LITMIR.BIZ

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its head, all of an inch, before letting it drop again with a muffled thump. “You’ve got a big dog there.”

      “Oh, he don’t belong to us. He just comes visiting every day. Must be my scintillating conversation skills. Yer a sight forsore eyes.”

      Startled, Gaylynn said, “Excuse me?”

      “Now, don’t you mind him none,” an older woman stated as she stepped out from behind the counter. “Floyd here says that to every woman under the age of a hundred who walks through that door. My name’s Bessie. Bessie Twitty. And that grumpy-looking, talkative man over there is my husband, Floyd. And you must be the sister of Hunter’s friend. From up north, aren’t you?”

      Gaylynn nodded, not even stopping to wonder how Bessie knew who she was already. “From Chicago.”

      Bessie grimaced, making her wizened face look even more wrinkled. “I hate cities.”

      “You never been in one,” Floyd retorted.

      “Have so. I been up to Knoxville one time. Didn’t care for it atall.” Bessie said the words together, as if they were one.

      “And my eyes are sore,” Floyd declared. “That’s why I have Bessie doing my post-office chores.”

      “Did you come in to get some stamps for postcards?” Bessie asked Gaylynn. “We don’t get many tourists in these parts, so I don’t have much call for postcard stamps.”

      “Unless it’s Ma Battle entering one of those doggone contests of hers,” Floyd inserted.

      “I do declare that woman gets more mail than everyone else in town put together,” Bessie said. “How many postcard stamps will you be needing, then? I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name, dear.”

      “It’s Gaylynn and I don’t need any stamps.”

      “You didn’t get any gas-o-leen,” Floyd said, enunciating it as if the word consisted of three separate parts.

      “I came to stock up on some food,” Gaylynn stated.

      “The Piggly-Wiggly over in Summerville is where most folks do their stocking up,” Floyd replied.

      “How far away is that?”

      “About a forty-minute drive,” Floyd said.

      “An hour, if you obey the speed limits,” Bessie inserted.

      “I was driving these roads before they had speed limits,” Floyd said.

      “I’d rather not go that far away,” Gaylynn decided. “I’ll just get what I need here.”

      “We don’t have the best selection,” Bessie had to confess.

      “But we do have something of just about everything,” Floyd added.

      “Just not much,” Bessie tacked on.

      “And we don’t carry any of them fancy TV dinners, neither.”

      “We have lots of ice cream, though.”

      Gaylynn was getting a crick in her neck from turning her head back and forth between Bessie and Floyd. A conversation with the two of them was like a tennis match, short words volleying back and forth.

      “What about tuna? And cat food?” Gaylynn asked.

      “I reckon we can fix you up with something. You bring some kitties down from the city with you?”

      “Actually, I found a family, a mama and two kittens, up in the woods. I was wondering if they belonged to anyone around here?”

      “Not that I know of. Most likely they’re just strays. We get lots of those down here.”

      Yeah, and I’m one of them, Gaylynn thought to herself. She gathered up her groceries, many things she hadn’t eaten in years—including oatmeal from the round cardboard box instead of a microwaveable packet. The bread they had was fresh baked by some one in town and the strawberry jam was homemade. She bought as many cans of tuna and boxes of dry cat food as they stocked. The Pit Stop didn’t have any fancy paper bags for her purchases, which made her glad she’d brought along a cloth tote bag to lug the stuff back to her car.

      But first she had to step over Bo Regard again, who this time lifted his head all of two inches before letting it drop again. He had a face only a mother could love and was actually so homely he was kind of cute—even if he did drool.

      As she loaded her trunk, she heard the telltale rush and ripple of the river. When driving in early yesterday morning, she remembered noticing that the buildings in Lonesome Gap clung to the small ribbon of land between the two-lane blacktop road and the river.

      Beyond that were the mountains, lush and green, rising directly beyond the narrow valley floor.

      Gaylynn might have lingered longer were it not for the Twittys’ curious stares as they watched her out the Pit Stop’s front window—their noses plastered against the plate-glass right beneath the neon Gas sign. With their eyes on her, she managed to spill half the contents of the tote bag before she got everything in the car.

      Gaylynn didn’t realize how uptight she was until she pulled in front of her brothe’s cabin. Only then did the tension ease from her shoulders.

      She spent most of her afternoon coaxing the kittens to let her pet them after they’d gobbled down theirfood. Spook still kept her distance, so that Gaylynn couldn’t even tell if she really was a she. But Blue did let Gaylynn briefly brush her fingertips over the kitten’s back. Gaylynn was reminded of Hunter touching her own back—with a similarly soothing movement.

      Once Hunter was in her thoughts, it was real tough booting him back out again. The best she could do was relegate him to a back corner of her mind as she sat on the covered front porch and watched the feline family playing with leaves left from last autumn.

      At first, she didn’t even realize she’d picked up a pencil and started doodling on the back of the old-fashioned receipt from the Pit Stop. Looking down, she was amazed to discover that she’d drawn the view of the woods in front of her. Even more surprising was the fact that it wasn’t half-bad.

      Funny, she’d never been able to draw worth a hoot before. Her artistic abilities were somewhere between zilch and nada. It had been something of a joke at the school, where she’d had the crookedest display boards of any class. The kids were better at art than she was.

      There was a lot she missed about teaching—the feeling of making a difference, the interaction with the kids, the expression in her students’ eyes when they first grasped a new concept in reading or math. For the first time in a long time the thought of teaching didn’t fill her with blind panic. She wasn’t ready to return yet, not by any means, but she could feel the peaceful surroundings beginning to work their magic on her.

      Thinking of magic naturally led her thoughts to the Rom box she still had stored inside the cabin. And from there, her thoughts roved right on to Hunter. Would he stop by tonight as he’d said he would? Tomorrow you can cook dinner, he’d told her last night. She’d told him not to bother, but she had the feeling that he took her words about as seriously as he did learning how to tickle trout.

      The sun was just about setting, and from her vantage point she could see the heavenly orange glow radiating from the western horizon. Hunter should be coming home from work soon.

      As it turned out, Hunter didn’t stop by that night so he couldn’t sample the tuna-and-noodle casserole she’d made. In fact, he didn’t come home at all—at least, she hadn’t heard him drive up by the time she’d fallen asleep at almost 4:00 a.m.

      The next morning, she’d woken up with the birds and taken a walk, not deliberately intending to head in the direction of his cabin. Her feet just took her there on automatic pilot, even though she’d never been to his place before. The cabin’s design matched the one she was staying in, with the addition of a stone chimney on one side.

      Hunter’s

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