style="font-size:15px;"> “I’ll get my bag.” They bumped shoulders as they neared the door. She tried not to notice and asked, “What’s Autumn Acres?”
“It’s a new living center being built for the aging. They’ve got the independent apartments finished and one wing of the added care where they check on residents, give them their meds, etcetera, but the final wing, the nursing care, isn’t finished.”
“Gram just visits?”
His gaze met hers. “No,” he said in almost a whisper. “She’s lived there for a while, but she thinks she’s just visiting.”
Connor vanished into the back room to turn off the last of the lights.
When she collected her things and stepped back outside, he was waiting. All the little stores on Main were closing, and the sun’s glow seemed to be pulling any warmth with it. Now the smell of coffee drifted from the bakery as low clouds hugged the horizon and the few people left on the street seemed to be in a hurry.
He fell into step with her as she turned toward the bed-and-breakfast. Her long strides seemed to match his in an easy gait. “How’d it go today?” he asked without looking at her.
“Fine. She thinks you and I are friends.”
“That’s all right. Just log your hours. Give me the report at the end of the week, and I’ll write you a check. She can think you’re just helping out, if it doesn’t bother you and it makes her happy.”
“I will.” They walked in silence for a few minutes before she added, “You don’t have to walk me home.”
“I’m not. This is my way home.” Without any hint of a smile, he added, “I thought you were trying to walk me home. I was starting to get a bit freaked out about it. Thought you might be after the other bag of popcorn.” He patted the stuffed pocket of his raincoat.
Jillian smiled. He was as hard to read as his grandmother. Shy one minute, funny the next. In an odd way she found it cute. She usually had to fend off at least a few advances from men she worked with. Even the married, do-it-by-the-book bosses sometimes took casual flirting too far.
Somehow, this good-looking man who carried a book under one arm didn’t frighten her.
Trying to kid him into smiling, she said, “I don’t like caramel, but if it had been cheesy flavored, you might have needed to worry. I could easily mug you for nacho-cheesy popcorn.”
He didn’t respond. Just nodded as if logging her comment to think about later. No jokes. No flirting. She wasn’t sure Connor Larady even knew how.
Jillian matched his steps and his mood. “Your grandmother doesn’t have a home to go to besides Autumn Acres, does she?”
“No. She moved to the Acres last spring right after it opened the first wing. My grandfather, Benjamin, died when I was a kid. She lived as a widow for years, ran the shop, walked home, and claimed she enjoyed her quiet time. Then one day she just decided Benjamin wasn’t dead—he simply forgot to come home.” Connor grinned suddenly, but there was no humor reflected in his eyes. “She’s been mad at him ever since. I used to think it was just a game she played with herself, but lately I think she forgets that she moved to the Acres and just thinks she’s spending a night out with the girls. Strange thing is, she’s never asked to go back to her house, not once. So, I’m thinking somewhere in the back of her mind she knows she’s where she needs to be.”
“What about your parents?” Maybe because she had no family, Jillian felt a need to know about other families.
“My folks died in a car crash my last year of college. My dad was Gram’s only living son. I came home and finished my studies online while I took over his newspaper business. My brother went the other direction. We hear from him now and then. The conversation is usually about how busy he is, but he hasn’t been home since our folks died.”
“Gram mentioned her boys were grown?” Jillian was trying to make the pieces fit.
“She did have two sons. My uncle died before he started school.”
He offered no more explanation and she didn’t want to ask. She knew the story would be sad.
They walked in silence for a few minutes. The streetlights blinked on, making the shabby old homes on the block with the bed-and-breakfast look quaint, charming. The lights on an old refinery across the creek morphed the ugly pipes into the towers of a castle.
“On the days I can’t come get Gram for lunch, I’ll have something for you and her delivered from Mamma Bee’s Pastries.” He looked straight ahead, not seeming to see the beauty around them. “I just don’t want Gram left alone. She knows not to leave until I come, but I’d feel better if you were with her.”
“I’m not a nurse.” Jillian wondered exactly what she was getting into. There was far more to this job than she thought. She could handle museum-quality logging, but she wasn’t prepared for taking care of anyone.
“I’m not asking you to be. Just sit down and eat with her.” His voice was still low, but frozen now.
“Fair enough.” Jillian stopped at the gate of Flancher’s Folly Bed-and-Breakfast. “I eat a big breakfast. If you order her a meal, just make it soup for me. I’ll eat with her, but if you take her out as she said you do when it’s not a quilting day, I’ll stay and work. I can take care of myself. Feeding me is not your problem, and those days I can log another hour.”
He nodded. “Understood. Just a job, right? Don’t want to get too involved.”
“Right.” She answered without looking up at him. He might read her lie in her eyes. She needed the job, but she was in town hoping to find a tiny piece of her dad’s life. She hadn’t been surprised when he first vanished, but as the years passed she wished for one thing, one thread, to hang on to.
Part of her still looked for him in a crowd. Still thought about what she would have said, or asked, if she’d known he’d be disappearing the last time he’d walked away so casually.
For the first few years she’d thought he’d appear just to check on her. The fact he didn’t told her more than she wanted to admit about the man who raised her.
She knew so little about Jefferson James. Nothing about her mother. It was like she’d found a hole in her mind and had nothing to fill it with. His journal had noted this zip code in one of the margins. Maybe there was something or someone he’d cared about here.
Connor nodded a silent goodbye and she did the same. But she turned when she reached the shadows of the porch and watched him until he disappeared into the night.
An interesting man, this Connor Larady. Cold at times, like he had a heavy load to carry. Formal, almost, at other times. Yet Gram loved him dearly. Jillian suspected he was a man with a great deal on his mind, and she didn’t plan to know him well enough to ever find out what that entailed.
They were polite strangers. Nothing more. Maybe he was too shy to get closer. Maybe she was too afraid of being hurt. It didn’t matter. She’d be on her way in three months.
His wrinkled raincoat had flapped in the wind, almost like wings. Then, as he’d turned the corner, he’d vanished. Or flew away. She grinned, letting her imagination run. For
