“That’s Alice in Wonderland, and you’d have to go as the Mad Hatter.”
“I could do that.”
“Well?” Sophie asked. “Who are you going to be?”
“I think I’ll let my cousin Sara tell you. She makes costumes for all of us.” And she can tell me, he added to himself. What could he wear that would put Sophie in something red? And low cut?
Sophie was smiling deeply for the first time in a very long while. “You have no idea what you’re going to wear, do you?”
Reede laughed. “I am caught! None whatever. I’ve had a very busy morning and—”
“Does Sara know your sizes?”
“Six one, one eighty-five,” he said. “What about you?”
“Five three and you’d have to put me in a hospital before I told you how much I weigh.”
“That doesn’t sound bad. I know a place—” He stopped as he remembered the circumstances of their meeting. “So should I pick you up at Kim’s house tomorrow?”
“Sure. No, wait. I think I should move into my own apartment at Mrs. Wingate’s house. I’m imposing too much on Kim.”
“So no one has told you?”
“Told me what?”
“Yesterday, Mrs. Wingate eloped with the gardener.”
“Oh,” was all Sophie could think to say. “I got the impression that she was an older woman.”
“Forties, not too old. Very elegant lady. It seems that while she was married to a man the whole town knew was abusive, she was in love with Bill Welsch.”
“And he’s the gardener?”
“And a builder. He’s a cousin of mine and he’s a great guy. Anyway, when she and Bill left, one of her tenants, Lucy Layton, asked—”
“Layton?” Sophie said. “But that’s Jecca’s last name.”
“Nobody told you that either? Kim’s husband’s mother married Jecca’s dad.”
Sophie had to think a moment to put that relationship in place. “No, no one told me. So what did Mrs. Layton ask?”
“If she could buy the Wingate house. Travis—that’s Kim’s husband—wants to open a camp for inner city kids, and they want to use the big Wingate house as part of it.”
“I guess this means that the apartment is no longer available.”
Reede’s first thought was to tell her that she could stay with him, but he refrained from saying it. What in the world was wrong with him anyway? He’d had dozens of offers from women in town, but none of them had interested him, but there was something about Sophie that intrigued him. Maybe it was the fact that she wasn’t one of the women who was going after him with the subtly of a submarine torpedo.
Sophie was quiet as she thought about the problem of the apartment. This morning she’d been going through Kim’s closet, rummaging about in her kitchen, and she hadn’t liked doing it. It was Kim’s house, and Sophie needed a place of her own. That she no longer had an apartment waiting for her was a blow.
Reede sensed that he’d inadvertently ruined the mood. “I’ll find you a place to live,” he said. “My cousin Ramsey owns several properties. I’m sure he has something available.” Even if I have to buy it, he thought. “What are you doing today?”
Sophie hoped he was leading up to inviting her somewhere this evening. It would be nice to get to know each other better before the masquerade of tomorrow. “The usual,” she said, which made no sense, as the job was so new to her that nothing was “usual.” “What about you?”
He couldn’t tell her the truth, that he was putting all his time and energy into planning the next two days, so he said he had “medical work.”
“It must be wonderful to save lives.”
“It was,” he said, thinking of his past rescue work and of the clinics he’d set up. “I mean it is now. I better go,” he said.