She let the tears come freely then. She didn’t sob; that had never been her way. They just ran down her face while she looked at the lake Liam had taught her to swim in, and the dock Liam had built, and that another good man had sanded and sealed so her daughter could run on it barefoot. She let five years of it was nobody’s fault drain out of her and make room for the harder, truer thing that had taken its place.
After a while—she didn’t know how long, the sun had moved—she reached out blindly, the way she had that other night, and put her hand on Reno’s forearm. This time she didn’t stop there. This time she slid her hand down and laced her fingers through his and held on, and he closed his hand around hers and held on back, and neither of them said anything, because there wasn’t anything that needed saying that a hand couldn’t say better.
The lake lay flat and bright. Somewhere down the shore a motor started and faded. Marshmallow, having decided the humans had finally gotten their act together, tucked her nose under her tail and went to sleep between them.
Grace was going to have to get up eventually. There was a daughter to pick up and feed and a whole town that didn’t know yet what she knew, and a man dying in a house in town who might be a murderer or might only be a thief, and a long road ahead of all of them that wouldn’t end this year or maybe next.
But not yet.
For now she sat on the porch Liam built her, with her hand in the hand of the man who’d sealed it, and she let herself, for one more hour, be a woman who was held.
19
The call came on a Thursday, while Reno was flat on his back under the Mustang with grease up to his elbows and losing his argument with an oil-pan bolt.
He fished his phone out with a relative clean rag and squinted at a number he didn’t know. Apple Pie Creek exchange. He almost let it ring through to voicemail. Three weeks of Tara Marchand’s lawyer calling him non-stop to try to negotiate a deal had him bracing for a fight every time it rang.
“Mr. Steele.” A man’s voice spoke, careful and quiet. “This is George Hughes from the Apple Pie Creek Savings ’N’ Loan.”
Reno went very still under four thousand pounds of Ford.
He’d set up an account at that bank when it became clear he was going to be staying in the area for a while. He’d also set up a standing transfer, first of every month, routed anonymously to the bank account of the woman he’d made a widow. George Hughes had been the bank officer who ultimately approved the anonymous transfers. Reno’d shaken the man’s hand and asked him never to call unless the building was on fire.
The building was, apparently, on fire.
“Mr. Hughes,” Reno said cautiously.
The banker said, “A woman came in yesterday afternoon. She had her own bank’s paperwork, all of it in order, tracing where her monthly deposit originates.” A pause. “She got as far as us. She can’t get past us because there’s nothing past us to get to. You made sure of that. But she sat in my office for an hour and she was . . .” The man hunted for the word. “. . . determined.”
“Did you tell her anything?”
“Not a thing. I told her our customers’ affairs are private and by law I couldn’t help her.” Another pause. “Then I watched her cry in a rental car in my parking lot, Mr. Steele. She didn’t tell me anything about her personal circumstances, but I gather that finding you is extremely important to her. You struck me as a decent man, so I’m asking you to reconsider remaining anonymous to this woman.”
Reno stared up at the underside of the car.
“She left a letter,” Hughes continued. “Sealed. Addressed to, and I quote, ‘The person who has been taking care of us.’ She asked me to send it on, if there was anyone to send it to. I told her I’d see what I could do, which committed me to nothing. I have it in my drawer.” He cleared his throat. “What do you want me to do with it?”
The shop’s air compressor kicked on in the back bay. A logging truck downshifted loudly on Main Street and rumbled past. Across the street Grace was almost certainly braiding bread.
“Hold the letter for me,” Reno said. “Don’t mail it. I’ll call you back.”
“I’ll be waiting,” Hughes said, which was as close as he came in the call to telling Reno to quit being a jerk and tell the poor, crying widow who her benefactor was. “My personal cell phone number is on the card I gave you if you need to reach me after bank hours.”
Reno lay there under the Mustang for a long while not fixing anything at all.
A few weeks ago he would’ve led up to it gently and broken the news into little bits that wouldn’t overwhelm Grace’s delicate sensibilities. He would’ve planned a whole approach to ease her into it. But now he knew her to be strong enough to hear anything he had to say. And, in fact, she preferred to get news without any tiptoeing around.
And so, when she came back from tucking Lily into bed that evening, and joined him at the sink to finish the last dishes, he stood there with a dish towel in his hands and said,” I have some news.”
She looked up questioningly, her hands still in the soapy water.
“Susannah Perry traced the money to the bank in Apple Pie Creek.”
Grace rinsed the suds off her hands, turned the water off, and faced him.
“She left a letter,” he said. “The bank’s holding it. She wants to meet whoever’s been sending her the money.” He folded the towel in half, then in half again. “He promised he won’t tell her it’s me, but he did call me to ask what I want him to do.”
“What do you want him to do?”
