LITMIR.BIZ

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was at my side in a heartbeat. “You have time for tea, right, Bernice?” he whispered in my ear, his fingers wrapping around my elbow.

      “Enjoying your vacation?” I whispered.

      “Mrs. O’Malley is fine,” he whispered back. “It’s Murphy that I’m not too sure about. But then, he’s probably the reason why you sent me here instead of the Super 8, right?”

      “There is no Super 8,” I reminded him under my breath.

      “You’re looking very pretty today!” The words were chortled loudly just as we reached the doorway to the old-fashioned sitting room.

      “Is he talking to you or me?” I murmured.

      Alex’s response was to lightly pinch my arm. I yipped in surprise.

      “Murphy, you’re such a charmer,” Charity chuckled.

      I looked around the room for Charity’s other guest but all I saw was a grouping of empty watered-silk furniture swathed in plastic.

      “‘Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting,’” the invisible Murphy shouted disapprovingly.

      “And my beauty fled years ago!” Charity laughed agreeably.

      I headed toward an oversize chair by the fireplace but just as I was about to sit down there was a flash of white and a rush of air several inches from my face.

      “Blessed is the man who does not sit in the seat of mockers.”

      I froze in place and blinked. There was an enormous white cockatoo sitting in the exact spot that I was just about to claim. His feathers lifted to create a huge ruffle around his face and he clicked his enormous gray beak.

      “You’re paraphrasing again, Murphy,” Charity said with a disappointed shake of her head. “You’re supposed to be working on the Beatitudes now, not the Psalms. Please concentrate.”

      Charity’s noisy bird was apparently not a rumor, after all. I’d imagined something…smaller. Like one of those little blue-and-white parakeets. Something in a cage.

      “You can sit over here, Bernice.” Charity patted the cushion next to her. Alex, I noticed, had picked the chair farthest from Murphy.

      “I only have a few minutes,” I said, watching out of the corner of my eye as Murphy took little marching steps up the arm of the chair. A bird who had more Scripture memorized than I did. It wasn’t fair. I loved reading the Bible and I valiantly tried to memorize verses—there were three-by-five cards taped to practically every surface in my apartment—but so far all I had down was a whopping three. Annie cautioned me not to make memorization something to beat myself up over—did she know me, or what?—and said to think of them as “grace graffiti.”

      “Are you going over to the Golden Oaks, dear?” Charity asked.

      How did she know that? Was my daily schedule posted somewhere in town? It was definitely worth looking into.

      She lifted a beautiful china teapot and poured hot tea into a cup for me, then carefully refilled the other two on the tray. I’d never been a tea drinker—I drink coffee out of a mug that could double as a thermos—but there was something so quaint and sweet about a dainty cup decorated with tiny violets that I was momentarily swayed.

      “What is the Golden Oaks?” Alex accepted the cup she offered and snagged a sugar cookie off the tray on the coffee table to go with it.

      “The nursing home outside of town.” Charity answered Alex’s question before I could. “Bernice goes there a few times a month and gives free haircuts.”

      “Really.” Alex smiled slightly.

      I could read his mind. Future ammunition.

      “So how long have you been Bernice’s beau, Mr. Scott?” Charity asked.

      “Bernice’s beau!” Murphy repeated, and then made a noise that sounded like he was choking on a cracker.

      “He’s not—” Without thinking, I took a quick, very undainty swallow of tea, which burned a path all the way down my throat.

      Charity’s eyes were as bright and unnerving as her cockatoo’s as they searched my face. She smiled benignly. “You make a lovely couple.”

      Alex lifted his cup and waved at me with his pinkie finger.

      I had to run away. But this time, I knew I couldn’t go very far. My roots in Prichett weren’t as deep as some, but like it or not, they were anchored there by my responsibilities and I couldn’t just pull them up, shake them off and relocate to an Alex-less place. But at the very least, I could leave Charity’s.

      “I really should go. They’re expecting me by five.” Probably breaking several unwritten laws about proper tea etiquette, I downed what was left in my cup and stood up, smoothing wrinkles out of my skirt that weren’t there. I still hadn’t called Elise and Annie, and I knew they’d be beside themselves with curiosity about Alex.

      “‘The Lord bless you and keep you,’” Murphy intoned, then cackled delightedly and belted out, “Bye-bye, baby!”

      “I’m going with you,” Alex decided.

      “Take your time, Mr. Scott. I’ll leave the door unlocked until ten, then you’ll have to climb through the basement window around back.”

      “‘Enter by the narrow gate…’” Murphy began.

      I didn’t hear the rest because Alex practically pushed me out of the room.

      “You can’t come with me,” I grumbled as he towed me toward the escape door at the end of the hallway. I discovered that digging my heels in on a polished hardwood floor was an exercise in futility.

      “I can tell that bird doesn’t like me. Animals never like me.”

      I stopped so quickly that Alex bumped into me. He smelled a bit like lemon furniture polish and rose water. “Oh, please. Don’t give me that,” I said, annoyed with him. “Everyone loves you. Babies. Second-graders. Elderly women. You can charm the birds out of the trees.”

      “Not all birds,” Alex said darkly. “I won’t get in your way. Scout’s honor.”

      “Don’t try to tell me you were a Boy Scout.” I rolled my eyes.

      “I played one on TV?”

      I wasn’t going to laugh. Laughter led to…Well, in our case it had led to like…and like had skipped right to love. At least it had for me and I had the scars to prove it. Alex was in Prichett on a mission to…to what? Tell me how he was doing? That could be taken care of with eight simple words. I’m fine, Bernice. See you in ten years. No, he obviously had a more sinister agenda.

      I slid into the front seat of my car and before I could put it into gear, Alex was buckling himself in next to me.

      My car decided to add to my torment. The engine gargled too much gas and quit. There was a ritual that I had to perform whenever this happened and it wasn’t pretty.

      “It died,” Alex pointed out helpfully.

      I turned on the brights and the radio and the windshield wipers, pumped the gas pedal several times and then turned the key in the ignition again.

      Alex leaned across me. “You have over a hundred and fifty thousand miles on this vehicle.”

      “And she’s still going strong.” I patted the dash as the engine hiccupped and then settled into a rough purr as I eased the car into the street.

      Just as I saw the long row of lights from the nursing home, my cell phone rang from the depths of my quilted purse. Which happened to be in a heap at Alex’s feet.

      “It’s probably Elise or Annie,” I muttered. “Can you just pick it up and say hello and tell whoever it is that I’ll call them back? My voice mail is messed up.”

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