“I said that would be fine,” Bruce muttered, leafing through the Cedar Cove Chronicle. He worked hard at his computer support business and needed this quiet time in the evenings. Just half an hour to regroup; that was all. Since Stephanie’s death he’d developed a routine with their daughter. He got home from work, watched the news and read the paper while Jolene entertained herself with a book or a jigsaw puzzle. Afterward they prepared dinner together. Their meals weren’t always the meat-and-potatoes variety, either. Some nights it was bacon, eggs and waffles. More than once they’d had cookies and milk with popcorn for dessert, but he didn’t make a habit of that.

  “You didn’t phone her,” Jolene whined.

  “Why don’t you?” he said. She’d called Rachel Pendergast often enough in the past. Rachel had stepped in as a surrogate mother after Stephanie’s death and spent many evenings and Saturdays with them both.

  At age seven, Jolene had decided she needed a mother and she’d chosen Rachel. Bruce smiled as he recalled the day they’d met Rachel at the beauty salon—and how embarrassed he’d been by his daughter’s pronouncement. But Bruce gratefully accepted Rachel’s involvement in their lives, as long as nothing was required of him. He wasn’t interested in a romantic relationship, he told himself again. He was a one-woman man, and Stephanie was that woman. Now that she was gone he had no intention of marrying again. Rachel understood that, although most women didn’t. Since he was what people considered prime marriage material, various friends had taken it upon themselves to find him a wife. Bruce had been in more than his share of uncomfortable social situations with women whose objectives were explicit—if not explicitly stated. Sooner or later, they all learned that he wasn’t interested.

  “I want you to phone Rachel,” Jolene said.

  Bruce lowered the newspaper. “Why?”

  “Because then she’ll know you approve.”

  Bruce could see that the peacefulness of the evening was already shattered. Jolene talked to Rachel on a regular basis; the two of them seemed to get together at least once a week for one reason or another. More often now that Lover Boy had departed for San Diego. Nate Olsen was no loss as far as Bruce was concerned, although he hadn’t said that to Rachel. She could date whomever she wanted.

  “Here.” Jolene handed him the portable phone.

  “Okay, okay,” he muttered. If he was truthful, he’d admit he wasn’t opposed to contacting Rachel. He considered her a friend—a good enough friend to be on speed dial.

  “Hi,” he said when she picked up. “Are you doing anything special this Saturday?”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “Jolene needs to go school shopping and she’d like you to take her.”

  “Count me in.”

  Bruce grinned at her enthusiasm. He didn’t understand this thing about women and shopping. He didn’t know a single one who wouldn’t leap at the opportunity to dash to a mall. A sale on bedsheets, some kind of giveaway, a makeup demonstration—any excuse would do.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You women and your shopping.”

  “Listen, Bruce, you don’t want to go there. Men have their own preferences. I’ll bet you’re sitting in front of the television right now with the remote control on the armrest. I’ll bet you’re reading the paper at the same time as you’re watching the TV news.”

  How did she know this much about his evening routine? He supposed it shouldn’t surprise him. Rachel had often been to his house over the past few years and he’d been to hers. She was the only woman who’d breached his defenses. Suddenly he wondered if she was right about other men’s routines being the same as his. And if she was, how had she found out?

  “What do you hear from Lover Boy?” he asked.

  “I wish you’d stop calling Nate that,” she said, the humor leaving her voice.

  “Okay, your Sailor Man,” he revised. The truth was, Bruce had never much cared for Rachel’s navy boyfriend. For one thing, he couldn’t imagine them as a couple. For another, Nate seemed to resent the time Rachel spent with Jolene. In fact he’d tried on more than one occasion to come between them. So far, that hadn’t worked; Rachel wouldn’t allow it.

  “We talk almost every day. He misses me.”

  “Do you miss him?” Bruce asked, although he already knew what she’d say.

  “Like crazy. I’m going to fly down to California to visit him soon. Or he’ll fly up here for a weekend. We’re miserable without each other.”

  Bruce had to bite his tongue to keep from making a sarcastic remark. He wasn’t sure why he’d bothered to ask. Thinking about Nate Olsen and Rachel invariably put him in a bad mood, although he refused to delve any further into the reasons for that.

  “What’s new in town?” Rachel asked, abruptly changing the subject. “You’re reading the paper, aren’t you? Give me an update.”

  “All right,” he said, looking at the front page. “The school board’s bringing a new bond issue to the ballot in September. You’ll vote for it, won’t you?”

  “Of course. Anything else?”

  “There’s an article here by Jack Griffin about the Harbor Street Art Gallery. Apparently the owners are closing it, at least for the winter months, and maybe for good.”

  “Oh, no,” Rachel murmured. “Maryellen Bowman’s going to feel awful about that. She’s the one who built it up. A lot of local artists depend on that extra income.”

  “There’s also a short piece about a farewell party for Linnette McAfee,” Bruce went on. “Apparently her last day at the Medical Clinic is next week.”

  “I’m sorry she’s moving away,” Rachel said. “If anyone should move, it’s Cal,” she added indignantly.

  “Who’s Cal?”

  She launched into a rather involved explanation of Linnette and Cal Washburn and their relationship, ending with, “He broke her heart and now she’s leaving town?”

  “Why?” That didn’t make sense to Bruce, either, but then he was the last person who’d understand the whys and wherefores of a relationship. Rachel explained why she thought Linnette had decided to move. It still didn’t make sense to him. So Linnette and this Cal broke up. So what? This wasn’t junior high. Everyone should be able to coexist and behave like the adults they were.

  “Martha Evans’s funeral was this week,” Rachel said next. “Anything in the paper about that?”

  “Who’s she?”

  “She was an elderly woman. Around ninety. I did her hair for the funeral.”

  He didn’t like thinking about it. “That’s something you do?” he asked hesitantly.

  “Of course. She was a lovely woman. I’ll miss her.”

  “But why—”

  “The funeral home occasionally hires me. And I was very fond of Martha so I wanted to do it.”

  They chatted for another while, joking back and forth, filling each other in on what was happening at work. When he replaced the phone, Bruce was shocked to realize they’d talked for more than an hour.

  “What did Rachel say?” Jolene asked. She’d been waiting patiently, completing a jigsaw puzzle of horses grazing in a field. Five hundred pieces! He was impressed.

  “She said she’d be by to pick you up at nine-thirty on Saturday morning,” he said absently. An hour. He’d spent an entire hour on the phone with Rachel?

  Something was wrong.

  Bruce didn’t even like talking on the phone. Five minutes, tops. Say what’s necessary and hang up. He could barely remember a conversation in his entire adult life that had lasted more than fifteen minutes.

  “Dad?” Jolene cut into his musings.

  “What?”

  “You’re standing up but you’re not going anywhere.”

  “I am?” He hadn’t been aware that he was on his feet until Jolene pointed it out.

  “Are you okay?” his daughter asked.

  Bruce sat back down. “I—I don’t know.” He felt dizzy, and that was unusual for him. In fact, his head was spinning. Maybe he had the flu. Yeah, a flu named Rachel. Where did that thought come from? Squinting at his daughter, he noticed she was looking at him strangely.

  “Should I call 911?”

  “No.” He forced a laugh. “I’m fine. I do have a question for you, though.”

  “Sure.” She knelt in front of him, her hand on his knee. “Do you want me to get you a glass of water?”

  “No, no, it’s nothing.” His heart felt like an oil-rig pump that had gone berserk, but he chose to ignore that. “You like Rachel, don’t you?” But Jolene didn’t need to answer. Rachel had taken Stephanie’s place in her life. His own parents lived in Connecticut, and Jolene had only seen them two or three times. Stephanie’s parents had divorced when she was young and she’d never had a good relationship with her father. Her mother had died within two years of Stephanie; she’d never recovered from the loss of her only child. So it’d always been just Bruce and his daughter. Except for Rachel…

  “Dad, of course I like Rachel,” Jolene said. “You like her, too, don’t you?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?” he asked suspiciously.

  “You’re not mad at her or anything?”

  “No, no, everything’s…fine.”

  The relief in his daughter’s eyes quickly turned to fear. “She’s not marrying Nate and moving to San Diego, is she?”

  Not if I can help it, his mind shouted. With Jolene studying him intently, he shook his head and pretended nothing was amiss.

  Together they made dinner. Jolene prepared a green salad while Bruce fixed tuna sandwiches. Dinnertime had been important to Stephanie. Because he knew this was something his wife would’ve wanted, Bruce had continued the practice of having dinner with Jolene every evening. While she described her day, he did his best to pay attention. During the summer she attended a church day camp, which she loved. She launched into a long, complicated story about a little play she was in, and he forced himself to nod and exclaim in the right places.

  Summer bedtime was nine-thirty and Jolene went without an argument. He cleaned up the kitchen, then thought about going to bed himself, only he wasn’t tired. After washing a load of laundry and dumping it in the dryer, he cleaned the bathroom. This burst of nervous energy wasn’t a bad thing, he decided. Rare and surprising, perhaps, but nothing to be alarmed by.

  Once in bed, he tossed and turned for another hour, then realized he wouldn’t sleep until he’d talked to Rachel again. Her phone rang four times before she answered.

  “Hello.” Her voice was soft with sleep.

  “It’s me,” he said, feeling a bit unnerved when he glanced at the clock on his nightstand and saw that it was after midnight.

  “Bruce? Do you know what time it is?” She sounded more awake now—and annoyed.

  “Sorry…”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “When we talked earlier,” he began, not knowing where to go from there.

  “Yeah, what about it?”

  “We were on the phone for over an hour.”

  His announcement was met with silence, so he forged ahead. “There’s something happening between us, Rachel.”

  She sighed, or it could have been a suppressed yawn. “No, there isn’t.”

  “I’ve never talked to a woman for that long in my whole life.” He hesitated, then added, “Someone other than Stephanie, I mean.”

  “You woke me out of a dead sleep to tell me that?” Now her voice was incredulous.

  “Yes.”

  “Bruce, listen, we’re friends. We’ve been friends for years. Friends talk.”

  “I don’t chitchat on the phone,” he said forcefully. “I just don’t. I never have.”

  “You’re making too much of this, okay? It’s not a big deal.”

  “Jolene’s worried.” He said the next thing that came to mind.

  “About you?”

  “No,” he told her swiftly. “She’s worried about you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. She’s afraid you’re going to marry Nate and leave.” He was worried, too, but he couldn’t tell Rachel that. He’d already revealed far too much of his confusion. His feelings for Rachel were changing—or perhaps he simply hadn’t recognized them for what they were.

  “Bruce, Jolene and I have discussed this at length. If she mentions it to you again, tell her the person she needs to talk to is me.”

  “What did you say to her?” he asked. They were talking about his daughter here and he had a right to know.

  Rachel yawned before answering. “I promised her she’d always be part of my life.”

  “So you’ve decided to marry Lover Boy, after all.”

  “Would you stop it,” she chastised none too gently.

  “Now I’m worried about Jolene,” he whispered. It felt like he was about to lose his best friend, and depression settled heavily on his shoulders. If Rachel did marry Nate, that was exactly what would happen. She’d move away and leave them both.

  “Can I go back to sleep now?” she asked.

  “I feel like talking,” he murmured, lying down again, the pillow nestling his head.

  “Bruce, it’s almost one in the morning!”

  “I know. But you’re awake now, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, thanks to you. What would you like to talk about—other than Nate and me?”

  “You want to go out for dinner on Saturday night? After shopping?”

  “Bruce!”

  “What?”

  “I want to go back to sleep. That’s what I want to do.”

  “Oh.”

  “Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.”

  Despite himself, he grinned. “Good night, Rachel.”

  “Good night, Bruce,” she said pointedly.

  He was smiling as he replaced the receiver—even though he didn’t have anything to smile about. Because Rachel might very well marry Nate Olsen, and then the emptiness she’d filled would be deeper than ever before.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Sitting with the other ladies at the Henry M. Jackson Senior Center, Charlotte Rhodes knitted with furious speed. Her friends chatted, but Charlotte’s mind was moving as fast as her hands.

  “Charlotte,” Helen Shelton said. “You look like you’re a thousand miles away.”

  “Oh…” she murmured with a start. She hadn’t been listening to her friends’ conversation, but the fact that they’d realized it was embarrassing. She smiled apologetically at Helen, who was a favorite of hers and another expert knitter. She was a widow, living in a lovely duplex on Poppy Lane; the two women had much in common and spent many an afternoon knitting and exchanging stories.

  But at the moment Charlotte was worrying about her son and his recent move to Cedar Cove. On the surface, Will’s decision to retire in Washington seemed logical, but knowing what she did, Charlotte had good reason to be suspicious.

  “Bess asked if you’d check her knitting,” Helen said. “I can’t quite figure out what she’s done wrong.”

  “Of course.” Charlotte set her own knitting aside and studied her friend’s half-finished sock. She’d discovered many an easy fix in sixty years of working with needles and yarn. When people came to her with knitting difficulties, her initial advice was always the same: Read the pattern. If the directions weren’t clear the first time, then read them again.

  She glanced at the sock pattern, which had been passed around among the knitters and looked a little the worse for wear. She found Bess’s mistake quickly enough and repaired it, using a crochet hook to pick up a dropped stitch.

  The ladies at this table were her dearest friends in the world, and yet Charlotte couldn’t divulge her troubles to them. That just wasn’t done by most women of her generation. Family problems stayed inside the family. They were not to be discussed with outsiders, and that included one’s very closest friends.

  She envied Olivia and Grace their friendship. There wasn’t anything those two couldn’t and didn’t talk about. But Charlotte couldn’t share her disappointment in her oldest child with anyone other than her husband. Ben might not be Will’s father but he was part of her family now.

  How could she tell her friends that her only son had a weak character? How could she reveal to these women that Will had dishonored his wedding vows? Not once, but repeatedly. His ex-wife, Georgia, had kept this a secret for as long as she could and then the poor girl couldn’t take it anymore. Charlotte didn’t blame her. If Clyde had been alive, she knew he’d be embarrassed and ashamed by Will’s behavior and would no doubt have a few things to say to his son. Maybe it was just as well that Clyde had gone on to his heavenly reward rather than suffer such disillusionment about his only son.

  Ben was at home when she returned from the knitters’ group. He opened the front door as she approached the steps, taking them slowly and one at a time.

  “You look like you’re carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders,” he said, taking the bag from her hand and steering her into the house. Charlotte went automatically to the kitchen.

  “Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked.

  “If conversation goes along with that tea.”

  Charlotte wasn’t sure she could talk; her throat felt like it was closing. Swallowing hard, she nodded because she needed to talk, needed to share the feelings that pressed on her so heavily.

  Ben collected the cups and saucers while she boiled water and measured out tea leaves. Soon they were sitting at the kitchen table across from each other but before she could pour the tea, he reached for her hand.

  “Is it Will?” he asked.

  “Where is he? Do you know?”

  Ben shrugged. “He left a couple of hours ago. Said he was meeting with a rental agent to look at apartments.”

 

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