Page 37 of Quiver

“I don’t know,” Fletcher said on reflex, even though she recognized the truth of the statement.

“I don’t think it was anybody’s fault you two weren’t good for each other.”

“Wow, Gram.” She laughed a little nervously. “I didn’t know you were bringing a knife on this ride. I always thought you liked me.”

“I do,” Gram said calmly. “From the first time Ava brought you over, looking all handsome and a little bashful, I had a real soft spot for you. Which is why I’m glad you didn’t end up together, because I never understood what you saw in Ava.”

Fletcher scrubbed her face with her hands. Maybe she should call a medical professional, because Gram wasn’t talking sense at all. “I can’t believe you said that. Ava is a nice girl, the nicest, and sweet and loyal. You love her.”

“Of course I do! I’ve never loved anyone more than I love Ava. She’s about as perfect a girl as ever lived. I see why Bex didn’t wait long.” Gram smiled with a hint of pride. “Now that’s a great match. But relationships, they’re a lot like rummy. Two high cards close together make a good hand only if they’re suited.”

“And Ava and I weren’t suited?”

She shook her head. “You already knew too much. Ava understood love, and so did you, but you knew pain, too. She knew all about candlelight and sunshine, but you knew about roaring fires and getting burned. Nice girls aren’t for everybody.”

“Quite a statement there, Gram.”

“When you get to be my age, you don’t fuss around with making the truth more palatable.”

“Let me see if I have this right. You think I shouldn’t be alone so much, so I need to find me a not-so-nice girl.”

Gram shrugged. “I think you might’ve already found one. I’m old, but I’m not dead, and neither are you. The whole town knows the Manchester girl left with a piece of your heart, and now she’s back.”

“She’s just passing through.”

“Maybe.”

Sweat pricked Fletcher’s palms under her gloves. “She’s going to go, and I suspect she intends to exact another pound of flesh to take with her.”

“I suppose you have some say in stopping that.”

“Which part?”

Gram patted her knee under the blanket. “Whichever part you decide to fight for.”

“Honey, we’re going to the Collinses’ for dinner and cards,” Kylie’s mom said from the doorway to her room. “You’re invited, too.”

She looked up from the magazine in her lap. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

“I figured,” her mom said. “Why don’t you call some of your friends and see what they’re up to?”

It took a second to realize she meant people here in Vermont, only Kylie couldn’t think of a single person her age she still considered a friend, though saying so would probably be cause for concern. “I’m enjoying the downtime to relax and recharge.”

“I know. That’s what you’ve said every night, but surely you’re getting a little bored. You barely stayed out an hour on Christmas and wouldn’t go out at all on New Year’s Eve. You haven’t seen anyone but us for weeks.”

“I see Fletcher every morning.”

A shadow passed over her mother’s expression before she schooled it. “I know. You must be working hard. I’ve seen the bruises on your arm, but are the two of you getting a chance to talk?”

She snorted softly at the absurdity of that image.

“Yeah, I thought so.” Her mom sighed.

“We’re working together, which honestly is shocking enough. I don’t expect either of us to have a total personality transplant. It’s a job, a weirdly connected and ludicrously complicated job.”

“I worry about you getting, I don’t know, a skewed sort of tunnel vision.”

She tried not to roll her eyes. Her mom meant well, but she had little concept of what it meant to live in her line of work. Her entire life had been one form of tunnel vision after another for years.