“You okay?” she asked.
Stride shrugged and shook his head. Maggie squeezed his shoulder.
He pointed at the book she was holding. “What’s this about?”
Maggie shared a secret glance with Amanda. “Think I should tell him?”
Amanda laughed. “Oh, why not.”
“I’m going for it,” Maggie told Stride. “I’ve decided to pursue the adoption thing all the way. I don’t care what it takes. I want a kid.”
Stride smiled. “Good for you, Mags. I couldn’t be happier for you. Really.”
“I just hope it’s a boy.”
“Why is that?” he asked.
“Are you kidding? Me with a little girl? That poor kid would be scarred for life having a parent like me. I couldn’t do that to a child.”
Amanda rolled her eyes. “He’s a man, darling,” she said, with a British accent full of exasperation. “He doesn’t understand the curse we women face and the terrible legacy we pass on to our daughters.”
“Curse?” Stride asked.
Maggie spread her hands, as if it were obvious.
“Sooner or later, we’re all destined to become our mothers,” Amanda whispered in his ear.
Stride grunted and decided this was a conversation that didn’t need a man in it. He turned away to let Maggie and Amanda continue talking about mothers and daughters, and then he froze in his tracks. He spun around so quickly that both women jumped.
“What did you say?”
Tish reached behind her head and undid her ponytail, letting her blond hair blow loosely in the warm wind. Her leather purse dangled from her shoulder. She was angry at herself and felt guilty for walking away. When she gazed at the back-and-forth parade of traffic on the street, she almost turned around and went back inside the store. The letter from Cindy was inside her purse, and she knew she should give it to Stride. She owed it to both of them, but she felt as if she were on a high bridge, paralyzed as she looked down. She couldn’t face the truth.
She unlocked her car and got inside. She threw her purse on the opposite seat and put the key in the ignition, but she sat there without moving or starting the car, wrestling with whether she should stay. If she went to the airport and got on the flight to Minneapolis, she knew she would never come back to Duluth. Not ever.
Maybe it had been a huge mistake to come back in the first place.
Tish turned the key, and the engine fired. She put the Civic in reverse, but when she backed up, she heard metal grinding on asphalt and felt the car lurch as if it were bouncing over something heavy. She stopped, shut off the engine again, and climbed out, leaving the driver’s door open. When she went around to the front of the car, she cursed, seeing the hood slumped to one side. Through the glare of the headlights, she saw that the right front tire was flat on the ground.
“Oh, hell,” she murmured.
She squatted by the tire and checked her watch. She knew nothing about changing tires, and she had no idea if there was a service station nearby. The answer was obvious. Go get Stride. Even so, she hesitated to see him again when she had just shut the door in his face.
Tish got up, turned around, and screamed.
Rikke Mathisen stood directly behind her, so close that their bodies were nearly touching.
“Are you having problems?” Rikke asked.
Tish backed up to give herself space. “Flat tire,” she said.
Rikke towered over her by nearly a foot. Her eyes flicked to the disabled tire, and her face was impassive. “Do you need to be somewhere?”
“I’m heading to the airport.”
“Leaving town?”
Tish nodded.
“I can drive you,” Rikke told her. “Put your things in my car.”
Tish attempted a smile. “You don’t have to do that. I can get the tire changed.”
“It will give us a chance to talk,” Rikke said. “Don’t you think we should talk, Tish?”
Tish rubbed the skin on her forearms. She was cold. “Sure, but it’s a rental car. I can’t just leave it.”
“This isn’t the big city. You can call them. They’ll send someone to get the car.”
“I have friends inside,” Tish said, glancing at the entrance to the bookstore and suddenly wishing she could see Stride’s face. “I’m sure one of them can drive me. You probably want to be alone.”
“I said I would drive you, so let’s go.”
Tish hesitated for another second. Rikke was angry about the death of her brother, but if she wanted an opportunity to vent her poison at Tish, so be it. Tish didn’t care. On some level, she deserved it.
“Sure, okay,” Tish said. “Why not?”
She retrieved her purse, turned off the lights on the Civic, and popped the trunk. She removed her suitcase and relocated it to the trunk of Rikke’s tan Impala, which was parked next to her. Rikke made no move to help. She waited until Tish had closed the trunk and then climbed inside the driver’s door and started the engine.
Tish got inside the Impala and went to put on her seat belt. The strap was broken.
“Sorry, I’ve been meaning to get that fixed,” Rikke said.
She drove out of the parking lot, leaving Tish’s stranded Civic behind them.
“Which bridge do you want me to take?” Rikke asked.
“Whichever is lower,” Tish said. “I hate heights.”
48
Stride leaned closer to Maggie and Serena across the table at the cafй. “How did Finn get home?” he asked them.
Maggie sipped from her cream-colored mug of chai tea and raised an eyebrow at him. “What are you talking about?”
“On the night Laura was killed, Finn was in the park watching her. How did he get back home to Superior?”
Serena shrugged. “By car.”
“Yes, except Rikke never let Finn drive himself,” Stride said.
“Well, Rikke swore that Finn wasn’t in the park at all, but we know he was there,” Maggie said. “So he must have had a car.”
“Or maybe Rikke picked him up,” Stride said.