Chapter 16 #3
He took a deep breath. “Because three years ago I made a wrong call on a case that cost a family everything. I didn’t know it until this lawsuit came along, but I’ve been waiting for a case to take that means something. Where I can save a family everything.”
“And more importantly,” he said slowly, “because it’s you. Even if the Perry case had never happened, I would do this for you.”
But the Perry case had happened, and she knew what it had cost him to come back to the law after it. And he’d paid that price for her.
“All right,” she said quietly. “A dollar retainer.”
“Done.”
“In writing. Tonight.”
“You’ve got it,” he replied.
Grace and Mary closed the shop at three.
Mary wiped down the counters, turned the chairs up, and mopped the floor while Grace counted the till.
Then Grace made them each cups of chamomile tea because it was soothing, and she suspected one or both of them would need soothing before this conversation was over.
Across the street, she could see Reno’s silhouette bending over the Mustang. His presence nearby was comforting. If this went badly, he’d be here to pick up the pieces of her and put her back together.
She and Mary sat down on the stools behind the front counter.
Mary told Grace about Sunday dinners at her mother’s house.
How her sister asked questions about her work that Mary thought were just interest in her.
How she hadn’t realized the information she’d given her sister had to have been used to harass Grace until after the intruder tried to get in the back door.
Mary told her about a notebook she’d found under the passenger seat of her sister’s car with a list of times in it that corresponded to Grace’s daily schedule—when the store opened and closed, when she dropped off and picked up Lily, when she got up in the morning and went to bed at night.
She told Grace about finding Tara Marchand’s name in her sister’s phone log, the dates always one day before something bad happened to Grace.
And she talked about feeling trapped. She loved Grace and loved her job, but her mother and sister would never forgive her if her sister got into trouble with the law because Mary turned her in.
When Mary finished, Grace said gently, “Thank you for telling me.”
“Are you going to fire me?”
“I already told you I wouldn’t. I meant it.”
Mary started to cry, and Grace put an arm around her. Mary leaned into it, and they sat there together until Mary finished crying.
“Mary, I need you to tell Cooper what you just told me. He’s a good man. He’ll keep your sister’s name as quiet as he can for as long as he can.”
“He’ll arrest her.”
“He may have to. But he won’t take pleasure in it, and he won’t make a parade of it through Apple Pie Creek. I’ll go with you to talk with him if you want me to.”
Mary thought about it for a moment. “Okay.”
“Thank you, Mary.”
They sat for another minute. Across the street, the auto shop went dark.
“Go home,” Grace said. “Sleep. Or try to sleep. Come in when you wake up tomorrow without an alarm clock.”
Mary nodded, wiped her face with her hands, and left.
Grace sat there another minute or two until Reno’s truck pulled up out front.
She locked the bakery door, walked across the sidewalk, and got in.
“Did she tell you?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Will she tell Cooper.”
“Tomorrow. I’m going with her.”
“Good.”
He drove for a bit in silence, then said, “Thank you for trusting me to take care of your case.”
“I know you well enough to be certain you’re the best at what you do,” she replied matter-of-factly. “You don’t settle for anything less from yourself. It’s why you’ve been so hard on yourself these past three years.”
He was thoughtfully silent the rest of the way to Tessa’s farm.
When she stepped down from the truck in Tessa’s driveway, his hand was there at her elbow even though she didn’t need to be steadied. He steadied her anyway, and she let him, and she liked it.
They walked across the gravel toward the porch. Through the kitchen window, Grace could see Lily standing on a kitchen chair stirring something at the counter while Tessa watched her.
“Looks like Lily’s making supper,” Reno observed.
“God help us.”
He laughed and they went inside.
Tessa insisted they stay for the pizza Lily had helped her make for supper.
While the pizzas baked in the oven, Makayla tried to show Lily how to play her violin, and the house was filled with screeching noises fit to wake the dead.
Reno suggested it sounded like two cats fighting, and Dillon grinned and suggested it sounded like that cats were doing something else together.
Nobody brought up the lawsuit over supper, and it was a laughter-filled affair with Dillon and Reno one-upping each other with stories about the other brother’s misspent youth.
Reno carried Lily out to the truck piggyback on his shoulders, giggling. He put her in her car seat and buckled her in, and as the three of them drove toward the cottage, Lily announced, “I want a brother.”
“Why’s that?” Grace asked, startled.
“So I when I grow up, I can tell funny stories about dumb things he did.”
“What if he’s really smart and never does dumb things?” Reno asked.
Lily said with disdainfully, “He’s a boy. He’ll do dumb things.”
That made Reno laugh, and Grace smiled beside him, distracted. She’d loved being pregnant and having a baby, in spite of being overwhelmed by grief the whole time. It would be nice to experience it when happy.
An image of a baby boy with Reno’s dark, dark brown hair and big, dark eyes popped into her head, shocking her into silence.
After Lily was asleep with a stuffed seal under each arm, Grace went out to the back porch, where Reno was typing on his laptop. Undoubtedly, he was writing up some dastardly new filing to cause Tara Marchand and her lawyer headaches.
“Reno, can I ask you a question?”
He looked up. “Of course. Anything.”
“What does Madison like? We’re meeting her tomorrow and I want her to feel comfortable with me.”
“She’s going to love you. And to answer your question, she likes horses, math, and sarcastic boys. Last I heard, she’s fretting about what she wants to study in college and which university she should go to.”
“Isn’t that decision still a few years away for her?”
Reno replied, “She’s fourteen going on thirty-five.”
“What should I bring for dessert?” she asked.
“A pie. Madison will trade her left shoe for a pie.”
“What kind?”
“Fruit pies. Apple, peach, cherry,” Reno replied. “And you’d better bring more than one. There will be Steeles present. Hank can put away half a pie in one sitting, and Dillon’s not far behind.”
“Noted. What’s your favorite?” she asked.
“Pecan pie. The kind my grandma used to make. Best pecan pie I ever had.”
She nodded, a plan forming in her head. She would text Tessa tonight. Ask her to have Dillon contact his mom and see if she’d be willing to send Grace their grandma’s pecan pie recipe.
“What are you working on?” she asked him with a glance at his laptop.
“Your retainer contract. It’s ready for you to sign, if you’d like. You can do it electronically on my laptop.”
She sat down beside him and he passed her the computer. He put his left arm on the sofa cushion’s top behind her and used his right hand to point at where she was supposed to type her name.
She signed the document and lifted the laptop to hand it back to him. His hand closed around hers, and lightning shot all the way from her fingers to her toes. The image of that dark-haired baby boy flashed through her mind, as well.
He let go of her hand belatedly and took the laptop from her.
He went inside, and she stood on the porch for a minute looking at the lake, whose surface was inky black tonight. The moon shone across its surface in blue-white relief.
Was there another child in her future? In their future?
She couldn’t pretend any longer that nothing was happening between them if she was thinking about potential children with him. He was great with Lily. Natural dad material.
He was kind, thoughtful, steady, hard-working, and made her laugh. Which was to say, he was natural husband material, too.
The good news was he didn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave, nor in any hurry to advance their relationship any further than she was ready for it to go.
But what if she was in a hurry to advance it? Was he ready for that?
Only one way to find out.
She was going to bake the man his grandma’s pecan pie.