Moonlight in the Morning (Edilean 6)

“Is he married?” Jecca asked. She knew the answer but hoped they’d keep talking.

“Oh no,” Lucy said. “He’s quite unattached. He doesn’t even have a girlfriend at the moment.”

“If this guy is such a paragon of virtue, why hasn’t some woman snatched him up?” Jecca asked. When the women said nothing, she said, “Did I say something wrong?”

“No,” Lucy said. “It’s just that most of the women in town have tried but haven’t succeeded with Dr. Tris.”

“Both unmarried and married, if you know what I mean,” Mrs. Wingate said.

“So he dumps them?” Jecca asked. “Gets them to fall for him, then leaves them?”

“Oh no!” both Lucy and Mrs. Wingate said.

“It’s more that the women go after him,” Mrs. Wingate said. “Even when he was a child, women liked him.”

“He’s such a very pretty boy,” Lucy said.

“Is he?” Jecca asked as she bit into a muffin. “How pretty?”

Mrs. Wingate and Lucy paused with food on the way to their mouths and stared at Jecca.

“That bad, huh?”

“Yes,” both Mrs. Wingate and Lucy said.

The three women were quiet for a moment, then Mrs. Wingate started explaining the way the shared kitchen worked. “If you’ll make out a grocery list, Lucy will pick up what you need, then give you a bill. She loves to go to the grocery as much as I hate to.”

“But I thought—” Jecca began but stopped. If Lucy went to the grocery, then she wasn’t agoraphobic as Kim believed.

“Do you work out?” Mrs. Wingate asked.

“Work out? You mean go to the gym?”

“Yes.”

“I try to,” Jecca said, “but my life in New York is pretty hectic. I do walk a lot there.”

“I guess you could walk back and forth around the garden,” Lucy said.

“Or you could join us,” Mrs. Wingate said. “I come home from work at three P.M. then we go downstairs to the basement and follow one of Lucy’s DVDs. It’s for one hour, and afterward we have tea amid Tristan’s orchids.”

Jecca ducked her head to Kd h kitch hide her smile. What kind of DVD workouts did two fifty-something-year-old women do? Ten leg lifts and a sit-up? A dozen reps with two-pound dumbbells?

“Or not,” Mrs. Wingate said. “Whatever you prefer. You’re certainly free to do what you want. A gym is about to open in Edilean, but not until the fall. Lucy, what do they do there?”

“Mixed martial arts. I think it’s a lot of boxing.”

“That’s a little above my exercise level,” Jecca said, and the women smiled. “Maybe I will join you this afternoon.”

“We’d love that!” Lucy said.

Mrs. Wingate looked at Jecca. “Last night when you fell asleep outside, didn’t the mosquitoes bother you?”

“They never do,” Jecca said. “They eat my brother up, but not my dad and me.”

“You sound just like Tristan,” Mrs. Wingate said. “His mother and sister can put on three kinds of insect repellent and still be bitten, but Tris and his dad have never had a mosquito bite.” She looked down for a moment. “When I saw that the lawn furniture had been moved, I thought maybe you and Tris had seen each other.”

“Never saw him,” Jecca said again, but this time she could feel her face turning red. She would never make a spy! How could she lie to these sweet women?