But I bet you could come up with an even better scenario if you tried.”
Tess laughed. Her assistant knew her too well. “Go home, Beth.”
Beth went, waddling with one hand pressed to the small of her back and the other making a phone shape at her ear. “Call me,” she mouthed.
Tess waved Beth away, smiling to hide her unmollified worry over Randy’s late hours. His boss wasn’t as accommodating as he might have been, but there was no helping it. The Trudells were struggling to make ends meet. Beth’s parents, an older couple who’d had their only daughter late in life, had recently retired in Florida. They planned to return soon for an extended stay, to help Beth out with the baby, but until then, Randy and Tess were the young mother-to-be’s main support system. Aside from any number of do-gooders in the community who would be glad to pitch in and help in case of emergency.
Although the two women were primarily best friends, there were times Tess felt like Beth’s older sister, even her mother. If it was possible to be a mother when you’d never given birth yourself.
Tess frowned, spreading her hands over her flat tummy. Eleven years ago, she was on her way to a life just like Beth’s when—
Tess brushed off the sad memory. Dismissing the tragedy that had shaped her life had become easier with practice. And distance.
She walked into the main room, checking first on Lucy. The girl, a dreamy, inward child, not unlike Tess at that age, was completely absorbed in the book.
Tess’s second glance went to the make-believe pirate. “Sorry for the delay. How can I help you, Mr…?”
He came forward, not as tall as she’d assumed but still many inches past her five-two. Tall enough to make her tilt her chin up when she looked into his clear hazel-brown eyes.
“Connor Reed,” he said, offering his hand.
“Tess Bucek.” His hand was large and cool and dry. Hers was small and warm and moist. And they fit together just fine, for a brief moment that made her feel as if her cells were rushing like a warm river toward him. He let go then, and she blinked and said in a far too girlish voice, “Hi.”
His eyebrows drew down. “Hi.”
She said, “Connor Reed,” mulling over the name. It was naggingly familiar. “Are you from around here?”
“Not really.”
“I feel like I know you from somewhere….”
His features tightened. “I used to spend summers here, with my grandfather.”
“Did you?” She tried to picture Connor Reed as a boy and no bells rang. Summer people. They came and went, very few of them leaving a mark except for the trash they threw off their boats, the cash in the tills of local businesses and the rising prices of shoreline property. Not many of them ventured into the library with the distraction of sun-soaked days at the beach beckoning so near. Lake Superior was practically lapping at her doorstep.
“I don’t think we’ve ever met,” she said doubtfully, “so I can’t imagine how I’d know—”
“You don’t. You don’t know me.”
He was lying. She was certain. But why?
“Who’s your grandfather?” she asked, letting her suspicion show. Close-knit families were important to local folks. Their ties were meaningful, binding, unbreakable. And closed to outsiders. She knew first-hand.
Connor hesitated. “Addison Mitchell.”
She shook her head. Nothing.
“He moved away some time ago, but he’s been back for about a year now.”
“In Alouette?” The town was small enough that she knew just about everyone, at least by sight.
“Ishpeming. At a nursing home.”
“I see.”
Connor let out a soft breath. “He was once the Gull Rock lighthouse keeper.”
The lightbulb went on. “Oh. Of course—Old Man Mitchell!” Tess’s cheeks got warm when she realized how that sounded. “I mean, that’s what we always called him. Kids, you know. He used to chase us away from the lighthouse grounds.”
Connor said nothing in reply and her eyes narrowed. Sonny Mitchell had always lived alone, as far as she remembered, until the lighthouse had become automated and then decommissioned altogether a few years later. Gull Rock was quite isolated and austere. Sonny “Old Man” Mitchell had been a notorious crank.
She prodded for more information. “I still don’t remember you, though, Mr. Reed.”
“Connor,” he said. He glanced over her, up and down, making her toes flex inside conservative Payless pumps. “I’m older than you—we wouldn’t have connected when I was ten and you were…still in diapers?”
She doubted there was that much of an age difference, even though he had a sort of weary, haunted look about him that made him seem…well, not old exactly, but sort of cynical and worn out. “I’m thirty-two.”
“Thirty-nine.”
Okay, he had a point. She wasn’t hanging out at the lighthouse when she was three. He might even be telling the truth about visiting his grandfather, except that she doubted he was telling all of it.
Unless her suspicion was only her vivid imagination run amok. Which, admittedly, wasn’t all that infrequent an occurrence. It was fortunate she usually kept her fancies to herself. Outwardly, she was as regular as a metronome.
“Now that we’ve established my provenance,” Connor said with a small twitch of one corner of his mouth. The hollows in his cheeks deepened. He was trying not to smile at her.
Not used to being found amusing, Tess elongated her neck, tilting her head back. She was short; imperious was a stretch, but she tried. “Yes?”
He sobered. “I have a favor to ask you. Or—well, not really a favor. It can be a job. I’d pay for your time.”
She felt her eyes widen. He wanted her to help him load bear gallbladders off Gull Rock when she could barely stand to handle raw chicken giblets? Certainly not. She almost chuckled at the thought, before remembering that she was being ridiculous with her farfetched imaginings and really must stop.
Right now.
“I saw you with the children, reading, teaching…so I wondered, if it’s not an imposition—” Connor’s gaze held steady even if his words were hesitant “—whether you might be willing to teach…”
Teach him how to read?
Tess tried not to look shocked. Suddenly all the little details made sense. The way he’d concentrated on the lighthouse illustrations and not the text. How he hadn’t taken any notes. The intent look on his face when he’d watched her storytelling group. She’d taken it for his natural demeanor, but it might have been fierce concentration. Exactly the way Grady Kujanen concentrated on sounding out a new word.
Heavens.
