“Me neither. They get in a man’s way.” He leaned across the seat and kissed her earlobe. She had on small gold earrings with stones of citrine just off center.
She smiled a
t him, glad he’d really looked at her drawings. Most people just glanced at them and said how pretty they were, but they couldn’t actually visualize her designs.
“Want to wander through every store or go directly to the one and only jewelry shop in town?”
She looked at him in disbelief. “Don’t tell me you’re a man who likes going shopping with women? Going in and out of stores and looking at every little thing in the shop?”
“Well, I . . .” He looked out the windshield.
“Oh, I see. You’re just being polite. You added the jewelry bit on the end to entice me there.”
“I’m glad you’re not a judge in a courtroom or I’d never be able to put anything over on you. I tell you what, today is yours. I’ll go in and out of every one of these insufferably cute little stores, but in the future . . .”
“I’m on my own? You’ll get a beer while I wander?”
“Pretty much,” he said, and they smiled at each other. That they were speaking as though their future together was set in place, a given, a done deal, was pleasing to both of them.
They got out of the car and stood on the sidewalk, holding hands. So normal, Kim thought. So . . . so satisfyingly, deeply normal.
“Where to first?” Travis asked.
“There.” Kim pointed to a used bookstore across the street. Its windows were covered in years of dirt and the few books she could see had curled, faded covers.
“Local history, right?” Travis asked. When Kim nodded, he raised her hand and kissed it. “Jewelry store last? To be savored?”
“Exactly,” she said.
In the bookstore Kim was glad to see that Travis didn’t mind going through boxes that had twenty years of dust coating them and digging for out-of-print books and local pamphlets. He found a cookbook put together in the twenties by the women of a local church.
They looked through it, saw there was no contributor named Janes, so Kim said it was no use to them. But Travis said a person never knew when relatives were going to turn up. Kim started to ask what he meant by that but he’d walked away.
He talked with the shop owner while Kim went through the shelves of books on the history of jewelry. She chose a big one on Peter Carl Fabergé.
They left the store with a box full of books, and Travis put them in the Jeep he’d commandeered from Russell.
“Do you think he walked?”
“Who?” Travis asked.
“Russell. You left him there at the Old Mill without transportation. Do you think he walked to . . . to wherever he went?”
“Probably called Penny and she picked him up,” Travis said.
“So how long has she worked for you?” They were crossing the street again.
“Since I started at my dad’s.”
“And your father let her go so she could work for you?”
“Why all these questions?”
“I’m just trying to find out about your life, that’s all.”
He paused in front of a little shop that had some very pretty clothes in the window. “When my dad rooked me into working for him, Penny said she was going to help me. Dad didn’t want to let her go, but she threatened to quit if he didn’t, and since she knows more about the business than he does, he couldn’t allow that.”
“Why was she so adamant about working for you?”