“Was the boyfriend late teens, early twenties?”
“Yes.”
“At that age, that’s all a guy can think of. The only thing Evan talks about is—” He stopped and for a moment his memories seemed to fill the cab of the truck. Evan was gone forever. “Stewart is what? Forty by now?”
“Based on the yearbook, I think he’s about thirty-eight.”
“He’s thirty-eight and you’re what? Twenty-one?”
“Three. I’m twenty-three years old.” Jack’s snide remarks were killing her good mood.
“That’s quite an age difference.”
She glared at him. “Alastair doesn’t laugh at me.”
Jack gave a smirk. “That’s smart of him. Gets him more.”
His insinuation of what Alastair was after was clear. Kate took her time before speaking and she changed the subject. “Is it still on that we’re going to the nursing home tomorrow?” Her teeth were clenched.
Jack glanced at her, then back at the road. “You don’t have to go. Sara and I could go alone. Maybe you and Stewart could have another date.”
“He’s taking his mother out to lunch.”
“And it’s not even Mother’s Day. What a nice guy.”
“He is a nice guy.” Her voice came out angry; she didn’t like having to defend herself.
They had reached the house. She started to get out but stopped. Damn him, but he’d ruined what had been a lovely evening. And for no reason! Was it spite? Jealousy? Or did Jack think that his grief gave him the right to take his anger out on others?
When she spoke, she looked straight ahead and her voice was calm. “You know, Jack, I truly believe that a person chooses whether or not to be happy. I’ve met people who are fifty years old and still whining that their parents didn’t love them enough and that’s why they’re miserable.”
She paused. “If you dig deep enough, we all have bad things in our pasts. My mother has debilitating fits of depression. By the time I was six years old, I knew how to open a can of soup, pour it into a bowl and heat it in the microwave. I—not my mother—set it up with a little mom-and-pop grocery that I could get food from them. When my mother came out of one of her depressions, she’d pay the bill.
“I did this because I love my mother and because the alternative was worse. If the State took me away, they would send me to my uncles. When I was seven, they were shouting at me that I was going to hell because my skirts showed my knees. I had to learn to enjoy the time when my mother wasn’t depressed. I forced myself to see the good, not the bad.” She took a breath. “Everybody has problems, Jack. It’s just what you do with them that makes the difference.” She got out of the truck and slammed the door.
ELEVEN
“Oh, my goodness,” Mary Ellerbee said as she looked up at the man from her big easy chair, noticing what looked like a gray wig peeping out of his pocket. “I haven’t seen you in ages.” She was in her mideighties and quite thin. Her eyes weren’t as sharp as they used to be but her mind hadn’t dulled a bit. “How have you been? Is your mother well?”
“Yes,” he said. “A few aches and pains, but nothing serious.”
She had an idea why he was here and what he planned to do to her. She’d seen the news on TV and had shed tears over what had been found in dear little Lachlan. It was about her friends Verna and beautiful young Cheryl. Their skeletons had been found in a tree’s roots! After her initial grief and shock, she remembered the young man she’d seen lurking about. It probably meant nothing, but she decided she should call the sheriff, though she hadn’t got around to it yet. Why had she hesitated?
She glanced at the closed door. “Where is that nurse? She should be here any minute.” She tried to control the shakiness of her voice. “Maybe I should call her.”
He put himself between her and the call button beside her bed.
Mary immediately thought of that one night not long before Cheryl and her mother vanished, when that pretty young girl had been sitting on the back doorstep and crying. All summer she’d been practicing being a newscaster while the Wyatt boy filmed her. Mary had encouraged them. It was important for Cheryl to think about her future. And besides, that poor Wyatt boy needed to get away from his loudmouthed father.
But that particular day, only Cheryl was there. Mary put the pie she’d baked down on the porch and wrapped her arms around her. The girl was too often alone. Verna did her best to support them, but it meant that she was gone a lot. The Wyatt child made Cheryl laugh and Mary liked that.
The other boy, the older one, the one who skulked around, sniffing like a wild boar, bothered Mary. He made sweet little Cheryl indecently happy or, like now, left her in tears that came from deep inside her. Mary knew what the problem was. She hadn’t lived sixty-plus years without seeing this particular kind of agony. She had to refrain from asking, “When are you due?”
“Now what?” Mary asked, her arms tightly around the girl. Her whole body was heaving.
“We’ll have to get married. I wanted to wait, but...” Crying overtook her.
“You could do something about this,” Mary said softly.