The next morning I wasn’t scheduled to work until afternoon. Tucker had just come off the night shift and finally had some free time, so he picked me up and took me to the Round Table for breakfast, which I hoped would be a place free of cat allergens.
Sabrina, the diner’s waitress extraordinaire, sat us in a booth, gave us menus, and poured coffee. “Her,” she said, nodding at me. “She’ll want cinnamon French toast with real maple syrup and sausage links. What’ll you have?”
Tucker opted for coffee and a look at the menu.
“Gotcha.” Sabrina wrote down the order and started to tuck her pencil into her bun of graying brown hair.
“Hey!” I pointed to one particular finger on her left hand. “Is that what I think it is?”
The cool, collected, and seen-everything-at-least-once-and-probably-twice Sabrina blushed. “No one else has noticed,” she said.
We both looked to the back of the restaurant, where Bill D’Arcy sat hunched over a computer, as per usual. But there was one difference. His left hand, which was busy with typing away at the financial transactions that made him scads of money, caught the restaurant’s light and displayed a shiny wide gold band on his ring finger.
“Had all the paperwork set,” she said. “We were at my sister’s for dinner yesterday, and the only thing I had to do was make sure the minister showed up at halftime.”
I laughed, and Tucker congratulated her.
“Thanks, hon,” she said, beaming. “Now, how long do you think it’ll take me to get rid of those awful brown curtains he has?”
Fifteen minutes was my guess, which pleased her, and she headed off with a smile on her face.
Tucker was giving me a quizzical look. “What?” I asked.
“Just now,” he said. “That’s the first time you laughed since I picked you up. You usually laugh a lot more often. Is something wrong?”
His expression of caring concern made my throat close up tight. I swallowed some coffee to loosen it up, then said, “The library board met yesterday. I was called upstairs half an hour after they started.” My throat felt weird again, so I preempted its closing by sipping more coffee. When in doubt, add caffeine.
“What did they want?” Tucker asked. “Is there some problem?”
“The board is worried about a negligence lawsuit.” I swallowed again. “Some of them think they might have a better case if they fire their assistant dir—”
A man walked past and a slight breeze blew over my arm and lifted a cat hair off my sleeve. The black-and-white piece of former Eddie wafted up into the air, where it turned lazily about, as if it were searching for the perfect new home.
“Umm . . .” Tucker flattened himself against the back of the booth.
The breeze faded as quickly as it had come, and the hair dropped like a rock, heading straight for my boyfriend’s lap. Sliding fast, Tucker zipped to the booth’s far end, and the Eddie hair fell to the floor.
“Safe,” I said, smiling. But there was no answering grin on Tucker’s face. On the contrary, he was frowning in the direction of the stray hair. “And this,” I said, “was supposed to be a cat hair–free zone. It’s this fleecy material.” I poked at my sleeve. “It’s a pet-hair magnet. I promise I’ll never wear anything like this around you again.”
Tucker nodded. “Probably a good idea.”
That was unfortunate, because I’d been joking. Fleece sweatshirts were the primary component of my wintertime casual wardrobe. If I couldn’t wear fleece around the allergic Tucker, I’d have to go out and buy new clothes, which wasn’t part of my budget.
I wrapped my hands around my coffee mug. “Our relationship was a lot easier in the summer, back when I wasn’t wearing clothes that attract so much Eddie hair.” I laughed.
Tucker didn’t. His attention was still on the threat that had come so near. “Yeah,” he said, “it was, wasn’t it?” Then he shook his head and sat up. “But you were talking about the library board. Someone was negligent?”
He hadn’t been listening to me. Or listening, but not hearing. A sinking sensation manifested itself somewhere in my insides, halfway between my heart and my stomach. It was a feeling I’d had a few times before in my life: the one that came just before heartbreak.
“Minnie?” Tucker asked.
I gave him a quick smile and returned to the saga of the library board. But as I talked, all I was really thinking was one thing.
The end is near.
Chapter 12
Tucker didn’t break up with me during breakfast, but when he dropped me off at the boardinghouse, there wasn’t any happy hug, either, even though the offensive fleece was covered up by my winter coat.
I dawdled away the rest of the morning by doing some online Christmas shopping, concluding that my engineer father might actually like the three-dimensional map of Janay Lake, and that even though my nieces and nephew might want the newest version of the latest video game (So real, you get motion sickness!), they weren’t going to get it from me.
After a lunch of leftovers and a short game of Bounce the Ball in the Bathtub with Eddie, I changed into library clothes and headed out.
The day was partly sunny, partly cloudy, the kind of weather that had you zipping and unzipping your coat as clouds passed over the sun. I was in unzip mode, my face turned up to the radiating warmth that might not be back until April, as I turned the last corner. My thoughts were wandering from the bookmobile to Tucker to Eddie to the library board and back around to the bookmobile. Since I was so busy thinking, I didn’t notice that the library’s door was opening until it banged into me.
“Oh, goodness, I’m so sorry!” A woman exclaimed. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?” She readjusted the bag of books she was carrying.
“Not your fault. I’m the one who wasn’t paying attention.” I looked at the woman and burrowed through my brain for her name. Blond. A little older than me . . . got it.
“Thanks for not running into me, Allison.”
She smiled, said, “Have a nice day,” and walked toward the parking lot.
I stood, sort of watching her climb into a silver sedan that looked expensively new, but mostly enjoying the sunshine. But then a cloud moved over the sun and the temperature plummeted, so I went inside.
Where Denise Slade was standing in the entryway, arms folded and frowning. But not at me; at Allison Korthase.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
Denise’s frown went deeper. “For a new member of the city council,” she said, “that woman could stand to learn some manners.”
I’d been the one who hadn’t been paying attention to where I going; it hadn’t been Allison’s fault at all. But there was no way Denise was going to listen to me so I said, “I didn’t realize you knew her.”
Denise made a rude noise. “This is Chilson. There’s maybe half a degree of separation between everyone in town. Of course I know her.”
I murmured something noncommittal and marginally polite, and started moving away. But Denise wasn’t ready for me to leave.
“Everybody says she’s so nice. Ha.” Denise sniffed. “That woman doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘nice.’ And she hates cats. Says she’s allergic, but I think she just hates them, and how can you trust someone who doesn’t like cats?”
I didn’t see the connection between cats and trust, but decided not to ask for an explanation.
“You know what she’s really like?” Denise pointed her chin in the direction of Allison’s brake lights. “She’s cheap. That fancy car? Her brother-in-law runs a car dealership downstate. He gives her a deal, so she leaves town to buy her cars.”