himself was ready to snap, Yes, the only reason we came in here! but realized Cara’s approach was much more likely to be productive.
“Oh, before,” Mr. Woodruff said. “She came in the very next day. Lovely young woman. I told her all about the fire, she was very interested.”
I’ll bet you did, Gabe thought. He let Cara continue; if the old gent preferred to talk to another lovely young woman, far be it for him to interfere.
“How did she seem to you?”
“Seem? Why, a pretty young girl. Charming, just charming. She bought that card, went over to the café to write it, then came back and mailed it.”
“So she wasn’t…upset, or distraught, anything like that?”
Mr. Woodruff drew back slightly, his thick, bushy gray brows lowered. “Upset? Why, no, she didn’t seem to be. In fact, she seemed very happy, excited even. Bubbly,” he added, smiling.
That was Hope, all right, Gabe thought. Except when she was upset at his long absences, she’d always been that way.
“You’re sure?” he asked.
“My memory,” Mr. Woodruff said primly, “is razor-sharp.”
Yeah, he definitely preferred talking to Cara, Gabe thought. Can’t blame the old guy for that.
Cara asked quickly, “She didn’t seem like she was unhappy, or frightened or anything?”
Mr. Woodruff frowned at that. “No, not at all. And I would have remembered, I think. I don’t like seeing pretty ladies in distress.”
He gave Cara a smile Gabe was sure was supposed to be charming in turn. The man was a flirt, Gabe realized suddenly, and had to hide a smile as his irritation vanished.
Cara chatted on for a few more minutes while Gabe inwardly laughed at himself; after eight years, he was suddenly in a hurry?
So Hope had been happy. He hadn’t been wrong about that. But they were no closer to knowing why she’d been here in this little hamlet to begin with. Or what had happened after she’d come in here, bought that postcard, scrawled her hasty, excited message on it, and dropped it in the mail.
It was very Hope-like, that after calling and being unable to reach her friend, that she would write something. She was always scribbling things down, and had kept journals she’d made him swear on his honor never to snoop into. He’d kept his word, although he’d let the police look through them when she’d first vanished. They hadn’t been much help, since they’d ended about the time she’d gotten her new laptop computer, and he assumed she’d begun to keep her journals electronically.
At last Cara bid the affable Mr. Woodruff goodbye, and they turned away from the postal counter in the back of the store. It was one of those small, old places that nevertheless seemed to have everything you could possibly need. A little expensive, although not exorbitant given what it probably cost to keep the place supplied; not a lot of variety, but all the essentials were there, from fresh produce to souvenir T-shirts to spark plugs. Gabe imagined the locals both avoided it and welcomed its presence, depending on how desperate they were to avoid a trip down the mountain road to other shopping options.
The old wooden floor creaked as they walked, and it was an oddly comforting sound. Cara paused to smile at a display of chain saw parts next to stacked bundles of kindling.
“The implication being if you buy the one you don’t need the other, I suppose,” Gabe said.
Cara grinned at that. “Good marketing.”
Gabe glanced back at Mr. Woodruff’s domain, where the man was gesturing widely as he told another story to yet another captive listener, a woman with a small child in her arms. No wonder he’d lasted thirty years there; it was the perfect venue for him to have a constant, rotating audience.
“I’m glad you thought to bring that photograph,” Gabe said as they continued through the store.
“It’s always in my wallet. I know it’s of both of us, but it’s clear enough of her.”
“Yes. He recognized her right away. She hadn’t changed much, since then.”
He didn’t point out that Cara herself was barely recognizable as the same woman.
“No, she hadn’t. Even though it’s almost eleven years old.” She paused, then said in a voice that seemed quite different, “It’s the one you took. In La Jolla that time.”
It took him a moment, but he finally remembered. “Your joint birthday bash.”
She smiled, seeming pleased he’d remembered. “Yes.”
His ship had been in port in San Diego for some refitting work, and Hope had been deliriously happy that he was going to be around for several months. So happy that it infected everyone around her, even quiet Cara, who had joined in the fun wholeheartedly when, at Hope’s insistence, they went out for dinner at Hope’s favorite restaurant. Hope had always been good at that, loved planning things down to the last detail. And she’d always been generous with her friends, Cara most of all.
He even remembered the moment when he’d snapped the shot; the two had posed at the beach park, on the bluff above the rocky, sheltered cove that was one of the seaside community’s major attractions.
It was also the day he’d asked Cara why she didn’t like him.
“I always wondered if you were mad at me.”
It was out before he thought. And Cara looked so astonished, he knew he’d been wrong about that before she even answered him.
“Mad? Why would I have been mad at you?”
“I married your best friend. She didn’t have as much time with you after that, when I was around.”
“But you included me so often,” she said, a slight urgency in her voice that puzzled him. Her next words explained the tone to him. “And you never, ever made me feel like…like a fifth wheel. I never thanked you for that. Not many men would have put up with Hope wanting me along so much.”
“I never thought of you like that, a fifth wheel,” Gabe said. “I was glad she had a friend like you, to rely on when I couldn’t be there for her.”
“Well,” Cara said wryly, “I could do that, since not much else was going on in my life, wallflower that I was.”
“You were…quiet,” he said, somewhat carefully.
She laughed, and it was a genuine one, light and pleasant. “That’s an understatement.”
“Obviously you outgrew it,” he said, that laugh making him unable to stop himself from teasing her.
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“It was meant that way. You’ve really…blossomed,” he finished a bit lamely; it sounded impossibly corny to his ears.
“That wouldn’t have been hard. I was very…unsure of myself, back then.”
