“All right then. See you tomorrow night.”
She nodded, and then she turned, her cloak swirling as she strode away in the exact opposite direction that he had parked his truck.
They’d even coordinated that without realizing it, parking in complete opposite directions.
Something told him that they were going to be really, really good together.
Chapter Eleven
Nelly couldn’t believe that she had actually done it. She’d talked to the other Secret Saint, and they had decided to work together! She was pretty much walking on air the entire next day. Some of her kids noticed and commented that she seemed happier than usual.
She even let the kids stay out an extra ten minutes at recess.
She had walked around the tree on her morning walk, although she hadn’t stopped to check it on the way past to begin with. Rather, she kept a lookout for anyone who looked like they might be about the same height and build as the man she had talked to last night. She believed him and trusted him, but…trust and verify? Something like that.
Regardless, she hadn’t seen anything, so on her way back, she’d gone to the tree and looked in. There was nothing there, and she couldn’t stop the little stab of disappointment. Not that she wanted there to be. She didn’t want any changes at all to the plans that they’d already made. And she didn’t have anything to leave, so she hardly expected anything from him. She walked away from the tree and continued on her walk.
She’d swing by again in the afternoon, and maybe she’d even check as she walked by the first time.
She thought the notes in the tree and meeting at midnight were really great ideas and was looking forward to working with him again.
Thankfully, her grandmother had another good evening, and they had some wonderful conversation as they worked together to make supper.
She had read online—and she had talked to the doctor in town, Dr. Terry, who had agreed—that when an older person was fighting off a cold or virus, sometimes they got a little confused.
She didn’t remember her gram having any kind of symptoms of a cold or anything, but maybe she had been on the verge of getting one.
Whatever it was, she had been lucid for a really long time—for a lot of days in a row—and Nelly couldn’t stop her feeling of anticipation that perhaps her gram wasn’t going to be suffering from dementia after all.
She knew she was probably wishing on rainbows and unicorns, but she couldn’t help grasping at every positive straw she possibly could.
She took a small nap in the evening after supper but was up by 11:30, dressed and ready to slip out of the house.
She hadn’t told her gram that she was going anywhere and hoped that her gram would sleep soundly all night.
She felt like it was better for her to do as little talking about the Secret Saint as possible, even though her grandma seemed like she was doing well. Now that there was someone else involved, she had extra incentive to try to keep everything under wraps.
After considering that, she stayed with her decision to not tell her grandma about her partner in that endeavor. At least, if her gram accidentally told someone about her, she wouldn’t be destroying his cover as well.
As she made her way to the Kowalski house, she tried to pickhis figure out in the shadows. But she could not. However, she saw a truck parked in the alley behind the house, and she assumed that the supplies on the back were the ones that he was going to use to replace the shutters and possibly some of the gutters.
“Hey there,” a voice said, low and soft.
She had walked right past him and hadn’t seen him. “I’m sorry. I was looking at your truck. Looks like you have supplies.”
“I sure do. I hoped maybe you would give me a hand carrying them to the house as I need them. Normally, I would have parked right where I was working and wouldn’t worry too much about banging things around, but since we need to be quiet…”
“Of course. I’ll help.” She was a little worried that he was going to be doing all the work and she would just be standing around twiddling her thumbs. There wasn’t much fun in that.
Except, he wouldn’t know that tonight the Kowalskis weren’t going to be home if it hadn’t been for her, so she was contributing something.
They went to the truck together, and he told her what he was going to need first. He grabbed one end, she grabbed the other, and they carefully carried it around the house without making any noise at all.
The neighbors’ houses weren’t particularly close, but they were close enough that if they started making too much noise, they had a good chance of waking someone up.
“I actually put a cloth over my hammer, because while this shouldn’t take too much hammering, it’ll take enough, and that should muffle the sound,” her partner said as they set the first piece down.
“That was really smart,” she said, knowing that she wouldn’t have thought of that, but she wasn’t exactly a handyman either.
