style="font-size:15px;"> Nobody yelled at him today. No reason to; he was strolling along at the same snail’s pace as everyone else. But they still stared. About half of them, anyway. He’d shed his riding gear for an unobtrusive pair of jeans and a blue T-shirt, so he knew it wasn’t his clothes. And he didn’t recognize them all, the gapers, although some of them brought back flashes of unwelcome memory. But then, he supposed a lot more people in Santiago Beach had known him—or of him—than he’d known himself. It had been one of his missions in life back then, to make sure of that.
“C’mon, Luke! Hurry up!”
He watched as David waved him on, trying to get him to pick up his pace. He did, slightly, but these days he got most of his need for speed taken care of elsewhere.
He’d caught up to David when they reached the bookstore. He noticed the display in the front window: a beach scene with real sand, a surfboard propped in one corner, a towel, a bottle of suntan lotion, sunglasses and, of course, a book open beneath a small umbrella, with others stacked beside it. As if the reader had just paused for a cooling dip in the ocean.
He barely had time to admire the cleverness of it before David yanked the door open, and before even stepping inside, he was yelling.
“Amelia! He’s here! I told you he’d come, I told you!”
The woman behind the counter turned just as Luke stepped inside. It was her. The frightened rabbit of a woman who had been so intimidated by his mere presence last night.
Several things registered at once.
She wasn’t old.
She was average height, maybe five-five.
Her hair was an unremarkable medium brown, cut short and tucked tidily behind her ears.
She was dressed plainly, in black slacks and a white blouse with black piping, with a simple gold chain at her throat.
She had the biggest eyes he’d ever seen, the same medium brown as her hair.
And those eyes were staring at him as if he were some kind of apparition.
“It was you,” she whispered, in a voice so soft he was sure he wasn’t supposed to have heard it.
She’d known who he was last night? How?
Before he could ask, David had. “Whaddya mean?”
“I saw…him last night. On a…motorcycle.”
“Isn’t it cool?” David enthused.
“I suppose,” the woman said cautiously.
“I want to ride on it,” David said with a sideways glance at Luke.
“I’ll think about it,” Luke said, never taking his eyes off the woman who was looking at him with such…trepidation. There was something familiar about her expression, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was. “If you remember why we’re here and introduce me.”
“Oh! Sorry. This is Amelia. Amelia, my brother, Luke.” Then he looked at Luke, puzzled. “Why’d I have to do that if she already knew who you were?”
“Because it’s good manners,” Amelia said. David grimaced.
“Because,” Luke said, “it shows you’re an adult, not a kid.”
“Oh.” That explanation clearly appealed to him. “Okay.”
“Amelia Blair, I presume,” Luke said, turning his attention back to her.
“I…yes.”
She lowered her eyes, sneaked another glance at him from beneath her lashes, then looked away. And suddenly he had it; she was looking at him like the good girls used to in high school, half-scared, half-fascinated. They had seemed to fall into two categories back then: those who were both frightened and intrigued in varying ratios, and those who simply looked down on him from the lofty height of their uprightness.
He’d tried to avoid all of them, although those who were intrigued had been, on occasion, persistent. But even then, he’d known they were after him for all the wrong reasons. He’d had his own battles to fight and had no interest in being a pawn in someone else’s.
Not, he thought as she stole another sideways look at him, that that would be a problem with the quiet Ms. Blair. She looked more likely to run from him than after him. Once he’d taken a twisted pleasure in the effect he had on good girls. Now he wasn’t sure how he felt. It was hard, he realized suddenly, to think that way again. To put himself back in the place he’d once lived, in the mind-set he’d once developed to survive. Maybe he’d come further than he’d thought.
Ms. Blair was too tense and far too serious. But she got points from him for caring about David and for thinking David needed more attention to his grief than he was getting.
“David’s been…telling me a lot about you,” she said, sounding more than a little awkward.
“Has he?” Luke said, wondering what the boy could possibly have said, after eight years with no contact at all between them.
“He told me you taught him to like to read.”
Startled, Luke looked at his brother. “You did,” David said. “When you used to come in and read to me. I read every night now.”
Reading had been his favorite—and sometimes his only—escape when he’d been under his mother’s roof. He’d tried to pass that along to David, but he’d had no idea it had worked so well. “I…that’s good,” he said, not sure what else to say.
“Amelia gets me the best books,” David said, smiling at her. “Sometimes she even loans her own to me, if I can’t buy them.”
“Speaking of which,” Amelia said, sounding glad to be back in familiar waters, “the newest in your science fiction series came in. I just put them up.”
“Cool!” David raced toward the back of the store without another word.
“So,” Luke said when David was out of earshot, “has David been the only one telling you about me?”
“I… What do you mean?”
He shook his head. “I’m disappointed, Ms. Blair. You mean I’m no longer the hot topic in Santiago Beach?”
She seemed to consider that. Then she surprised him, a tiny grin lurking at the corners of her mouth as she said, “I’m afraid you’ve lost a bit in the gossip standings after eight years.”
So the mouse had a sense of humor, he thought. But before he could comment, David was back, his book clutched in one hand, a crumpled five-dollar bill in the other. Amelia gave him his change and offered a bag, which David declined, stuffing the book in a pocket of his baggy pants.
“Come on, Luke, I want my friends to meet you.”
Luke, who was still looking at Amelia, noticed something change in her expression, saw two worry lines appear between her brows. Afraid he would be a bad influence
