LITMIR.BIZ

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      She paused at his headstone and stooped down to remove a weed that was trying to grow just beside the tombstone. Her grandmother was buried beside him, but Sara had never known her. She’d been a very small child when she died.

      She patted the tombstone. “Hello, Grandad,” she said softly. “I hope you’re in a happy place with Granny. I sure do miss you. Especially in the summer. Remember how much fun we had going fishing together? You caught that big bass the last time, and fell in the river trying to get him reeled in.” She laughed softly. “You said he was the tastiest fish you’d ever eaten.”

      She tugged at another weed. “There’s this new guy in town. You’d like him. He loves to read and he owns a big ranch. He’s sort of like an ogre, though. Very antisocial. He thinks I look like a bag lady…”

      She stopped talking when she realized she wasn’t alone in the cemetery. Toward the far corner, a familiar figure was tugging weeds away from a tombstone, patting it with his hand. Talking to it. She hadn’t even heard him drive up.

      Without thinking of the consequences, she went toward him. Here, among the tombstones, there was no thought of causing trouble. It was a place people came to remember, to honor their dead.

      She stopped just behind him and read the tombstone. “Ellen Marist Cameron,” it said. She would have been nine years old, today.

      He felt her there and turned. His eyes were cold, full of pain, full of hurt.

      “Your daughter,” she guessed softly.

      “Killed in a wreck,” he replied tonelessly. “She’d gone to the zoo with a girlfriend and her parents. On the way back, a drunk driver crossed the median and t-boned them on the side my daughter was occupying. She died instantly.”

      “I’m sorry.”

      He cocked his head. “Why are you here?”

      “I come to talk to my grandad,” she confessed, avoiding his eyes. “He died recently of a massive coronary. He was all the family I had left.”

      He nodded slowly. “She—” he indicated the tombstone “—was all the family I had left. My parents are long dead. My wife died of a drug overdose a week after Ellen was killed.” He looked out across the crop of tombstones with blank eyes. “My grandfather used to live here. I thought it was a good place to put her, next to him.”

      So that was the funeral he’d come here to attend. His child. No wonder he was bitter. “What was she like?” she asked.

      He looked down at her curiously. “Most people try to avoid the subject. They know it’s painful, so they say nothing.”

      “It hurts more not to talk about them,” she said simply. “I miss my grandfather every day. He was my best friend. He taught history at the local college. We went fishing together on weekends.”

      “She liked to swim,” he said, indicating the tombstone. “She was on a swim team at her elementary school. She was a whiz at computers,” he added, laughing softly. “I’d be floundering around trying to find a Web site, and she’d make two keystrokes and bring it up on the screen. She was…a child…of great promise.” His voice broke.

      Without counting the cost, Sara stepped right up against him and put her arms around him. She held on tight.

      She felt the shock run through him. He hesitated, but only for a minute. His own arms slid around her. He held her close while the wind blew around them, through the tall trees that lined the country cemetery. It was like being alone in the world. Tony Danzetta was out of sight watching, of course, even if he couldn’t be seen. Jared couldn’t be out of his sight, even at a time like this.

      He let out a long breath, and some of the tension seemed to drain out of him. “I couldn’t talk about her. There’s a hole in my life so deep that nothing fills it. She was my world, and while she was growing up, I was working myself to death making money. I never had time to go to those swim meets, or take her places on holidays. I wasn’t even there last Christmas, because I was working a deal in South America and I had to fly to Argentina to close it. She was supposed to spend Christmas with me. She had Thanksgiving with her mother.” He drew in a ragged breath and his arms involuntarily contracted around Sara’s slim figure. “She never complained. She was happy with whatever time I could spare for her. I wish I’d done more. I never thought we’d run out of time. Not this soon.”

      “Nobody is ever ready for death,” Sara said, eyes closed as she listened to the steady, reassuring heartbeat under her ear. “I knew Grandad was getting old, but I didn’t want to see it. So I pretended everything was fine. I lost my parents years ago. Grandad and I were the only family left.”

      She felt him nodding.

      “Did she look like you?” she asked.

      “She had my coloring. But she had her mother’s hair. She wasn’t pretty, but she made people feel good just being around her. She thought she was ugly. I was always trying to explain to her that beauty isn’t as important as character and personality.”

      There was a long, quiet, warm silence.

      “Why did you decide to live here?” she asked suddenly.

      He hesitated. “It was a business decision,” he replied, withdrawing into himself. “I thought new surroundings might help.”

      She pulled back and his arms fell away from her. She felt oddly chilled. “Does it help?”

      He searched her eyes quietly. After a minute, the intensity of the look brought a flaming blush to her cheeks and she looked down abruptly.

      He laughed softly at her embarrassment. “You’re bashful.”

      “I am not. It’s just hot,” she protested, putting a little more distance between them. Her heart was racing and she felt oddly hot. That wouldn’t do at all. She didn’t dare show weakness to the enemy.

      “It wasn’t an insult,” he said after a minute. “There’s nothing wrong with being shy.” His eyes narrowed. “Who looks after you, if you get sick? Your boss?”

      “Dee’s wonderful, but she’s not responsible for me. I look out for myself.” She glanced at him. “How about you?”

      He shrugged. “If it looked like I was dying, Tony the Dancer would probably call somebody if he was around—if he wasn’t on holiday or having days off. My lawyer might send a doctor out, if it was serious and somebody called.”

      “But would they take care of you?” she persisted.

      “That’s not their job.”

      She drew in a long breath. “I know you don’t like me. But maybe we could look out for each other.”

      His dark eyebrows lifted. “Be each other’s family, in other words.”

      “No ties,” she said at once. “We’d just be there if one of us was sick.”

      He seemed to be seriously considering it. “I had flu and almost died last winter,” he said quietly. “It was just after I lost my daughter. If Tony hadn’t come back early from Christmas holidays, I guess I’d have died. It went into pneumonia and I was too sick and weak to get help.”

      “Something like that happened to me this year,” she said. “I got sick and I had this horrible pain in my stomach. I stayed in bed for days until I could get up and go back to work. It was probably just the stomach bug that was going around, but I thought, what if it was something serious? I couldn’t even get to the phone.”

      He nodded. “I’ve had the same thoughts. Okay. Suppose we do that?”

      She smiled. “It’s not such a bad idea, is it?”

      “Not bad at all.”

      “I would be more amenable to the plan if you’d stop treating me like a bag lady,” she added.

      “Stop

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