by Jeannie Watt
So was this an attention-getting device? Did she just want some company? Whichever it was, Zach’s patience was growing thin. He was tired.
“It’s not the thunder,” Lizzie admitted in a small voice. A low rumble punctuated her words.
“Then what is it?” he asked softly.
“Trespassing.”
“Trespassing? What about it?” He’d made it clear that his daughters were never to cross the neighbor’s property again, despite Darcy’s heated protests about the land not being posted.
Lizzie twisted the edge of the blanket between her fingers. “What happens to you if you trespass?”
Zach knelt down next to the bed so they could be eye to eye. “The sheriff will warn you not to do it again.”
Lizzie’s forehead wrinkled. “But...her face.”
“Those scars did not come from trespassing, Lizzie.” He didn’t know how on earth they could and he was pissed that Tess would have told his girls that.
“Then why did she say it?” Lizzie’s eyes were huge.
Good question. Why scare a six-year-old? “My best guess is that she was trying to make a point. Her face didn’t get hurt because she trespassed,” he repeated firmly. “Your face will not get hurt if you trespass.” He could only imagine what scenarios Lizzie had been conjuring up in her young mind. “Even though you shouldn’t trespass,” he added for the sake of consistency.
Lizzie sniffed. “How do you know?”
“Because that’s not what happened to the lady. Her scars look like they came from a car accident, honey.”
Lizzie twisted the edge of her blanket between her small hands. “She was lying?”
“In a big way.” Zach reached down to smooth a few pale reddish-gold strands of hair off her forehead. In Lizzie’s limited experience, adults didn’t lie. She had so much to learn. “Now go to sleep, kiddo. There is absolutely nothing to worry about.”
“Can Benny sleep with me?”
“Benny stinks to high heaven right now. Trust me, you don’t want him in your bed or you’ll smell like a ranch dog. You don’t want that, do you?” A wavering smile touched his daughter’s lips and she shook her head. “Benny’s keeping guard on the porch,” Zach said, pulling Lizzie’s blankets up a little closer to her chin. “He’ll bark if there’s anything to worry about.” Damn, he hoped the dog didn’t bark. He needed some sleep.
Lizzie’s smile faded away. She wrapped her arms around Zach’s neck, pulling herself against him. He put a hand on her back and held her for a moment, smelling the strawberry bubble bath Emma had given her for her birthday. Then he got back to his feet and Lizzie snuggled deeper into the covers, looking so small.
“Liz, you know I’ll make sure nothing happens to you. Right?”
She nodded silently and Zach smiled. “Good. Now get some sleep. Tia will drive you to school tomorrow.”
Darcy’s door was open and the light was on when he walked past her room a few seconds later. He paused in the doorway and she looked up from where she was reading in bed.
“If Liz yells again, I’ll go,” she offered.
“I think she’ll be okay,” Zach said. “I should just let Benny sleep with her.”
“Ewww. Have you smelled him?”
“You guys going to wash him this weekend?”
Darcy let out a heavy sigh. “I guess.”
“Just how scary was this lady?” Zach asked. The girls had poured the story out shortly after he got home but it had been jumbled, told from three different points of view. At the time Zach had brushed aside the details and got to the meat of the matter—his girls shouldn’t have been on Tess O’Neil’s land and they weren’t to go back again. He didn’t want his daughters to have anything to do with her.
“I wasn’t scared.” Darcy’s lips twisted a little. “But I was kind of shocked. It took me a minute to realize she was being serious.”
“She’s serious,” Zach said. And a whole lot less than friendly. Why did people like that move to small communities? “I take it you guys aren’t going to use the creek path to get to school anymore? You’re going to stay off her property?”
“We won’t take Lizzie on the creek path. That’s for sure.”
“None of you will take the creek path.”
“Dad, it’s so much shorter...”
“And it’s so her property.”
“It’s stupid.”
“Stay away from that woman and off her land. Got it?”
Darcy let out a loud sigh—the kind he’d recently discovered only adolescents seemed to be able to make. “Fine. Got it.”
“Thank you.”
Zach walked down the hall to Emma’s room. The door was shut, but he cracked it open and looked inside. His middle daughter was sound asleep, despite the thunder and the Lizzie drama. He smiled, wishing he had that ability. Sleepless nights were more of the norm for him and because of the uncooperative hospital accounting department, he predicted more of the same.
He opened his bedroom door and flicked on the light. For a long while after her death, he’d kept Karen’s belongings out where he could see them, although Beth Ann had boxed her clothing and sent it to charity. But as time went on, he’d divided up Karen’s personal treasures between his daughters. The small collection of jewelry he’d stored for later. All that remained was a photo on the nightstand and a lot of good memories.
And a lot of bad ones. Not of Karen, but of the grim months following the diagnosis. The trauma of the treatments. Meeting the needs of three little girls who were about to lose their mother. Grieving for his wife long before he’d lost her.
Zach sat on the bed and eased his boots off. The first one fell with a heavy clunk. What would Karen have done tonight after discovering what was bothering her baby? He smiled wearily. Probably marched straight over to Tess O’Neil’s place and ripped into her. Karen had been sweet and peaceful, until something endangered those she loved. Beth Ann was the same way.
So was he. It was important to get along with the neighbors, but when a neighbor threatened your kids, things changed. Granted, they’d had no right to cross her land, but they were little girls, not hoodlums, following a path they’d taken for years. What the hell was she thinking trying to scare them?
Leave it. Just leave it.
Easier said than done when he was brought out of bed two hours later by a crying child. He shrugged into his flannel robe, his last gift from Karen, and he jogged upstairs to find Darcy hugging her little sister.
“It’s not the lady. Honest,” Lizzie said.
Like hell.
“It’s okay, Dad,” Darcy said. “Liz is coming to bed with me.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. But only for one night.” Darcy emphasized the last words.
“One night,” Lizzie agreed, making a beeline into Darcy’s room.
Zach waited until the girls were in Darcy’s bed, then turned off the light. Across the field, Tess O’Neil’s place glowed like a beacon, every light on, even though it was almost three o’clock in the morning.
Darcy leaned out of bed and craned her neck to see what Zach was staring at out of her window. Then she shrugged.
“It’s like that every night, Dad. She never shuts off her lights.”
* * *
THE NIGHT BECAME still after the storm had passed, almost too still, and Tess couldn’t bring herself to go upstairs to sleep. She remained in the chair, dozing fitfully and waking the next morning sti
ff from having finally fallen asleep in an uncomfortable position. When she pushed the blanket off her lap and got up out of the chair, Blossom shot to her feet, but Mac was slower to rise. When he finally did get to his feet, he held his injured foot a good three or four inches off the floor.
“Let’s see that leg,” Tess said, crouching in front of the dog. She reached out to gently touch it and Mac yelped, drawing it back, but not before Tess felt how hot it was. This was a problem.
Ten minutes later, after a short internet search, Tess called a vet in Wesley, the larger town an hour’s drive to the south. As she’d feared, since Dr. Hyatt was the only vet within sixty miles, no appointments were available until the following week, but the vet tech promised to let her know if something opened up.
“His leg is hot,” Tess said after receiving the bad news. “I’m afraid of infection.”
“It’s probably just inflammation,” the tech said, “but to play it safe, I’ll phone Ann at the mercantile about some medications you can give him until the doctor can see him.”
“Really? The mercantile here?”
“Yeah. The merc is kind of our branch pharmacy.”
“I had no idea. Thanks. I appreciate it.”
Tess had shopped at the mercantile three times so far, and each time she’d been the only person in the store except for the tough-looking elderly woman behind the counter who’d gruffly introduced herself as Ann. Tess had not made a friend when she’d refused to offer her name in return.
When Tess parked in front of the store a half hour after talking to the vet, she was in luck again. Not a single car in the small lot. List in hand, she crossed the old wooden porch and pulled the door open, only to stop abruptly on the threshold, facing five sets of curious eyes.
Tess automatically dropped her chin, hiding her face as she quickly walked past the women who stood in a tight group near the checkout counter, and grabbed a basket off the stack at the end of the first aisle.
“Well, hello,” one of the women called after her, “are you the new tenant of the Anderson place?”
“Hi,” Tess replied, not answering the question and not looking back as she escaped down the aisle closest to her.
She stopped at the end of the aisle, out of sight of the group, and faced the cooler as she gathered her composure, convinced herself that this was not a big deal...just unexpected.
The mercantile was roughly the size of a large convenience store, stacked to the ceiling with a wild variety of merchandise, much of which Tess didn’t recognize. Good cover until the ladies left. But the ladies started talking again and Tess soon realized that they had no intention of leaving.
Deciding she couldn’t hide forever, she opened the cooler door and pulled out butter, milk and eggs before moving on to the rather sad-looking produce. If she hadn’t felt cornered she might have worked at choosing the best fruit and vegetables, but as it was, she dumped carrots, oranges and apples into her basket, put three loaves of bread on top—one to eat, two to freeze. Then she peeked around the corner of a display.
The women were still there, clustered in the exact spot Tess wanted to be. Well, she couldn’t hide out here forever and when Ann, the proprietress, caught sight of her and frowned, Tess sucked up her courage and headed for the checkout counter.
She was instantly surrounded by women—or so it felt.
“It’s so nice to finally meet you,” one of the ladies said. Tess didn’t know which one because she didn’t look at them. “Do you quilt?”
“No.” Tess set the basket on the counter where Ann stood with a hand poised over the keys of the cash register, waiting for Tess to unload her basket. “Has Dr. Hyatt phoned in an order for me?” Tess asked her as she pulled the bread out of the basket.
“If you’re Tess O’Neil he has,” the woman said in a tone that told Tess she hadn’t forgotten her refusal to state her name on her first visit.
“I am,” Tess said in a low voice.
Ann pulled a stapled paper bag from under the counter and started ringing up the items in Tess’s basket. And then the women started closing in again from behind.
“We’re always looking for new members for our club,” another woman, who for some reason was not taking a very blatant hint, declared from close to Tess’s right shoulder. “And quilting is very easy to learn.”
“Thank you very much, but I’m not interested.” Tess sensed an exchange of glances as she pulled three twenties out of her very plain purse and handed them across the counter. The drawer of the old-fashioned cash register popped open as Tess quickly loaded her purchases into the recyclable tote she’d brought. A couple bucks’ worth of change and she was good to go.
Except that she had to walk past the group of women and the shortest one was now studying her face with a thoroughness that unnerved her—to the point that Tess half expected her to say, “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”
Maybe her disguise wasn’t as good as she’d hoped. Maybe she should have gone with a wig or something. Or never left the house.
“Excuse me,” she said, refusing to make eye contact as she squeezed past the women and opened the door. Okay. She was coming off as cold and rude. Tough. These ladies needed to understand that she didn’t want to join their quilting bees or whatever.
“Such a nice young woman,” she heard one of the women say sarcastically.
“I swear...I know her from somewhere.”
The last words came just as the door swung shut, making Tess’s blood freeze. She rushed to the car and got inside, slamming the door harder than necessary and then dumping the grocery tote on the seat beside her as the dogs nuzzled her hair. What if they figured out who she was?
CHAPTER FIVE
TESS’S HEAD POUNDED with a stress-induced headache by the time she turned her car into her long driveway. Realistically, what were the chances that the inquisitive ladies in the mercantile would connect her, a scarred woman with dark brown bobbed hair and horn-rimmed glasses, to photoshopped magazine ads featuring a redheaded model? Slim. Very slim.
But she still felt ill.
After putting away her few groceries, Tess tricked Mac into taking an antibiotic pill by wrapping it in cheese, then went out to the barn to put the final coat of finish on the oak table.
She swept the barn floor in the area around the table, trying not to think about the women. Trying not to obsess.
There was no breeze to stir the dust she hadn’t been able to bring up out of the rough floorboards, so Tess left the barn door rolled open. The dogs soon settled in the sun outside the door and Tess began applying the clear finish over the golden oak stain, focusing on her brushstrokes, trying to make the finish as perfect as possible.
She was in the zone, done with the top and crouched down to start a leg, when a fracas outside the barn door brought her bolt upright. A split second later Mac and Blossom shot into the barn, tumbling over each other and knocking down the garden tools leaning against the far wall in their frenzy to do...what?
The brush fell out of Tess’s hand as she stumbled backward, instinctively heading for cover—until she heard a frantic squeaking and realized the dogs were after a small animal, now hiding behind an old mower.
“Leave it alone! Foei! Zit!”
Blossom instantly fell back at the Dutch commands, which meant business, then slowly sank down onto her haunches, her sharp gaze still zeroed in on whatever had hidden behind the tools. Mac was slower to obey, but then he, too, sat with his
injured leg held out slightly, as if pointing to his prey.
Tess pressed her hand to her hammering heart then walked over to gingerly pick up the brush from where it had fallen on the still tacky tabletop. The finish was ruined, marred from the brush and the dust the dogs had carried in with them in their frenzy to get whatever furry little beast had raced into the barn ahead of them.
Her fault. She should have closed the door, but this was no big deal to someone with a lot of time on her hands. She’d simply wipe it down and start over.
But Tess’s very logical assessment began to disintegrate as she stared down at the marred table. The dogs continued to hold, waiting for her to release them, and the critter, whatever it might be, stayed huddled where it was. For a brief moment everything in the barn was still, and then Tess felt tears start to well. Stupid tears that rolled down her cheeks—not because of her ruined work, but because of her still hammering heart. Because of the fear reactions she didn’t seem able to control.
Something had to give.
“Let’s go,” she said to the dogs, motioning to the door. Once the dogs were out, Tess rolled the door most of the way shut, leaving a crack big enough—she hoped—for the furry little beast to escape through.
Hands shaking, she made a cup of tea to calm her nerves and forced herself to drink it before pulling out her cell phone and calling Detective Hiller.
It took two tries and several minutes on hold before the detective answered by stating his name in a clipped tone. Tess identified herself and asked if there was any news on Eddie or the guy who slashed her. Despite the tea, her voice still shook.
“Nothing new,” he said in his usual brusque tone, indicating without saying a word that he had bigger, more urgent problems than an essentially cold case—her case—and he undoubtedly did. How many new and possibly urgent cases had he started working on since her assault? She was old news.
