“Hey, babe!”
Libby nearly choked on her Diet Coke, but she recovered in time to give Sean a bright smile as he dropped onto the grass beside her. She could feel at least ten sets of dagger glares coming from underneath the cottonwood tree.
“Hey, Blair,” Sean said, “how’s it goin’?”
“Fine,” her friend said, and Libby swallowed a sigh—along with the Diet Coke—because Blair and Sean didn’t really like each other all that much. Libby wasn’t really sure why, although she had a feeling it had something to do with both of them wanting her—Libby—all to themselves. Well, they were just both going to have to learn to deal with it, weren’t they?
Libby smiled into Sean’s amazing coffee eyes and tried not to sigh. She knew he wanted to kiss her, but the school had a zero-tolerance policy about shows of affection, so that was out. It was so weird—Sean was easily one of the cutest boys in school, he could have had any girl he wanted, so Libby had been totally shocked when he’d started hanging around her. And she really couldn’t believe it when he’d offered her a ride home a week ago and had leaned in and given her this really sweet kiss right before she got out. They’d kissed some more—okay, a lot more—since then, and to tell the truth, what she felt when they were kissing kinda scared her. Like when she was little and she’d spin around and around until she got dizzy and would fall over. But she figured it was like being new in school—eventually, she’d start feeling more normal about it.
“Thought you were working on Dawn Logan’s old GTO?” People could bring in cars for the advanced auto students to work on. They’d been working on that GTO since the first day of school, with no end in sight, from what Sean said.
Sean grinned, a crooked thing that made Libby feel a little like she might throw up. “I was. Except then I remembered if I spent the whole hour in there, I wouldn’t get to see my girl for another three-and-a-half hours.”
Blair made a strange sound in her throat. Libby tossed her a “Don’t say it” look before smiling back at Sean. Nobody’d ever called her my girl before and she was determined to squeeze every drop of pleasure out of the moment as she could.
The bell rang, bringing a chorus of groans, understandable since it was hot as hell inside. But before Libby could haul herself to her feet, Sean was standing with his hand out. Libby flushed, both with pleasure at being treated like a lady, and with embarrassment that he might not be able to heave her to her feet as easily as he thought. She resolved this dilemma by getting on one knee so he wouldn’t do all the work, flushing all over again when, once she was standing, he placed a kiss on the inside of her hand, making her tingle all over.
Behind Sean, Blair rolled her eyes. Libby decided it was only because she was jealous. However, she was gracious enough not to hold it against her.
Showered and changed into her favorite voile blouse over a tank top and a pair of bold, floral capris too tacky to resist, Carly sat stiffly on Sam’s porch swing, staring mindlessly out toward a clump of fruit trees—apple, mostly, she thought, but there were a few pears, as well, their leaves blushing scarlet—while nursing a cup of coffee long since gone cold. Sam had insisted she and her father were welcome to anything in the house, but she’d already started a list of what they used so she could replace it before they left. Since both she and her dad were big coffee drinkers, a can of Maxwell House went to the head of the class.
She’d hoped the shower and coffee would clear her muddled head. Wrong. If ever a situation brimmed over with “I know, buts…” this was it. Despite how well the situation had resolved itself, despite the shower and the coffee and a surreally perfect day with a sky so clear she felt buoyed by it, despite the rush of fond childhood memories brought on by the soothing, honest scents of hay and earth and animal, the ominous feeling that she was about to be tested in some way kinda shot all the good stuff to hell.
All the males, as well as a small pack of dogs, had been gone for a good two hours—something about repairing a fence, she gathered. Her father’s enthusiastic offer of help had thrown Sam, Carly could tell, but he’d relented once Dad convinced him he’d helped fix plenty of fences as a kid growing up on his parents’ dairy farm in Iowa. So off they’d gone, Sam’s apparent lack of concern about leaving a stranger alone in his house unnerving her even further, tossing her own cynicism back at her like a hot potato. And like that hot potato, she wasn’t quite sure what to do with such no-strings-attached generosity. Except she knew if she held on to it for more than a second, she’d get burned.
Carly downed another sip of coffee, only to grimace at its bitterness. The swing’s chain jingled, startled, as she got up and tossed the dregs out into the yard. Then she stretched her arms over her head, hauling in a lungful of air before slowly swaying from side to side, then bending down to easily lay her palms on the floorboards in front of her feet, taking care not to hyperextend her bum knee. Almost more than giving up performing, the thought of losing her flexibility and control over her body gave her the willies.
Speaking of willies…she actually shuddered when she walked back into the house, it was so impossibly neat. Fancy, no—the blue and beige early-American sofa had a decidedly weary aura about it—but everything was stacked or shelved or hung up or otherwise relegated to its appointed place. Not a single cobweb dangled from the ceiling or clung to a lampshade, not a speck of grunge huddled in the corners of the bathroom, and the clawfoot tub had been as white as Miss America’s smile. Creepy. While Carly wasn’t prone to letting dishes pile up in the sink, her housekeeping philosophy generally ran along the lines of when she got grossed out, she cleaned.
And yet, how to explain the occasional wall painted bright blue or tangerine or lemon-yellow, the animals snoozing or lurking everywhere she looked, the exuberantly free-form artwork smothering one entire wall of the airy, teal-green hallway leading from the living room to the kitchen? Or the row of boots lined up with almost military precision in the mudroom, except for one tiny red pair, defiantly lying on its sides…the mad collection of family photos in mismatched frames, on walls, on shelves, on end tables?
Sam’s wife was in at least half of them, a round, pretty woman who’d been clearly in love with her husband, her children, her life. Carly’s chest tightened for the obvious hole her death must have left in this family. As generous as Sam was with his smiles, none of them even came close to the ones in these pictures.
She carried her empty mug back into the kitchen, where one of a dozen notes tacked here and there instructed whoever—in this case, her—to either wash it out or put it in the dishwasher. Smiling, she rinsed it out and set it in on the drainboard, then decided to see what she could throw together for lunch, since she imagined the guys would be back soon. Not that Carly was inclined to either domesticity or helpfulness, but it seemed silly to make lunch for herself and not go ahead and make it for everyone else at the same time.
A block-printed note on the refrigerator sternly reminded her to think about what she wanted before opening it, but since she didn’t know what was inside, she supposed she could be forgiven for browsing, just this once. She found many of the same staples she remembered from summers at her grandparents’: bologna and American cheese and lettuce and big, ripe, juicy tomatoes still fresh from the late summer garden, Miracle Whip and generic mustard, with loaves of IronKids and whole wheat bread in the large basket on the counter. The milk would be fresh, she knew—she’d heard the lowing of a cow or two while she’d been sitting on the porch—and nothing skim about it. And if you wanted water, there was the tap. Well water, she imagined, ice-cold.
A humongous ginger tomcat snaking around her ankles, she started slicing tomatoes on a wooden board she found by the sink, frowning at the wipe-erase board the size of a medium-size continent hanging on the only counter-free wall, divided into columns with chores listed under each name. Even little Travis was up there, with Feed Chickens and Collect Eggs as part of his duties. Although she did notice that there was always an older child listed with the same chores, so maybe the little guy was only in training. Still, this was a method that brooked no argument. And frankly seemed at odds with what she could have sworn was a laid-back demeanor on Sam’s part. But there it was, irrefutable evidence