She sat back in the booth, contemplating him. She made no effort to hide that she was trying to decide about him. When she started talking again, he had no idea what decision she’d made.
“The only reason she won’t hear that you’ve been asking questions about her finances is that nobody would want to make her feel bad that her ex-brother-in-law was nosing around her business.”
Okay. They were going to be honest. Even if they didn’t mention Jennifer Truesdale by name. A wise precaution since Loris’s Café clearly still ranked as Gossip Central.
“You don’t think her having the listing on Stenner Autos makes it Stenner business, too?”
That would make her the only one benefiting from the dealership at this point.
And wouldn’t his father love to hear that.
“No, I don’t,” she snapped.
She went on almost immediately, talking all about how Drago was a strange mix of everybody knowing everybody else’s business and respect for people’s privacy. A flow of words meant to cover that initial, blunt response.
He only half listened. The three words—No, I don’t—had coalesced fragments he’d been picking up into a whole he didn’t like.
He swallowed the last bite of peach pie. It didn’t taste quite as sweet as its predecessors.
“Remember Zeke Zeekowsky?” Only when Darcie asked that abrupt question did he realize they’d fallen into a silence.
He knew it was a different question from whether he recognized the name. Most people who kept up with technology at all would know the name. But remember keyed the question to here in Drago.
“I remember him. And I hear you’re to be congratulated. Wedding’s soon, isn’t it?”
Her smile nearly blinded him. “Not soon enough—and thanks.”
In the interests of cutting to the chase, since she must have asked the question with an eye to heading somewhere, he added, “I also heard Zeke’s starting a computer lab in town, and signed a license for a hot new program with a Drago kid and he’s moving a division of Zeke-Tech here.”
“Yes, he is. But moving a division of a company isn’t easy. It’s going to take a while. It’s going to take a while to get to the point where Drago feels real benefits. It’s started—a trickle here or there, spurts when the media descends—but the steady, reliable flow, that won’t come for a while yet.”
“I can see that,” he said slowly.
What he didn’t see was what it had to do with his brother’s ex and his questions.
“The café here has more business with all the Zeke-Tech folks coming through town. And a few people are starting to rent rooms and such to the Zeke-Techers planning the move. But the big influx of folks, the ones who’ll stay here permanently, put their kids in school, and—” she looked into his eyes “—buy houses, they won’t come for another year or so.”
And Jennifer sold homes, so her hopes for good times were another year off.
But that didn’t necessarily mean she was going through bad times now.
“Are you saying—?”
Darcie held up her hand. “I’m just catching you up on the big news in Drago. That’s all any of us have to tell you.”
Some might have taken that last part as almost a threat. But having failed to get much concrete information about Jennifer’s finances out of anyone he’d talked to, he chose to accept it as a statement of fact.
On the other hand, words didn’t necessarily tell the tale. The quality of discomfort with the topic, the furrows in foreheads when he broached his parents’ contention that Jennifer had come out of the divorce in the lap of luxury, the down-turned mouths whenever Eric’s name came up—that all came together to form a message.
But whether that message was the truth or not depended a whole lot on the messenger. The town would be hearing only Jennifer’s side of the story, and one side of a story was never enough.
He took a final swig of water, wiped his mouth with the paper napkin and put it down beside his empty pie plate, then slid out of the booth.
Darcie mirrored him, standing face-to-face with him.
“I’m just telling you— My God. You used to be a runt. Did you grow or something?”
He couldn’t help but grin at her, though it twisted a bit at the ends. “Since my freshman year in high school? Yeah, I grew. Or something.”
“Oh, dear. Your father’s at the town council meeting about the streetlights, Trent. I’m sure he wanted to talk to you about the dealership.”
“No problem,” Trent said, as if he hadn’t remembered his father’s plan to take on the town council. “I haven’t seen the dealership yet anyway.” Not officially. “What do you know about Eric and Jennifer’s divorce?”
The hum of silence came through his cell phone.
“Mom?”
“I don’t know what to say, dear. Why would you ask?”
“What sort of settlement was there?”
“Oh, I have no idea about that.”
Trent rubbed his neck, then down his shoulder. “Do you know if Eric’s been to see Ashley since the divorce? Word is that he’s got visitation, but doesn’t use it.”
Another silence confirmed the truth of that tidbit from Loris.
“The children are always hurt most by a divorce,” his mother finally said. “There is no arguing with that. Poor Ashley. It breaks my heart.”
“You don’t think Jennifer’s a good mother?”
This time the hesitation was briefer. “I have never seen any sign that Jennifer wasn’t doing her very best for her daughter.”
Trent turned those words over. They could be high praise. Or damning with faint praise, depending on what Jennifer’s “best” was.
“Okay, Mom.” He wasn’t getting anywhere, and he was making her uncomfortable. “If you need to get in touch with me, leave a message on my machine at home and I’ll call back.”
No way was he letting his father know where he was staying or giving him the cell phone number. His life wouldn’t be his own, not with Franklin’s beloved Stenner Autos at stake.
“Trent.”
He waited. Then nudged, “Yeah, Mom?”
“Don’t get caught up with trying to understand what went wrong. It can paralyze you. And when the paralysis finally wears off, it can be too late. I don’t mean too late to fix what went wrong, because some things can’t be fixed, but too late to change. To make a change. To go on.”
Was she talking about the dealership? His relationship or lack thereof with his father? Eric and Jennifer’s divorce?
The last option went to the head of the line when she spoke again.
“No one truly knows what goes on inside a marriage. Sometimes,” Ella Stenner added softly, “not even the two people who are married.”
Trent couldn’t pretend he wasn’t surprised.
An apartment over a store.
That was where the phone book listing for J. A. Truesdale led him. Though when he’d tried calling, the phone had been disconnected.
Three businesses occupied the building’s first floor. A Warinke Hardware Store on the corner, Hair Today in the middle and on this end Bulton’s Antiques, with a sign that read Gifts, Jewelry, Crafts. Trade, Barter, Buy, Sell. That pretty much covered it, Trent thought.
Having examined the three store windows, he had nothing left to look at except a door tucked in next to Bulton’s Antiques. Its adornment consisted of the address in those stick-on angled rectangles with reflective numbers, a doorbell buzzer, a mail slot and a peephole.
Definitely not what he’d expected.
He rang the bell.
Nothing.
Rang again.
Still no response.
He hadn’t achieved what he’d achieved by giving up easily. He tried the door. And damned if the knob didn’t turn under his hand.
The door opened to a miniature landing with a steep stairway straight ahead. He had to take a few steps up before he could pull the exterior door closed behind him. At the top of the stairs an
equally miniature landing presented a single door at a sharp right angle. It was painted a glossy, fresh green. Wooden letters painted with flowers and strung together by rope to spell out “Welcome” hung from a spindly knocker.
Not trusting that piece of hardware, he knocked loudly with his knuckles. He tried to imagine Eric living here. Not a chance.
He knocked again.
So Jennifer must have moved here with Ashley after the split. But what about his father’s declarations about Jennifer getting all the money?
This doorknob didn’t turn when Trent tried it. Locked.
As he turned to start down, the exterior door abruptly swung open.
A girl—a young teenager, Trent guessed—started up at a good clip. Halfway, her head snapped up and she stopped dead, staring at him, with one foot on the next step and the other trailing behind.
He saw Jennifer in the girl. The coloring, sure. That blond hair that was so much more than yellow, because it had depths and shadings like finely polished wood. Only wood that swayed and swung. Also the hint of slender curves to come.
“Who are you?” she asked, her voice rising.
Her attitude appeared undecided, open to a number of options, including flight. But some reluctance seemed to offset the urge to run.
“That depends on whether you’re who I think you are,” he said.
She jammed her fists on not-yet-there hips. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
And now he saw his brother in her. In the cast of the jutted chin. In the sureness of the stance. In the curl of the lip.
Damn.
Before Trent could explore what had pushed that word to the upper level of his mind—or perhaps so he didn’t have to explore it—he decided he needed to deal with the girl in front of him.
“It means that if you are Ashley Stenner, I’m your uncle. Trent Stenner.”
For a moment, her eyes widened and her face softened. She looked almost as she had the last time he’d seen her, a chubby-cheeked toddler in coveralls that bulged out in back with diapers that also provided padding when her adventures in walking ended in an abrupt seat on the floor. Each time, she’d hauled herself upright, using whatever prop was handy. Then she’d stand clear, wide-eyed and pleased with herself when she found her balance, and head off, fast and unsteady.
“I know who you are.” She made it an accusation. Any resemblance to the remembered child disappeared.
He ignored her declaration. “How long have you lived here, Ashley?”
“Awhile.”
“Did your father live here with you?”
“What do you care?”
“Does your father ever visit?”
“None of your business!”
“Are you and your mom getting help—financial help—from your father?”
Her eyes narrowed to daggers, red pulsed in her cheeks. “I know about you,” she said. “You used to be a football player. But you quit. Dad told me about you.”
“Did he?”
“Yes. I know how mean you were to him. And Grams and Gramps.”
“Really. When did he tell you all this?”
She flinched. But she didn’t bend. “Lots of times.”
“I only retired after last season. January. Have you heard from him since then?”
“None of your business.”
And that was a no.
“When I left your grandparents’ house this morning,” he said slowly, watching it sink in that he was calling her bluff on including Grams and Gramps in her list of people he’d wronged, “they said to tell you they send their love.”
She didn’t back down. Not one iota. Instead, she launched a full-fledged bad-attitude sneer.
But it didn’t last, as she did another of those lightning changes, startled like a deer and scooted up the remaining stairs. She elbowed him out of her way on the landing, and he stepped down to protect his balance.
The exterior door opened again and he saw Jennifer coming in, head lowered, a plastic grocery bag dragging down one arm.
In the half second it took him to absorb that sight, Ashley had the green door unlocked and open. But instead of slamming it on him, she spun around, holding its edge, looking as if she’d been standing in the doorway all the time.
Jennifer had trudged up one step when he spoke.
“Hello, Jennifer.”
Dismay swept over her initial surprise. Then she saw Ashley in the doorway beyond him, and her pace picked up.
“Ashley, you shouldn’t have buzzed him in.” She stopped on the stair below him. She would have to be even more single-minded than her daughter to get past, considering there would be two adult bodies involved. “You know the rules about strangers.”
“He says he’s my uncle,” the girl said belligerently. She cut him a look, as if daring him to tell her mother she hadn’t buzzed him in, because she hadn’t been here and the door had been unlocked.
“You didn’t know…” Jennifer’s husky voice trailed off, and he saw her decide not to conduct this argument in front of him. “Why are you here?”
“I came to see you.”
The parade of reactions to that statement was about as subtle as a brass band and a troop of men on little cycles wearing fezzes, although less suited to a festive occasion. She didn’t want to see him. Maybe because she wore the same ratty clothes as before, and was even dirtier. Not a chance in hell she’d listened to him about not cleaning more.
She particularly didn’t want to see him here, he realized when she darted a look toward the cramped living area he could see past Ashley.
Then he noticed another layer of didn’t want: she didn’t want him to have met Ashley, judging by the protective frown tucked between her brows.
Then, atop those layers, another appeared. Speculation, along with a dash of hope and a heaping helping of determination.
“You came to get the projections so you can study them overnight.”
“Yeah,” he lied, because what did it hurt?
His peripheral vision caught Ashley rolling her eyes.
She could tell Jennifer that he’d been asking questions that had nothing to do with business projections or the dealership. But he could tell Jennifer that Ashley’s pose at the door was a lie, that she’d arrived not long ago herself and that the outside door had been unlocked. That equalized the balance of power and kept them both silent.
“I could meet you at the café in half an hour,” Jennifer offered.
“I’ve eaten.”
“For dessert and coffee then.”
“Had dessert. Don’t want any more coffee.”
This time Ashley made no pretense of hiding the eye rolling. “Well, we haven’t eaten, and I’m starved. So go away—”
“Ashley.”
“Well, geez,” the girl said, then subsided into mumbles under her mother’s stern look. The only word he caught was dense.
“I’ll come in while you get the projections,” he said. Seeing the inside might not be confirmation of what he’d been hearing, but it added to the evidence. “Then leave you in peace to have your dinner.”
Jennifer caught the left corner of her bottom lip between her teeth. “The projections require some explanation. Come in, and if it won’t delay you too much, I’ll start dinner then go over the projections with you.”
“Okay.”
“Great.” Ashley’s sarcasm was about as subtle as her eye rolling. “I’ll be in my room if dinner’s ready before midnight.” She stalked away.
Jennifer pressed herself against the far wall to minimize contact. He accommodated her by also turning his back to the wall, to leave the most room possible for her to pass. But he’d been right about the effect of two adult bodies in this narrow space. There was no way not to touch.
Her shoulder brushed his arm. The sleeve bottom of her big shirt feathered across him—hip, crotch, hip—and he felt the instinctive stirring.
The top of her lowered head was under his nose. The blond hair might be
matted but it smelled sweet. Her knee bumped his leg as she climbed the stairs sideways.
Her gaze flashed to him. “Sorry.”
“No problem.”
Once clear of him, she shot past. At the landing she drew an audible breath, then gestured for him to enter.
A door slammed down the hallway. Jennifer seated him on the couch, excused herself, then went down the hall. He heard her open a door, speak quiet but concentrated words, close that door and open another.
He took the opportunity to look around. The couch’s leather was good quality, but showed wear. Side chairs flanked a table under windows that had to overlook a parking lot by his reckoning. A wall unit held books, a modest TV and an even more modest audio unit. An aged air conditioner clogging one window wasn’t turned on, even though the room was just this side of uncomfortable. A dining counter separated the living room from a kitchen that would have felt at home in a camper.
He looked down the hall and saw it made a sharp turn to the right. What were the chances he could poke around down there?
A door opening somewhere around that bend gave him his answer. He was seated again when Jennifer appeared. She had fluffed her hair, washed her face and changed into clean slacks and a shirt.
“If you’d like to look these over while I start dinner…” She handed him a binder he nearly dropped because he hadn’t expected its weight.
“Would you like something to drink?” she added.
“Thanks, yes.” A drink could provide a prop now, a reason to linger later. He followed her to the kitchen, taking a seat on one of two stools at the dining bar, which was empty except for a glass jar holding a yellow rose not quite opened. Not a store-bought rose, he thought, judging by the holes in two of the leaves framing the bud. She turned, a frown between her brows again.
The stool creaked as he shifted on its hard seat.
“You’ll be more comfortable on the couch.”
“I’m comfortable here.” He could observe her. “Don’t you eat here?”
“We have a little balcony. We eat there in the summer.”
How little was little? He’d seen no sign of a balcony.
She poured lemonade over ice and placed the glass before him, her gaze going from the folder to him and back. Dutifully, he opened it.
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