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The “if” was a big one, though; in small-town America, “Going Out of Business” signs were more common than transfers of ownership were.
“Yeah, you’re right.” Her smile was small and crooked. “That hit me about the same time she announced she was selling the house. I’ve been having fun running with some ideas—only suddenly, it was bam. Not my store, not my decision.”
“Tough,” he said with a nod.
She told him some stuff she and her mother had talked about—including the fact that they had talked last night. Made up after their lunchtime debacle. He liked all her ideas for the business and was impressed at how well thought out they were. The hardware store had always been solid, and, from all reports, her dad had made a success of the lumberyard, too. Ben couldn’t imagine that Charles had done much to build the business into anything bigger and better in recent years, though, not the way she seemed to do by instinct.
“Was opening the lumberyard your idea?” he asked.
“Well...we talked about it.” She showed some shyness. Didn’t want to imply she was smarter than her father, he suspected. “Hamilton’s went out of business the summer between my junior and senior years in college. So...I guess I might have prodded Dad some.”
Ben nodded. “Your mother was receptive to your ideas?”
“Willing to think about them, anyway.” Olivia made a face. “As she pointed out, the higher the receipts, the better price she’ll get if she does decide to sell.”
Was it possible the business had been in Charles’s name alone, meaning Marian now had to wait for probate to sell it anyway? The house had presumably been in both their names, so she wouldn’t be hampered the same way. Could that be why she’d so generously encouraged Olivia to try to build business? If so, Ben wished she’d been honest with her daughter. Otherwise, Olivia was going to be hurt when probate was complete and her mother brought down the hammer.
Damn, he hoped that wasn’t the case.
“You’d be working for your mom,” he pointed out.
She made a horrible face at him. “I am so trying not to think of it that way.”
He laughed and didn’t argue when she then decided she really needed to get back to work. A glance at his watch startled him; they’d been talking longer than he’d realized.
She was so insistent on splitting the bill, he had to agree. He reminded himself of his philosophy with teenagers: don’t push. Olivia was as wary as any adult-leery sixteen-year-old.
He winced at the thought. Yeah, she had been sixteen when he’d broken up with her. Not a good memory. Leery was probably a good word for what she felt, though, assuming it wasn’t way stronger.
During the short drive, she said suddenly, “Chief Weigand has been really closemouthed about the girl. Everybody talks about her freezing to death, but is that really what happened? Was she injured? Sick? Drunk? Has he said anything to you?”
“I think it’s clear the freezing to death part is accurate, but you’re right. He hasn’t wanted to say what else he knows. I’m actually surprised he’s been able to keep so much information close to his chest.”
Olivia would know what he meant. Small town translated to few secrets and gossip transmitted at a speed faster than light. Which made the mystery all the more shocking—and it all the more improbable that nobody at all knew anything. Nonetheless, Ben didn’t like the idea that any number of people might know little bits of something, puzzle pieces that, if shared, would put together the whole picture. Yes, there was lots of talk about her death, but he’d have expected some of those puzzle pieces to be slotted into place by now. And yet not a one had been.
The girl had to have hitched a ride with someone, for example. And since the highway closed in winter only a few miles past Crescent Creek, that ride had been with someone going to Crescent Creek, not a trucker passing through. If she’d been in good health, not drunk, not injured, she wouldn’t have died out there however cold the night. If she was drunk—she probably hadn’t gotten that way alone. If injured—how?
And, God, he had a sudden thought he should have had earlier. The autopsy would have revealed whether she’d had sex recently before her death. Was there any chance Phil Weigand had some DNA and was waiting patiently for a suspect to emerge to whom he could match it?
No, I’m reaching, he told himself, trying to tamp down that anxiety. There’d been no suggestion of murder. Sure, everyone wanted to know how she’d gotten there and why she hadn’t asked for help, but mostly they wanted to know who she was.
Still—damn, he wished he knew whether Carson had been at that kegger.
Olivia gave no sign of noticing his abstraction. The moment he braked in front of the hardware store, once again double-parking, she reached for the door handle. “I’ll let you know if I hear any more,” she said breezily and hopped out. “Thanks for listening.”
He barely had a chance to say goodbye before she was gone. There was not the slightest suggestion she’d enjoyed talking to him, would welcome a call asking her out.
On his way to pick her up, he’d been worried about what she’d heard but had also felt...hopeful. Having her call the very next day after they’d talked... Now, half a block from the hardware store, he had to sit briefly at one of the town’s four red lights. The hope had leaked out, as if it were air in a balloon she’d punctured.
What he’d been doing was dreaming, without the slightest encouragement.
Would they have made it, if he’d been patient and smart enough to wait for Olivia to grow up? He grunted. No way to know. Water under the bridge.
Besides, her mother might announce tomorrow that she was putting the business up for sale along with the house.
Maybe, Ben admitted, bleakly, for him that might be for the best.
* * *
SUNDAY MORNING, BEN woke to an astonishing silence. Frowning, he focused on the digital clock on the bedside table, groaning as soon as he saw what time it was. He’d overslept. Mom wouldn’t approve if he didn’t appear at church.
Thinking about it, he threw off his covers. Was Carson still asleep? And, damn it, given the hour, why was it so quiet out there?
His suspicion was confirmed the minute he looked out the window. The world was cloaked in white, and the snow was still coming down in lazy, gentle flakes.
Well, the Lord was going to be responsible for skimpy attendance at his houses of worship this Sunday morning.
“Hey!” Carson’s voice came from behind him. “It’s awesome!”
“Well, at least it’s Sunday.”
“Bummer,” his son said. “If this was tomorrow, we could have had a day off.”
“You may still get one off, although it’s not coming down the way it must have during the night.”
A storm had been forecast, but not the eight inches or more that already blanketed the front yard and street.
Now that he listened, he heard a snowplow working in the distance. He’d be able to get around with his four-wheel drive, but not everyone would. He and Carson could have their driveway shoveled in twenty minutes, but folks farther out of town with long driveways...
No surprise, it was Olivia he was thinking about. She and her mother would be trapped this morning. Unless—
“Let’s have breakfast,” he suggested, “then get out and clear our driveway.”
“Do we have to?”
He laughed and clapped Carson on the back. “We have to. But I’m not making you go anywhere if you don’t want to.”
“We don’t have to go to church?” the boy asked hopefully.
“We wouldn’t make it in time if we wanted to.” He had only a small moment of guilt at having implied he didn’t much want to go, either.
As he mixed up pancake batter a few minutes later, Ben decided to wait until they were outside and their muscles warmed up before he suggested performing a good deed. He could pretend it had just occurred to him.
Yep. His kid wouldn’t see right through that.
And...which part of giving up didn’t he get?
As he watched butter sizzle on the griddle, Ben admitted that he wouldn’t be giving up, not until he heard Olivia had left town again, and for good this time.
Worse came to worst, he and Carson could feel virtuous because they had performed a good deed.
* * *
“WHO ON EARTH...?” Olivia’s mother exclaimed, setting down her cup of coffee. The two sat at the breakfast table, where they’d been making lists of supplies they’d need to begin packing.
Olivia’s head came up. She’d heard the voices at the same time. “Maybe kids playing out in the snow?”
“That doesn’t sound like kids to me.”
And the voices should have come from farther away, too. The Bowen house only sat on an acre, but neighbors had at least as much land, and even if the people on either side had grandkids visiting, they wouldn’t be right outside. There was no hill out front good for sledding, much to Olivia’s regret when she was a kid. In fact, the closest hill that offered decent sledding was far enough away, she’d had to wait until one of her parents could drive her—which meant shoveling a very long driveway first.
Leaving pencil and list behind, she reached the front window with her mother close behind. Two men were shoveling their driveway. The voices were theirs, as was the laughter. As she watched in astonishment, one threw a snowball at the other, who dropped his shovel and bent to pack a snowball of his own.
“Oh, my goodness,” Marian murmured. “Isn’t that...?”
Olivia was gaping. “Yes. It’s Ben and his son.”
“They came all the way out here to make sure we could get out of the house.” For just a moment, Mom looked like...well, like Mom, her eyes amused.
Olivia couldn’t think of a single thing to say. A fist seemed to have closed around her heart, which might explain why she was breathless. Say something, she ordered herself.
“I should go out and help.”
“That’s a good idea,” her mother agreed. She chuckled, watching as Carson whopped a gloveful of snow against his father’s neck. “Dress warmly.”
Suddenly energized, Olivia donned boots, parka, scarf and gloves faster than she could remember moving in quite a while. Just as she opened the front door, Marian called from the kitchen, “Invite them in when they’re done. It never seems worth baking just for the two of us, but I’ll make a coffee cake.”
Man and boy stopped wrestling when Olivia stepped gingerly from the porch into snow that had to be nearly a foot deep. Having started shoveling down at the road, they were still quite a ways away. She waved. “I’ll grab my shovel.”
She saw the flash of white teeth as Ben grinned. “Guess we got distracted.”
He looked...amazing. Even bulkier in quilted pants and parka, the color in his cheeks high. The dark shadow on his jaw told her he hadn’t bothered shaving this morning.
Carson might be a stepson, but with his height he could have been Ben’s biologically, too. Their coloring was the greatest contrast. His hair was sandy, not dark like Ben’s, his eyes light-colored...blue, she saw, as the two tramped toward her. His grin was as bright and friendly as his dad’s.
Olivia hadn’t felt butterflies like this in a very long time. Ben hadn’t decided to come shovel her driveway because he felt sorry for the two lone women. There were a lot of single women in town. He might as well have presented her with a bouquet of red roses. Which she’d have sworn she didn’t want him to do, but—
Dismay washed over her. Oh, damn, she was more susceptible than she’d believed. The trouble was, he’d gone from being the sexiest boy in her high school to being...the sexiest man she’d ever seen. No, it was more than that, she knew. The warmth flooding her also had to do with her realization the other night that, despite their past, she did trust him in many ways.
“I was just wishing we had a nearby hill for sledding,” she said, because she had to say something.
“Yeah, cool,” Carson exclaimed. “The one by the high school is perfect.”
He was packing another snowball when Olivia let herself into the garage, but she was aware that Ben was watching her. When she reappeared, his dark eyes were still trained on the doorway. Hoping her blush wasn’t obvious, she narrowed her eyes at Carson. “You weren’t planning to greet me with that, were you?”
“Nah.” He turned and slung it at his father, who dodged just in time and then grabbed the boy in a headlock. They were both laughing by the time Ben let him go.
“This is awesome,” his son said.
“We could go sledding once we finish here,” Ben suggested. “What do you say, Olivia?”
She hadn’t felt even the tiniest spark of pleasure this morning when she’d looked out the window and saw the snowy landscape. All she’d been able to think was that they’d buried her father a week ago today. So it felt really good now to see the wonder in it.
“I say yes. Except first you have to come in and have coffee and a goodie Mom is baking right now.”
Ben laughed, his teeth a brilliant flash of white. “I think we can manage that. We’ll have worked up an appetite.”
Olivia looked at the expanse of pristine snow marked only with their parallel tracks. “Maybe I should start on this end while you take up where you left off.”
“No fun. We’re here now. Might as well work our way back to the road.” Ben yanked off the red fleece hat he’d been wearing. “Your ears will get cold.” He put the hat on Olivia, tugging off one glove so he could smooth her hair beneath it. “There. I’m already warm.”
Had his fingers lingered momentarily? She hoped the color in her cheeks could be explained by the cold. “Thanks.” She turned a smile on the teenager. “I’ve seen you, but I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Olivia.”
“Carson.” He grinned. “Dad said this was our good deed for the day.”
“In lieu of church attendance,” his father said with mock solemnity.
“Rescuing the little women,” she said.
“Right,” the boy agreed.
“Except the little woman isn’t so little,” she pointed out.
“Did I tell you Olivia took our girls’ basketball team to a league championship her senior year?” Ben asked his son. “She was a heck of a center.”
That caused a sting. Suddenly she wasn’t smiling. “How would you know? You were long gone.”
They stared at each other for a moment. “I...actually came to a couple of games. Anyway, Mom kept me up-to-date,” he said.
He’d come to watch her? Probably only because his parents were going to the game anyway and he was home, so why not?
“You were a center?” Carson studied her with open interest. “I guess you are tall for a girl.”
Olivia laughed. “And that’s a compliment, right?”
He really looked like his dad right now. “Right.” He spoiled his solemnity with a big grin. “Who likes little bitty girls anyway?”
Olivia mumbled, “Most men,” at the exact same moment when Ben said something under his breath that might have been, “Not me.”
His kid smirked.
“Work,” Ben reminded them.
CHAPTER FOUR
THEY DID SHOVEL, working as a team except for the occasional impulse to pack a snowball and chase each other all over the yard. By the time they actually made it to the road, they were all breathing like dragons, red-cheeked and good-humored. Olivia, at least, was feeling the strain in her shoulders and upper arms.
She turned and surveyed their accomplishment as well as the trampled front yard. “If only it weren’t still snowing.”
“Yeah, but it’s not coming down that hard.” Ben groped in his jeans pocket and produced his keys. “Catch,” he told Carson. “Why don’t you move the Cherokee up here?”
“Me?” The boy’s face brightened. “Yeah! Cool.” He trotted toward the SUV.
“Does he have his license yet?” Olivia asked.
“No, but he’s taking driver’s ed this semester. I’ve been letting him practice.” Ben grimaced. “Not so much in the snow, though.”
Olivia suppressed her smile as they both watched Carson give a cheerful wave and hop into the red Jeep Cherokee. “There’s not much he can run into between there and here.” She turned on her heel. “Except the garage doors, I guess. Mom might not appreciate that.”
“Yeah, and us.” Ben’s hand on her arm drew her up the driveway. “Although I have taught him to brake.”
“You were such a stodgy driver for a teenage boy.” Olivia cursed herself the minute the words were out. Reminders of their past were not a good idea.
“That’s a compliment, right?” he said, deliberately echoing her from a minute ago.
She had to laugh.
“He’s doing okay for a kid. In fact, he’s sure he has it all down pat, which means he’s cocky.”
She wondered at the shadow that crossed his face after that. What was he thinking as he watched Carson carefully maneuver the Cherokee up the driveway, braking neatly in front of the garage only a few feet from them?
“He’s on the basketball team, right?” she asked.
“Huh?” He turned his head. “Carson? Yeah. He’s not real happy because he didn’t start Friday night. There’s something going on with the team. I don’t know what.”
“You can’t exactly go berate the coach because your kid didn’t get enough playing time, can you?”
He made a sound in his throat that she recognized as frustration. “No, I have to step carefully. In this case...”
The driver’s side door slammed. Carson ostentatiously stashed the keys in his own pocket. Ben’s eyebrows rose, but he didn’t say anything.
“Did your dad tell you he helped me learn to parallel park?” Olivia asked.
“Sort of,” Ben muttered, and she elbowed him.
“I passed the driver’s test, didn’t I?”
“Pure luck.”
Her elbow brought a sharp exhalation this time. “Skill.”
Carson watched them with obvious interest. “You guys, like, hooked up when you were in high school, didn’t you?”
“A very long time ago,” Olivia agreed, not looking at Ben as she led the way onto the front porch. “I got together with a bunch of old high school friends Friday night. Nicki was in town,” she said as an aside to Ben. “It got me thinking. I was sixteen years old when your dad and I broke up, and that was sixteen years ago.”
“You were my age?” The horror in the teenager’s voice made both adults laugh, although Ben’s was more subdued than Olivia’s.
“Well, I was a little older.” Ben’s tone was cautious. “Eighteen.”
“Weird,” his kid pronounced.
They stamped the snow from their boots, stepped inside and took off their parkas, hats and gloves in the entryway, laying them on the tile floor. Leaving boots there, too, they padded in stocking feet to the kitchen. The spicy smell of baking worked like a beacon.
“Mrs. B.” Ben went to her mother and kissed her cheek. “Good to see you under better circumstances.”
Marian’s smile dimmed at the reminder that their last meeting was at the funeral, but she relaxed again when he introduced Carson. She cut generous slabs of a cinnamon-flavored cake, and they sat talking while they ate it and sipped coffee. Perhaps inevitably, Olivia’s mother remarked on how proud she’d been of Ben for starting the initiative to bury that poor girl.
Carson ducked his head. Death, it occurred to Olivia, didn’t often become quite so real to kids.
“It’s so hard to believe no one at the high school recognized her,” Marian said. “Are kids talking about it still?”
Ben’s gaze rested inscrutably on his son’s averted face. “Not as much as I’d have expected. Carson?”
He gave a jerky shrug. “There’s not that much to say. I mean, since no one knew her.”
“I suppose it wasn’t all that different from reading in the newspaper about something like this happening elsewhere in the country.” Marian gave a small laugh. “Or should I say, reading online?”
“Probably.” Ben smiled at her.
“I almost wish people would quit talking about her.” Not until she saw the way the others all stared at her did Olivia realize how vehemently she’d said that.
“What do you mean?” Ben asked.
“Oh...I get the feeling a lot of people don’t care about her at all. They’re too busy congratulating themselves for their generosity to bother imagining her as a real person. Someone scared. Cold.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Carson’s body jerk and she wondered about that, but not much. She wasn’t sure she hadn’t shuddered herself. “And then there are the ones who got to see themselves on TV and haven’t gotten over it.”
Creases in Ben’s forehead had deepened. “Don’t you think it’s normal for people to feel good after they’ve done something a little above and beyond?”
“Oh, I suppose.” She knew he was right. The people who didn’t want to talk about the girl at all bothered her just as much, but she knew that was dumb. Not everyone was given to brooding about a tragedy that didn’t directly impact their own lives. A couple of times lately she’d caught herself speculating, though... But that was dumb, too. Just because someone was brusque to the point of being rude when the subject arose didn’t mean a guilty conscience. “Where do you hear people talking?” Ben asked, seeming genuinely curious.
“Mostly in line at Bowen’s.” She rolled her eyes. “I swear sometimes our regulars come in to pick up something they don’t even need just to have a chance to gossip.”
Ben’s expression lightened. “Aren’t women supposed to be the worst gossips?”
She made a face at him. “Don’t believe it.”
“Come on.” He was definitely amused now. “Men are strong and silent. You know that.”
Olivia snorted. Ben laughed, but Mom didn’t. In fact, she looked strained, making Olivia remember the silence that had run so dark and deep between her parents. Maybe this wasn’t the best of topics.
“We were thinking about going sledding,” she announced. “Although now that I can feel my toes again, I’m not so sure.”
“Don’t be a wimp.” Ben smiled at her with warm brown eyes. “It’ll be fun.”
“I’ll probably be the oldest person on the hill.” Oh, she was pathetic, wanting to be talked into going.
“Nope. That’d be me.”
“I don’t suppose you want to come and be the oldest person?” she asked her mother, who shook her head firmly.
“Not a chance.”
New widows probably didn’t appear in public playing in the snow, it occurred belatedly to Olivia. Did grieving daughters?
Dad wouldn’t mind. And the truth was...she’d been mourning him for almost a year already, knowing full well they were losing him.
Which was true of Mom, too, of course, which made it more reasonable for her to have decided already what she wanted to do about the house. Olivia discovered she didn’t feel that forgiving, though.
And I won’t think about it right now.
Instead, she was going to let herself have fun.
“Oh, fine,” she said, getting up to take her dishes to the sink. “Do you know if we still have a sled out in the garage?”
“I think so,” her mother said. “Did your father ever get rid of anything?”
The sharpness in her voice caused a silence that went on a moment too long. Mom must have heard herself, because in a different tone, she said, “Look up on the rafters. That’s where the skis are.”
“Ooh, do I still have cross-country equipment?” Olivia hadn’t even thought to look last year. It had been a mild winter, for one thing, at least when she’d returned to Crescent Creek. And with Dad looking so much worse than she’d expected, and her having to take over the store, frolicking in the snow had been the last thing on her mind. “I don’t know if I still have ski boots.”
“Attic,” her mother said. “I’m sure some of your winter clothes are still there.”
“Oh, lord. I didn’t even think of the attic.” Their eyes met, and they were both thinking the same thing. Packing.
Not today.
Her mother ended up shooing them out after wrapping most of the remainder of the coffee cake for Ben and Carson to take home.