hated him.
Well, could he blame her?
When it came to Sarah Clay, he pretty much hated himself, too.
God, but he still couldn’t believe she was here. In Weaver.
Aware that Eli was still waiting for him, he headed out to the SUV. His son was fiddling with the scanner when he climbed in the truck.
“She tell ya?” Eli sat back in his seat as Max reset the equipment.
Great. Tell me what? He started driving away from the school. “What do you think?”
His son heaved a sigh, obviously assuming the worst. “Figures. I was only kidding with the guy. How was I supposed to know his glasses would fly off like they did? At least they didn’t break or nothing, though.”
He gave his son a hard look, thinking he was glad Eli was more open than his teacher evidently was. “Did you apologize?”
“Yes. I used Miz Clay’s phone in the classroom.”
“Good. Don’t do it again.”
“How come you came to get me?”
“I told you. You were late. I was worried.”
Eli rolled his eyes. “What for? This place is dinky. I mean, geez, Dad. There’s not even a real mall!”
“Missing those afternoons you liked to spend shopping, is that it?”
His son snorted. They both knew that Eli loathed shopping. That was one trait he had gotten from Max.
He drove past the station where he’d go back on duty after Eli was settled with Genna. He drummed the steering wheel. “So, what’s your teacher like?”
“Besides a rat fink?”
Max let out an impatient breath. “She didn’t tell me anything, pal. You did that all on your own.”
“Geez.” Eli’s head hit the back of the seat. He looked out the window. “She’s all right, I guess.” He was silent for a moment. “She kinda reminds me of Mom.”
Max let that revelation finish rocking. Since Jen had died of cancer almost fourteen months earlier, Eli rarely mentioned her of his own volition. “In what way?”
“I dunno. What’s for supper?”
“Grandma’s cooking.”
“I thought we were here to take care of her.”
“We are. But she’s pretty bored sitting around all day letting her broken leg heal. She’s not used to that much inactivity.”
“Can we go skiing sometime?”
Max wanted to tell his son they could. He didn’t want Eli to be miserable the entire time they were in Weaver. “We’ll see.” Most everything would depend on how well the case went.
“Do ya even know how to ski?”
“Smart aleck. Yeah, I know.”
“Well, you just lived in California all my life.”
“All your life, bud. Not all of mine.”
“What about horses? Can we go riding horses sometime?”
Max suppressed a grimace. He and horses had never particularly gotten along. “We’ll see.”
“Did you know Miz Clay?”
The question, innocence and curiosity combined, burned. “Yeah. I knew her.”
“Did you, like, go to school with her?”
“No. She’s a lot younger than me.”
“Well, yeah.’ Cuz you’re old and she’s still pretty.”
A bark of laughter came out of him. Miz Clay was still pretty. Beautiful, in fact; all that youthful dewiness she’d possessed at twenty-one had given way to the kind of timeless looks that would last all of her life. “That’s why I keep you around, Elijah. To keep me humble.”
His son smiled faintly. “She says you can’t swing a cat without hitting someone from her family. Was she your girlfriend?”
He pulled to a sudden stop in his mother’s driveway and the tires skidded a few inches. He needed to get out the snowblower, and soon. “Just because she’s female doesn’t mean she was my girlfriend. I just told you. She’s a lot younger than me.”
“How much younger?”
God, give him patience. “I don’t know. A lot.” Liar.
“Five years?”
As if a paltry five years mattered. “Twelve.”
“Geez. You are old. Not like Grandma old, but still—”
“Enough. I’m not so old that I can’t beat your butt inside the house.”
Eli grinned and set off at a run, his backpack swaying wildly from his narrow shoulders.
Max jogged along behind him. At least one thing had gone right that day. Eli was smiling.
Just before his son bolted up the front porch, Max put on the speed and flew past him to open the storm door first.
“Dad!”
He shrugged and went inside. “Wipe your boots,” he reminded. He pulled his radio off his belt and set it on the hall table and tossed his jacket on the coatrack. “Hey, Ma.”
Genna Scalise was sixty years old and looked a good ten years less. Her hair was still dark, her face virtually unlined. And she was currently trying to poke one end of an unfolded wire hanger beneath the thigh-high edge of her cast. “Turn the heat off under the pasta.”
“Don’t poke yourself to death.” He went into the kitchen and turned off the stove burner. The churning water in the pot immediately stopped bubbling. The second pot on the stove held his mother’s homemade sauce. “Smells great, but I thought you said you were just going to throw together a casserole or something.” He went back in the family room and took the hanger from her frustrated hands. “Here. Try this.” He handed over the long-handled bamboo back scratcher that he’d picked up at the new supermarket on the far side of town.
Her eyes lit as if he’d just told her she was going to have a second grandchild. She threaded the long piece beneath the edge of her cast and tilted back her head, blissfully. “Oh, you’re a good boy, Max.”
Eli snickered.
“How was school?”
“I got homework,” the boy said by way of answering her. “Vocabulary.”
“Well,
