Stranger Read online

  “I want to see you again!”

  I stopped, then, and turned, grateful the rest of the crowd had already gone. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Why not?”

  I shook my head. “Not a good time for this discussion.”

  “I’ll call you!”

  “No, Sam!” I was almost to the hearse when I stopped this time. “No. Don’t.”

  He shook his head to get his hair off his forehead, and the sun again caught his earring. It caught his smile, too, which was twice as shiny as the diamond. “I’m going to call you.”

  I shook my head again, but said nothing this time. Arguing would be undignified. I went around the front of the hearse and got in the passenger side. Jared looked up as I slid into my seat. He reached to turn down the music, but I stopped him.

  “Leave it. I like this song.”

  Jared gave me a look. “You do?”

  Since we’d often teased each other about musical preferences, I knew he could tell I wasn’t being truthful, but I just wanted to get out of there. “Sure. Emo is my new favorite flavor.”

  Jared laughed and cast a curious glance out the window, where Sam was loping away over the grass-covered hill toward the parking lot. “Does that guy know where he’s going?”

  “Does anybody?”

  Jared laughed and revved up the car. “Deep, Grace. Very deep.”

  I let him think I was being flip, but as I watched out the window for Sam’s car to drive away, I wondered the same thing.

  I made it through the Stewarts’ service and the one later in the afternoon, but then was finished for the day. I needed coffee. Shelly usually made it, not as strong as I liked to drink it but good enough to get me through the midafternoon lag.

  The day had seemed interminable, probably because of my lack of sleep and the amount of paperwork I had to do. I was yawning when she poked her head in again, this time with a plate of cookies.

  “I baked. Want one?”

  “Sure.”

  She brought the plate to my desk. “Chocolate peanut-butter chip.”

  “God.” I bit into one. “Sooooo good.”

  Shelly beamed. “I got the recipe from my baking magazine. I think I’m going to try pecan roll next. With cream-cheese filling. What do you think?”

  “I think I’m going to have to buy new pants if you keep this up.”

  She giggled. Shelly was really a sweet girl, even if she was prone to attacks of excitability and easily made to cry. She ate a cookie, too, but looked as though she was analyzing it rather than enjoying it.

  “I think next time I’ll use white chocolate chips, instead.”

  I finished my cookie. “These are great. Why mess with perfection?”

  Shelly shrugged. “How do you know it’s perfection unless you try something else that might be better?”

  “The same could be said for more than cookies,” I said.

  Shelly snagged another cookie and broke it into pieces to eat each one slowly. “Like men?”

  I sat back in my chair. Shelly had had the same quiet boyfriend since she started working for me. Duane Emerich had taken over his family’s farm and had, according to Shelly, been hinting at marriage. Whether or not Shelly herself wanted to get married I didn’t know, but she hadn’t shown up with a ring on her finger yet.

  “Depends,” I answered.

  “On what?”

  “On the man?” I took another cookie but only nibbled it. Savoring it. “What’s up, Shelly?”

  She shrugged prettily. “Nothing. Just thinking about living on a farm for the rest of my life, that’s all.”

  The idea held absolutely no appeal for me, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. “Thinking about Duane, you mean. He’s a good guy.”

  “Yes.” She sighed. “But…”

  I waited for her to continue, but she didn’t. “But…?”

  Shelly looked up at me. “Well, he’s…a little…”

  Duane was a little of a lot of things, none of which I wanted to give an opinion about.

  “He’s a good guy, Shelly.”

  “With shit on his shoes,” she said.

  I don’t know which shocked me more, the fact she’d criticized him or the fact she’d cursed. I didn’t know what to say and shoved more cookie into my mouth so I wouldn’t have to think of something. Shelly sighed again.

  “You go out with lots of different guys, don’t you, Grace?”

  I chewed and swallowed and sipped coffee to clear my mouth. “Not that many.”

  “I’ve been going out with Duane since we were sophomores in high school.” She looked at me. “He’s the only boyfriend I’ve ever had.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with that, you know.”

  “I know.” Shelly shrugged again. “But he’s just so…good.”

  “Good isn’t something to sneeze at,” I told her.

  “By good I mean boring,” Shelly said.

  “Boring isn’t so good.”

  We laughed.

  “I just don’t know what to think. We do the same things all the time. Go to the movies. Eat pizza on Sunday nights. I can tell you exactly what he’ll get me for my birthday. I can tell you what color shirt he’ll wear on Thursday.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with any of that,” I said quietly.

  Shelly nodded. “Yeah. I know.”

  Part of her must have questioned it, though, else she wouldn’t have been talking to me about it. Shelly and I weren’t close enough for me to offer her advice, if I’d had any to give. So I ate another cookie, and so did she, and in another minute the phone rang and she went to answer it.

  Thinking about what she’d said, I spun in my chair while I ate yet another cookie and sipped my coffee and looked out my window to the back parking lot.

  I tried to tell myself it was the plateful of cookies that had soured my stomach, but the truth was, I didn’t like facing the memory of my earlier envy. I closed down my computer and made sure to grab my phone, then headed out to Shelly’s desk.

  “I’m going to run some errands. I don’t have any appointments today, but if something comes up, give me a call. Jared can handle pretty much anything until I get back.”

  I was uncertain of where, exactly, I wanted to go, just that I wanted to get away from Frawley and Sons for a while. Traffic decided for me, making it easier to turn right than left.

  Five minutes’ drive took me to my sister’s house, the front yard uncharacteristically scattered with toys. I pulled into the driveway but sat in the car for a minute. What would I tell my sister about why I was here?

  She didn’t give me long enough to figure it out. The front door opened and Hannah peered out through the screen door. Of course she did. This was Annville, after all. I’m sure all her neighbors were peering out, too.

  She opened the door as I got out of the car. “Grace?”

  I waved. “Hi.”

  She held the door for me. “What are you doing here?”

  “Oh…just thought I’d stop by, if that’s okay.”

  She closed the door behind me. The living room was a minefield of blocks and action figures. Like the front yard, this wasn’t the norm for my sister, who’d inherited our mother’s neatness genes.

  “Where’s Simon?” I asked unnecessarily, since from the basement rec room I heard the drone of cartoons.

  Hannah pointed. “Downstairs rotting his brain. Come into the kitchen.”

  It was also a disaster, at least according to the normal standards. Dishes were piled high in the sink and on the counter, with the remains of lunch on the table. The sliding door that normally imprisoned the washer and drier hung open, two baskets of laundry sprawling in front of them.

  “I didn’t have time to clean,” Hannah said when she noticed me looking.

  “I see that.”

  “Coffee?” She went to the pot and lifted a cup.

  “Sure.”

  I watched her carefully. She didn’t usually wear a