Confessions of a Small-Town Girl. Christine Flynn
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“Kelsey?” Carrying a freshly poured glass of milk, her mom backed out the swinging kitchen door. “The cakes?”
Multitasking normally came as easily as a smile to Kelsey. At the moment, however, she could barely focus on anything other than what she was overhearing. Rattled, hating it, she grabbed a white ceramic plate from the stack near the griddle and slid the pancakes on it. The meal joined the others on the service ledge as her mom placed the milk in front of the UPS man sitting at the end of the counter.
“Wonder what’s keepin’ him,” she heard Amos mutter.
“Keepin’ who?” her mom asked. Turning around, Dora absently smiled through the window at Kelsey’s suddenly frozen features, then reached one at a time for the older men’s breakfasts.
“Sam.” Scratching his balding head, Amos added a few more furrows to his weathered brow. “He’s usually here by now.”
Barely breathing, Kelsey watched the silver-haired Charlie eye his plate as her mom set it in front of him. Fork in hand, he poked at an egg yolk to make sure it was done to his liking. “Might be he drove to St. Johnsbury. Told us yesterday he’d have to make another trip into the lumberyard,” he reminded the man on the stool next to him. “I keep tellin’ him things aren’t as handy here as he’s used to in the city. Got to make lists. Pick up everything in one trip.”
Amos pressed his white stubble-covered chin toward the collar of the T-shirt shirt tucked into his coveralls. As he did, he eyed his similarly attired friend through the top of his black-rimmed trifocals.
“Doing the work he does, you think he don’t know about makin’ lists?”
Charlie, his own glasses rimmed in silver, eyed him right back. “What’s being a policeman got to do with anything?”
“He’s not a policeman. He’s a detective. You can tell by those shows on the TV that there’s a difference,” he explained, sounding as if the man being discussed hadn’t pointed out the distinctions himself. “I’d think that a man who goes around lookin’ for clues and such about crimes would be prone to keepin’ lists of what he knows and what he don’t.”
Kelsey’s mom gave the elderly men a patient smile. “I doubt he’s gone anywhere just yet,” she assured them both. “You know he wouldn’t make that long drive before fillin’ himself up. He hasn’t missed breakfast here in the two weeks since he arrived.”
“That’s ’cause he loves your cookin’, Dora,” came a gravelly voice from a table behind the men. “By the way, Kelsey, you’re doing good this mornin’, too.” A white ceramic mug was raised in her direction. “Good to see you home.”
Exposed by the window her mom had made wide so she wouldn’t miss anything while working in her kitchen, Kelsey smiled into the half-filled room. Smiley Jefferson had been the postal carrier for as long as she could remember. His front tooth had been missing for about that long, too.
“It’s good to be home, Smiley.” It had been until a few minutes ago, anyway. “I hear Drew and Kathy had another baby. Congratulations.”
“He finally got himself a grandson.” The owner of the only gas station in town grinned as he looked up from his breakfast. “Just don’t ask him to show you pictures. You get him started and the mail will never get delivered.”
There was no such thing as a private conversation at Dora’s Diner. Not when nearly everyone there knew everyone else. The quaint little establishment with its maple tables and chairs and bulletin board papered with handwritten notes of locals seeking to barter everything from farm equipment and labor to hay and eggs was as much the center of the community as the community center down the street. It was also the root of the town grapevine.
Much of what Kelsey had always loved about remote and rural Maple Mountain, Vermont, was the sense of acceptance and community she’d always felt there. Many of the locals were set in their ways and independent to a fault, but they protected their own. Neighbors helped neighbors. If someone hadn’t been heard from in a while, someone else checked on them to make sure they weren’t just busy or being reclusive. They were like extended family to her. And, like family, she loved them in spite of their quirks as much as she did because of them.
The acceptance was reciprocal. No matter how long she remained away, for a year, sometimes two, she was always welcomed back.
Her attention wasn’t on that comfortable familiarity, however. All she felt as the front door opened and heads lifted to see who was joining them was a distinct sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach.
Sam MacInnes hadn’t been anything more to her than a passing memory in the dozen years since she’d last seen him. Since she’d gone off the deep end for him as she had, she’d obviously thought him rather incredible back then. But she’d been a teenager at the time. Having been raised in conservative and totally unsophisticated Maple Mountain, she’d been a fairly sheltered one at that.
Years of living in cities had left her far more worldly and infinitely less impressionable than she’d once been. Still, she wasn’t quite prepared for the six feet of solid muscle and testosterone in a faded NYPD T-shirt and worn jeans that walked into the room.
He totally dominated the space.
He made no effort to draw attention to himself. If anything, it seemed to her that his manner as he returned the greetings of others with an easy, appealing familiarity seemed decidedly low-key. He was simply the sort of man other men sensed as a prime example of their own, and either envied or emulated. Women simply stopped to stare and reminded themselves to breathe.
She didn’t remember his hair being so dark. Its shade of sable looked so deep it nearly seemed black in the overhead lights. And his silver-gray eyes spoke more of a quiet, watchful intensity than whatever romantic notion she’d had about them all those summers ago. Yet what struck her most as he moved closer was the rugged maturity that carved lines of character in a face that had once merely been handsome—and gave him an aura of power and utter control that seemed downright dangerous.
He’d barely met her eyes when she jerked her glance away and slipped behind the wall to the grill.
The thought that he might have already found the diary sent her heart to her toes.
With her pulse pounding frantically in her ears, she heard coffee being poured into a mug and her mom’s cheerful, “’Mornin’, Sam. Good thing you showed up. These two were gettin’ worried about you.” The mug slid across shiny pine. “I just told ’em not a minute ago that you wouldn’t leave without havin’ breakfast first.”
The chuckle she heard sounded as deep and rich as the brew her mother had just poured. “I didn’t realize I was getting that predictable. But you’re right.” His tone grew grateful. “Thanks, Dora,” he said, apparently referring to the caffeine she’d just slid toward him.
With the clink of metal against glass, her mom slipped the carafe back onto the big double coffeemaker. “What are you pickin’ up from the lumberyard this time?”
“More two-by-fours. But I’m not going into St. Johnsbury until I get all the walls upstairs torn out and see what else I’ll need. I’ve run into more wood rot up there than I did downstairs.”
“That’s because the roof was so bad.” Amos punctuated his conclusion by stabbing a bite of pancake. “The Bakers replaced it so they could sell the place. That thing sagged like an ol’ mare. Leaked in buckets, I’d imagine.”
“They told Megan about the water damage,” Sam replied, speaking of his sister. “She didn’t care. She and the boys fell in love with the place.”
“I can see why they’d do that.” Silverware rattled as her mom put together a setting. “It’s a pretty piece of property, with that creek and all. Kelsey used to like going out there herself when the elder Mrs. Baker was still alive. She was friends with her granddaughter.
“Speaking of