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She said, “I don’t believe for a minute that it was a coincidence you were in the supermarket that day. What were you doing there?”
“Buying food and toilet paper.”
“Damn you! Don’t be cute. How did you come to be in the produce section when—”
“I followed you into the store.”
She inhaled a swift breath and on a soft expulsion asked, “Why?”
The time for playing it cool had passed. He pushed himself away from the counter and faced her squarely. “As I told you, someone had pointed you out to me. But not in the pie shop, and not after you had lost your baby. It was earlier on. You must not have been back in town for long, because you were in the post office to rent a mailbox. I was there to pick up a package. The woman working the counter caught me looking at you, and—”
“Why were you looking at me?”
He tipped his head down in a manner that asked, Really? “Come on.”
Self-consciously she glanced aside before coming back to him.
He continued. “The postal worker asked if I remembered the scandal about Joe Maxwell, and I said, ‘Vaguely,’ and she told me you were his daughter. Long lost. Now living in Penton again. That’s how I came to know who you were.”
“That’s the truth?”
“Swear to God.”
“If it was that innocent, then why have you been hush-hush about it?”
“I didn’t tell you this morning because you were already freaked out over your ghost driver.”
“How do I know you’re not lying now about the post office?”
“You had on blue jeans with holes in the knees. Red t-shirt. You hooked your sunglasses in the neck of it while you were filling out the form for the mailbox. Your ponytail—high, on the top of your head—was lopsided. Your pregnancy wasn’t obvious yet, so I didn’t know about that until later.”
“You saw me again?”
“Couple of times.”
“When, where?”
“Around. And so did a lot of other people.”
“A lot of other people haven’t broken into my house in the middle of the night.”
She said that with heat, and he couldn’t say he blamed her. But he didn’t defend himself.
“I suppose that on one of these Arden sightings, you noticed my baby bump.”
“Yeah, but by then, I’d already heard you were pregnant.”
“From whom?”
“I picked it up in the hair and nail salon.”
“While getting your roots done?”
With utmost patience, he said, “A friend of mine owns it. A squirrel had nested in the attic insulation and chewed up some wiring. I was asked to trap and relocate the squirrel, and repair the damage. While I was up there—”
“You overheard that Joe Maxwell’s daughter was pregnant.”
“But no daddy to be seen. Juicy stuff. That kept them going for a good half hour.”
