Lucas had told him.
Micah would believe whatever Lucas said. He’d never liked her anyway, would be eager to accept that she was not only a poor little rich girl but a murderer as well.
“Landy.” Mrs. Burnside’s voice reached her. “Would you help me in here, dear?”
“In here” was the kitchen. She’d have to walk past the table where Micah sat with his father and Lucas Trent and feel their baleful gazes burning holes into the back of her sweater. She wondered why it was the unhappy things, like painful memories and people thinking badly of you and the need for donated blood, that seemed to be unending. Happy spaces in time were always fleeting.
“Don’t slump.” Jessie’s voice came softly. She stood beside Landy, pulling on her coat. “Stand tall and smile like there’s nothing that could ever reach you. Don’t make me whack your spine to straighten you up the way Grandma used to.”
Landy stretched up tall just the way Evelyn Titus had taught her. “See you later, Jess. Kiss the kids for me.” She drew her mouth into a smile and moved across the room, going to the sink to dry the pitchers used for juice.
“Good turnout today,” said Mrs. Burnside.
Landy nodded, trying to think of something to say. “So, how do you like being retired, Mrs. Burnside?”
“You can call me Nancy, dear. We’re not in geometry class anymore. Retirement’s all right. I miss the kids, especially those few every year who soaked up information like a sponge.” She tilted her head and lowered her voice. “Like that Walker boy. He wasn’t gifted, or even extraordinarily intelligent, but he loved learning as much as anyone I ever taught. He had a bad reputation, but he was a pleasure to have in class.”
“Was he?” Micah had been in Blake’s class, two years ahead of Landy. He’d seemed taciturn and always angry. Blake hadn’t liked him, so she’d avoided him. Even then, it was better not to cross Blake.
Lucas brought his glass and plate to where they stood. “Better be careful, Nancy,” he warned, “who you let in here. There’s no telling what’s in their blood.”
“Go back to your office, Lucas.” Her voice was frosty. “We don’t have time for this.”
Landy looked past her former father-in-law at where Micah still sat at the table. He was watching, his gray eyes expressionless. He spoke to his father in a low murmur, but his gaze never left the scene at the sink.
“Landy.” Micah’s voice was still quiet, but it carried easily to where she stood. “Jenny said you were a Realtor. Could you show me some houses? The bed and breakfast is comfortable, but I need something permanent.”
Landy almost grinned. She was, indeed, a licensed Realtor, but her sole contribution to the field was answering the phones at Davis Realty when the receptionist didn’t show up for work.
“Of course,” she said, and some devil made her add, “Any particular area?”
He got to his feet, reaching for his coat. “Yeah, I was thinking about something on the River Walk.”
He hadn’t been thinking that at all, but it was worth the lie to see the look of dismay on Lucas Trent’s face, the quick shimmer of glee that crossed Landy’s features. “Are you free now?” Micah asked. “I could buy you a cup of coffee and give you an idea what I’m looking for.”
Mrs. Burnside took the pitcher Landy was drying from her hands. “She’s free, but you buy her some dinner, too, Micah. She doesn’t eat enough to keep a bird alive.”
“You kids go ahead.” Micah’s father spoke. “I’ll help finish up here.”
Landy looked as though she wanted to argue, but Nancy Burnside was holding out her black pea coat expectantly. “All right,” Landy said finally, slipping her arms into the extended sleeves.
Micah put a hand under her elbow as they ascended the basement stairs. She had a hitch in her walk, and he wondered if she was on the tail end of a sprained ankle. He didn’t ask, but when she pitched slightly sideways at the landing, he tightened his hand.
“I really don’t do much with real estate,” she said. “Taking the course was just one of the things I did to keep busy at a time in my life.”
“I know you don’t.” Jenny had told him that much.
They crossed the church foyer, and he kept his hand under her arm, liking its warmth, the way the heat moved through his own veins.
In a few minutes, they were seated across from each other in the back booth of the café, Jenny’s fresh coffee steaming between them.
“What kind of house do you have in mind?” asked Landy.
“Old. Big. Near the river.”
“Sort of ‘in your face?’”
“Not really, although I’m sure the Lucas Trents in town will take it as such.” He shrugged. “I can’t help that.”
“Tell me about you,” she urged, lifting her cup to her mouth. “What have you done with your life?”
Her hands weren’t like he remembered them, either, not that he’d paid that much attention to them twenty years ago; her other parts had been much more interesting. In addition to the short, unpolished nails and the fingers’ lack of rings, the hands were thin and capable-looking. A few of the knuckles were more prominent than the others, one of the little fingers crooked. She didn’t flutter her hands or fidget with them the way nervous people he knew did; nevertheless, he felt tension emanating from her.
“I went to college,” he said, “at the University of Kentucky and stayed in Lexington after that as a reporter and a columnist. I loved what I did, even though it didn’t leave a whole lot of time for a normal life. Then a year and a half ago, my mom died. My dad was lost without her, and the only time he ever showed any interest in anything was when we talked about Taft. The paper was for sale, so here we are.”
“It’s nice to have you back,” she said politely. “Do you want to look at some houses now? I can pick up keys and take you to ones that are empty. I’m afraid I don’t know what’s available, but we can look at the listings.”
Micah wanted to touch her pale cheek, wanted to murmur, “It’s all right. Nothing can hurt you now,” and convince her the words were true. He kept his hands wrapped around his cup.
“At least with this rain, you’ll be seeing the properties at their worst, so there won’t be any unpleasant surprises later.” Her tone was businesslike and crisp, and her eyes avoided his.
“Fine,” he said quietly. “Let’s look.”
Narrow and tortuous, the Twilight River flowed slow and lackadaisical between wooded hills and dumped itself unceremoniously into the Ohio. Just before reaching the Ohio, the Twilight widened and splattered, looking on the map like nothing so much as a human fist with a short, extended thumb. Taft nestled in the V between the thumb and the fist, beginning toward the end of its second hundred years to meander around the edge of the curled fingers of the river.
Some of Taft’s earliest inhabitants—the
