A look of horror crossed Valery’s face. She slapped a hand to her mouth. “What’s wrong with me?” She lurched toward Carrie, face white. “I am such a loser. Please, please, don’t repeat that. It’s the booze talking. I only meant to have one drink. One drink to settle my nerves.”
Was Valery an alcoholic? Her beautiful, vivacious, talented friend who could snap her fingers and have any guy she wanted?
While she grappled to say something worthwhile, Valery rambled on.
“I love my sister. She’s been through hell, and now she’s finally happy again with a really sweet guy.” The troubled brunette gripped Carrie’s arm. “Don’t breathe a word of this to anybody. I won’t ruin this for her. Promise me.”
Carrie knew the rule of families like theirs, especially families in Honey Ridge. They took care of their own dirty laundry, hid their problems under the bed or locked them away in closets and pretended the bad things didn’t happen. Julia knew Valery sometimes drank too much. Apparently, more often than anyone else realized, but family issues were no one else’s business. Not Carrie’s. Not anyone’s.
Pity welling, she said the only thing she could. “I won’t say anything.”
Valery began to cry and turned her back. Carrie touched her shaking shoulder in comfort, but her friend shook her off. “Go away, Carrie. Just go.”
With a lump in her chest, Carrie left the library and refreshments forgotten, went outside. She needed air. She needed to think.
She and Valery had hung out in high school before Val discovered boys and left Carrie with her books. They’d been friends. Still were, but time and different styles had put a gulf between them. A far greater gulf than she’d realized until today.
Yesterday’s fiasco with Mr. Thomson should have taught her to keep her nose to herself.
But she cared.
That was the problem with being Carrie Riley. She cared, but when faced with trouble, she got all shaky and ran away. Her sisters would never have walked out. They would have known what to do.
But she was Carrie, the sister who was as exciting as dental floss.
Mulling, worried, she walked out through the kitchen. The peach orchard spread in the distance, dormant now until spring, when the pink blossoms filled the air with scent and beauty.
At the back of the house was Michael’s garden, a memorial of sorts to Julia’s abducted son created by Eli Donovan in a labor of love that told the whole town he’d fallen for the innkeeper.
Theirs was a bittersweet story of grief and healing.
But what had happened to Valery? How had she come to this?
The bitterness had shocked Carrie more than the drinking. The Griffin girls had always seemed so together.
Worried, pensive, she found a quiet place on the grass where she could see the comforting hills rising around Honey Ridge, kicked off her shoes and sat down.
When had life become so complicated?
* * *
HAYDEN SHUT THE LAPTOP, frustrated at the snail’s pace of this new project. He’d dumped an entire chapter and started fresh again.
Killing people for a living was murder in more ways than one.
He’d holed up in his guest room after a buffet lunch at Miss Milly’s Café with Brody. Chicken and dumplings with all the fixings.
The boy had ambled along the road, hands deep in his pockets, a shoe box under one arm, looking as if he carried the weight of the world when Hayden drove past. He’d stopped, pushed open the door and said, “Get in.”
Brody hadn’t questioned the command. He’d been going fishing he claimed, but he’d had no fishing gear. Showing Hayden his lizard, he’d grown animated. Hayden had asked him about the hideout, and they’d talked of the rabbit and wounded creatures and night noises.
The boy’s affection and care for animals reminded Hayden painfully of the stray black dog.
The mulberry walls of the B and B pressed in. He’d been planning to explore the old gristmill across the road as much to assure himself that it was not the mill in his dreams as to generate a book idea.
This was as good a time as any.
He jogged down the stairs, hopping over the bloodred squeaker.
Maybe he’d kill somebody on that step. Someone like Clint Thomson.
The thought of Penny Thomson flashed through his head. Where was the woman? Dead? Hiding?
The young couple staying in the Blueberry Room passed him on the stairs.
“I picked up a copy of your new book,” the man said. “Would you sign it for me?”
“Be happy to.”
The woman beamed. “We’ll bring it down to breakfast in the morning.”
They moved on up the stairs, heads together, murmuring to each other, and Hayden suffered a pang of loneliness, of being one in a world of couples and family. His thoughts drifted to Carrie. She was here somewhere at the inn, holed up with the other women in a wedding frenzy.
He veered into the long hallway that bisected the house, intending to go out the front way until he spotted her in the backyard.
She sat on the lawn in the afternoon shade, a vision of quiet and peace, with her knees pulled to her chest, blue floral dress demurely tugged to her ankles. She’d kicked off a pair of tan flats to dig her toes into the lush green grass. The slender ankle bracelet glinted in the sunlight.
She was a picture, a scene for a movie or a book. But not the kind he wrote.
He stepped out onto the veranda, its timeworn planks painted the blue of yesteryear, and crossed the expanse of green between himself and the woman who captured his interest. A sugar maple with a trunk the girth of an elephant dappled the ground in shades of gold and shadow.
When he drew close, Carrie looked up.
He went to his haunches beside her.
“I thought you were plotting a wedding with the other women.”
“Plotting.” She turned her head toward him and smiled. A pearl earring winked at him. “Is that how you view marriage? As a plot?”
The topic made him melancholy, pinched a spot in the center of his chest, but he put on a good front by teasing, “Weddings are the ultimate diabolical plot. The poor groom is trussed up in a monkey suit on display for all the world to learn that he can’t dance. Then he stutters over the vows and forgets the bride’s name, forever damned.”
Instead of the expected laugh, she gazed at him mildly, curiously, with that half smile lingering around her softly bowed mouth. “Why aren’t you married, Hayden?”
The question didn’t bother him. He’d been asked before. “Never wanted to be.”
She picked at a piece of grass. “That diabolical plot thing?”
“Exactly.” He folded his body and sat down beside her, ankles crossed, knees up to match hers. He brushed her arm as he plucked a piece of bluestem; the grass reminded him poignantly of Kentucky. “So why aren’t you in there with them?”
She hesitated, picking at the grass. Something troubled her. He felt her worry as sure as he felt a pleasant hum of attraction.
“I’m not good at that sort of thing, and after a while...” She lifted a shoulder, the strap of her sundress pressing into creamy white skin that looked as soft as down.
“You needed some fresh air.”
She nodded, and again he got the feeling that she was worried. “Weddings can be diabolical for a woman like me, too.”
But that wasn’t the only thing bothering her. He was intuitive enough to read conflict in her brown eyes.
“Why aren’t you married?” he asked, really wanting to know.
“Same reason as you, I suppose.” She shook her head. “No. That’s not true. I wanted to get married, to have a terrific husband to keep the storms away and send me gardenias on my birthday.” The single dimple returned, poking fun at her ambition, and h
e found it endearing.
“Why didn’t you?”
“It just never happened. The right guy never came along.”
“No one special?”
“No.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She turned her face toward him, the slope of cheekbone elegant and appealing. He resisted the urge to trace the shape with his finger.
“Why not?”
“If you’re fishing for a compliment, you have it.”
“I wasn’t.” But she looked pleased, softened by his words.
She was a uniquely beautiful woman. Didn’t she know that?
He tickled her arm with the grass. “Tell me.”
“No.” She gave a light laugh as if she couldn’t believe he was serious.
“Did he break your heart?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Mysterious.” He tickled her again. “Should I ask one of your sisters? Or the good old boys?”
“Don’t you dare. I’ve already lived down enough rumors without starting them up again.”
He grew serious. She’d been hurt, and the truth of that hurt him, too. “He did break your heart.”
For a moment, her brown eyes clouded and her throat worked. She glanced away and back again but didn’t quite meet his gaze.
Rumors, she’d said, an indicator of something colossal.
She shrugged off the heartache, but the action didn’t convince him. “It’s no big deal. A college guy I was dating. My sister came to visit. He took one look at Nikki, and I was out like yesterday’s newspaper.”
Nothing colossal in that. His sharp second sense didn’t believe this was the event that had broken her heart and made her skittish. “What a jerk.”
“Not really. My sisters, I’m sure you’ve noticed, are irresistible. The man didn’t stand a chance.”
“You’re not yesterday’s newspaper.” Hayden brushed a knuckle over her arm.
“And you’re a nice man, Hayden Winters.” She pointed a finger. “A man who had better swear never to use that pathetic tale in a book.”
“I promise.”
She rose up on her knees and thrust out a crooked finger. “Pinkie swear.”
He crooked his much larger pinkie and hooked it with her smaller one. “Pinkie swear. I will never use that in a book. At least not with your name.”
“Hayden!” She laughed and whacked his arm. “A pinkie swear is serious business. God will get you if you break a pinkie swear. And I will hunt you down and do something...terrible. Something...”
He rubbed his arm, pretending pain while he grinned at her. “Diabolical?”
“Yes!” She whacked at him again for good measure, and this time he caught her hand and held on. He liked his barefoot librarian and contemplated the next couple of months with her. And he would have her company, though her comments about marriage lodged uncomfortably beneath his breastbone.
Carrie was the marrying kind.
The guy who’d broken her heart was a fool. There was more, a lot more than a college boy who’d dropped her for her sister. He recognized avoidance when he saw it because he did it himself all too often.
“You want to tell me what’s really bothering you?” he asked gently. “About the man who caused the rumors.”
Her mouth opened in a mini-gasp of surprise. “No.”
He gently prodded her foot with the tip of his shoe. “More than a pinkie swear, Carrie. I’m sorry for whatever happened. You’re a kind and beautiful woman. Any man that didn’t see that didn’t deserve you.”
She looked at him for a long, considering moment and must have read the genuine empathy and caring in his eyes.
“There was someone. I thought we’d get married and have a wonderful life together. But he turned out to be...different than I believed.”
And he’d damaged her confidence, left her believing she was not as special in her own right as her sisters.
“Want to talk about it?”
She looked out at the barren peach orchard and sighed. “No.”
“Is that why you’re sitting out here by yourself? Memories? Wishing it was you and the brainless idiot planning a wedding?”
Her lips curved. “No.”
“But you’re out here alone and maybe a tad depressed for some reason.”
He waited her out, curiosity too strong for him to play the Southern gentleman, a role he embraced when the need suited, though he’d never actually be one. Breeding, as they said, prevailed.
“I have a friend who is in trouble,” she said finally, softly. “At least I think she is, and I don’t know how to help her.”
“Anything I can do?”
“I don’t know how you could. She’s a friend, Hayden. We’ve been friends since we were kids.”
“Valery or Julia?” When she blinked at him, he shrugged. “You’re here with the two of them. Easy analysis that it’s one or the other.”
“I promised not to tell.”
“You didn’t. I guessed. And if my radar is correct, Julia is a happy woman. Valery isn’t.”
She dropped her hands from her knees and shifted toward him. “We used to be close. We had sleepovers, hung out and even took dance together.”
“I can see Valery as a dancer. The way she moves is...musical.”
Carrie nodded her agreement. “In high school, she was so good people assumed she’d end up on Broadway or in Vegas. She was on the dance team, danced in local theater and some plays in Knoxville and Chattanooga. Her parents even sent her to New York for a year of dance school.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. Our lives went different directions. I went to college and lost touch for a while.”
“And met the brainless idiot.”
She smiled. “Valery...changed.”
“She didn’t continue her dance?”
“I heard once that she might open her own studio here in Honey Ridge, but she never did. Today I realized she’s really hurting about something. Not that she’d tell me.”
“Any guesses?”
“None. But she drinks too much.”
“I’ve noticed.” When she looked up, brown eyes swimming with sadness, he tilted his head. “Especially late in the evenings after the guests settle.”
“Every guest except you.”
“I keep strange hours. Noticing things makes me a better writer.”
“I wish there was something I could do for her.”
He had little sympathy for the innkeeper. Addictions infuriated him. All she had to do was put down the booze, but, like Dora Lee, she chose herself over others. The ultimate selfishness.
“Her family knows. The only thing you can do is continue to be her friend.”
Exactly as he continued being Dora Lee’s son, no matter how badly he wanted to forget her. Dad would have expected him to watch over his mother.
“You’re right. I know. It’s just—” She lifted a hand to her forehead. “Don’t tell anyone we talked about this. Please.”
Having her confidence made him feel close to her. “You have more than a pinkie promise on that.”
She glanced up, serious. “You’re a good listener.”
He didn’t tell her that listening was a skill he’d honed intentionally. When he listened, he wasn’t talking and in danger of revealing too much.
“Come on.” He leaped to his feet and tugged her up. “Walk with me.”
Using him for balance, she slipped into her flats. “I should let them know.”
“Text them.”
“My cell’s in the house with my purse.”
“Will they send out the hounds?”
“I doubt they’ll even miss me.”
“Don’t worry, then. We won’t go far. I want to explore that abandoned mill across the road.”
“Are you scared to go in alone?” she teased. “The mill is kind of spooky.”
“Something like that.” He tugged her along, across the front lawn past the orchard and down the long road flanked by whispering trees that leaned close to listen and gossip.
The hum of late summer sounded around them. An orange-and-black butterfly—a swallowtail, he thought—dipped and danced as if leading the way across the main road and down a trail nearly obliterated by overgrown bushes and kudzu vines.
“What’s that?” He pointed to a shaft of red berries growing along the trail.
“Jack-in-the-pulpit. The berries are poisonous.”
“To humans?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, Mr. Murder and Mayhem, but I don’t know how potent. When I was a kid, Daddy took us on nature hikes and pointed out the poisonous berries so we didn’t eat them and get sick.”
“Good dad.”
“The best.”
“What’s he do?”
“Electrician. He rewired the inn when Julia and Valery first bought it.” A soft breeze fluttered a wispy lock of hair around her cheek. “What about your dad? You never say much about family.”
The question caught him off guard. It shouldn’t have. He was normally more careful than to travel down conversational roads that lead to killer dead ends. Carrie’s natural manner made talking too easy. He’d have to tread more carefully with her.
“He died when I was small.”
Sympathetic eyes met his. “I’m so sorry. That must have been awful for you.”
He shrugged, but his chest burned. His father’s death had opened up an ugly Pandora’s box from which he’d almost not escaped. Awful didn’t begin to describe losing his daddy.
Before she could dig deeper and ask more questions he didn’t want to answer, he looked toward the west, across the road toward the abandoned gristmill. “Do you know who owns the mill?”
“It used to be part of Peach Orchard Farm but not anymore. The place has been abandoned as long as I can remember. I don’t know if it belongs to anyone.” Her face wrinkled up. “But I guess someone has to hold the title. Long-lost heirs maybe?”
The Rain Sparrow Page 29
