to admire her. She was silver-haired and tough as any US marine he had ever known.
“Still looking over her glasses at kids?”
“Yes!” said Lori and rolled her golden eyes and then did a fair imitation. “I don’t know what she was talking about. We’re studying plants and she was talking about comotosis and phototosis or something and I think that’s high school stuff. And she is so boring! She makes me comotosis!”
He laughed. Lori was funny.
“Mitosis and photosynthesis?” asked her grandmother, impatience making her voice tight.
“Maybe,” said Lori.
“And this—” she waved a finger at Lori before continuing “—is the sort of nonsense that caused me to have to speak to her after class.” Mrs. Morris turned to Logan. “I don’t see why I should be punished for my granddaughter’s disrespect.”
His brother’s new “dragon-orange metallic” Audi Q8 model SUV raced by, exceeding the speed limit. The color looked to Logan exactly like the orange flashing light on a snowplow. He frowned.
Mrs. Morris watched the SUV disappear after the procession. “You should give him a ticket.” Then she directed her cool gray eyes on Logan. “Shame about Dr. Sullivan.”
Word traveled fast.
“Did Paige call you, Mrs. Morris?”
“You can call me Beverly, Logan, as I’ve told you.”
He looked away, uncomfortable with that. He’d always think of her as Paige’s mom, Mrs. Morris, despite her insistence that he call her by her first name.
Mrs. Morris sighed. “Yes, she did call.”
“What happened to Dr. Sullivan?” asked Lori.
The two adults exchanged a look. Logan shook his head. He wasn’t speaking about this before an eight-year-old. The world had too many monsters, but the ones under her bed would do for now.
Mrs. Morris clearly felt differently for she answered the question.
“Your mother’s supervisor has been in an accident.”
“Is he okay?”
“No, I don’t think he is.”
“What kind of accident?” asked Lori.
“I’ll tell you on the way home.” Mrs. Morris set them in motion. Lori remembered to say goodbye and waved a hand sheathed in a mitten fashioned to look like a zebra puppet complete with a braided tail and pink lolling tongue. The googly eyes rolled, making it look as if it also had a head injury. Logan waved back. Then he replaced his hat and returned inside to the phones.
He made it only to the new wheelchair ramp and paused at the sound, unsure what it was. He could identify where it came from, toward the village library, on the corner of Raquette and Main, in the former home of the Hornbeck family. The village’s namesake had founded the bank back when the railroad stopped in this village. The sound reminded him of a fish thrashing in the river after it was hooked. But it turned out to be Paige Morris, hurrying along Main, passing the autobody shop and the antiquarian bookstore.
She wiped her face every few seconds with her gloved hands. Today was cold and windy, and Paige had a blocked tear duct. He remembered with perfect clarity in the winters of their childhood that the tears rolled down her left cheek and froze on the collar of her maroon nylon snow coat. Funny how he could remember that but not a minute of his time in the US Marines or a minute of his engagement to Paige.
But Paige’s tear duct dripping did not make a noise and she was making a noise. Was that pain? He crossed Main Street to intercept her. She usually walked home after five but was early today.
It wasn’t until he was nearly before her that she noticed him. The noise she was now making was obvious. Paige was crying.
Paige hurried up Main Street with her head down against the wind and her shoulders bent by the weight of her troubles. Someone stepped directly into her path, bringing her up short. She startled, glancing up. Instinctively, her hand went to her shoulder bag and the printed copy of the file she had found on Dr. Sullivan’s computer.
Logan stood before her.
For just a moment he looked as he always had, back when her family had been in trouble and he’d done the wrong thing for the right reason. One look into Logan’s sympathetic eyes and she fell to pieces.
The years of his absence disappeared. Pain and fear lowered her resistance and she stepped into his arms, sobbing. He was just the right height to cradle her against his chest and rest his chin on the top of her head. His familiar scent comforted her as tears rolled down her cheeks like raindrops down a windowpane.
“Why are you crying?” he said. “Is it Dr. Sullivan?”
She couldn’t have answered if she had wanted to. And she couldn’t tell him what had happened. But she wasn’t sure who to tell about the text message or what she had found afterward. She wasn’t even sure what the document meant, just that it highlighted an inconsistency. Inconsistencies were the enemies of quality assurance.
Dr. Sullivan had found something. She suspected he reported his concerns to the head of security or to his supervisor, Sinclair Park, or even the CFO, Veronica Vitale, and then he had died.
A correlational relationship. Not necessarily causal. But she could not eliminate, out of hand, the possibility of causality.
“Is this about Dr. Sullivan?” Logan asked again.
Paige nodded, snuggling closer to the canvas jacket supplied to Logan by the village.
Logan cradled her against him. “I’m sorry about Dr. Sullivan, Paige.”
Nodding, she managed to rein in the sobs. Logan helped coach Ed’s son on basketball. He’d lost a friend, as well. Her coworker’s death would leave such a hole in the community. And his kids…his wife…
Her ragged breath and a hum in the back of her throat was all the sound emerging from her.
“He was a good man,” said Logan.
“He was.”
“They had the state police up there. County sheriff, too.”
Since they were a village of only a little over four hundred residents, they could not afford a police force. But after Logan had come home, his brother, then newly appointed to the village council, raised concerns that traffic had increased with the arrival of the pharmaceutical company two years before, the company that Connor himself had helped advocate for. Rathburn-Bramley expected the village to manage the increased traffic flow and issues arising from the daily commute of the workforce of two hundred employees, nearly all of which lived outside their community. The taxes they paid more than covered the cost of the salary of the new village constable, the hiring of whom had caused debate in the village, narrowly
