Dale Tolliver never came to the Grange.Word went around in the way word went around this valley that he’d sat in his truck across the street until the count was read out, and then drove home with his headlights off.
Sunny found she had no desire to gloat at him.He’d staked everything on a lie that Bonnie had cooked the town’s books.That, and the comfortable story that nothing in Cobbler Cove had ever been wrong.That Lucas Shoemacher was an innocent old man, and a bunch of widows were grieving too loud.He’d lost on both counts tonight.Something in her, though, some instinct she’d developed when she’d become a forensic accountant, whispered to her that the story still had worse losses ahead of it.
She was beside the pie table when she saw Bonnie draw Hank toward the coat rack at the back of the hall away from the noise.She saw Bonnie’s face change from happiness into something regretful.Pained, even.
Sunny headed for her friend before she even stopped to think about it.Something was wrong, and it involved Hank.As she got closer, Bonnie spotted her and subtly tipped her chin toward Hank to indicate that he was involved in whatever bad news she was delivering to him.
Sunny reached the pair in time to hear Bonnie say, “I reached all seven of them.It took me four days and one call to a ship’s satellite phone, but I reached every one of Lucas’s children.”
“And?”Hank said.
“They’re coming.All seven.”
“How on earth did you manage that?”Sunny blurted.The way she heard it, the Shoemacher children had scattered to the four winds after the fire, vowing never to return here again and wanting nothing to do with their father.
Bonnie shrugged modestly.
“Ellie booked a flight while we were still on the phone.Apparently, she called Trent after I did and talked him into driving down Thursday.The others were ...”she chose the word carefully, “...correct.Kind to me, every one of them.Cold as the lake about him.”
“Mm,” Hank responded, as if that didn’t surprise him.
Bonnie’s gaze came up and complicated grief warred with old anger.“Hank, in all those phone calls, not one of them asked me how their father was doing.Most of them just asked how soon they have to get here and how long they have to stay.”
The party roared on behind them, warm and bright.In the little pocket of quiet by the coats, Sunny stood between the town’s new mayor and its only doctor and felt the other story, the one underneath the election, turn itself one notch closer to its ending.
“I’ll do my best to see to it they get here in time,” Hank said.His phone buzzed at the end of that sentence like punctuation.
Sunny watched him read the screen and watched any vestige of the party leave his face.The day nurse’s name was visible to Sunny at the top of the message.Bonnie took his Styrofoam cup of coffee from him as he pocketed his phone, transforming from guest to doctor in the blink of an eye.It dawned on her that she’d never once seen him resent having to make that instant shift.
“Go,” Bonnie said.
He was already three steps toward the door.On impulse, Sunny caught up to him at the edge of the crowd.
“Lucas?”she asked.
“His heart’s throwing rhythms the nurse doesn’t like the look of.”He settled the hat.“Probably the start of the last lap.”
“I’ll get word to Bonnie if you need to tell her anything tonight.I doubt she could hear her phone ring in all this noise if you tried to call her.”
For one second his gaze came all the way back to hers, the way they used to across a kettle.Something in his eyes strained toward her like a dog at the end of a chain.Then it disappeared.
“Thank you,” he said, with terrible courtesy.
She stood in the swirling noise and watched the Grange door shut behind the only man in the valley who hadn’t gotten to celebrate one single thing all summer.
The rental was dark and quiet when she got home, all the WoWS kids farmed out to Natalie’s in a heap of sleeping bags so their mothers could see democracy work.Sunny made her own tea, in her own kitchen, with nobody to put the kettle on for her, and took it out to the back step.She sat down with the night smelling of cut hay and the lake.
She knew exactly what she’d been doing all week, even while she’d been pretending not to watch herself do it.She’d been gathering evidence on Hank.
The cold stove.The dark kitchen.The white envelope.The house is done.There’s not one thing left in it that needs you.That was circled in red and underlined in her mind.
Don’t let me put a thumb on the scale.
It was a damning collection of facts that told a clear, undeniable story.
That was the maddening truth of it.
But it was also true that he’d defended her to the gossips in town.He’d built her daughter a desk with his own hands.He’d handed the key to recovering three million dollars, knowing, she saw it clearly now, knowing exactly what it might cost him.
