As did he.
I’m afraid I’m in love with you. And I don’t want to be.
Feeling like this could change everything.
He looped an arm around her, relieved when she leaned into him and pressed her cheek to his chest. “It’s okay,” he said quietly. “We have plenty of time. The threat to you has us both edgy. It can’t help spilling over.”
She didn’t say anything. Then her head bobbed. “You’re right. In fact, earlier I was thinking—” Once again she stopped, but not as abruptly this time, more as if not sure how to say whatever this was.
“Thinking?”
“It probably isn’t important at all, but I said something to Jerry.” She tipped her head back to see him. “You know, Hegland?”
“I knew who you meant.” He was getting a very bad feeling. “We’re dressed. Let’s go downstairs and have a cup of coffee or tea if you’d rather, and a slice of the key lime pie I bought at the bakery today. You can tell me what you said and why it’s worrying you.”
She nodded, forgetting her hurry to get back to her brother’s.
She wanted tea, so he put the kettle on while she cut and dished up the pie. He cleared the table quickly, piling their dirty dinner dishes on the counter. Then they sat down and looked at each other.
“It was something I remembered. I didn’t even know I did. It just…popped out from nowhere.”
It. She was circling the point, and he couldn’t help wondering why.
“Start at the beginning,” he suggested. “You said, ‘Jerry, how are you?’”
Cait wrinkled her nose. “Actually, I think I said, ‘You?’”
Noah chuckled. “Then you said, ‘How are you?’”
“No-o.” She drew out the word. “I said, ‘Jerry, right?’ and he said he was surprised I recognized him. I think I introduced Nell. I don’t know if I told you I was having lunch with her,” she added as an aside. She frowned. “In fact, this was right after you called to offer me the job. She and I were just finishing lunch.”
He nodded, reining in his chronic impatience.
“Anyway, looking at him, I had this sudden memory. He’d bought a house only a couple of blocks from ours. Not to live in—it was going to be a rental. He showed it to Mom one time when I was with them. Totally bored, of course,” she added. “But later I went past it a lot. I liked to get out of the house, so I’d ride my bike. Mornings, sometimes.” She gave him a quick glance. “You know my dad owned a tavern?”
Noah nodded.
“If he had to get up early for some reason, he was always really mad. Because he’d been up late, and I suppose he was hungover, too. All I knew was that I didn’t like being around him. So if I could sneak out without him noticing, I did.”
Noah remembered her describing her home life as unhappy. Was slipping out of the house an alternative to having to hide in her bedroom to avoid her father’s fists? Had Dad yelled when he was mad, or expressed that anger physically on the nearest family member? If she’d spent a lot of time trying to pass unnoticed, how had she ended up the confident woman she was?
Picturing her as a big-eyed, skinny, quiet kid, Noah had to wrench his attention back to her when she continued her story.
“So one morning I’d sneaked out really early. I was biking by the rental when I heard voices from the backyard. It was fenced, but next to it was a weedy vacant lot, so I sneaked in and found a crack between slats big enough I could see what they were doing. I was just curious. It was something to do.” Faint creases appeared on her forehead. The teakettle was whistling and she hadn’t noticed. Dread gripping him, Noah didn’t move, either.
“For a while I couldn’t figure it out, because there was string and boards laid out in a square, and inside those Jerry and another man seemed to be filling in a deep hole in the ground. I mean, there was this gigantic pile of dirt, and they were both sweating, and they seemed to be squabbling. You know, snapping at each other.”
Her head finally turned. “Oh! The water.”
The hell with the water. But he pushed back from the table. “I’ll get it.”