But his concern warmed her. He wasn’t treating her nervousness as if he thought she was simply a ditzy spinster with too much time on her hands.
She watched as Gage walked over to the bench. Apparently he said something, because the man pulled out his wallet from his hip pocket and passed something to Gage. Gage took it, spoke for a minute, then returned to his patrol car.
No doubt running the guy’s ID. Finally Trish allowed relief to trump over nerves. Gage would sort it out, and the stranger was on notice that he had been seen. Good.
The man had turned on the bench so that he was looking directly at the sheriff’s car and away from her. So maybe he did find it difficult to turn his head.
All right, she should just go to bed and forget it. Gage would let her know if anything should concern her.
Except that she remained rooted. A sign, she decided, of having had too much time on her hands. She wasn’t the type to stand at her window and watch the goingson outside, unlike some of her nosier neighbors.
After a few minutes Gage climbed out of his vehicle again, approached the man and handed him something—probably his ID or driver’s license. They chatted for a moment and then Gage got back in the car and drove off.
Okay, so there was no immediate evidence that the guy was a threat. She glanced over at the digital clock on her DVD player and realized there were only minutes before the guy moved on again, assuming he followed his usual, almost compulsive, schedule.
Driven by some impulse, maybe the need to put the matter to rest now, she hurried into her kitchen, poured two mugs of the coffee she’d made a couple of hours ago, still hot and rich-smelling. Then she slipped on her jacket and went out the front door with the two mugs.
As she approached him, the man on the bench appeared startled in a way he hadn’t when Gage had stopped to speak with him. She guessed he hadn’t expected a homeowner to come out at this hour.
Reaching him, she could finally make out his features. Nicely chiseled, although not Hollywood handsome. She couldn’t tell the color of his eyes and could see only that his hair was dark, short, but unkempt. The rest of him, seated as he was, remained mostly a mystery within a heavy jacket, jeans and work boots.
“Coffee?” she asked.
“I was just leaving.” Nice baritone, smooth enough to indicate a nonsmoker and probably a good singer.
“Well, you can drink fast,” she said, thrusting a mug at him. “It’ll be cold in a minute or two, anyway.”
He couldn’t refuse the mug without being rude. Which was exactly why she’d done it. She took the other end of the bench and sipped her own coffee. Yeah, it was already cooling down.
Then she looked straight at him. “Why do you sit out here every night?”
“Because there’s a bench.” Yet the reply hinted at a question, almost as if he was wondering if she was looking for a particular response. If she was, she didn’t know herself what it was.
“You limp pretty badly,” she said bluntly.
“Accident.”
“Will it heal?”
“Eventually.” He made eventually sound like a very long time, not something that might happen in the next couple of months.
“I’m sorry.”
He shook his head slightly. “Things happen. I was the lucky one.”
He spoke that like a mantra, as if it was something he told himself again and again, yet didn’t quite believe. Some part of whatever had happened, she guessed, was never going to feel lucky, but she didn’t feel she could press it.
She offered her hand. “Trish Devlin.”
He hesitated, and finally shook it. “Grant,” he said. Not a full name.
Trish let it pass, thinking that Gage probably had all the rest of it now, anyway, and maybe a lot more. She watched him take a gulp of coffee and realized he was about to make a quick getaway.
Despite running to the sheriff with her paranoia, Trish had never been a wimp. She wasn’t going to let the stranger off that easily.
“You’ve been making me nervous,” she said. “Sitting out here every night staring at my house.”
He seemed to grow still, as much inwardly as outwardly. Then he said, “I guess that’s why the sheriff stopped.”
“Could be.”
She thought she saw the faint flash of a small smile. “Could be,” he agreed. “I didn’t mean to make you nervous.”
“Well, you did. You keep staring at my house.”
He shrugged. “It’s right in front of me.” He gulped more coffee.
“So it is,” she agreed, then waited, trying to let silence do what her questions couldn’t: make him talk.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m just resting, for obvious reasons.”
He was a lousy liar, she decided, because she didn’t believe that, even if it did fit. But if he was a lousy liar, that was a good thing. It meant he wasn’t practiced at deceit.
“Okay,” she said finally. “Don’t let me keep you.”
But he didn’t move. Instead, he said something she wondered if she’d heard right. “Everything’s wrong tonight.”
“What?”
Again that little shake of his head. Then, “Look, I’m really sorry. I don’t sleep well at night, never have. So I’m walking. Waiting, I guess.”
She seized on one word. “Waiting?”
He drank more coffee, this time sipping, as if to put off his moment of departure, quite different from when she’d first approached. “Do you know anybody who doesn’t have a rucksack full of emotional baggage?”
“That’s some question!”
“But an honest one.”
So she gave him an honest answer. “I guess not. More for some than others.”
“Well, mine’s pretty full. So I guess you could say I’m waiting for some resolution.”
“Don’t you usually have to work at that, not just wait?”
“I am. Believe me, I am.”
In spite of herself, Trish was growing more intrigued. But then he sighed and passed her back the empty mug. “Go inside before you get chilled,” he said. “Thanks for the coffee.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to walk back to the motel. Maybe pop into the truck stop for a wee-hours breakfast.”
The
