LITMIR.BIZ

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crinkled the navy sky and thunder growled, closer now. She looked west, past Jon and Seth, as if they were transparent. “Not tonight, Sam.”

      “Aw, Mom… I’ll pedal real fast,” he added eagerly.

      “No, Sammy. It’s after eight and I don’t want you coming home in a downpour.”

      “Pleeease.”

      She veered another look Jon’s way. “I said no.”

      Without a word, the kid shoved the bike back into place, spun toward the rear of the house and vanished behind the junipers. Shoulders squared, she skipped a third look their way. Jon almost smiled. She had grit, this woman.

      With her son. With him and Seth as an audience.

      She hadn’t run off. That point alone was enough to jack up his admiration about two hundred notches. Offering the slightest of nods, he conveyed what he felt. Deference in the slant of her chin, she returned the gesture and walked out of sight.

      Sparse drops of rain fell. Seth set down his empty soda can. “Well. This town hasn’t seen anything that pretty in a while.”

      “That a fact?”

      “Uh-huh.” A measured look at Jon. “You really don’t remember her, do you?”

      “Should I?”

      “Hell, I thought every guy from sixth grade up, living to a hundred, would remember the way that red hair used to hang past her—Hell,” he said again, clearly disconcerted about the direction of his musings.

      Jon stared at the carport. “She’s…Rianne Worth?”

      “Bingo.”

      Clueless fool. She knew you. He took in the weathered little house. “Husband?”

      “Dead, what I heard. She showed up one day early last summer from California somewhere, rented a motel for a week, then moved in there. She’s a part-time librarian or some such at Chinook Elementary. Hallie knows her. Says she subs now and then at the high school as well.”

      Jon kept silent. He wondered what Seth’s daughter thought of Rianne Worth as a teacher. Jon knew what he used to think of her, as a teenager.

      Too many years ago, way too many years.

      The rain increased. Drops mottled the driveway. Seth got to his feet and pulled the bill of his cap low. “Okay, I’m off.”

      “Yep.” Jon rose. “Talk to you tomorrow.”

      Shoulders hunched against the rain, his brother headed for his green pickup. Moments later, Jon stood alone.

      A steady drizzle pelted the earth like buckshot. Thunder tussled in the heavy, dismal sky. He made no move to go inside, instead allowed the storm to soak him. Harder, faster it came, collecting in puddles where the aged concrete had sunk over time. The budding trees fronting his yard glistened in a tangle of shiny, black prongs.

      Since he was a kid, he’d enjoyed rain, would walk hours in it when his mother was on an extrarotten binge. When her drunken cursing defiled their home, and his father escaped out back to the shed and his brothers hid in their bedrooms or the basement.

      Listening to the rain, feeling its blunt, wet needles cool his skin, helped him forget some of life’s uglies. Of course, no matter how hard it rained, how far he walked, one of those uglies would never fade.

      A sound to the left drew him. Rianne Worth, still in heels, skirt and clingy top, was piloting a giant purple umbrella while lifting two bags of groceries from the trunk of her car. Success evaded her; the trunk was loaded. She, on the other hand, kept dodging a sheet of rain baling through the tattered roof of the carport directly above the bumper. She had to move the car forward another two feet, which was impossible, or back it up, which would put her smack into the rain.

      He could help.

      Don’t get involved.

      She struggled another minute, gave up and carried a lone bag around back.

      Ah, damn it.

      Crossing his soggy mess of lawn, Jon stepped over the pruned shrub roses edging her drive. Behind the car, the cold stream from the roof caught him full across the neck and shoulders, drenching his ponytail and T-shirt. Five plastic bags in one hand, six in the other, he shook his head, blinked water from his eyes and rounded the rear bumper.

      She stood ten feet away. A petite gold and black silhouette under a purple mushroom. Rianne.

      Twenty-two years, and what could he say?

      You’ve grown up damn pretty?

      You’re someone I don’t recognize?

      Hell, most days he barely knew himself.

      “Shut the trunk,” he ordered, shouldering past her and heading for the back of the cottage. He bowed his head to the striking rain while her shoes clicked behind him.

      Under the porch overhang, she flipped the umbrella closed, parked it against the wall, then held open the door, waiting for him to proceed into the warm house.

      In a minuscule entryway, he stopped. “Where?”

      “To the left.”

      A whiff of her scent mingled with the damp air.

      Rain on woman.

      He turned into a kitchen about the size of his bedroom closet and set the bags in front of the stove and refrigerator. When he straightened, she stood near the door, hands clasped in front of her, little-girl fashion.

      “Thank you,” she said in that same soft tone he remembered.

      “You’re welcome.” He looked at his grubby harness boots. Sprigs of dead grass clung to the toes. “I’ve dirtied your kitchen.”

      “Don’t worry about it. Would you like some coffee?”

      He ran a hand down his dripping cheeks, scraped back his soggy hair. He could stay, get to know her as a neighbor—the five second Hi-how’s-it-going? type—or he could leave.

      Seth’s comments pitched both options. “You remember me.”

      Her eyes didn’t waver. “Yes. I do.”

      He flinched. She would. Two decades ago, every kid from first grade up knew the Tuckers. Not hard in a town of a thousand souls. Not hard when, on any given day, the mother of those Tuckers stumbled down the sidewalk, drunk.

      “Well,” he said, disgruntled she undoubtedly recalled those days. “I’ll go then.”

      “Jon.” His name was a touch. “I’d really like you to stay for coffee. You were kind enough to help, and…” The half smile from yesterday returned. “I feel responsible for what Sweetpea did to your shirt.”

      “Forget it. Cat needed a spot, shirt fit the bill.”

      “I’ve washed it. Wait a second.” She disappeared down a short hallway.

      He took a breath. Fine. He’d stay for a cup. He went to the door, took off his boots, set them on the outside mat with its white scripted Welcome to Our Home.

      Her footsteps returned. “Jon?”

      “Here.”

      “Good. You stayed.” She smiled and placed his neatly folded shirt on the table, then began scooping coffee into a maker. He approached the end of the counter where she worked.

      Abruptly, she faced him. “Are you a cop?”

      “I was. I quit a month ago.”

      He’d been asked to take stress leave and had opted for retirement. After Nicky’s death, his work had suffered. Hell, after the loss of his son life became an abyss—where he still floundered.

      Rianne set the coffee on.

      “Where are

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