Читать книгу The Third Mrs. Mitchell - Lynnette Kent - Страница 9

AS FAR AS Mary Rose was concerned, dinner with her parents was an exercise in holding her tongue. And her temper. And her breath.

“The roast is delicious,” she told Kate after a bite.

“A bit rare, I think,” their mother commented. “Your father likes his meat well-done.”

Judging from his focused assault with knife and fork, Mary Rose thought John Bowdrey probably liked his roast just as he’d found it. Time for a change of subject. “The game looked pretty intense, Trace. Were you playing a particularly good team?”

Without taking his eyes off his plate, Kate’s son shrugged one shoulder. “I guess.” He was a handsome boy, tall and rangy, with his father’s blond hair cropped close. When Mary Rose had seen him last winter, he’d been the bright, enthusiastic kid she’d always known.

Then, the week after the annual family ski trip in January, Trace’s dad had moved out of the house and announced his intention to divorce Kate. Mary Rose would never have guessed, witnessing L. T. LaRue’s behavior in Colorado, that he had desertion on his mind.

In the months since, Trace had become sullen and uncooperative. His grades had plummeted from high A’s to barely passing. Worry over him, and over Kelsey’s rebellious attitude, had worn Kate to the bone. Mary Rose wasn’t sure her sister even realized the full extent of the problem. There had been a distinct tang of alcohol in the air around Kelsey at the soccer game this afternoon. The girl hadn’t been obviously drunk, and Mary Rose hoped that whiff of liquor had drifted from the friend trailing Kelsey. That would be the easy way out.

But she’d learned long ago that the easy way out rarely was. “It must be getting close to prom time. Are you going this year, Kelsey?”

Across the table, her niece shook her head, her blond hair gleaming with gold under the soft light of the chandelier. “It’s just a stupid dance.”

“It’s the most important dance of the year.” Frances Bowdrey pressed her napkin carefully to her lips, then gave her granddaughter a bright smile. “I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want to go.”

When Kelsey didn’t answer, Kate did. “She’s only a sophomore, Mama. She’ll go next year.”

Their mother rarely took no for an answer. “Oh, I’m sure some nice junior boy would be happy to take such a pretty girl to the prom.”

Kelsey stared at her grandmother for a moment, her brown eyes wide and wild, her cheeks flushing deep red. Then she pushed sharply away from the table and, without a word, stalked out of the dining room. Her footsteps pounded up the staircase and along the upstairs hall, ending with the slam of her bedroom door.

Eyes round, eyebrows arched high, Frances looked at her older daughter. “What was that all about? Are you going to allow her to leave the table without being excused?”

“Mama…” Kate pressed her fingers to her lips for a second. “Surely you remember…Kelsey’s boyfriend Ryan broke up with her last week. He’s a junior. They would have gone to the prom together.”

Frances pursed her lips. “That’s no reason to be rude.”

“Of course it is.” Ice clanked on crystal as Mary Rose set her glass down a little too hard. “Being dumped is the world’s greatest tragedy for a fifteen-year-old.” She hadn’t liked the experience as an eighteen-year-old, with Pete Mitchell, either. And then there was Kate’s situation. “I should never have brought the subject up. I’m sorry, Katie.”

Her sister shook her head. “You didn’t know. I think I’d better try to talk to her. Please go on with your meal.”

Neither Trace nor his grandfather needed those instructions—judging from their unswerving attention to their plates, they hadn’t even heard the conversation. Mary Rose played with her mashed potatoes and listened as Kate climbed the stairs and walked down the hall. She heard a knock, but there was no sound of Kelsey’s door opening.

“Well.” Her mother buttered a small piece of biscuit and put it delicately in her mouth. After a sip of tea, she looked at Mary Rose. “Wouldn’t you rather come home with your father and me? I’m sure our house is more restful.”

Mary Rose had lost her appetite completely; she pushed her plate away and laid her napkin beside it. “I didn’t come to rest, Mother. I came to give Kate some help. That will be easier if I stay here.”

Trace put his fork down. “I’m going up to my room.”

Beside him, his grandmother put her hand on his arm. “The appropriate way to leave the table is to ask if you can be excused.”

The boy rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Whatever.”

But when he tried to stand, Frances kept hold of his wrist. “Trace LaRue. You will ask politely to be excused.” Watching resentment and temper flood into Trace’s brown gaze, Mary Rose wondered if her mother had pushed too far.

Then John Bowdrey looked up from his dinner. “Do as your grandmother says, Trace.” His stern tone would not be argued with.

Trace’s shoulders slumped. “Can I be excused? Please?”

Frances smiled and patted the back of his hand. “Of course, dear. Run and do your homework.”

Mary Rose wondered if her mother heard the boy’s snort as he left the dining room. “This might not be the best time for etiquette lessons, Mother. Trace and Kelsey have enough problems just handling their lives these days.”

“Etiquette makes even the worst situation easier.” Frances got to her feet. “Shall we clear the table?”

“Sure.” Mary Rose wasn’t surprised when her father simply got to his feet and left the dining room without offering to help. Her mother had him well trained—domestic responsibilities were strictly female territory.

Kate had used her fine china for dinner, which meant hand washing all the plates and the sterling silverware that went with them. Trapped at the sink in Kate’s ivy-and-white kitchen, up to her wrists in suds, Mary Rose was held hostage to her mother’s commentary on the state of Kate’s life.

“I can’t imagine what she was thinking, letting L.T. leave like that.”

“He didn’t give her a choice, Mother. From what Kate says, I gather he announced he was moving out, picked up his bags and did just that.”

“She should have stopped him, for the children’s sake.”

Mary Rose blew her bangs off her forehead and scrubbed at a spot of gravy. “How would she have stopped him? Thrown herself in front of his car? Grabbed hold of his knees, weeping and pleading? Kate has some pride, for heaven’s sake.”

“There are ways to hold on to a man who wants to stray.” Frances Bowdrey’s voice was tight, low.

When Mary Rose turned to stare, all she could see was her mother’s straight back. “Mother? What—?”

Trace came into the kitchen. “Didn’t Mom say there was cake?”

His grandmother turned. “I believe she made a German chocolate cake. Have a seat in the dining room and we’ll bring in dessert and coffee.”

He shook his head. “I’ll just take a piece to my room.” Despite her repeated protests, he got a plate, cut a two-inch-thick slice and poured a glass of milk, then disappeared again.

Mary Rose followed her nephew down the hall. “Trace, is your mom still talking to Kelsey?”

“Never did. Kelse wouldn’t open the door. Kate’s in her own room.” Taking the stairs two at a time, he left her standing at the bottom.

“What a mess this is.” Frances spoke from just behind Mary Rose. “I think I’d better talk to Kate. She’s got to do something.”

“Mother…” Mary Rose put a hand on Frances’s arm to keep her from climbing the steps. “Dad’s waiting on his cake. Why don’t you fix his coffee and the two of you have dessert? I’ll talk to Kate.”

Obviously torn, the older woman glanced upstairs and then toward the living room, where her husband sat with the newspaper, his foot crossed over his knee, jiggling in a way they all knew well. “You’re right. But be sure to tell Kate I’ll call her tomorrow. There are things she needs to hear.”

I doubt that. But Mary Rose kept her skepticism to herself as she climbed the stairs.

WITH RELIEF, Kelsey heard Kate’s door open and shut, and the murmur of voices behind it. She’d been afraid Aunt Mary Rose was coming up to talk to her about this afternoon. About booze and teenagers and the evils thereof.

And she would really hate to have to tell her favorite aunt to go to hell, especially on her first night in the house.

She glanced at her backpack on the floor at the foot of her bed. She had two tests tomorrow, and a boatload of homework waited for her attention.

Tough shit. Rolling off the bed, Kelsey grabbed a pack of cigarettes from the bottom of her sweater drawer and stuck her head out into the hallway to be sure the coast was clear. A second later, she was closing Trace’s door quietly behind her.

“Ooh, cake.” She tossed him the cigarettes and snatched up the remains of his dessert. “You ate all the icing, jerk.”

“That’s the best part.” He lit a cigarette for each of them, passing hers over as he went to open the windows. “Was that Auntie M coming upstairs?”

Kelsey drew in a deep lungful of smoke. “Had to be. Grandmother wouldn’t be so quiet.”

“I wish she’d stay out of our business.”

“M?”

“Gran. Drives me crazy, the way she’s always giving me orders. How’d we get such a witch for a grandmother, anyway?”

“I take great comfort from the fact that she’s not really ours.” Kate had married their dad when Trace was a baby, after their real mother had disappeared. So the Bowdreys weren’t actually their grandparents at all, not by blood anyway.

“That’s right. We turn eighteen, we never have to see her again.”

“Hell of a long time to wait.”

“Tell me about it.”

They smoked together in peace for a few minutes. Trace’s room was at the back corner of the house above the screened porch, with windows on two walls and big trees blocking the outside view. Kate had let him paint the walls and ceiling black and put up wildly colored posters—not rock groups, but totally weird computer-generated artwork. Some of the posters glowed in the dark; Trace’s room was an eerie place to be with the lights out.

“I got Janine’s ID finished,” he said, rummaging through the papers piled deep beside his computer desk. “Looks good to me.”

He handed over a North Carolina driver’s license with a picture of her friend Janine Belks, currently a sophomore in high school, but recorded on the license as age twenty-two. Kelsey nodded. “You’ve got those holograms down cold. I don’t think the guys at the license bureau could tell the difference.”

“Just be sure you get the money before you give it to her, okay? I don’t like getting ripped off.”

“No problem.” Another long silence flowed past. “There’s a party Saturday night. Gray Hamilton’s folks are going up to Chapel Hill for the soccer game. He’s got the house to himself.” She blew a smoke ring, then grinned. “And a hundred of his closest friends.”

Trace shook his head. “Boring.”

“I suppose you can do better? Like playing computer games with Ren and Stimpy?”

He gave her the finger for calling his best friends by the names of cartoon freaks. “Beats getting trashed and passing out on the floor with a bunch of drunks tripping over you.”

“Gray’s house has twelve bedrooms. I plan on passing out on a bed in one of those.” Taking one last, long drag, Kelsey dropped the butt of her cigarette into a soda can on the windowsill. A tiny sizzle and a wisp of smoke proclaimed its demise. “Dad’s supposed to pick us up Saturday morning for breakfast.”

Her brother’s response was vulgar and totally appropriate.

“He’ll be pissed if you don’t show up again.”

“Am I supposed to care?”

“No.” Kelsey sighed. “But I have no intention of enduring another meal with him and the Bimbo by myself. And if neither of us goes, he’ll stand downstairs and yell at Kate for an hour. She doesn’t deserve that.”

Trace stared at the poster plastered on the ceiling above his bed, the landscape on some planet out of a heroin addict’s nightmare. “I hate her.” Kelsey knew he meant the Bimbo, the secretary their dad would bring to breakfast. Not Kate. Kate was all the mother he’d ever had.

She gave him the only reason that might work. “If we cooperate, maybe he’ll think about coming home.”

He cocked an eye in her direction. “Bullshit.”

“Maybe not.”

“I’ll think about it.”

That would have to do. “’Night.” She crossed to the door, listening for sounds of someone out in the hallway.

“Kelse?”

“Yeah?”

“What’s wrong with us? What else does he want?”

Kelsey rested her head against the panel and closed her eyes. “God only knows.” With a deep breath, she opened the door, stepped out and closed it behind her. “And She’s not telling.”

ON FRIDAY AFTERNOON, Mary Rose nosed Kate’s Volvo into a long line of equally sensible, passenger-safe vehicles and waited her turn to pick up Kelsey and Trace from school. She had to smile, thinking of herself as a car-pool driver. If she and Pete had stayed married—if their baby had been born—this might have been a daily routine in her life. That little boy would have been ten this year. There might have been brothers and sisters…

She shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut against the futile, irrational urge to cry. What in the world was she thinking? Why had that long-ago tragedy suddenly reared its head?

Because of Pete, of course. Seeing him again had undone ten years’ worth of forgetting and resurrected a pain she really couldn’t afford to relive. Except for Trace and Kelsey, children played no part in her present and future plans. There were real advantages to a life without kids, and she enjoyed as many as came her way.

The car behind her beeped its horn, and she realized the line had moved up. Easing closer to the van ahead of her, she scanned the groups of kids hanging around outside the school building, hoping to spot Trace and Kelsey among them. Even after she reached the head of the queue, though, the LaRue kids were nowhere to be seen. When minutes passed and her passengers didn’t show, the security guard told her to move on. Mary Rose tried to protest, but the woman in the bright orange vest simply shook her head and waved with both arms in a gesture that said, clearly, “Get out of the way.”

Two additional trips through the line later, Trace and Kelsey still hadn’t appeared. Muttering a few choice words, Mary Rose drove to the student parking lot—nearly empty now—and left the Volvo there. She had no idea where in the building Trace and Kelsey might be. But when she found them…

The nearest entrance was one of the doors on the back of the gymnasium. Rounding the corner, Mary Rose stopped short at the sight of what looked to be battle lines drawn up in the narrow asphalt alley between the high gym walls and the chain-link fence marking the edge of school property. Seven or eight Hispanic boys on one side taunted the three white kids who stood backed up against that fence. The gibes were in English, but there were extra comments in Spanish, with mocking laughter and lewd gestures. After a moment, she realized that one of the outnumbered boys wore the brilliant yellow, long-sleeved T-shirt she’d seen just this morning in the car on the way to school. Trace.

She started to call out, just as the fight exploded. One of Trace’s friends charged the other group and was sent sprawling on his back on the asphalt. When Trace bent to give him a hand up, he got a kick in the backside that sent him down on his face. And then there was a jumble of bodies, the sick sound of fists pounding against flesh, curses in English and Spanish.

Mary Rose headed back the way she had come, intending to summon help, but found the principal already running toward her, with Kelsey and another girl behind him. The sound of a siren in the distance heralded the approach of more assistance. For a dreadful second, she wondered if Pete would respond to the call, then decided with relief that the highway patrol would let the local police handle this kind of incident.

“Break it up! You hear me? Get back!” A big, heavy man, Mr. Floyd waded into the fight without any apparent concern for his own safety, jerking kids apart by the shirt collars. In another minute the police car arrived; between them, the three men separated the combatants and ended the fight.

“What’s this all about?” Mr. Floyd stared down at Trace and each of the other boys. “Who started it?”

But no matter how many times he asked the question, none of the kids would give an answer. Even after they were marched like a string of prisoners to the principal’s office and written up for violence on school grounds, no one offered an explanation.

“It wasn’t Trace’s fault,” Kelsey told Kate and Mary Rose later, after they got home. “Eric Hasty made a comment in class about a wrong answer Johnny Vasques gave. They’ve been sniping at each other all year long. And when Trace and Bo and Eric went outside at the end of gym class, Johnny and his friends were waiting for them. Trace was trapped. He didn’t have a choice.”

“You could have walked away,” Kate told her son as he sat at the kitchen table with an ice pack on the side of his face. “You didn’t have to fight.”

“And left Bo and Eric there by themselves? I don’t think so.” Dropping the ice pack in the sink, he stalked out of the kitchen, then pounded up the stairs to the refuge of his room.

“Men and their honor code.” Mary Rose shook her head. “Not a tradition I understand very well.”

“It’s like something out of the Middle Ages.” Kelsey folded her arms on the table. “Eric’s sister is a year younger than him, and when he caught her talking to Johnny at lunch last fall, he threw a fit. His family doesn’t think Mexicans and Americans should mix. So there’s been this running feud going all year, and today I guess it just erupted.”

Kate took her coffee cup to the sink. “I guess I’ll have to put Trace on restriction. Honor code or not, I can’t have him fighting in school.”

“Oh, come on, Kate. It’s not his fault.” Kelsey got to her feet. “He was just backing up a friend. It’s not like he started the fight.”

“The two of you should have been out front, waiting for Mary Rose to pick you up.”

“I told you, this thing started before school got out. I went to find Trace and they were already fighting. Please, Kate. Don’t punish him like that. I know he’ll stay out of trouble from now on. I promise.”

“How can you make a promise like that for your brother?”

“I’ll talk to him. Make him see he has to behave. You know he listens to me.”

“Does that include getting him to be polite when you go out with your dad tomorrow morning?”

Kelsey swallowed hard. “Sure. We’ll be good as gold. Cross my heart.” She suited action to words.

With a deep breath, Kate gave in. “Okay. No restriction this time. But if it happens again…”

“No more fighting. Guaranteed.” She gave her stepmother a quick hug and started out of the kitchen. At the doorway, though, she turned. “Does that mean he can come to Gray Hamilton’s party with me tomorrow night?”

Mary Rose’s first impulse would have been to say no. Kate hesitated. “They just live around the block, right?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And you’ll be back by eleven-thirty?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I suppose that will be all right, then.”

“Thanks!”

Alone with her sister in the kitchen, Mary Rose shook her head. “They’re a real handful, aren’t they?”

Kate nodded. “Since they got out of elementary school, I haven’t had much practice at discipline. L.T. was always the one in control, and he made the decisions pretty much by himself. Maybe I took the easy way out, but fighting with him was just more than I could bear.” She sighed. “Now I’m making the decisions. I’m not sure things are going very well.”

“You know what’s good for them and what’s right.” Mary Rose placed her empty cup in the dishwasher. “Trace and Kelsey will settle down as you get more practice and they get used to listening to what you have to say. Give yourself, and them, some time. Everything will work out just fine.”

She hoped.

SWEAT DRIPPED into Pete’s eyes as he swayed from side to side, breathing fast, dribbling the ball and looking for a way around the opponent crowding him. He feinted left; Tommy Crawford moved with him, arms spread wide, ready to steal. “Screw that,” Pete muttered, pivoting on his right foot to turn his back to Tommy.

“Mitchell!” Twenty feet farther away from the basket, Adam DeVries held up his hands. Pete sent the ball like a bullet straight toward his teammate’s face, watched in satisfaction as Adam caught and immediately redirected it in a soaring arch over the length of the court. Swish…the ball dropped straight through the net. Two points, and the game.

Adam came across the court. “G-good pass, Pete.”

“No thanks to Tommy, here.” He punched Crawford in the shoulder. “I thought you were coming down my throat.”

“Us short guys gotta be aggressive.” Tommy shook his head as Rob Warren joined them. “Sorry, man. The guy must be wearing Super Glue. I couldn’t shake the ball loose.”

Rob gave them all his slow grin. “We have to let them win sometimes, right? Anybody else ready for breakfast?”

Without debate they jogged off the outdoor basketball court of New Skye High School and headed across the street to the Carolina Diner. When he wasn’t working, Pete’s Saturday morning schedule never changed—two-on-two b-ball with DeVries, Crawford and Warren from 7:00 to 9:00 a.m., followed by the biggest breakfast Charlie and Abby could dish up.

“Three scrambled, double bacon, grits, biscuits and stewed apples,” he ordered a few minutes later. “And tea.”

“That’s a no-brainer.” Abby grinned at him. “You ever consider trying something different? Oatmeal’s good for your heart.”

Pete let his jaw hang loose as he stared at her. “My heart is doing just fine, thanks all the same.”

“Oh, really?” She raised an eyebrow. “Is that why you ran out of here the other night like the place was on fire? Without taking your pie?”

He snapped his mouth closed, feeling his cheeks heat up. “I had to get to the school.”

“It looked to me like you had to get away from Mary Rose Bowdrey. Fast.”

Three pairs of eyes lifted from the menus to his face. “M-Mary Rose B-Bowdrey is in town?” Adam sat back in his chair and linked his hands behind his head. “Isn’t she…?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Pete rearranged the salt and pepper shakers, started in on the sugar packets. “No big deal.”

Rob took a swallow of coffee. “You were married…what? A month?” Having done her worst, Abby sashayed back to the kitchen.

Pete shrugged. “Something like that.”

“Her sister’s in the middle of a divorce.” Like the Bowdreys and Adam, Tommy was part of the Old Town crowd—the families who traced their names back for a century or more in New Skye history, who mostly lived in big, elegant houses on The Hill, and who pretty much ran the town. “I hear the kids are really messed up over it.”

“If he ran his family the way he runs LaRue Construction, I’m not surprised the family got b-busted up. And speak of the d-devil.” Adam sat facing the door. “Here they are now.”

Pete heard the bell jingle, but he had his back to the entrance. There was no way he could ask who had just come in, so he sat there with a rock in his stomach, certain that Mary Rose had arrived with her family for breakfast. Certain that he could not eat a single bite with her on the premises.

But then the newcomers moved to a booth in his line of sight. He let his shoulders slump in relief. It wasn’t Mary Rose—just the kids, Kelsey and Trace, with their dad and his girlfriend.

Rob shook his head. “That is one unhappy bunch. Does L.T. really think his kids are going to warm up to the woman he left their mother for?”

“L. T. LaRue th-th-th-thinks he can g-g-get a-away with any damn thing he p-p-pleases.” Although usually barely noticeable, Adam’s stutter worsened when his temper flared. “I’m f-f-f-fixing one of his m-m-m-messes right now. He underbid me on the Whispering Pines n-n-nursing home job a few years ago, but the…the s-s-s-s-second-rate air-conditioning s-system already needs replacing, there’s n-no adequate insulation anywhere in the complex, and the ‘new’ stove and refrigerator in the k-k-kitchen were seconds bought at a scratch-and-dent sale.” He shook his head and muttered a word under his breath—without stuttering—that described L. T. LaRue perfectly.

Pete kept an eye on the LaRue kids while he ate. The epitome of sulky teenagers, they avoided looking at their dad when they spoke to him, which wasn’t often and only in response to a question. They appeared to be pretending that the woman sitting beside L.T. didn’t exist at all. Melanie Stewart, LaRue’s office receptionist and the focus of his midlife crisis, was barely a half a decade older than the man’s daughter. She wore her honey-blond hair piled high, put on her makeup with gusto and wore her clothes tight, displaying a set of curves that explained LaRue’s infatuation to any man with eyes in his head.

A hand fell on his shoulder. “Hi, guys. Who won?”

Another Saturday-morning ritual—Jacquie Archer came in for breakfast before starting her workday as a farrier. Thanks to mild weather and good terrain, the counties around New Skye were known as prime horse country, and Jacquie had a full-time job visiting stables and farms to shoe their horses.

Pete looked up at the woman beside him. “Hey, Jacquie. The best team, of course.”

She rolled her eyes. “There’s no ‘of course’ about it, Mitchell. You’ve been running this little tournament since tenth grade and I’ve decided the outcome just depends on who got to bed later on Friday night.” Arms crossed, she stared at them with one eyebrow raised. “Considering the four of you are bachelors with the social lives of slugs, that makes the odds practically even.” While they were still protesting, she turned on one booted heel and went to join her daughter, Erin, in the booth next to L. T. LaRue and his kids.

“‘The social lives of slugs.’ Man, I’d call her bluff on that one.” Tommy finished his toast, then shook his head. “If it weren’t the truth.”

“I’ve got a construction b-b-business to run. This is all the time I can s-spare.” Adam poured syrup on his pancakes. “Besides, who’s she to talk? When’s the last time we s-saw Jacquie with a d-d-d-date?”

Pete gave it some thought. “That would be the senior prom. Remember, she left right after graduation to go up north so she could train with that Olympic rider. When she came back a couple of years later, she’d been married and widowed and had Erin.” The girl must have heard her name amidst the din, because she looked at Pete and grinned. Even wearing jeans and a T-shirt, she made him think of an elf, with her pointed chin, dark eyes and short dark curls, so different from her mother’s corn-silk blond braid.

And so different from Kelsey LaRue in the seat behind her, who was dressed like some jailbait rock singer all the kids idolized—tight jeans, belly-baring tank top and too much makeup. As Pete let his gaze wander, he noticed L.T. pointing a finger at his kids, talking hard and getting red in the face. Before he finished, Kelsey jerked herself out of the booth.

“I don’t give a damn about what you planned or how much money you spent.” Her voice shut down all the other noises in the diner. “If you wanted to be with me and Trace, you should’ve stayed at home. I’ll go to hell before I go anywhere with you and your…your…concubine!”

She stomped through absolute silence to the door, flung it open with a hysterical jingle of the bell and stormed outside. Before the door could close again, Trace caught the handle and followed his sister.

Another mute moment passed, then folks at the tables and the counter started up their conversations again, throwing a few sidelong glances at L.T. and Melanie in the process. Pete looked at his basketball buddies. “Do you suppose those kids are walking home?”

Rob sat facing the streetside window. “Looks like it. They’re at the corner, waiting for the light.”

“That’s no good. It’s a five-mile walk through some of the worst parts of town.” And the girl was dressed like a hooker ready for work. In those neighborhoods, there would be guys ready to take the offer, even at ten on a Saturday morning. Pete put cash for his share of the breakfast bill on the table and got to his feet. “Thanks for the game, guys. See you next week.”

Just as he reached the door, he felt a tug on his sleeve. Abby stood behind him, holding the box with his lemon meringue pie slice. “You’re always rushing out these days. Take it easy, okay?”

He took the box and gave her a one-armed hug. “I’ll do my best. You keep Charlie on his diet.”

Then he went out to make sure Mary Rose Bowdrey’s niece and nephew got home safe and sound.