“Yeah, I do.”
“And Amelia.”
Luke lifted a brow. “Amelia? Who’s that, your girlfriend?”
David blushed. Luke’s mouth quirked; that was a stage he was glad to be long past. “Nah,” the boy said. “She’s too old. She’s thirty, I think.”
Ancient, Luke silently agreed with a rueful smile; his own thirtieth wasn’t all that far away.
“She’s a little quiet,” David went on. “You never know what she’s thinking. But she’s cool. Even takes kickboxing lessons. She runs the bookstore downtown.”
A memory flashed through his mind, of riding down Main Street last evening, just as it was starting to get dark. And of a woman, almost huddled in the doorway of the bookstore, as if she feared he would ride right up onto the sidewalk and grab her. That surely couldn’t be the “cool” Amelia….
“What happened to old man Wylie?”
“He retired. Amelia’s folks moved here and bought the store, and she worked there. Then they died, and now it’s hers. She’s cool,” he repeated. “She gets me good stuff to read, not that junk they make you read at school. You can talk to her, about anything and she really hears. And she talks to you, not at you.”
“Definitely cool, then,” Luke agreed; there had been a time in this town when he would have been pitifully grateful to find someone like that.
“She lets me talk about Dad,” David added, looking away and taking a surreptitious swipe at his eyes that Luke pretended not to see. “Mom doesn’t want me to ever bring him up. But Amelia says I should talk about him, that it’ll help.”
Another point for her, Luke thought. A big one.
David looked at his brother hopefully. “Want to meet her? I told her you’d come, but she wasn’t sure.”
Luke wasn’t sure he wanted to meet anybody in Santiago Beach, but the cool Amelia had a few things in her favor. She apparently listened to David, something their mother never did; he doubted that had changed much. She had acknowledged his right to grieve for his father, something else he apparently wasn’t getting at home. And most of all, she hadn’t lived here when Luke had, so she didn’t know him.
“All right,” he agreed at last, and David yelped happily. It was fairly close so they walked, although Luke guessed David was itching to ask for a ride on the bike. Later, he thought; that would be just about right to send the old lady— Lord, she had always hated being called that—over the edge.
David was so excited he couldn’t just walk; he ran ahead, heedless of the people dodging out of his way. Luke watched his not so little brother—the wiry David was only about four inches short of his own six feet—with a wry amusement. Once he’d been the same way, in a hurry in a slowed-down place. And if people had stared at him, or yelled at him, so much the better.
Nobody yelled at him today. No reason to; he was strolling along at the same snail’s pace as everyone else. But they still stared. About half of them, anyway. He’d shed his riding gear for an unobtrusive pair of jeans and a blue T-shirt, so he knew it wasn’t his clothes. And he didn’t recognize them all, the gapers, although some of them brought back flashes of unwelcome memory. But then, he supposed a lot more people in Santiago Beach had known him—or of him—than he’d known himself. It had been one of his missions in life back then, to make sure of that.
“C’mon, Luke! Hurry up!”
He watched as David waved him on, trying to get him to pick up his pace. He did, slightly, but these days he got most of his need for speed taken care of elsewhere.
He’d caught up to David when they reached the bookstore. He noticed the display in the front window: a beach scene with real sand, a surfboard propped in one corner, a towel, a bottle of suntan lotion, sunglasses and, of course, a book open beneath a small umbrella, with others stacked beside it. As if the reader had just paused for a cooling dip in the ocean.
He barely had time to admire the cleverness of it before David yanked the door open, and before even stepping inside, he was yelling.
“Amelia! He’s here! I told you he’d come, I told you!”
The woman behind the counter turned just as Luke stepped inside. It was her. The frightened rabbit of a woman who had been so intimidated by his mere presence last night.
Several things registered at once.
She wasn’t old.
She was average height, maybe five-five.
Her hair was an unremarkable medium brown, cut short and tucked tidily behind her ears.
She was dressed plainly, in black slacks and a white blouse with black piping, with a simple gold chain at her throat.
She had the biggest eyes he’d ever seen, the same medium brown as her hair.
And those eyes were staring at him as if he were some kind of apparition.
“It was you,” she whispered, in a voice so soft he was sure he wasn’t supposed to have heard it.
She’d known who he was last night? How?
Before he could ask, David had. “Whaddya mean?”
“I saw…him last night. On a…motorcycle.”
“Isn’t it cool?” David enthused.
“I suppose,” the woman said cautiously.
“I want to ride on it,” David said with a sideways glance at Luke.
“I’ll think about it,” Luke said, never taking his eyes off the woman who was looking at him with such…trepidation. There was something familiar about her expression, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was. “If you remember why we’re here and introduce me.”
“Oh! Sorry. This is Amelia. Amelia, my brother, Luke.” Then he looked at Luke, puzzled. “Why’d I have to do that if she already knew who you were?”
“Because it’s good manners,” Amelia said. David grimaced.
“Because,” Luke said, “it shows you’re an adult, not a kid.”
“Oh.” That explanation clearly appealed to him. “Okay.”
“Amelia Blair, I presume,” Luke said, turning his attention back to her.
“I…yes.”
She lowered her eyes, sneaked another glance at him from beneath her lashes, then looked away. And suddenly he had it; she was looking at him like the good girls used to in high school, half-scared, half-fascinated. They had seemed to fall into two categories back then: those who were both frightened and intrigued in varying ratios, and those who simply looked down on him from the lofty height of their uprightness.
He’d tried to avoid all of them, although those who were intrigued had been, on occasion, persistent. But even then, he’d known they were after him for all the wrong reasons. He’d had his own battles to fight and had no interest in being a pawn in someone else’s.
Not, he thought as she stole another sideways look at him, that that would be a problem with the quiet Ms. Blair. She looked more likely to run from him than after him. Once he’d taken a twisted pleasure in the effect he had on good girls. Now he wasn’t sure how he felt. It was hard, he realized suddenly, to think that way again. To put himself back in the place he’d once lived, in the mind-set he’d once developed to survive. Maybe he’d come further than he’d thought.
Ms. Blair was too tense and far too serious. But she got points from him for caring about David and for thinking David needed more attention to his grief than he was getting.
“David’s been…telling me a lot about you,” she said, sounding more than a little awkward.
“Has