by Melissa Tagg
He turned away from the lights of the town square, moving instead toward the river he’d crossed over on his way to the restaurant.
“Marshall Hawkins.”
He halted, lungs still heaving and head pounding. Footsteps caught up with him. He blinked, grasping for control, and gripped the hand stretched toward him before taking in the face it belonged to.
Of course. The cop. And he knew Marshall’s name. Had he taken down Marshall’s plate number yesterday too? Or maybe he’d just been hanging around the hardware store.
“Name’s Sam Ross. I’d like to have a word with you, if you don’t mind.”
Marshall started walking again. “About what?”
The man strode beside him. He was nearly as tall as Marshall, and he didn’t so much as flinch at Marshall’s blunt tone. “Skipping small talk. Fine by me. I have some questions about you, the Everwood, Mara. Mostly, Lenora Worthington.”
“Doubt I’ll have answers. Is there a twenty-four-hour pharmacy in this town?”
“Come on, Hawkins, you’re a cop, a detective.”
“And you obviously did your homework.”
Gone was any hint of the friendliness from earlier at the restaurant. “Yeah, I did, so don’t tell me you don’t also have a sense that something’s up at that house. I met Lenora Worthington. I’m finding it hard to accept she’d just leave her business in the hands of a woman with no experience, who’s apparently taking it over and—”
Marshall stopped again. “Aren’t you the one who just yesterday told Mara the owner had most likely cut ties when she realized she was going to lose the Everwood to the bank? Now you’re trying to tell me . . . what?”
“That I’ve started looking into this. That I think there’s more to it. And if you don’t want to talk now, fine.” Sam Ross’s eyes hardened. “You can come see me at the station tomorrow.”
Marshall gave a curt nod. “Time?” He was being rude and moody and needlessly uncooperative—everything that drove him crazy when he was the one on the job. But his empty stomach roiled and he was too close to feeling too much.
“How’s 10 a.m.?”
“Fine.”
“There’s a pharmacy on the corner of Main and Betsy Lane,” Sam called after him.
But Marshall was already moving again toward the fingers of moonlight combing the ripples of the river. As if they promised any escape.
The headlights of Jenessa’s convertible revealed a tall form at work on the Everwood’s porch. Marshall’s back was rigid, his arms clutching the edges of a front door as he crossed the porch.
“Well, I guess you know where he disappeared to,” Jenessa said.
Mara unbuckled her seatbelt, Jenessa’s idling vehicle vibrating under her bare feet. This is why Marshall had walked out in the middle of her presentation? Because he couldn’t wait to install the new door?
“Thanks for the ride. And the heels and the skirt. I’ll make sure to get them back to you.” She slid on the shoes and refused to let herself wince. “And thanks for making that presentation happen. I can’t believe . . . ” That she’d done it. That it’d turned out the way it had.
That the plan Marshall had concocted last night had become even more of a reality.
“You did amazing tonight,” Jenessa said. “Seriously, I don’t know why you were nervous. Everybody loved you. And you have a check coming your way.”
Yes. Yes, she did. Except she’d had to make some steep promises. That’s the part that scared her.
“By the way, I’m free tomorrow morning. A perk of running the newspaper practically on my own—flexible hours. I’ll come out and help paint or clean or something.”
Mara shook her head. “You’ve already done so much. You don’t need—”
“Hey, I was serious about being a friend. And don’t worry, there’s plenty in it for me, too. All I’ve got for best buds right now are Sam and Lucas. Don’t get me wrong, I love ‘em both. But a girl needs at least one good female kindred spirit, right?”
“And that’s what I am?”
Jenessa tipped her head. “I think you could be. We can test it out.” She grinned.
A kindred spirit. Mara liked the sound of that.
With a quick goodbye, she slipped from Jenessa’s car, zipping up the hoodie she’d shrugged into once she’d escaped The Red Door’s crowd. She’d heard someone talking tonight about coming snow. She could believe it, with the way the nighttime chill cloaked her as she made her way across the lawn.
Muscles in Marshall’s back strained as he held the new door under its frame as if assessing the fit. An electric drill propped near the threshold looked brand new. Had he bought it just so he could install those hinges for the door? How much of his own money had he spent today?
Questions that had plagued her ever since last night hobbled in all over again. What kind of man dropped everything to stick around and help a stranger fix up a rundown B&B? Didn’t he have a job to get back to? Where’d he been on his way to when he’d stopped at the Everwood in the first place?
And why had he ditched the meeting so abruptly?
He didn’t turn at the sound of Jen’s car rumbling away. Nor at Mara’s careful steps over the porch’s damaged stairs.
“You could give a girl a complex, you know,” she said to his turned back. “Walking out in the middle of my presentation. Pretending you don’t hear me now.”
He gave something of a grunt. Set the door down. Angled to face her.
And she saw what she hadn’t before the meeting. The shadows in and around his eyes were back.
But apology hovered there too. “Sorry about that.”
“Was my speech too boring?”
He pulled one arm across his chest, stretching muscle or maybe simply stalling. “You weren’t boring. You were great. You really were.”
She could see that he meant it, and she had the sudden desire to tell him everything. Not just how the meeting had turned out, but what had happened inside of her as she’d presented.
She’d discovered something tonight as she stood up in front of all those people. She’d finally figured out the answer to that question Lenora had asked her so many months ago, the one about what she used to dream of as a kid. As she’d talked about the Everwood and its place in the community, her own buried desire had come out of hiding.
She hadn’t dreamed of a career as a kid. She’d dreamed of a place. In those childhood years of moving from town to town, she’d longed for belonging. In her young adult years of nannying, sleeping in beds and rooms and houses that weren’t truly her own, she’d wished for a home.
Now she had the opportunity to stop wishing and start doing.
No, it wasn’t her name on the deed to the Everwood. But it was just like Marshall said—Mara was here, Lenora wasn’t. Nobody at tonight’s meeting had questioned Mara’s role at the B&B. Nor had they treated her as a stranger.
The Everwood could be her home. Maple Valley could be her place to belong.
But she couldn’t tell all that to a man she barely knew. Even if she had begun to feel an uncanny connection to him. In just a couple of days, he’d slid into life at the Everwood as if he too had belonged here all along.
“Aren’t you at least going to ask how it turned out?” she finally asked.
He opened his mouth but nothing came out. He turned away, combing his fingers through his hair, and when he faced her again, all the angles of his face seemed at once sharp and downcast. “I’m not a hero, Mara,” he blurted.
“What?” For the third or fourth time tonight, she kicked off Jen’s heels.
“You said it yourself last night and again this morning. You don’t know me at all.”
“You’re Marshall Hawkins. Thirty-five. Milwaukee.”
No reply.
“I thought you’d be slightly more impressed that I got the city right this time.”
“I’m sorry I left the meeting early. I had a headache. I needed air.” He hefted the door with a frown. “But Mara, you don
’t know the kind of person I am. I don’t want you to think . . . ” He struggled to fit the door into place as the hinges refused to line up. He gave a frustrated push.
Where was this coming from? She leaned one hand on the wall. “That you’re a hero? Okay. Done. You’re being bested by an inanimate object at the moment, so it’s not the hardest thing to believe.”
He didn’t so much as crack a grin.
“If you’re not going to ask, fine, I’ll just tell you. The city council approved us for twenty thousand dollars. It’ll take over a fourth of it to get caught up on the mortgage, but that’s still almost fifteen grand left for paint and furniture and carpet and repairing this porch and paying you back for whatever you spent today and—”
“You don’t have to pay me back.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Why are you arguing?”
She huffed. “Why are you?”
“I’m not—”
“And why aren’t you wearing a coat? It’s freezing out here.”
He’d finally fit the door into place, and now he turned, the lights from inside tracing his profile. She could see a hint of those lines etched around his mouth—the ones until now buried under his frustration. “I’m glad the meeting turned out well, Mara. Congratulations on getting the grant.”
At least he sounded sincere. “Yeah, well, I had to agree to some stipulations. For one thing, it’s not a straight-up grant. It’s more of a forgivable loan. I have to submit a business plan with specific project outcomes. The city council wants to review our progress”—and the clincher—“at an open house in three weeks.”
“Three weeks.” To his credit, he didn’t flinch.
“The depot and scenic railroad opens in April. Business at the antique stores picks up this time of year. There’s some spring festival coming up too. Basically, they want the Everwood ready for tourist season, I guess.”
“So we wow their socks off at an open house. In three weeks. And just like that, they forgive the loan?”
She nodded. Waited. Wished he’d assure her it was doable. Instead, his gray eyes strayed past her toward the sound of tires over gravel.
Moments later, a car door slammed and a form emerged. She didn’t gasp this time at the sight of Lucas Danby. No shudder, no instant fear of Garrett. Jenessa’s friend had left this morning soon after checking in, but it’d been enough time for Mara to get over his resemblance to Garrett.
And yet, she must’ve had some reaction just now because Marshall picked up on it. He took a step closer to her, a spark of concern filling his otherwise empty gaze.
“He just looks like someone I used to know,” she said, answering his unasked question. “That’s all.”
Lucas climbed the porch steps. He wore a stocking cap and a fatigue that seemed to weigh down his movements. Jenessa had told Mara this morning that he worked at the local apple orchard his sister owned.
He gave a simple greeting as he passed them, thanked Mara for the room, and disappeared into the house.
Marshall bent to retrieve his drill. “He’s a quiet one.”
“I don’t know if I remembered to tell him breakfast hours.”
Marshall pulled open the door then shut it, testing his work. “You’re not just going to serve him Lucky Charms?”
“I’ll have you know I make amazing blueberry muffins. With a lemon glaze and everything.” Wind rattled through branches and off in the distance, a squirrel’s climb pattered into the hush of the night. “Guess I’ll get inside. Thanks for the front door.”
Marshall nodded and she stepped inside, Jenessa’s shoes dangling from one hand. Just when she thought he meant to let her leave without anything further, she heard his voice behind her. “I’m sorry again, Mara. For . . . disappearing.”
She turned. “Well, you missed a riveting second half of the agenda. After voting on the grant, there was a huge debate about whether to plant pansies or anemones in the town square’s flowerpots this year.”
He closed the front door and turned its lock.
“And Marshall?”
He set his drill on the check-in counter and faced her.
“For the record, if you hadn’t shown up here, I might still be sitting around waiting for Lenora to return. There might still be a tree in the entryway. And I certainly wouldn’t have found the gumption on my own to start making things happen. You’re putting your life on hold to help me out.”
“Maybe I don’t have much of a life to put on hold.”
“I’m just saying, kindness is its own shade of heroism. And whatever else you are, Marshall, you are that—kind. And I’m grateful.” Without waiting to see how he took in her words, she turned and headed toward Lenora’s room.
Her room.
8
“I was wondering whether you’d show.”
Marshall had one hand on the police station entrance. He used the other to shield his eyes from the sun as he angled his gaze behind him. Sam Ross stood at the curb next to a squad car.
“Come on.” The man motioned to the car, sunglasses tipped up over his forehead. “Get in.”
Okay. Despite the glare of the midmorning sun, a thin sheen of frost still reflected off the sidewalk and covered grass yet withered by winter’s cold. A near-white sky looked primed for snow, never mind that April was only a week away.
He dropped into the vehicle, impressed at the smell of new leather and the shine of the dashboard. Instead of a traditional mounting bracket and laptop, the vehicle boasted an in-dash camera and touchscreen with consolidated communication controls. “Pretty nice for a small-town department.”
Sam flipped down his sun visor. “I’ll try not to be offended that you sound surprised.” He started the engine, flicking at the radio control as soon as the first beats of a song rang out. “Maple Valley’s no Milwaukee, of course.”
“I wasn’t trying to go ‘town cop, country cop’ on you. Didn’t mean anything by it.” But he couldn’t blame the guy for having his guard up. Last night Marshall had been mulish and difficult. He’d taken out his black mood on Sam Ross for no other reason than the man had picked a lousy time to approach him.
If not for the fact that his headache hadn’t turned into a migraine, he might still be brooding.
Sam pulled away from the curb. “You ever find that pharmacy last night?”
“Uh, no.”
Because anything that would’ve given him what he truly wanted—a dulling of his memories, a blunting of the pain he’d failed to leave behind in Wisconsin—required a prescription. And because there was just enough of Beth’s voice in his mind or maybe his own conscience persisting to hold him firm.
Instead, he’d walked to the river in an aching daze, stood at its edge and traced the rise and fall of its bank until the cold had numbed his hands and chapped his cheeks.
Then he’d found his truck, intent on returning to the Everwood, though he’d taken a longer route back. He’d followed the river for a stretch, passed a well-lit arched iron bridge and an ensemble of storefronts decorated with awnings and flowerboxes. He’d circled the town center with its spacious lawn, trees wrapped in twinkle lights, and a band shell in the corner. Eventually, as he turned the truck from town, the city lights faded, replaced by a star-studded sky.
The drive had helped clear at least a little of the fog.
Mara had finished the job. “Kindness is its own shade of heroism. And whatever else you are, Marshall, you are that—kind. And I’m grateful.”
How many times had he replayed her voice in his head in the ten hours since? Was he really so hollow inside that such simple but earnest words could fill him so poignantly?
And how the heck were they going to pull off everything that needed to be done around the Everwood in three weeks? All the more reason to get this meeting with the local police chief over. He rubbed his palms over his jeans. “Where are we headed anyway?”
“Dispatch got a 9-1-1 call from Eunice Hathaway. Apparently she was near-frantic,
kept talking about Frank Roosevelt. She asked for me specifically.” Sam gave Marshall a sidelong glance before tipping his sunglasses into place. “Frank is her parakeet. He’s gotta be something like 120 years old.”
“I . . . see.” Marshall shook his head. “Nope. Nope, I don’t see.”
“Like I said, this is Maple Valley, not Milwaukee.” He made another turn. “I wasn’t sure you’d actually show up, so I figured I’d deal with Eunice and Frank real quick. And you’d either be waiting for me when I got back or you wouldn’t.”
No lights or siren, so Sam must not have been that worried about the woman and her bird. “You said you have questions. You mentioned the Everwood’s owner. I’ve only been here a few days, so I’m not sure how much help I can be.”
Sam waved at a letter carrier before turning off Main Avenue, steering the squad car toward a residential area. “Well, first off, you can assure me you don’t have anything to do with the woman’s—Lenora’s—disappearance.”
“I’ve never even met her. And since when did we get from thinking she abandoned the property because of an impending foreclosure to ‘disappearance’?”
“Since my gut kept me up all night after meeting Mara Bristol.”
“Some Pepto-Bismol may help with that.”
Sam’s eyebrows lifted above his sunglasses as he pulled in front of a small ranch-style house. “Put yourself in my shoes, Hawkins. You meet a sweet, older woman who seems like she has her heart set on settling down in this community and running the local B&B. Later, you come to find out she’s left town with, apparently, no word on where she’s going.”
“People pick up and move all the time.”
Sam pocketed his keys and stepped out of the car, waiting until Marshall followed to go on. “But now, a woman who by all accounts has been hiding out at said B&B and a stranger—that’d be you—with no discernable connection to this town, are making like they own the place.”
Marshall rubbed one hand over his grizzled jaw. “Okay, when you put it that way—”
He was stopped by the sight of a woman in a tangerine pantsuit half-jogging, half-waddling from the house. “It took you long enough, Sheriff Ross.”
