall,” Tricia offered, amused. Of course, being one of the most popular girls in town, Joleen wouldn’t remember her, the summer visitor who rarely said more than two words running.

Brody gave Joleen a mildly exasperated glance.

“You’re Conner’s twin,” Sasha said, with the air of one having a revelation. “You were at the barbecue by the river.”

“Yep,” Brody said.

“You didn’t look so much like him then,” Sasha went on, nonplussed. “Your hair was longer and your clothes were different. Now, you look exactly like Conner. I thought you were Conner.”

“Sasha,” Tricia said, squeezing again.

Joleen, evidently bored, wandered off.

“How are people supposed to tell you apart?” Sasha demanded, as though confronting an imposter.

Brody chuckled. “I’m the good-looking one,” he said.

Sasha wasn’t amused, though Tricia, knowing her well, saw that she was softening a little.

“Most kids like me,” Brody said, with a twinkle in his eyes, as his gaze connected with Tricia’s again. “But I seem to be zero-for-zero with this one.”

Sasha, Tricia noticed, was watching Joleen. “Is she your girlfriend?”

“Sasha!” Tricia said.

But Brody didn’t seem to be bothered by the question. He crouched, so he could look directly into Sasha’s face. “Nope,” he said seriously. “Is that a good thing or a bad one?”

“Depends,” Sasha answered, sliding another glance in Joleen’s direction and neatly slipping out of shoulder-squeezing distance from Tricia. “Does Conner like her?”

Tricia’s mouth fell open.

Brody chuckled, shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. As he straightened up again, he was looking at Tricia’s overheated face. Something shifted in his eyes, with a distinct but soundless click. “Guess I’d better get in line if I want any of that famous chili,” he finished, before walking away.

Tricia looked around for Sasha, found her behind the book table, looking very busy as she restacked the volumes into tidy piles. If Carolyn hadn’t been standing right next to Sasha, Tricia probably wouldn’t have noticed the way the other woman followed Brody’s progress through the crowd.

She recalled something Carolyn had said the week before, when they were cleaning up after the barbecue at River’s Bend. What a fool I was, way back when.

As though she’d felt Tricia watching her, Carolyn swung her gaze away from Brody and back to her friend’s face. She made a funny little grimace and shrugged.

Tricia’s curiosity was piqued, but she was a great believer in her late father’s folksy philosophy: everybody’s business was nobody’s business. She didn’t know Carolyn well enough to grill her about her fascination with Brody, though a part of her wished she did. Because then she would have had someone to confide in about Conner.

It was all so confusing, and Diana was so far away.

You, Tricia McCall, she thought glumly, are flirting with slut-dom. You’re going on a romantic cruise with one man, and getting all hot and bothered over another. Not becoming. Not becoming at all.

Fortunately, there was a new run on the community center when the chili was finally served, and Tricia was so busy helping to ring up the sales—if making change from a cigar box could be called “ringing up”—that she didn’t have a chance to think about Brody or Conner again until early afternoon.

There was a lull, so she and Sasha grabbed the opportunity to go home, take Valentino out for a walk and measure more of the top-secret spices into plastic bags, to be added to tomorrow’s batch of chili as soon as the door closed on the last of the rummagers at six that evening.

They were about to head back, in fact, when a hired sedan drew up at the curb in front of the house and who should get out of the back, with the driver’s careful assistance, but Natty McCall herself.

Tiny, with a cloud of silver hair pinned into a billowing Gibson-girl style, Natty reminded Tricia of the late stage actress Helen Hayes. She had beautiful skin, virtually wrinkle-free and glowing with good health, and blue eyes that snapped with intelligence, energy and, occasionally, mischief.

“Natty!” Tricia cried, descending on her great-grandmother with open arms. “You’re home!”

“I couldn’t stand being away any longer,” Natty admitted, fanning herself with one hand. “Worrying about the chili recipe, I mean. Surely that wasn’t good for my heart or my blood pressure.”

Smiling, the balding, middle-aged driver left Natty in Tricia’s care and went to collect her suitcases from the trunk of the Town Car.

“And who is this lovely person?” Natty asked, her gaze falling, benevolent but unusually weary, on Sasha.

Tricia made the introductions.

“And this is Valentino,” Sasha chirped, indicating the dog, who seemed on the verge of genuflecting to Natty. She had that effect on people, as well as animals, with her queenly countenance. “He lives with Aunt Tricia, but she says she’s not going to keep him.”

“Famous last words,” Natty commented wryly, allowing Tricia to take her arm and escort her toward the front steps, while Sasha and Valentino and the driver followed. “I have missed Winston sorely,” the older woman confided, handing the key to Tricia, who unlocked the front door.

Winston was right there, waiting to greet his elderly mistress with a plaintive meow that might have translated as, Thank heaven you’re home. Another day, and I would have starved.

Delighted, Natty scooped the cat up into her arms and held him while Tricia squired her to her customary chair in the old-fashioned parlor.

“You should have called,” Tricia fretted, glad Conner had persuaded her to turn up the heat that morning, when he stopped by to bang on the pipes with a wrench. “I would have had a nice fire going, and prepared a meal—”

“Don’t be silly, dear,” Natty scolded, in her sweet way, once she was settled in her chair, Winston purring and turning happy circles in her lap. She handed her small, beaded purse to Tricia. “Pay the nice man, won’t you?” she asked, indicating the driver.

Tricia settled up with the fellow from the car service, and he left. Natty’s baggage stood in the entryway.

Both Sasha and Valentino seemed fascinated by the old woman. They stared at her, as though spellbound by her many charms.

“Would you mind building a fire now, sweetheart, and putting on a pot of tea?” Natty asked Tricia, stroking Winston with a motion of one delicate hand. The cat purred like an outboard motor.

“Of course I wouldn’t mind,” Tricia said, grateful, now, that Conner had laid a fire on the hearth and all she had to do was open the damper and light a match to the crumpled newspaper balled up under the kindling.

Soon, cheery flames danced on the hearth.

Tricia tucked a knitted shawl around Natty’s shoulders before hurrying into the kitchen. While she was making the requested tea, she listened to the rise and fall of voices as her great-grandmother and her goddaughter chatted companionably, getting to know each other.

“And I think Aunt Tricia really likes Conner,” Sasha was saying, as Tricia entered the parlor carrying a tea tray. “He likes her, too. You can tell by the way he looks at her. It’s the same way my dad looks at a cheeseburger.”

Natty smiled at that, and her wise, china-blue eyes shifted to Tricia with a knowing expression. “How is the rummage sale going?” she asked.

Tricia set the tray down, poured hot, fresh tea into a delicate china cup for her favorite elderly lady. “It’s an enormous success, as always,” she answered.

“You’d better get back there,” Natty said, after taking a sip of tea. “I wouldn’t put it past Evelyn to sneak a sample of that chili out of the community center and have it analyzed by some lab, just so she could find out what makes it so special.”

Tricia smiled, sat down on the chair nearest Natty’s. There were blue shadows under the old woman’s lively eyes, and she looked thinner than she had before she left for Denver. “I’ll guard that recipe with my life,” she vowed, making the cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die sign. “But right now, I’m more concerned about you.”

Sasha, by that time, was busy entertaining Valentino on the rug in front of the fire, so Tricia felt free to express her concern.

“I’ll be perfectly all right,” Natty said, looking down at Winston with a fond expression and continuing to stroke his sleek back. “Now that I’m home, where I belong.”

“Just the same—”

Natty yawned and patted her mouth. “Winston and I,” she said, “would love a nap.” She sighed, a gentle, joyous sound, full of homecoming. “Right here, in our very own chair. Do hand me the lap robe, Tricia dear.”

Tricia obeyed.

“I could stay here and look after Natty,” Sasha said, in a loud whisper, when Natty had closed her eyes and, apparently, nodded off. “Valentino, too.”

Tricia was reluctant to agree. After all, Sasha was only ten.

“Please?” Sasha prompted. “It’s so nice here, with the fire and everything.”

“You know my cell number,” Tricia said, relenting. She nodded to indicate Natty’s old-fashioned rotary phone, in its customary place on the secretary, over by the bay windows.

Sasha seemed to read her mind. “I know how to use one of those, Aunt Tricia,” she said patiently. “Dad bought one on eBay last year, and he showed me how it works.”

Tricia chuckled. “Okay,” she said, with a fond glance at Natty, who was snoring delicately now, obviously happy to be home. In a day or two, she’d probably be her old self again. “I won’t be long, in any case. I just have to make sure tomorrow’s chili is underway.”

“Valentino and I will take care of Natty,” Sasha promised solemnly.

Overcoming her paranoia, Tricia went into Natty’s kitchen, measured out the spices and peeked into the parlor once more as she passed.

Natty was unquestionably sound asleep. So was Valentino.

But Sasha sat on the ottoman at Natty’s feet, watching her intently, as though poised to leap into action at the first sign of any emergency.

Touched, Tricia left the house again, with the chili ingredients safely stashed in her purse.

The rummage sale/chili feed was going at full tilt when Tricia arrived back at the community center, so she pushed up her sleeves and got busy helping, careful to keep her cell phone in the pocket of her jeans in case Sasha called.

After an hour, Tricia took a break and dialed Natty’s number, just in case.

Natty answered, sounding quite chipper. Evidently, the nap had restored her considerably. “We’re doing just fine, dear,” the old woman said, in reply to Tricia’s inquiry. “Sasha and I are about to play Chinese checkers, right here by the fire, where it’s cozy.” A girlish giggle followed. “The child swears by all that’s holy that she’s never played this game before, but I suspect she’ll trounce me thoroughly at it, just the same.”

Tricia smiled, impatient to join Natty and Sasha at home. She’d missed her great-grandmother sorely while she was away and, with the move to Paris looming, she wanted to spend as much time with Sasha as she could.

“No one ever beats you at Chinese checkers,” Tricia said.

Again, Natty giggled. “I used to be pretty wicked at Ping-Pong, too, if you’ll recall,” she replied sweetly. “But I’m not as quick with a paddle as I used to be.”

Tricia smiled again, recalling some lively Ping-Pong tournaments she and her dad and Natty had competed in, after stringing a net across the middle of the formal table in Natty’s dining room.

Her great-grandmother had indeed been formidable in those days. Neither Tricia nor Joe had been able to beat her, except when she decided to throw a game so they wouldn’t lose interest and stop playing.

“Shall I bring some chili home for supper?” Tricia asked, feeling an achy warmth in her heart that was partly love for the spirited old woman and partly nostalgia for those long-ago summers, when her dad was still around. “I’m sure there are some plastic containers I could borrow.”

“Yes,” Natty decided immediately. “And bring home some of Evelyn’s cornbread, too, if the supply hasn’t been exhausted already.”

Tricia promised to head home with supper as soon as possible.

Along with Carolyn and several other volunteers, she waited on the steady stream of customers—it never ceased to amaze her how many people showed up for the event. Many of them, of course, were out-of-towners, staying at River’s Bend, but the locals came in waves, often for both lunch and supper.

At six the last few stragglers wandered out, and Evelyn promptly locked up behind them.

By then, the huge kettles had been emptied, scrubbed and filled with fresh salted water and bags full of dried beans, and while the others sat at the public tables in the front of the community center, relaxing and enjoying a well-earned meal of their own, Tricia stirred spices into the cooking pots.

A few minutes later, Tricia left by the back door, carrying two bulky plastic-lidded bowls full of food, and spotted Carolyn, just getting into her aging compact car.

She made an oddly lonely figure, in the twilight-shadowed parking lot and, on impulse, Tricia called out to her. There was a kind of brave sadness about Carolyn that she hadn’t noticed before.

Smiling, Carolyn turned from her open car door. “I should have thought of that,” she said, with a nod to Tricia’s takeout.

“There’s plenty,” Tricia said. “Why don’t you join Natty and Sasha and me for supper?”

Carolyn hesitated—she looked tired—but then she gave a little nod. “I’d like that,” she said.

“Good,” Tricia said. “Follow me.”