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“The article didn’t say.”
And she couldn’t ask Will.
“What about Montford? The university pressed charges, didn’t it?”
“No.” Not that she’d been able to find. There’d been nothing filed, that much she knew. And he’d just hit on the other problem she had where Will was concerned.
Not only did Tory Evans get away with her deceit, she was still right there in town. Married to a Ben Sanders, according to the records Addy had pulled up the previous afternoon. She’d adopted Ben’s daughter and the couple had had a child of their own, too, Phyllis Christine, born in 2001. The child would be twelve now.
More damning, though, was that Ben Sanders was a descendant of the Montford family—town founders and Montford University patriarchs.
And based on what she’d found in the local paper, the Phyllis Tory had stayed with when she’d first come to town was one of Becca Parsons’s best friends. Becca Parsons, as in Will’s wife.
“I’d say they’re lucky no one pressed charges.”
Not the words she’d wanted to hear. But exactly the same conclusion she’d drawn.
It appeared to Addy, with sickening dread, that Will Parsons had played favorites. That if his anonymous threats had anything at all to do with Tory Evans, he could have a tough road ahead of him. She figured he had a fair chance of winning—but the battle wouldn’t be easy. And he could lose his job.
Addy was really beginning to regret coming back to Shelter Valley.
For more reasons than one.
* * *
ON THURSDAY, NONNIE volunteered Mark to change Addy’s oil. The truck was due. He’d mentioned taking care of it before work. And before he knew what was happening, his grandmother had called Addy and told her Mark would be changing the oil on her car, too, while he was at it.
He could only hear one half of the conversation, but figured Addy was trying to refuse when he heard the old biddy say, ?
?I can’t let you do for me if you won’t let us do favors back,” in a pleading voice that didn’t come naturally to her at all. She’d never have gotten away with it if she’d been talking to him.
“No, really, he’ll have the oil pan out there, anyway. Won’t matter if he lets a little extra drip in.”
Sitting at the table, finishing the tuna sandwich she’d had waiting for him when he’d come in from class, Mark shook his head. He was going to have a serious talk with his grandmother.
Words at the ready, he waited for her to get off the phone. Seeing him, she wheeled down the hall toward her bathroom, assuring Addy that he’d know what kind of oil to get and she could settle up with him later.
By the time she hung up, she was in the bathroom with the door firmly locked behind her.
The ploy might have worked if he hadn’t just helped her change her padded undergarment half an hour before.
“Nonnie.” Standing outside the door, he used his most serious tone on her.
“I’m busy.”
“No, you aren’t. Come out here.”
“Nope.”
“What you do in my life is our business,” he said through the door. “You can’t interfere in someone else’s life.”
“Who’s interfering? I’m being neighborly, is all.”
The toilet flushed. She could be going. It wasn’t as if she couldn’t lift herself onto the seat and back to her chair. On her good days. She just didn’t have the capacity to hold it long enough to get herself there and situated sometimes.
Thinking of the struggle Nonnie had just managing life’s most basic functions, Mark felt his frustration drain away. He waited to make sure that she made it back to her chair okay, and let himself out to run downtown for more motor oil.
CHAPTER TWELVE
