not me,” she admitted. “Sarah filled me in.”
He nodded. “I had a feeling it would work something like that, Serenity being the kind of town it is. As Mr. McDonald informed me, folks here look after their own.”
“We certainly try to,” she agreed. She decided he’d squirmed enough and let her ingrained manners kick in. Southern women were always ready to offer a cool drink, if not an entire spread of food, at a moment’s notice. “Could I offer you some coffee? Maybe a glass of lemonade or some sweet tea? It’s another scorcher out there today. There are cookies, too, if the kids haven’t gotten to them today.”
He looked a bit startled by the invitation. “You sure?”
She gave him a thoughtful survey that brought more color to his cheeks. “Well, despite the fact that you’re wearing a gun, you don’t look all that dangerous to me, so yes, I’m sure.”
“I just thought maybe me being a stranger would make you nervous.”
“It’s not people who terrify me,” she found herself saying. “It’s everything outside this house.” She gave him a wry look. “Crazy, isn’t it, since I grew up in this town and all my problems were over in Charleston.”
“What kind of problems, if you don’t mind me asking? Travis said something about domestic violence.”
Raylene hesitated. Her disastrous marriage wasn’t something she liked to talk about to anyone, much less a stranger. If he knew about the abuse, he knew more than enough.
“It’s in the past, and I don’t like to talk about it,” she said. “Now, about that coffee, are you interested?”
“The lemonade sounds better,” he said, then followed her inside.
In the kitchen, she gestured for him to take a seat, then poured two tall glasses of lemonade over ice and handed one to him. She put an assortment of chocolate-chip and oatmeal cookies on a plate and set it on the table, then took a seat herself. Only a trained observer might notice that she sat on the edge of the chair and a safe distance away, rather than relaxing. She had a hunch that Carter noticed.
Calling on her once-instinctive social graces, she said, “Are you new to Serenity? I know you weren’t in school with us, and you seem to be about the same age.”
“I moved here a few months ago when I hired on as a deputy. It seemed like a good place to raise kids.”
His response surprised her. She’d automatically checked for a wedding band and there hadn’t been one. Of course, as she knew all too well from her philandering ex-husband, some men were adept at hiding rings when it suited their purposes. Or he could be divorced or even a widower.
“How many children do you have?” she asked.
“None of my own, but my two younger sisters are living with me. They’re fourteen and almost sixteen. Our parents died a couple of years back. We stuck it out in Columbia for a while, but I liked the idea of a small town. When a job opened up here this spring, I grabbed it. I’m hoping they’ll get in less trouble here than they might have in the city.”
Raylene chuckled, thinking of some of the mischief she, Annie and Sarah had gotten into as teenagers. “Trust me, if girls want to get into trouble, they can do it anywhere.”
He regarded her with an impudent grin. “Do tell. Just what kind of trouble did you get yourself into? If I go into the computer, will I find a dark criminal past?”
“Hardly,” she said, then grinned. “We were far too clever to get caught.”
“Really?”
She thought back over her high school years and chose one of many incidents. “Really. For instance, there was one memorable slumber party when we let boys sneak in,” she confided. “Annie’s mom, Dana Sue Sullivan…” Her voice trailed off.
“The owner of the restaurant,” he guessed.
“Exactly. She about had a fit over that one. Of course, the fact that Annie collapsed that night and wound up in the hospital pretty much trumped whatever trouble we probably would have gotten in over inviting the boys to the party.”
“What happened to Annie?”
She hesitated at talking about Annie’s personal business, but then everyone in town already knew the story. “She had anorexia. It nearly killed her.” She waved off the subject and grinned. “As for the mischief we got ourselves into, I’m sure I could tell a few other stories, if I racked my brain. And most of the teachers at the high school could probably add a dozen or more.”
He looked a little pale as he shook his head. “I’ll definitely keep that slumber party scam in mind when Carrie—she’s the fifteen-year-old—tells me she wants to spend the night with a friend. I had no idea teenage girls were so sneaky.”
“The ones I knew certainly were,” she told him.
He smiled, causing an unexpected bump in her heart rate. Then his expression sobered.
“May I ask you a personal question?” he said.
“Sure.”
“Travis mentioned something about you not being able to leave the house. Is that true?”
She nodded. Whatever embarrassment she’d once felt over her problem had faded as people in town had come to accept that if they wanted to spend time with her, they had to do it here.
“When I first came back to town, I was able to sit on the back patio. I was so relieved to be someplace safe that I didn’t realize at first that leaving here was even an issue.”
“Makes sense,” he said.
“Then, after a couple of months of healing physically and mentally, I tried going out with Sarah and Annie,” she said ruefully. “I never made it past the driveway before I’d break out in a cold sweat. My heart would start racing so fast, I was sure I was going to pass out. After that happened a few times, well, I hate to admit it, but I just stopped trying. Eventually it got so bad, I couldn’t even take a step outside.”
“Why’d you give up?”
The question was simple, but the answer was complicated. Raylene wasn’t sure she could explain it. “I suppose it just seemed easier,” she said eventually. She shrugged. “And there was no place I really needed to be, nothing I really wanted to do.”
Carter looked unconvinced. “You’re content to make this house enough for the rest of your life?” he asked incredulously.
“I suppose I haven’t let myself think long term. Right now, when I consider leaving here, the fear outweighs the joy of whatever might be out there. Forever’s not a concept I can grapple with.”
“What about the yard, at least? Can you go outside that far?”
“You know that I can’t,” she responded, meeting his gaze. “You saw me frozen in place on the top step the other day. If I could have gone farther, believe me, I would have. Knowing Tommy was somewhere out there and I couldn’t look for him was horrible. I’ve never felt so helpless in my life.” She
