Читать книгу Small Town Secrets - Sharon Mignerey - Страница 11

“Hi, Gram.” Léa kissed her grandmother’s cheek, then said hi to the others sitting in the dining room of the nursing home. Frank Morris had looked a hundred years old since her first memories of him as a child. Alice Parker had broken her hip several months ago and was finally well enough to come to the dining room in a wheelchair.

“I think my eyes are deceiving me,” Frank said, his wizened face creased into a wide, toothless grin. “It’s the prettiest girl in town.”

“Get yourself a chair,” Alice said to Léa. “And ignore this old coot.” She patted Gram’s arm. “Nothing like a man making a fool of himself.”

Gram smiled, and Frank laughed.

“After all this time, you’d think he’d have something original to say,” Alice continued while Léa retrieved an unused chair from a nearby table. “He’s buttering you up because he hopes you brought us dessert.”

“Did you?” Frank asked, his voice hopeful as a little boy’s.

“I had to check with the cook—”

“Who has more rules about what we can eat,” he said, “than Carter has Little Liver Pills.”

Léa grinned and pulled a round tin out of her totebag. “She thought these might be okay.”

“Well, open it, dear,” Alice said while Frank folded his arms over his bony chest.

“Are peanut butter cookies okay?” Léa opened the tin and held it out to her grandmother.

Smiling, Gram took one from the box, and Léa wished she’d say something. Her grandmother could talk, but hated the slurring of her speech caused by her stroke. She lifted the cookie in a silent salute, and Léa passed the cookie tin to Frank.

“Got any good gossip for us?” Alice asked.

When the cookies came back to her, Léa took one and pretended to think. She supposed she’d be eager for news, too, if she were cooped up. “Hank Miller’s daughter made the dean’s list last quarter.”

“That’s old news,” Alice said. “You’re not paying attention at that café of yours.”

Léa smiled and didn’t bother telling her that it was hard to hear over the sounds of cooking and the din of conversation.

“I heard they brought up another oil well on Sadie Graff’s land.” Frank dunked his cookie into his coffee, ignoring that most of it disintegrated into the liquid. “Some people have all the luck.”

“I heard her nephew is a good-looking man who’s already been to your place for breakfast,” Alice said. “That’s much more interesting than Hank Miller’s smart daughter. So, what’s he like?”

“Well.” Léa drew out the word, doing her best to build anticipation and providing herself time to decide what to say about Zach. Given the way the man had occupied her thoughts a good part of the day, the less she said, the better. “He’s nice.”

“Nice?” Alice patted Léa’s hand. “Dear, you can do better than that. Mavis said that Kim told her that he’s smashing.”

“Hot is what she’s trying to say,” Frank said.

“If I had meant hot, that’s what I would have said,” Alice returned.

“If you’d watch something besides The Price is Right on TV, you’d know nobody has said smashing since 1958.”

“Oh, eat your cookie, you old—”

“Ah, ah, ah.” Frank took another cookie from the tin and waved it at Alice. “Don’t say anything you’ll have to apologize for later.”

Léa laughed. The arguments between the two were ongoing and familiar.

“What does Sadie’s nephew look like?” Alice asked, turning her back on Frank.

“Trouble,” came a man’s voice from behind Gram.

Léa looked up and into the eyes of her ex-husband who was still dressed in his police uniform.

“And trouble is what he’ll have if he doesn’t stay away from you,” Foley said, his usual smile in place. He gestured toward Léa with his palms out in a playful come-here-baby way. “Now’s your chance to say yes.”

Léa assumed he was referring to his nearly daily marriage proposals, but even if it was something else, she had only one answer for him. “No.”

He managed to look crestfallen as he leaned down and dropped a casual kiss on Gram’s cheek. “Nice to see you, Eleanor.”

“What brings an officer of the law here?” Frank winked at Foley as though sharing some private joke. “No felons around here.”

Alice snorted. “Officer of the law. Now who’s been watching too much television? He’s a cop, Frank, pure and simple.”

“Policeman,” Frank said.

“I just got off duty,” Foley said, snagging another empty chair, turning it around and straddling it. “And I hadn’t seen Eleanor in a few days—”

“Weeks,” Gram said, speaking clearly and sitting up a little straighter.

Foley smiled at her. “You’re right. Weeks. Negligent of me, and I’m sorry.”

“Well, Léa here sure didn’t have any good gossip. Who’ve you arrested lately?” Frank shoved the tin of cookies in Foley’s direction.

“Now, you know I can’t talk about that.” He took a cookie and bit into it. “But you watch the news later, you’ll hear about a guy who was found dead on the bus from Denver this afternoon.”

“Was he murdered?” Frank asked.

“Oh, my,” Alice said. “That would be just like that episode of Murder She Wrote where Jessica—Angela Lansbury—had all sorts of trouble on a bus.”

“Might,” Foley said.

“Not everything is like television,” Frank said. “Do you know who he was?”

Gram tapped Léa’s hand and nodded toward the open door of the dining room. “Room.”

“Sure, Gram.” Understanding her grandmother’s wish to return to her room, Léa stood, pulled her grandmother’s walker to within reach, then held it steady while Gram rose to her feet.

“Good night,” Gram said, over-emphasizing the ends of the words in her effort to enunciate clearly.

“’Night,” Foley said. “I’ll see you later, baby.”

Not if I see you first, she thought. “Good night,” she said as mildly as she could as she walked alongside her grandmother.

Foley had called Zach trouble. Since the man was once again at the forefront of her thoughts, he surely was. Even so, Foley’s territorial claim annoyed her just as much as his highhanded visit to Dottie.

After she and Foley had separated, she hadn’t seen him for months, except for the mornings when he dropped by the café for breakfast. Over the last several weeks though, he had started coming around nearly every day and had completely shocked her when he asked her out on a date. The idea of dating him after the way he had treated her during their marriage was repugnant. She didn’t understand…or like…his renewed interest.

He always had a way of shading the truth that he expected to make perfect sense, like the time she found a trash barrel in the barn filled with empty bottles. He had insisted that he was collecting them for target practice. Or all the times he had disappeared for hours, returning home red-eyed and disheveled, incredulous that she hadn’t seen him in the barn or yard doing some chore or another. He was trouble, and she’d had enough of him. No way was she going there again. Not with Foley, and not with anyone else.

The memory of the day they had separated came to the front of her thoughts, sticking like eggs on an unseasoned pan.

“Marriage to you has been nothing but a trap,” he had said within five minutes of coming into the house.

Foley had been ragging on her since they’d left the hospital, and she had done her best to tune him out. All she had wanted to do was climb into bed and stay there until the consuming grief of losing her baby somehow went away. With effort, she had repeated, “Marriage is a trap.” No real surprise there. This wasn’t the first time he’d told her so.

“Glad to know you’re paying attention,” he said.

Wishing that he would offer even a single word of comfort, Léa had filled a glass with tap water from the kitchen sink. When she had turned around to face her husband, she was trembling. Odd that he didn’t seem to notice.

His sandy hair was slicked back the way he liked to wear it when he was on his way somewhere. Stupid that she had hoped he might want to hold her for a while. He hadn’t touched her in weeks, and truth be told, since she’d found proof he had been unfaithful, she hadn’t wanted him to. Just now, though, she would have given anything simply to be comforted.

“Now that you’re not pregnant anymore, there’s no reason why you can’t go out with me,” he said. He glanced at his watch. “Let’s go over to O’Malleys, kick back.” He winked. “I might even let you beat me at a game of pool.”