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“Nothing much to tell. I grew up in New Jersey, my mother died when I was four, so I was raised by my father. My older brother likes to say he helped raise me, but he didn’t. Didn’t Kim tell me you have a sister?”
“Addison. Addy. She’s married, her husband is just back from Iraq, and they gave me my eight-year-old niece.”
“Gave her to you? You adopted her?”
“No, we just enjoy each other’s company, that’s all.”
Jecca was trying hard to see him but couldn’t. She couldn’t remember what Kim had told her about this particular cousin, but then there wer Chenhard toe so many of them. One was a lawyer, one wrote novels, a new one was a super jock, another one was a sheriff. The list seemed endless. And even though both he and Kim said she’d met this cousin, Jecca couldn’t remember him at all.
“Okay,” Tris said, “we’ve now told each other all the happy, sugary things, so what’s bad in your life?”
“’Fraid I don’t know you well enough to tell you that,” Jecca said.
“So what’s the good of this? Sitting here in utter blackness, two strangers who will never meet again, if we don’t talk of something besides superficialities?”
“We will meet again,” Jecca said. “And again. I’m going to be living next door to you for three whole months.”
“And what is that in the scope of life? Three months to actually talk to someone? It’s not much.”
Underlying his jesting, Jecca could hear the seriousness in his voice, and she remembered Kim’s story of how her cousin’s arm came to be broken. “Hit over the head,” Kim had said. “Pushed down a hill.” And the robber had wanted “something” Tris had. These were traumatic events.
When Tristan had fallen over the chaise she’d put in his path, she knew he’d been in pain, but he’d acted as though he wasn’t. If he concealed pain, did he also hide his true feelings from people here in Edilean? Jecca knew that she worked hard to keep all bad news from her father. There were times when she’d been so down she’d wanted to see no one, but she’d always done her best to put on a happy face around him.
“It must be difficult to live in a town full of family,” she said softly. “When you have one of those life setbacks, who do you talk to?”
He took so long to answer that she thought maybe he wasn’t going to. When he spoke, his voice was quiet. “A few months ago, a young woman came to Edilean for a job. I came very close to falling in love with her, but she recently married my best friend.”
“And this happened at the same time you broke your arm?”
“Yes. It’s all related.” He took a breath. “She’s in her second trimester now.”
“That was fast. Wait! If she’s that far along, maybe she only married him because she felt she had to.”
“I wish that were true,” Tris said, “but it’s not. She never once looked at me as anything but her friend.”
“That hurts,” Jecca said. She wasn’t going to say so, as Kim’s brother was his friend, but she’d felt that way when Reede ignored her. When she was silent, she heard him turn as though to look at her, but try as hard as she could, she couldn’t see him.
“Speaking of being hurt, whatever happened to Laura Chawnley?” Jecca asked. “I’ve always meant to ask Kim but haven’t. Is Laura still around?”
“Oh yes. She married the pastor, and they have strong, healthy kids. We thought the boy had a heart murmur but he’s okay.” C ok
Jecca laughed. “You really are a doctor, aren’t you?”
“Not now. While this damned arm heals I’m nothing.”
“I know that feeling well!”
“You? How could you know? Kim raves about you. When she was in college every e-mail she sent me was about you and the blue-bikini girl. What was her name?”
“Sophie. I bet Kim sent you more photos than just the one of us in swimsuits.”
“She sent hundreds, but for some reason, that’s the only one I remember. I stuck it on the mirror in my bedroom.”
“With your other girly pictures?”
“That was the only one.”
“Sophie is beautiful.”
