DC on up. If Ben Zwick had his way, I feared, the invasion would grow.
When the conversation turned to speculation about the kind of money the press attention would bring to the town, I tuned out. When it turned to their own plans for Sunday brunch in Hanover, I sent Grace another text.
“Where is she?” I muttered under my breath, setting the phone down again and staring at the screen.
“Isn’t that the pertinent question,” Kevin remarked.
Feeling a twinge, I looked up. “What do you mean?”
“Where was Grace while her son was doing all this?”
“Uh, working?” I was mildly offended. “Struggling, like single mothers do?”
“Where’s the father?” Jimmy asked.
“I don’t know. He’s never been in the picture.”
“She could always call him.”
“Or not,” I said with more force than I might have had I been with Kevin alone. I liked Jimmy, but I didn’t trust him like I did Kevin. It wasn’t that I thought he was fishing for information to pass on to the police. But my loyalty to Grace was key. I figured if Chris’s father was part of a past she didn’t want to discuss, there was a good reason. Men weren’t always a solution. There were times when they made things worse.
Suddenly too antsy to sit, I reached back for my coat. “I have to go.”
“No,” Kevin said in alarm, grabbing my hand as it closed on the phone. “Forget I mentioned Grace. It was a stupid question.”
“No,” I said sadly now, “it wasn’t. I’m sure other people will be asking the same thing. But she’s a good mother.” Phone in hand, I slipped free. “She isn’t answering my texts. If she’s home with Chris, I want to go over.”
“Maybe she’s saying she wants to be alone.”
“Maybe she’s saying she’s scared and confused. Maybe she’s overwhelmed. Likely,” I said with mild accusation aimed at Jimmy, “they took her phone, which means she’s cut off from the world. Maybe they’ve disabled her so she can’t think straight. Maybe she needs a friend who can.” Arms in sleeves, I slid from the booth.
Kevin had to shove at Jimmy twice until he slid off the bench and let him out. As soon as he was upright, he pulled me in for a hug. “Are you okay helping her?”
“I’ll have to be. She has no one else.”
“But are you okay?”
I drew back and met his eyes. I considered the question, then nodded. “I am,” I said and smiled to prove it. “I’m a master at blocking out painful thoughts, you know?”
I left without a single glance at the dark booth in the rear of the pub, but I walked quickly, even ran across the parking lot. My stranglehold on the steering wheel didn’t ease up until the pub was well behind me.
* * *
Edward hadn’t followed me. As I drove, I wondered if this was good or bad. He owed me an explanation for why he was here, and I didn’t mean his being the voice of a group. He knew I was in Devon. This was my turf. He could have let someone else be the voice. But he hadn’t. That made me really uneasy.
Let it go, Maggie. Pack it away. Inhale, hold, exhale.
As I cruised through the center of town, I repeated the exercise. The streets were their usual peaceful, quiet selves. On one of those inhales, I conjured up lemon verbena. I told myself that Devon was my ally. And it worked for a bit. When it came to denial, I was a pro.
Turning north on the Blue, I drove past the entrance to the Inn. A tiny little voice said the parking lot there might be filled with vehicles whose tires I wanted to slash, but I pushed that from mind, too, and drove on.
Grace lived at the far reaches of Devon, just close enough to the town line to allow Chris to attend our schools without having to pay, as students from outlying towns often did. I had been to her house many times. It was the fourth and last bungalow on a road that snaked around enough to set each home apart. She said she loved the privacy this gave, that she was barely aware of having neighbors at all, and I couldn’t fault that. Hadn’t I chosen similar isolation on Pepin Hill? The problem for me here was that the twists in the road hid trouble until I was smack on top of it.
5
The road was narrow. Rounding that final turn, I had to brake