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Dr. Crispin M. Coleson had a nice ring to it. Professor of mathematics at one of the best universities in the country? FCU might not be Ivy League, but it had prestige. She could see doing that, too. She could teach some undergrad math next semester and get a feel whether she liked it.
In the meantime, she’d make flyers up tonight about offering tutoring. Eden really needed that money right now.
Colesons took care of Colesons. No matter what.
Her mom’s car was in the driveway. So were Eden’s, Cara’s, and Samia’s. And there was Heather’s blue Jeep. Cashlyn’s little car, too. Even Joy’s van was there. Maybe Joy had brought Hope, too.
Her family. She smiled. She loved it when they were all together. Maybe Uncle Norman would drive everyone down from Oklahoma tonight, too. That would be awesome.
She stepped inside.
Her mom was at the kitchen island, attacking a stack of frozen hamburger patties with a butterknife trying to get them apart. She looked up with Crispin walked in. “Hi, baby. I was wondering when you were going to get home.”
“I was at the library.” She had found her own way home. She was trying to be a bit less dependent on her mom lately. She was an adult, after all.
“I thought I saw you in the law library this afternoon,” Crispin’s older sister Cara said from the kitchen island. “I was going to see if you needed a ride home, but when I got closer, the girl had blue in her hair. I didn’t see her from the front, but I could have sworn it was you from the side today. Until the blue.”
Crispin definitely didn’t have blue hair. At least, not anymore. That was years ago—a dare from Summer. And something she would never do again. “I was in the lower-level library most of the afternoon.”
“Next time, I’ll check downstairs.” Cara was chopping lettuce into equal chunks. Nice and precise, like her sister had always liked. “We’re all going to grill out again tonight. The others are driving down now. Hope’s riding with Marcia’s family. We’re going to have a family meeting to figure out how we can help pay for Iagan’s tuition. And Heather and the girls are moving to Finley Creek in two weeks. And Mom got a promotion at the hospital. And she’s finally getting off third shift in a few weeks.”
Crispin hugged her mom from the side. She always hugged from the side, and not the front. It just felt easier that way. “Congratulations, Mom.”
Going to third shift had been hard for her mom, but when they’d moved it was the only shift that had needed help in PICU. Her mom had taken a step down to get a job here in Finley Creek. She’d been the headof the small PICU unit at the previous hospital where she and Eden and Cashlyn and Samia had all worked before. Her mom would make any sacrifice she had to for things to work out for her kids. But now, her mom could get off third shift and could have a more normal schedule.
Crispin would be able to see her mom more, too.
Her sisters knew what they wanted, her cousins, her aunts. And now, Crispin thought she had a real plan for her life, too.
The professor idea felt soright.
Everything felt good now.
How cool was that?
“Apparently, the girls in PICU recommended me to Dr. Holden-Deane personally, and it was endorsed by Dr. Alvaro. She’s a trauma surgeon at the hospital I’ve met a few times—she’s actually his sister-in-law. I’ve never met him, but I received a letter from him offering me the position. He’s at a conference now, with his wife. I have met her a few times. She has the prettiest dark-red hair.”
“I think you’re going to be the best PICU nurse they’ve ever had.”
If this Dr. Holden-Deane had half a brain cell, he’d see just how special of a nurse her mom really was. But for now, there was a teeny, tiny brand-new baby Coleson in this place somewhere. Crispin so wanted to hold her and snuggle. She loved her family so much, from her mom all the way down to little Kemberly Kaye. She had her family, they were together, she was figuring out what she wanted for her future—maybe Finley Creek wasn’t so bad, after all?
40
Zoey hada list of fifteen names, from the gravestones at Coleson Hollow Hope Life Church. It was time for some good old-fashioned legwork.That meant actuallytalkingto people who had been around Garrity back then.
Sydney had ranked the names in the most likely order to have been the father of Denise Daviess. She'd arranged them by age, by location in the graveyard—though that was a stretch, honestly—and by where they had lived at the approximate time of Denise's birth.
Sydney and her pal Grace had been very, very thorough. To have narrowed it down to fifteen names from the seventy-six that had been on Zoey's original list as quickly as they had, spoke of serious skill. Scary, scary skill.
If Grace, Sydney, Jo-Jo, and Pen combined their considerable brain-power and ever chose to go bad—there would probably be no stopping them. They were sometimes too smart for their own good, Zoey had thought before. And with the resources Sydney had at her disposal...
She was looking forward to seeing what kind of women the four of them became someday.
Maybe. At a definite distance, though.
But for now, she had an interview to do. Right there in Coleson Hollow.She'd called Murdoch's office looking for him, but his chief deputy had told her Murdoch had taken the afternoon off to move his belongings to his brother’s place in Value.
He wasn't sitting around. Now that he'd been told he'd gotten Major Crimes, he was in a major hurry.
