LITMIR.BIZ

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moments. All of which revolved around Janey.

      She’d saved him from everything, the travesty of his family, from closed minds and unsympathetic authority figures, from his own self-destructive tendencies. At a point in his life when he was the town outsider, when almost no one in Erskine accepted him, Janey had. It was that simple.

      And when she’d needed him, where had he been? Where was he now? Still focused on his career, his future, his own wants.

      Sure, he’d called her house twice in the two weeks since he’d discovered he had a daughter. Both times she and Jessie had been gone and he’d left messages, grateful they weren’t there to ask questions while resenting the fact that he felt obliged to check in with her at all.

      He gunned the engine, watched the speedometer notch up to seventy, a foolish speed to be traveling on a backcountry road where a cow or a slow-moving tractor could be over the next hill. He didn’t slow down, even when he passed the turnoff for Erskine. He wasn’t ready to go back there yet. Besides, Jessie didn’t want him around, anyway; she’d made that perfectly clear.

      SPRING IN ERSKINE. There was no better season, Janey decided, and no better place to spend it than her hometown.

      Erskine didn’t change from year to year, the same old buildings, the same mountains and pastures and hay meadows, but in the spring it always seemed…newer, fresher. People opened windows to let in the breeze off the mountains, a breeze so crisp and clean it slipped into corners and swept through shadows, and left them brighter somehow. The winter’s accumulation of dirt and dead leaves had been banished from the doorways, window boxes had been filled with geraniums and impatiens, and planters hung from eaves, dripping with ivy and crowded with glossy-leaved begonias.

      It was such a beautiful day that she’d left her car at home and walked to the school for her afternoon art classes. She really should have taken Jessie directly home after school; she had a hundred tasks to complete, grades to tally for final report cards, trim to paint. Phone messages to listen to…

      She looked down at her daughter and decided there wasn’t any rush to get home. Two weeks had passed since Noah had left with a promise that he’d be back. Two weeks and two phone messages, they still hadn’t seen him. As the days continued to add up, facing the answering machine each evening had become a real challenge. If the message light was blinking, it meant Noah couldn’t make it again. If there was no message, it was even worse.

      No one else in town knew about Noah’s visit, a kind of unspoken agreement between mother and daughter not to bring up a subject sure to inspire gossip they didn’t want to hear and questions they couldn’t answer. But Jessie wouldn’t talk to her about Noah, either, and that worried Janey.

      “Clary’s truck is at the sheriff’s office,” Jessie said. “Can I go say hi?”

      “Absolutely. Tell him hi for me, too.”

      “You could tell him yourself.”

      Janey considered doing just that, for all of ten seconds. The hope on Jessie’s face held her back.

      Deputy Sheriff Clarence Beeber was not only Jessie’s fishing buddy and good friend, he was the closest thing she had to a father. But it wasn’t any secret that he wanted to be her father for real one day. It was Janey who was taking her sweet time. And she let them think that, because, honestly, she didn’t know what else to do.

      She didn’t want to string Clary along, but she’d always been afraid of what it might mean for Jessie if she told him outright that they’d never be more than friends. So Janey walked a fine line between not encouraging Clary, but not discouraging him so much it became uncomfortable for him to see Jessie. Walking that line was even more important now, when the last thing her daughter needed was more change in her life.

      “I have about a million things to do, Jessie, but you go on ahead. Just be home for supper.”

      Jessie headed off, dragging her feet, nothing like her usual upbeat self. Janey knew Clary would cheer her up, though, and in the meantime, she’d go home and weed or wash windows. Whatever kept her hands occupied and her mind off Noah Bryant.

      “Hey there, Janey,” Earl Tilford called out as she turned the corner onto Main Street and passed the bakery.

      Janey backpedaled a couple of steps and stuck her head in the wide-open doorway. “How’s it going, Mr. Tilford?”

      “I was about to ask you that. I heard Bryant’s in town.”

      “Where did you hear that?”

      “Came by way of the usual sources.”

      Which meant Dory Shasta, wife of Mike Shasta, owner of the Ersk Inn. If the Ersk Inn was the town watering hole, Dory Shasta was a prospector who spent all her spare time panning for little nuggets of information that she used to her best advantage. In Erskine, gossip was currency.

      There was no telling how Dory had found out. Mrs. Halliwell might have seen Noah outside her house two weeks ago, or maybe somebody had recognized him when he gassed up on his way out of town. Or he was here now, which not only gave Janey a serious case of butterflies, it made more sense. No way would it have taken two weeks for such a juicy rumor to get around.

      This kind of information ran through town like a bad case of the flu. That thought made Janey smile, since in both instances stuff was coming out of people’s mouths that would’ve been better off kept inside. Not that she resented the gossip all that much, even when she was at the center of it. Some people might not appreciate having everyone know their business, but to Janey it felt like being part of a huge, caring family. Being alone in the world and responsible for a daughter was a little less scary in Erskine.

      “You being our newly elected mayor and all,” Earl said, “maybe you could make a law against ex-boyfriends who show up every decade or so and cause trouble. I’m sure Clary would be happy to enforce it.”

      Janey didn’t quibble with Mr. Tilford’s assumption that Noah was there to cause trouble. Intentional or not, trouble was what he brought. As for the rest of it, “I think I can handle Noah without throwing around my political weight,” she said, tongue firmly tucked in cheek, “or calling in local law enforcement.”

      “Well, at the very least, a girl could use a cookie when she’s facing an ordeal like this.” Earl came out from behind the counter and offered her one of the huge cookies—loaded with nuts and chocolate chips—that he was famous for.

      “Just the air in here is enough to put ten pounds on me,” Janey protested, but she took the cookie, broke off a piece and slipped it into her mouth. She closed her eyes and let it melt on her tongue, sighing her approval. “Then again, this is worth a couple hundred extra sit-ups.”

      “Here’s one for Jessie,” he said, handing her a bakery bag and waving off her thanks. “Knowing you appreciate it is reward enough for getting up at 3:00 a.m. If I was twenty years younger—”

      “You’d still marry Meggie and break my heart.”

      “You’re right. And my girls would still grow up and leave town.” Earl sighed, but the smile was back on his face by the time he ducked under the pass-through and straightened to look over the counter. “Dee’s stationed in Germany these days, and Andie’s a fancy pastry chef in one of them New York hotels. Meggie’s working on her, but the harder she pushes Andie to come home for a visit, the more stubborn the girl gets. I think Meggie’d be smarter to back off, use that reverse psychology I always hear about, but—” he shrugged “—they’re peas in a pod, one of them just as pigheaded as the other.”

      “My money’s on Meg,” Janey said with a smile. Literally. There was a pool down at the Ersk Inn, and Janey had put down her five dollars like everyone else in town. “If Meg can get Andie to visit by the Fourth of July, I’ll have more to thank you for than your cookies.”

      She left Earl laughing, stepping out into streaming sunshine and nearly colliding with Sam Tucker. Besides owning one of the biggest ranches around, Sam was also the town veterinarian.

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