LITMIR.BIZ

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called for desperate measures. She’d tried just about everything else, and she was fresh out of ideas.

       Of course, she could have gone to Sedona and talked to a psychic, but people knew her there. She didn’t want anybody spilling the beans—if word of what she was up to ever got back to Rance, he’d have a fit and fall in it.

      I did it for you, Julie, she said silently. And for your girls.

       Julie would have laughed, Cora knew that. Her daughter had been the practical, pragmatic type, just like Rance. Indeed, the two of them had been very much alike, believing only in what they could see, hear and touch.

       It was sad.

       Cora came back from her mental sojourn. Hammering sounded from next door, at Echo’s shop, and Eddie Walters’s old truck was still parked out front.

       Needing a break, after giving three perms and a weave, Cora decided to go over and see how the new shelves were coming along.

       Echo was up on a ladder, painting the ceiling. Barefoot, wearing a fitted T-shirt, her long, firm legs revealed by a pair of denim shorts, she looked like a wood nymph. The dog was nowhere in sight.

       “Wow,” Cora said, admiring Eddie’s work as well as Echo’s. “The place looks great.”

       Echo smiled and descended the ladder, laying her paint roller in the tray and resting her hands on her hips. “The first shipment of books is due to arrive on Thursday,” she said. “I might be open for business by Saturday morning.”

       It pleased Cora to see the old shop coming alive again. She’d bought it years ago, along with the space next door, planning to expand her own business one day. As it turned out, though, she’d had her hands full with the Curl and Twirl, and now she was thinking more and more often of retiring, maybe doing a little traveling.

       Of course, she couldn’t do that with Rance still running hither and yon like some crazy man, trying to work himself into an early grave, or outrun memories of a past he tended to idealize.

       Cora had loved her daughter, but Julie had been a flesh-and-blood woman, with all the accompanying faults and foibles, not a paragon of virtue. In some ways, it was unfair, Rance’s remembering her the way he did. He’d forgotten the way the two of them butted heads, because they were too much alike. Stiff-necked, both of them. Used to getting their own way.

       A curious expression came over Echo’s face; she seemed to be pondering Cora, like the blank spaces in a crossword puzzle.

       “I haven’t seen the girls in a few days,” Echo said, brightening.

       “Rance took them camping up on Jesse’s ridge,” Cora explained, relieved. “Where’s Avalon?”

       “Hiding under my bed, I think,” Echo replied. “All this hammering and sawing is probably giving her a headache.”

       Eddie grinned sheepishly and waded into the conversation. “Almost done,” he said.

       Cora had known Eddie all his life. Known his mother, and his grandmother, too, God rest their souls. He wasn’t a bright boy, but he was good with his hands. When somebody in Indian Rock needed shelves put up, or walls painted, or pipes and wiring fixed, Eddie was the person they called. That was why Cora had recommended him to Echo.

       “Looks like you did a good job,” Cora told him. “Just like always.”

       Eddie beamed, already putting away his tools. The floor was covered with sawdust, and Cora, being Cora, found a broom in the corner and started sweeping.

       “You don’t have to do that,” Echo protested, a slight frown puckering her brow.

       Cora remembered that she’d come from Chicago. Like as not, folks in a big city like that didn’t sweep one another’s floors, but this was Indian Rock, not Chicago. Cora went right on with her sweeping.

       Echo watched solemnly, and she looked like a person with something to say. When Eddie finished up, Echo wrote him a check, and he left with his toolbox.

       Avalon came downstairs the moment the door closed behind him.

       “How ya doin’ today, little mama?” Cora asked the dog. She’d always liked critters, but she had a special place in her heart for this one. Echo had told her about finding Avalon outside a truck stop down by Tucson, lost and soaked to the skin.

       “I was walking her on Saturday night, after I got back from the party,” Echo said suddenly, patting the dog’s head. “We came to a park, so I let her off the leash for a run. She headed straight for an RV parked on the opposite side and about clawed the door down trying to get in.”

       Cora considered that. The implications were obvious.

       “I want to find her family,” Echo said, very softly, and very sadly. “I truly do. But I swear it’s going to kill me to give her up.”

       If ever anybody looked like they needed a hug, it was Echo Wells, in that moment. “You’ll do what’s right,” Cora said, dumping a dustbinful of sawdust and wood chips into the trash. “That’s the kind of person you are.”

       Echo’s eyes glistened. She blinked and looked away.

       “I might be out of line asking this,” Cora ventured carefully, “but do you have any folks?”

       Echo met her gaze, though Cora could tell she didn’t want to. “An aunt and uncle, a few cousins,” she said. “We’re not close.”

       “I see.” Cora told herself she was an old busybody and she ought to keep her mouth shut. She didn’t, though. “No husband or boyfriend?”

       Echo shook her head. Looked away. Looked back. “I almost got married once,” she said. “Justin and I booked a slot in one of those gaudy little chapels in Vegas. I flew in on schedule, put on my dress and took a cab to the McWeddings place. Justin was—detained.”

       Cora set the broom aside. “You mean he stood you up?”

       “He said he had a meeting at the last minute,” Echo said, trying to smile and failing miserably.

      Uh-oh, Cora thought, as she registered the word meeting. She’d been toying with the idea that Rance and Echo might get together ever since the party—the girls liked Echo, and she and Rance surely looked good together—despite their bristly beginning. But Rance was a workaholic, and evidently this Justin yahoo had been, too.

       “So you were all alone in Vegas? He didn’t show up at all?”

       “I told him not to bother,” Echo said. Her voice sounded small and faraway.

       “But when you got back home…?”

       “Justin lives in New York,” Echo replied, when Cora’s sentence fell apart in the middle, like a suspension bridge bearing too much weight. “I lived in Chicago. Neither of us wanted to move at the time, so it wouldn’t have worked out, anyway.”

       “Still,” Cora said, wanting to cry.

       “Justin was all business,” Echo went on, evidently trying to make Cora feel better. The effort, just like the smile she’d attempted earlier, fell flat. “He cared more about his company than anything else. I wanted—”

       “What did you want, Echo?” Cora asked, after a few moments of gentle silence.

       “A dog,” Echo said. “A husband and kids.”

       Cora’s hopes sparked again. “You’re young—twenty-nine? Thirty? You oughtn’t to give up.”

       Echo leaned down, stroked Avalon thoughtfully. “Twenty-nine,” she said. Then she gave Cora another of those pensive looks. “What about you, Cora? You haven’t mentioned a husband. Are you planning to fall in love one day soon?”

       It was an odd question. Made Cora think of the little package snugged away in her handbag. “Julie’s dad died years ago. Best husband a woman could ever ask for,

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