The Marriage Agreement. Christine Rimmer

Tory, about the damn “surprise” she was supposedly keeping from him. And now, after the way Bob Avery had behaved, Marsh was beginning to wonder if there could be more to this thing about Tory than a mean old man’s crazy head games.

      “You go on,” said Blake for about the fifteenth time that day. “Talk to her again. And this time don’t let her get away from you until she tells you the damn truth.”

      About then, Marsh could easily have grabbed the old man around his scrawny throat and squeezed until the wolfish eyes popped right out of their sockets, until Blake gave in and blurted out the big secret, whatever the hell the big secret was.

      But somehow he restrained himself. Mostly because he knew that strangling his father would get him nowhere. Blake would die with that ugly knowing grin on his wrinkled face.

      Marsh said, “You know, Dad. You’re right. I’m going to see her. Now.”

      “You be sure to tell her I said hi.”

      He drove to her flower shop, figuring she’d have to be there at that time of day. It wasn’t difficult at all to find. He thought it looked charming, the windows sparkling clean, the displays attractive and eye-catching. He almost parked and went in.

      But he didn’t. By then he’d had a little time to reconsider, time to think some more about the way she’d run out on him last night. After that, he doubted she’d be too thrilled to see him if he dared to drop in on her at her workplace.

      Better to wait, now he thought about it. Wait until she closed the shop for the day. Call her at home, as he’d done last night.

      How early could he call and reach her?

      Well, how late did the shop stay open? He could see the hours printed on the door. But he couldn’t quite make them out from the street. And he didn’t dare get any closer. She might look out and see him.

      Hell. This was ridiculous. He felt like a damn stalker—probably because he was behaving like one.

      He drove on by the shop, turned left at the next intersection and then right on Main. Before long he was passing the statue of the Union soldier again. And this time, when he got to the street that would take him by Tory’s house, he swung the wheel to the right and turned into her neighborhood.

      The streets near her house looked much the same as they had ten years ago: solid, comfortable homes, mostly of brick, lots of oaks and sweet gum trees and twisted evergreen yaupon hollies. Some of the mailboxes were out at the street, clematis vines thick with star-shaped purple flowers twining over them.

      There were children, a number of them, strolling along on either side of the street, wearing backpacks and swinging lunch boxes, probably just getting out of the elementary school a few blocks away. They looked happy, those kids. Contented with the world and with their place in it. No doubt they had the kind of life he’d always envied when he was growing up. They were going home to the nice brick houses, where they’d do their homework, have their friends over, sit down to dinner at six—dinner cooked by a trim, pretty mom who smiled a lot and didn’t have to work her fingers to the bone just to make it from one day to the next.

      He spotted it: Tory’s house. A block and a half ahead, on the corner, with that big sweep of lawn front and side. He used to cut that lawn, and the lawn of the house next door to it—Mrs. Pickett’s house—during those summers he worked for that gardening service. He’d cut a lot of lawns in this neighborhood, in those two summers, his sixteenth and seventeenth year.

      He remembered he’d been running a lawnmower on Tory’s lawn the first time he ever laid eyes on her. She’d come out of the front door—fourteen, she must have been then, wearing shorts that showed off her pretty legs, that red hair pulled back with one of those scrunchy things. He’d almost run that mower right into the big oak in the corner of the lot.

      That fall, he’d spotted her at school for the first time: a freshman. It had taken him until the following summer before he could drum up the nerve to ask her out.

      Marsh drove very slowly—too slowly, probably. In this kind of neighborhood, where people kept their cars in their roomy garages and no one had the bad taste to hang out on the street, a lone man cruising a little too slowly could easily cause suspicion.

      Again he felt slightly reprehensible, an intruder in the life of a woman he no longer really knew. Still, he didn’t speed up as he approached. He slowed even further, taking in all the details, noting small changes. Flowers grew close to the house now, instead of low juniper bushes in a bed of white river rock. And the big door with the beveled glass in the top of it, once white, had been painted a deep green.

      A group of children—four girls dressed in jeans and bright-colored T-shirts—were passing Tory’s front walk just as Marsh turned her corner to drive by the front of the house. One of them, slim and dark-haired, wearing bright purple tennis shoes with thick white soles, waved at the others and started up the walk.

      Marsh’s mouth went dry.

      He slammed his foot on the brake, stopped the car, right there, in the middle of the street, not caring in the least that the other three girls had turned to stare at him. He had eyes only for the slim one in the purple tennis shoes—the one who strolled straight up the walk to the dark-green door and let herself inside.