but only Morwenna knew much about them. She liked things that made people different. People who weren’t different, she sighed, were so much the same.
“Ooh, yes, I forgot. I saw that last ad he did for Migliora cologne. Whew. If I didn’t know... Yeah, I can see how you’d feel second-best compared to him.”
“I didn’t say I felt second-best,” Daniel protested. “He’s...”
“Something to aspire to.” She slid to her feet and started back across the room.
“Hey. I thought you were going to ask about...”
“Natasha? I’ll get to it, all in good time.”
“How do you know—I never told you her name.”
She smiled smugly. “That’s some good detecting there, Daniel. Bet a clue never gets past you, does it?”
Daniel scowled at her until she was out of sight, then began packing up his desk. If somebody offered him a nickel, he’d go home and to bed. But like he’d told Natasha, the chief didn’t like it when they skipped bowling night. With all his refined tastes, why couldn’t Jeffrey have insisted on teaching him to play polo or ride dressage or something like that?
He made it out of the station without talking to anyone else, slogged his way through puddles and streams and reached the car with his feet soaked again.
It was only a few blocks to the duplex he rented in one of Cedar Creek’s older neighborhoods. It was a nice house, built of deep-red brick and topped with green-clay roof tiles. The place had been built with a main entrance on the street it faced and a servants’ entrance on the street that sided its corner lot. Fifty-some years ago, the owner, with two spinster daughters, had made the servants’ entrance identical to the main one and divvied up the interior into two halves of a whole.
Sad to think all that exacting work was easier than finding husbands for the daughters.
He didn’t have to be at Thunder Lanes Bowling Alley until 6:30 p.m., so he showered, then sprawled on the couch to watch the news before heading out. When his cell phone signaled a text, he frowned. His parents had told Natasha where to find him. Had they also given her his cell phone number?
It wasn’t her. That was relief he was feeling. He was pretty sure, even if it felt kind of strange. It was Jeffrey.
Are you still speaking to us?
Of course.
Did you speak to her?
No more than I had to.
I hope you weren’t rude. Even if she deserved it.
Daniel scrubbed his face. Sometimes he had trouble telling the difference between plain speaking and rudeness. He’d often been accused of the latter when he simply wasn’t mincing words. Had he been rude to Natasha? Yeah, the people-you’ve-screwed-over bit had probably crossed the line. He certainly could have phrased it better.
Though he also could have phrased it the way Archer would have, with a few alphabets’ worth of f-words.
I might have been. A little.
Your father said we should ask you first, but it seemed really important to her.
Daniel responded with one of the lessons Archer had taught him that Jeffrey had always tried to unteach: it’s easier to apologize later than to ask permission first.
His dad prefaced his answer with a frowny face.
Are you okay?
He considered it. Yeah, he was feeling a little cranky, but he was always cranky. He leaned toward the serious-dour-cynical side on the best of days, and this day had already gone down the toilet before Natasha showed up.
I’m good. I get to go bowl tonight.
Hope you get nothing but strikes. Love you.
Daniel typed the same, then tossed the phone aside. What excuse had Natasha given Jeffrey and Archer to get his whereabouts from them? What could possibly be important about talking to him now, five years after she returned his engagement ring via her sister? The time for saying, Gee, Daniel, I’m having some doubts, was long past.
Or, Sorry I broke your heart.
Even, Sorry I didn’t have the nerve to humiliate you in person.
Funny that she’d come all this way to talk and, after they left the police station, she’d said a total of nine words to him. How are you? I’m sorry. I’ll find another way.
To do what? Clear her conscience? If she felt guilty about the way she’d ended their relationship, that was fine, but he had no absolution to offer. It was over and done with. He’d even learned something in the process: to not believe for a second that he could be the one to change her. She’d told him on their second date that she’d run out on two previous fiancés, but he’d been stupid enough to think this time would be different. He would be different. He would be the one who made her want to stay.
Over and done with.
He’d believed that for a long time, since he’d reached the point where he went entire weeks without thinking about her. Missing her. Wondering what he hadn’t given that made it so easy for her to leave. He’d believed it when he finally started dating again, when he’d thought he was falling in love again. It hadn’t happened—the falling in love—but he liked to think it would have if they had been at different stages in their lives.
But if it was over and done with, why was he so darn irate?
The Prairie Sun Hotel, located a few doors from Judge Judie’s, was a three-story building with a sandstone facade and leaded-glass double doors leading into the lobby. It had begun life as a mercantile, later became a JCPenney, then an indoor antiques mall and now was a boutique hotel. It had been an easy choice for Natasha after seeing the cookie-cutter motels on the highways leading to Tulsa. Parking in the tiny lot out back was the only downside, but she could live with that.
She could live with it easier if she wasn’t convinced both she and her car were going to sprout mushrooms if the rain didn’t stop soon.
Her room was on the second floor at the front and had wood floors and tall ceilings and a claw-foot tub in the bath. Instead of a closet, there was a scarred oak armoire, standing across from the vintage tubular steel bed. It was all so lovely that the only thing she would even think of changing was the line of small iron birds that danced along the top bar of both the headboard and the footboard. Not only were they just too much, as Jeffrey said about excessive decorations, their sharp beaks and wing tips looked a little dangerous for someone wandering to or from the bathroom in the middle of the night.
She sat at the small oak table that served as a desk, her tablet and keyboard in front of her. She intended to spend the rest of the evening the way she usually did—a few games of Candy Crush, then a few chapters of whichever book caught her fancy. Fantasy tonight, she thought, with dragons and knights and self-rescuing princesses. Something that would take her out of Cedar Creek and far, far away from Daniel’s dislike.
“You dumped him,” she muttered aloud. “Did you really expect him to be happy to see you?”
No. She’d never thought he would be happy. He took things so seriously. Sometimes she’d wondered how someone raised by two majorly passionate people could be so cool and unemotional. Maybe he was just a version of her: coming from such a chaotic family, she’d craved quiet and calm. Maybe he’d craved rationale and reason.
But he felt things. Felt them deeply. He’d trusted until he’d learned better. He’d been fiercely loyal until she’d showed him disloyalty. He would have done anything for her until she’d done everything to him. He was done with her. She understood that. Respected it. Accepted it.
But it still stung.
With the email icon on the tablet screen showing new mail, she raised one hand to swipe across it, then hesitated. The tiny