“I know,” Danny said gravely. “You told me that already.”
• • •
When Wendy came home from work on Monday afternoon, she was not surprised to find Danny in the backyard. He was sitting cross-legged on the grass next to the cage, reading a library book called Raccoon.
“Glad to see you doing your homework,” she teased, and they both smiled, because it was summertime. No school, so naturally, no homework.
“It’s kind of short,” he said. “But it was the only book they had about raccoons.”
“You can probably find more information on the web,” Wendy said. “Do you know how to use the Internet?”
“Yes, but I don’t have a computer at home. Only at school.”
“You can use mine,” Wendy said. “Wait right there and I’ll bring out my laptop.”
Wendy logged on and waited until Danny Googled “raccoon.” Then she went back in the house and lay down.
She’d had a bad day at work. All day long, every time a strange man walked into the bank, a feeling of panic rose in her chest. When it was time to carry money across the parking lot to fill the ATM, she flatly refused. Ellen wouldn’t do it, either. Mr. Smart had sighed loudly, as if they were being totally unreasonable and he was the most patient person in the world. In the end, he filled the ATM himself, taking along his secretary who was scared stiff, but didn’t dare refuse.
Wendy wished Kyle could stop by later, but he was on night shift again. It was going to be like that all week, him going to work just as she was getting off. Usually she wasn’t bothered by him working the night shift. After being around people all day, she liked having evenings to herself. But not this week. Not since the holdup.
• • •
On Thursday, Mr. Smart called her into his office. “Wendy,” he said. “I am real sorry about what happened to you and Ellen. You know I am. But it’s part of your job to fill the ATM every afternoon. You’re going to have bite the bullet and do it, that’s all.”
Wendy didn’t much like his phrase “bite the bullet.” The way she saw it, she’d come all too close to biting a real bullet, and all because the bank wasn’t concerned enough about employee safety to put the ATM next to the building so it could be filled without the whole town watching. But she couldn’t argue with Mr. Smart’s main point. She had always known that the ATM was on the other side of the parking lot, and was told when she came to work here that filling it would be part of her job.
Too bad. Because no way was she going to walk across that parking lot carrying thousands of dollars in cash again. It was a well-known fact that robbers often held up the same bank twice, especially when they had found it easy the first time. Wendy stood in front of Mr. Smart’s desk, looked away, and said nothing.
“So can I count on you from now on?”
Wendy shook her had. “I would if I could, Mr. Smart. But I can’t.”
Mr. Smart steepled his fingers under his chin and looked at her for a long time. Then he said, “Well, think about it, Wendy. One way or another, you’re going to have to get past your fear of … the parking lot.”
Wendy almost laughed. It wasn’t the parking lot she was afraid of. It was guys with guns! Or any strange men, for that matter. It was almost a week now since the holdup, and she still felt panic when a man she didn’t know looked at her — or worse, two men together. She hadn’t told anybody, not even Kyle, because what could they do? They’d just tell her to stop worrying. She had already told herself that and it did not help one bit.
Wendy didn’t need to be told that if she did not go back to carrying that cash out to the ATM she was going to get fired. Ellen had already agreed to start carrying the money out on Monday. If Wendy kept refusing, then it was just a matter of time. She pulled into her driveway and sat there a minute, thinking things through.
“The bank is not where I want to spend my life, anyway,” she said aloud. “If I could have my druthers, I’d spend all my time in the backyard fooling with animals. Or better yet, out in the woods, where the real wild things are.”
9
TWO PROPOSALS
Kyle called on Sunday morning and asked Wendy if she wanted to go for a drive.
“Sure,” she replied. “What time?”
“Right now,” he replied. “Soon as I can get there.”
It was unusual for Kyle to call out of the blue like that and ask her to go somewhere that wasn’t a regular date, like to a movie or a party. But they had barely seen each other for the two weeks he had been on the night shift. It pleased Wendy to think that he was missing her so much that he wanted to be with her the first chance he got when he was off work at the same time she was.
“So where are we going?” Wendy asked.
“You’ll see,” he said, and hung up before she could ask more questions.
• • •
They drove along a narrow paved road for about ten miles. It was like the area where Wendy had grown up on the other side of town. There were a few small patches of woods, but most of the trees had been cleared for farming. Wendy was a little surprised when they turned onto a dirt lane that led to a two-storey farmhouse set a good distance back from the road.
“Who are we visiting?” she asked, as they stopped in front of the house.
“Nobody,” Kyle said. “The old folks who own this place are at church. I just wanted to check it out.”
“For what? To see if a couple of church-going old folks are growing marijuana on the back forty?” Wendy joked.
“Has happened,” Kyle reminded her. “But these folks don’t have forty acres. Just ten. I doubt there’s anything besides weeds growing back there. The place is up for sale.”
“Are you thinking of buying it?” Wendy asked in surprise.
Kyle shrugged. “Come on, let’s take a look around.”
There was a small vegetable garden behind the house, but most of the property looked abandoned. The bird nests in some of the taller bushes and the rustle of small animals as they walked through the weeds made it seem as if it was already being used more by animals than people. At the very back, along the property line, there were a few trees. Some were so ancient-looking that Wendy thought they might have been part of the original forest.
Wendy was silent as they headed back to the car. She didn’t know what Kyle might decide, but she knew that if she had the money to buy a house out of town like this, with a little land around it, she’d do it in a heartbeat.
“Well?” Kyle asked. “What do you think?”
“Too bad they didn’t leave more trees,” Wendy said. “But the few at the back are nice, and there is that big shade tree in the front yard. I like the way the house is set back from the road, too.”
“I’ve already looked at the house,” Kyle said. “It’s in pretty good shape. Still, we’d have to do a lot of work to fix it up the way we want it.”
“We?” Wendy repeated in astonishment. Then she laughed. “Kyle Collins, are you proposing to me?”
Kyle’s face turned red all the way to the roots of his sandy crewcut. “Well, considering how your folks and my folks and Mrs. Armstrong and everybody else is waiting for us to set a wedding date, I don’t think we could very well move out here together without getting married.” He hesitated, turned a shade redder, and stammered, “That is, if you want to.”
“So