Page 7 of Summer Holiday Lifeline

“You missed nothing. In fact, you saw more than most people do.”

Which made no sense, but before Myles could ask, Lucky grinned wide at something past Myles’s shoulder, then lifted an arm and waved. “Hey, Steven. Okay?”

Myles turned to see a man standing on his porch across the street. Both hands gripped the porch railing and the man leaned out, as if he wanted to jump the railing but didn’t quite dare. White-blond hair tossed in an errant breeze, and the man, Steven, shook it out of his eyes.

“Who…?” Myles stared, breath taken by that same breeze as Steven smiled and waved back.

“Not hurt?” Steven called.

“No.” The word was a faint croak, caught behind Myles’s trapped breath. He cleared his throat. “No. I’m good.” He nodded, waved his cane in a vague gesture of he didn’t even know what, and swallowed hard. He turned abruptly to Lucky. “Sorry. Who is that?”

A calculating expression swept off Lucky’s face as Myles focused back on him, replaced by a generic host expression. “Steven Barrow. He owns that used bookstore. Hey, you read, right?”

“What?”

“You read.” Lucky took his arm and turned him towards the front door. “So you should check out his place. Come on.” He tugged slightly, and Myles fell into step alongside him, his skewed balance having nothing to do with his bad hip.

Then a deep, all too familiar rumble of laughter inside the house distracted him before he could further grill Lucky on his neighbour.

He stopped abruptly on the porch, suddenly hesitant to go inside. “Ozzy’s here? Now?”

“He knows you’re coming,” Lucky said, a hand on Myles’s back. “He’s okay with it.”

“Am I?” Myles asked.

Lucky’s brows drew down.

“Rhetorical,” Myles assured him. “I knew he lives here.”

“You guys both got here by your own roads,” Lucky reminded him. “You don’t need each other anymore.”

Myles drew in a breath, nodded, then moved forward again. He’d known from the day he stepped out his door in Calgary that Ozzy would be at the end of this trip. He’d made the choice to come anyway. He and the kids all needed some time away from that city, his sister’s house, everything, and there was no better place than here, where Lucky would have his back.

The screen door, when he approached, opened smoothly to the soft tinkle of bells, though he saw no sign of an automatic opening mechanism, or of bells.

Since no one else thought that strange, he pretended he hadn’t noticed and followed Lucky inside.

CHAPTER THREE

Steven pushed a toe against the porch planks. Above him, the chains holding the swing creaked a mournful scree into the afternoon. His tea had gone cold as he sat there, but he wasn’t ready to go back inside when everyone else had gone off to do their own thing, leaving the house quiet and the shop empty.

It had been an interesting afternoon of neighbour watching, as it turned out. Lucky had emerged from the B and B numerous times when cars had gone by, frowning at them, like they were supposed to be someone else.

Kreed had even come out after him once, taken him by the shoulders, and turned him to go back inside. Whatever Kreed said to him, Steven hadn’t been able to hear, but Lucky had nodded and looked dejected at the same time, before they’d disappeared back inside.

Across the road now, a couple strolled, laughing, out of the B and B. He watched them turn left towards the scattering of second-hand shops at the top of the street. Most people took the same route. Sooner or later, they would make it to the end of the street, cross and come back down to arrive at his used bookstore. He’d go in then.

As he watched them slip into the first shop, a car rolled down the quiet street, slowed, then stopped in front of the Oaks. It idled there for a moment before the engine died.

“Isn’t that a nice ride, Emma?” Steven asked the small tortoiseshell cat on the swing next to him.

She yawned, licked her front paw once, then tucked it back under her chest, blinking into the afternoon sunshine.

“Well, it is,” Steven told her. “Scoff all you want, but that is one of the last of a dying breed of what we like to refer to as the boat-car. Huge, inefficient, impractical, but oh-so-comfy.”

The cat closed her eyes.

Too bad for her, because as she did, the front door of the car swung open and an army-booted foot hit the pavement, followed by another, and then a figure stood from the driver’s seat, rising up—and up—and up, to stand beside the behemoth of a car.