Fifteen-year-old Olivia had entered to tell them Teri was restless.
Grandpa had reached for Olivia’s hand. “I left you something at the bank. You can have it when you turn eighteen.”
A year and a half later, Olivia was nearly eighteen. She stared at Mandy with glowing, trusting eyes. “Why wait to tell me? I’m nearly legal.”
Because you won’t like what he left you.
It’d been Mandy’s responsibility as trustee to check the safe-deposit box contents after Grandpa died.
She opened her mouth, unsure how to deliver the news.
“Hey, Mandy.” Hank, the maintenance crew leader, saved her. “Can I get a quick opinion on this?”
“We’ll talk later,” Mandy told Olivia. “After you put mail in PO boxes and I deliver the rest.” She was required to deliver the mail she’d processed before her shift ended, which meant she had to go in the next few minutes. She’d already loaded up the postal service Jeep.
“So you’ll tell me?” Olivia’s eyes were bright with enthusiasm.
“We’ll see.”
Olivia frowned. She knew “we’ll see” meant “no.”
CHAPTER SIX
“WHAT WAS THE rush to get to the post office?” Dad asked when Ben had the fire engine headed to the station.
Only Ben turned down a back road instead, needing time to think. And he thought best when he was in the shower or driving.
“Spit it out, son,” Dad said impatiently.
“There’ve been no fires in Harmony Valley—not even a brushfire by the highway—for more than five years. New people come to town and now there’s a fire?”
“I’m glad you didn’t pursue a career as an investigative reporter,” Dad deadpanned. “This is a nonstory.”
“Did you see the gray sedan in the post office parking lot?”
“Yes. And I saw another one on the last corner. Don’t jump to conclusions. If you’re going to drive around, drive me to Martin’s Bakery. I hear the coffee is outstanding.” Dad had definitely recovered from the smoke he’d inhaled earlier. His feistiness had returned.
“Do you remember the way Mandy was enthralled by the electrical fire? She’s new to town. And that car...”
“You suspect Mandy of setting the grass fire?” Dad guffawed, which caused a severe shortage of air in his lungs.
“Maybe you’re right.” Ben turned on a road that paralleled the Harmony Valley River, recalling Mandy’s face as she gazed at the moon. She didn’t fit the profile of an arsonist. She didn’t feel like an arsonist. She felt like a woman with secrets. “I don’t know what kind of car she drives. Plus she said she walks to work.” But she might not have done so this morning.
“Common sense,” Dad choked out. “Good.”
“But she didn’t want me going inside the post office today.” She’d hurried outside to greet him. “And she gave me your medicine along with a request for a date to reinspect the post office.”
“Those are your suspicions?” Dad sounded like a gunshot pipe organ, winded and off-key. “Were you really in the running for a fire inspector position? Because you’re missing one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Proof.” Dad drank from a water bottle. His voice strengthened. “Something that’s enough for a jury to convict. You’ve got nothing.”
“She knows what meds you’re taking,” Ben said, unable to put his finger on what about Mandy didn’t feel right. “She could tell everyone in town. You’d have to step down and there’d be no second chance at making full retirement.” No reprieve for Ben either. “I’m just trying to figure her out.”
“I’d say that sounds less like suspicion and more like attraction.” Dad tried to chuckle, choked, and looked out the window instead.
“Listen to yourself. Is it any wonder you need someone to watch your back?”
Dad sat up and put both hands on the window. “Slow down.”
“I want to keep my eye on her,” Ben said. “Purely for reasons associated with fire.” Why didn’t his words sound convincing?
“No, I mean literally. Slow down.”
“I’m only going thirty-five.” They had the country road to themselves, and the trees were far enough back from the pavement that the engine was clear of branches.
“Stop!” Dad twisted in his seat to look behind them. “Hannah’s in that tree.”
“All right. All right.” Ben pulled over. They were near where Hannah had found Iggy. “I’ll park and ask her to get down.” His little charge had escaped again? Mom was going to be upset. Hannah was going to be upset. Heck, Ben was upset. He rolled tense shoulders.
“I don’t have time for your poor sense of humor.” Dad threw open the door and was climbing out before Ben got the rig to a complete stop. “That branch she’s on has cracked at the trunk and she’s dangling over the river.”
Ben leaned forward to see.
Sure enough, Hannah was in a tree and in a predicament. She clung to a thin branch that hung at a forty-five-degree angle, the end submerged in the water.
Ben’s heart banged in his chest. He jumped to the pavement, shucked out of his turnout gear and slipped into the black waterproof loafers he kept behind the seat. At a full run, he drew up to Dad, who was jogging slowly across the field, sucking in air like a clogged vacuum cleaner.
Ben darted in front of him, forcing the older man to stop. “If your heart gives out and you collapse, and Hannah falls in—”
Dad gulped air and nodded. “You’ll save Hannah and let me die.”
“That’s right.” Ben’s pulse accelerated faster than his slowly measured words. He clasped a hand briefly on Dad’s shoulder. “Don’t make me choose.”
Dad tilted his head in acknowledgment.
“Hang on, Hannah!” Ben shouted, spinning around and racing to the river.
Hannah let out a frail wail as if she was afraid anything louder would send her tumbling into the river.
Ben skidded down ten feet or so of steep bank to the water’s edge and positioned himself downriver from the branch in case she fell in. The fifteen-foot limb swayed slightly in the water, like a broom being swept over the same spot repeatedly. How much longer would it hold?
He’d visited his grandfather enough times growing up to have gone tubing down the Harmony Valley River in spring and summer. This stretch was slow and deep, but just fifty feet away it twisted and turned, gaining speed and dodging some big rocks. Not exactly wild rapids, but a challenge for a little girl who’d had only one or two swimming lessons. If she fell in, she’d be scared, perhaps even panic.
His insides churned and his hands trembled. This was no welcome adrenaline rush on his way to a call. This was fear for Hannah. Blood relative or not, Hannah was a part of him. And she needed him to stay calm.
“Well, peanut.” Ben schooled his features and his tone. “This is what Granny Vanessa would call a fine kettle of fish.” Oh, those words cost him. He wanted to be doing something. Scale the tree, climb to her, hold Hannah in his arms as he carried her to safety. But that route spelled disaster.
Hannah’s face was streaked with tears. “There was a baby bird...”
“Let’s worry about you now, peanut,” Ben said in that same casual tone, the one that was slowly killing him inside.
Dad reached the bank and choked on a bad word.
“Can you get me down?” Hannah hiccuped as if she’d already cried herself out. Her knobby arms and legs gripped the tree limb like a jockey did a racehorse.
Dispatch squawked on the radios at Ben’s and Dad’s belts. Dad turned away to answer. Ben forced himself not to listen.
Hannah sniffed and hiccuped again. “Do you need to go rescue someone?”
Erica would be proud of her little girl. Of course, she’
d have Ben’s hide for allowing this to happen in the first place, but she’d be proud of her daughter nonetheless.
“We’re not going anywhere, peanut. Not until we get you down.” There were few options. One really. Ben had to wade in and Hannah had to jump. He took a few steps in the river. It was cold, the bottom rocky, the current more than a lazy pull, and the bank slanted steeply toward the middle of the river, making it a challenge to stay on his feet. “Do you trust me?”
“Ye-es.” Half wail, half answer.
“Atta girl.” Ben lifted his arms, willing his hands not to tremble. He didn’t want to telegraph to Hannah that he was afraid. “Do you remember how I caught Truman the other day?”
“He fell.” Some of the stoic Hannah returned. She blinked at him from behind her smudged glasses.
Ben smiled, just the way Mandy smiled under pressure. She was right. It made him feel better, keeping his fears at bay. “But I caught him.”
“You almost didn’t.”
“I’ll catch you, peanut.” Ben shored up his footing and sent up a prayer. “Let go.”
The river gurgled past his legs with a cold tug.
“I want the ladder.” Hannah was a scared, stubborn thing, in need of enticement, like Truman’s kittens.
He had nothing to entice her with. “The bucket can’t reach over here. You’re going to have to trust me.”
“No.” He’d never seen Hannah jut out her chin before.
“She learned that expression from you.” Dad returned to the upper bank. “10-67 waiting.”
10-67. Someone in Harmony Valley needed their help. Hannah was putting another life in jeopardy.
“Hannah Laurel Thompson.” Ben abandoned patience and godfatherly tones in favor of breaking eggshells. “Get your butt down here. Now!”
“Don’t let me die,” Hannah sobbed, letting go and tumbling through the air with far less grace and control than Truman.
Ben caught her, but not without their heads connecting with a crack.
“Ow-wooo.” Hannah began to cry.
He adjusted her in his arms, holding her close, never wanting to let her go. “I’m sorry, peanut.” Ben carried her out of the river and up the bank. His wet pants dragged, and his shoe soles quickly became caked with mud. None of it mattered. Hannah was safe.
In that moment, he needed to know the truth. Was she his biological daughter? Was she his responsibility? The weight of not knowing was greater than the weight of Hannah in his arms. It pressed the air from his lungs. It made his steps cumbersome. His purchase on the slope precarious. Was she a Libby? He vowed to find out.
Dad reached down, grabbed Ben’s arm and pulled him the last few feet to the top.
“You hit...my head.” Hannah was as out of breath as Dad normally was. Her palms covered her face.
“Let me see.” Dad pried her hands away, revealing a red bump rising above her black glasses. “An ice pack will fix that right up.”
“It...won’t.” She buried her face in Ben’s chest, glasses and all.
“It will.” Ben’s head throbbed, but he didn’t care. He marched back across the grassy field. “Now, here’s what we need to do, peanut. We’re going to put you in the backseat with an ice pack and drive to our next call, where Granny Vanessa is going to meet us and take you home.”
“You’re punishing me!”
Dad chuckled, reaching the truck first. He dug in the first aid kit, found an instant ice pack and activated it.
“That’s not funny, Grandpa.”
But Ben imagined he could feel her smile.
* * *
“I HEAR THE SIREN, Elvira.” Mandy held the older woman’s cold hand. She’d heard Elvira’s cries for help on the first street she’d tried to deliver mail to. “I’m going to flag them down. Stay here.”
“As for that...” Elvira lay on her left side. She’d fallen on the lime-green linoleum beneath her kitchen table. “I’m something of a captive audience.”
“No one’s holding that against you.” Mandy stood and hurried to the front door through the large living room. Over rugs with frayed edges, circling antique armchairs and slipping past curio cabinets stuffed full of porcelain and china figurines of Victorian women in long flowing dresses. It was a wonder Elvira hadn’t fallen in the front room.
Sparky, Elvira’s small shaggy black-and-white dog, waddled after Mandy to greet the troops.
Ben was running around the front of the fire truck. “I can handle this, Dad. Stay with Hannah.”
“It’s a medic call.” Hand to chest, Keith stepped down from the passenger seat like a man who’d had stitches recently. “Hannah is fine. And look. Here’s your mother.”
A frazzled-looking middle-age blonde pulled up in a gray sedan, followed by an old blue truck with a sheriff’s star on it.
“I forgot,” Keith said to Ben with a brief laugh that turned into a cough. “Your mother drives a gray car, too.”
Ben mumbled something Mandy couldn’t hear as he hurried around to a storage cubby in the fire truck and tugged out a first aid kit. His pants were wet to his knees, and his black shoes were caked in mud.
“Elvira fell and needs help getting up,” Mandy said, stepping onto the front porch. “She’s breathing easy and doesn’t have any back, hip or neck pain.”
Ben glanced up at her. There was a red lump on his temple that hadn’t been there forty minutes ago. “What’s the postman doing here?”
“I’m the one who called 911.” Mandy commanded Sparky to stay (although that dog wasn’t running away from his meal train) and held the door open for the rescue team. “I was delivering mail when I heard her.” Elvira had been hoarse, having fallen at breakfast.
The tall man from the sheriff’s truck ran past her. He wore blue jeans, a blue plaid button-down and a worried expression. “Elvira?”
“Nate? Did I disrupt your day?” Elvira said meekly. “I hate being a bother.”
The frazzled blonde lifted the little girl from the backseat of the fire truck. The child also had a red lump on her forehead, similar to Ben’s. Despite a pair of black rectangular glasses, the Libby-blue eyes shone bright.
“Madame Postmaster, you know first aid?” Ben lugged his equipment up the walk.
Mandy nodded. “I’m certified in CPR and first aid, plus I took care of my grandfather for years. I’m familiar with elderly emergencies, so hold on.” She stood in the fireman’s way, eliciting a glower. She lowered her voice. “Elvira’s likely to have a heart attack if you enter her house with those muddy shoes.”
“Get out of my way,” Ben warned, leaning into her space. Earlier, he’d smelled of smoke. Now he also smelled of something green.
“My grandfather was more intimidating than you are.” Louder, too. Mandy smiled harder. “Now, I’ve spent the last twenty minutes waiting for you with this woman. I got a lesson on the quality of rugs from Turkey. She’s proud of her things, Ben. Please don’t upset her.”
Ben set his metal first aid kits on the ground like a weight lifter who’d just done a successful clean and jerk, efficiently, with no wasted movements. He removed his shoes and rolled his pant cuffs three times. His feet were larger than hers, a fact Mandy was embarrassed to appreciate.
He straightened, having rid himself of both shoes and glower. “Satisfied?”
She almost said, “Surprised.” She’d expected more of a fight. And a glower, not an almost-smile.
Mandy moved aside to let him through.
“You can go now,” Ben said over his shoulder.
“Do not send away my savior.” Elvira’s voice unraveled for the first time since Mandy had arrived.
The mail would just have to be late today. Mandy was sticking with Elvira as long as she needed her.
“She’s stable,” the sheriff sa
id. He’d moved the heavy table back a few feet. “No neck, hip or back pain. Good job for getting her on her left side. Not everyone knows that. Mandy, is it?” He had a friendly half smile. Ben could learn a lot from him about bedside manners.
Ben dropped to his knees next to Elvira, placing his equipment on the floor with more care than he’d shown outside. “Elvira, I’m Ben. I’m going to take your vitals.”
“I’m single,” Elvira said coquettishly, smiling the way Olivia did when she talked about her favorite boy band. “Is that vital enough for you?”
“I like a woman with spunk.” Ben put a stethoscope in his ears. “If you like coffee, we’d be a match made in heaven. Breathe deep for me.”
This was the man Mandy had spoken to beneath the stars. Deep inside her chest, her heart gave a little pang.
Sparky waddled around to Elvira’s head and gave her forehead a little lick.
“I’m so embarrassed.” Elvira’s voice faded from sassy to vulnerable. “I leaned over to give Sparky a piece of bacon and just kept on going. Luckily, my screen door was open. Darn heat means I need to get some airflow until eleven. If not for the heat, I wouldn’t have heard Mandy delivering the mail. Although I thought for a moment she was a burglar.”
Elvira’s chatter was charming. When Grandpa had fallen trying to get to the bathroom in the middle of the night, he’d been frustrated and annoyed with the world and with Mandy.
Elvira squirmed. The floor had to be uncomfortable. “Can we move me and this conversation to the living room?”
“Hold still,” Ben said. “Do you hurt anywhere?” Despite being told twice that Elvira felt no pain, Ben ran his fingers beneath her head, along her neck and shoulders, and down to her hips. “Can you wiggle your toes?”
“My toes are curled.” Despite her delicate features and delicate situation, Elvira was a pistol. “I can’t complain about anything but the dirt on this floor. I never was good at housework.”
Love, Special Delivery Page 7
