by Stella Quinn
Katie pressed her fingers to her eyes. Was she so much of a burden?
Her sister hesitated, then carried on reading aloud. “The man that raised us passed away a year ago, and we’ve been really close ever since. I moved away recently for work, and my sister got really sad and quiet. Now if I start making time for someone else in my life, will that make her even more sad?”
Katie was crying now, and for some dumb reason, her shoulders and lungs had decided to join in the party and turn her tears into a full-blown sob-fest. But also crying, she realized with a shock, was her sister.
“If I had to choose,” Veronica continued, her voice thick. “I’d choose her. But Anna…I really don’t want to have to choose.”
The only sound for a long moment was the ka-kaw-ka of a quail from somewhere in the neighboring garden. Katie felt the sun on her face while she listened to her sister’s sad sniffles beside her. This was the moment when she needed to step up, move away from her fear of being left alone and lonely. If only it didn’t feel so hard.
She let out a long breath, then began. “Vee?”
“Yes, honey.”
“I wanted to be mad at you and make this all your fault but really...I think I’ve been a big idiot.”
Her sister’s tears dissolved into a snort. “Of course you have. You’re a Shields, aren’t you? When we do anything, we do it like rock stars. Idiocy included.”
She tried to say more, but her sister wrapped her in a hug so tight words became impossible. Eventually, she had to fight her way out of the stranglehold in order to take a breath.
“Cup of tea?” she said. “Followed by a long overdue talk?”
“I thought you’d never ask. Come on, let’s sit in the kitchen.”
They slipped into an old routine, Vee filling the kettle while Katie pulled mugs from the hooks on the old cabinet.
“So,” Veronica said, once they were seated across from each other at the scarred Formica table. “Confession time. Okay, I’ve been worried about you, but I’ve also been having some relationship dramas, and I’ve been frazzled. I wrote that letter just after I moved out to Maple Ridge. It was a dumb move. I should have just talked to you, but I was...scared. A bit selfish too, if I’m being honest. I’d just met Pete, and I wanted to just think about me for a while. I’m sorry, Katie.”
Katie took a sip of the green tea she’d brewed. “Okay. Confession time for me, too. I didn’t hear from you for a few days, and you weren’t returning my calls. Then I misplaced your next letter—it slid under the sofa, and I didn’t find it for a week—and yeah, I kinda went nuts.”
“How nuts are we talking/”
“Oh, it’s up there. I reported you missing at the Maple Ridge Police Department.”
Veronica was halfway through a cookie, and a spray of crumbs hit the table as she gasped. “You what?”
She shrugged. “Idiot, remember?”
Her sister’s lips twitched, then her nose, then she let out a whoop that would have silenced every quail in a ten-mile radius. “The police department,” she snickered. “Oh, that’s good. That is so funny.”
She couldn’t help it; her sister’s laugh was so infectious. “I marched on in there snapping my fingers. They cowered before me.”
The snort her sister made would have done a pig proud. “You did not. Stop it.”
“I left no stone unturned. Your current boss. Your ex-boss. Your ornery eighty-three-year-old neighbor. Even...” oh boy, this really was confession time. She winced. “I even tried to find out who the guy was at your old job that you had a crush on.”
“Freeman? But that was like, a year ago...and he barely knew who I was.”
“Well,” she sniffed. “He knows who you are now.”
“Wow.”
Yeah. Wow. As her sister’s laugh dried up, she held her hand out across the table. “I can see that it’s all ridiculous. I know why it’s funny. But the real confession is this, Vee: I really didn’t think it was funny or ridiculous at the time.”
“You want to tell me about it?”
She had to tell someone, and who better then Vee, who knew her better than she knew herself?
“I’ve been stressed. About a lot of things, over such a long time. I’ve just kept it all bottled up instead of talking it out, and when I couldn’t get hold of you, I wasn’t able to think rationally about it.”
“Ok. When did all the stress start?”
“Uncle Roly’s funeral. It was a sunny day, do you remember? And we’d plucked every flower from the garden here to make a wreath for his service. The grass was so green, the sky was so blue, the sun so high in the sky...but I couldn’t feel any of it. I just felt cold. All day, and almost every day since, until—”
No. She wasn’t going to think about Anton. Not yet. He came later.
“Maybe we should have seen a counselor, both of us,” said Veronica.
“Yeah. But then, of course, the state was in lockdown, and we all had to deal with those months of uncertainty. Then I met Jetson.”
“Jetson the rat.”
She smiled. “He wasn’t that bad, was he?”
“He never loved you.”
“Well, to be fair, I never loved him. But still, it stung when he took off as though I’d meant nothing at all.”
Vee nodded. “And then I left you.”
Katie took in a breath. “I needed to let you go, but I wasn’t ready. I think, after Uncle Roly died, I had this idea that you were now the head of the family, and would look out for me like he always did.”
“I will look out for you, Katie.”
“Yeah. I know. But we’re both adults. It’s time I started living like one.”
“You’re being too hard on yourself. You have a fabulous job, you volunteer at the refuge. That’s about as adult as it gets, Katie.”
Perhaps. But it wasn’t enough. “I’ve had an idea, but I’m not sure if you’ll like it.”
Veronica raised her eyebrows. “Try me.”
“This house. I’d like to buy you out of your half. It’s time I started thinking of it as my house, not Uncle Roly’s house.”
“Oh!”
“Think about it. You could use the money to put into your house-flipping business. And I could stop living my life as though I’m in a holding pattern. I need to land, Vee. I need to feel some solid ground beneath my feet.”
Vee had tears in her eyes as she looked around the faded blue paint on the kitchen cupboards, the door to the laundry room where their heights at various ages had been carefully etched. “I love this place, Katie. But I’ve been ready to move on from it for a long time. I’d be pleased to sell you my half.”
“You would?”
“Of course I would, you nut. I just hope home ownership really will help you feel...grounded.”
Katie hid a grin. “It was Tuna Yango who gave me the idea.”
“It was who? Oh, you mean the crossword compiler? How on earth—?”
“Um, yeah. This is the part of the missing-person crisis I didn’t tell you yet.”
“I am agog. Start talking.”
“His name is Anton.”
Her sister held both her hands up in the air like she was bringing in a jumbo jet to land. “Wait, wait...is that a blush I see on your cheeks? Oh my word, that is a blush. You met a guy while hunting me down?”
“Yeah. I met a guy.” She smiled, and a few tears may have slipped down her cheeks, but they were happy and hopeful ones this time, not desperate ones.
“Well, come on over here and give me a hug, so I can cry again, too.”
She slid her arms around her sister and buried her face in her neck. “Love you, Vee.”
“Love you too, Katie. Now.” Vee said, pulling her face away. “Forget the tea pot; is there wine somewhere in this ancient fridge I no longer own half of?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll pour, you talk. Tell me everything.”
Chapter 28
The park in the center of Mapl
e Ridge was busy on Friday lunchtime. Anton realized, as he looked across at Prince sitting high and mighty in the front seat of his Jeep, that he may not have thought this through.
First problem: he had to walk into a bank to persuade a woman he’d never met that he needed to talk to her. Second problem: he had a dog on probation who couldn’t be left alone tied up at the bank’s door.
Where there was a will, there was a way, he thought. And he had one heck of a will.
“Prince, old friend. Today is important, okay?”
A terrier with mismatched brown and white ears was flying across the park’s grass in pursuit of a ball, and Prince had never seemed less interested in anything he had to say. He was straining at his car harness and had started to drool, his eyes fixed on the running dog.
“We don’t drool on leather, pal,” he said. “And we play nice. Understood?”
Prince gave a woof as Anton unclicked him from the seat belt, but didn’t lunge for freedom, which was a good sign.
He hoped.
The bank turned out to be dog friendly, which definitely was a good sign. He was about to ask a teller if she could let Veronica Shields know she had a visitor, when a tall woman with a direct green gaze that had to be from the same gene pool as Katie’s walked past him.
“Vee?” he said.
She came to an abrupt stop beside him. “Excuse me?”
“You must be Vee. You have Katie’s eyes.”
Those green eyes widened. “Holy mackerel. You must be the guy.”
Hmm. It was hard to read whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.
She dropped her eyes to the black furry beast at his feet. “And Prince. Wow. Just ... wow.”
“Can we talk? Do you have a minute?”
She had her hand under his arm and was guiding him out of the bank in the space of a heartbeat. “For you, Anton, I have my whole lunch hour. You can buy me and Prince a hotdog in the park and then ...”
Okay. So she hadn’t hated him at first sight, which was the best sign yet. Katie must have said something nice about him at least for her sister to be willing to talk. “And then?”
Her grin was fast and such an exact match for Katie’s, it made his head spin.
“Then, you can tell me everything.”
He was pretty sure everything didn’t include the kiss on the front porch. Holding Katie’s hand as they walked the quiet streets of Redwood Cove. Especially not feeling his heart tear a little as Katie cried over the agony aunt letter in the little blue envelope.
He could spin out a story into a hundred-thousand-word blockbuster when the mood took him, but today wasn’t about some long-winded narrative about how he’d come to know Katie, and how she made him feel, and the conflicts along the way that had somehow brought them closer together.
Today was just about the emotion.
“I’m in love with your sister,” he said.
“Oh, Anton.” Veronica looked at him across the picnic table, a sauce-stained napkin forgotten in her hand. “Have you told Katie that?”
He swallowed. “That’s been a little tricky. Last time I saw her, she was running out of my house crying.”
“Yeah. There’s been a bit of that lately from us Shields girls.”
“Have you seen her?”
“Yeah. We caught up.”
“She was pretty worried about you.”
“I know, she told me. The stakeout on my apartment, the police department.”
“Where were you? Oh...sorry. You don’t have to answer that. Curiosity is one of my bad habits.”
She grinned. “I’d expect nothing less from Tuna Yango.”
He shook his head. “That silly pen name.”
“No way! I liked to imagine I was the only one who’d clued in that the crossword compiler and the Dear Anna columnists were both anagrams of Agony Aunt. I love that page. And sharing it was something Katie and I got a lot of joy out of. Well...more me than her to be honest. I thought she loved playing crossword games with me, turns out she wasn’t that interested.”
“Yeah. She’s a one-plus-one girl, she keeps telling me.”
Her sister smiled. “You know, I think I like you, Anton Price. Enough to maybe not cause a fuss that you called me Vee. I’m Veronica to most people, all four syllables.”
He tilted his head. “Well, when we first got acquainted, your name was Very Secretive, wasn’t it? You are the person who wrote in, I take it?”
She nodded, then began shredding the serviette into strips. “Yeah. That was me.”
“I’m giving up that column.”
“You are? People love Dear Anna.”
He shrugged. “I never liked doing it. It seemed false, assuming you know enough about someone from a couple of paragraphs to give them life advice. It’s a gimmick to sell newspapers, not counseling.”
“Maybe. But can I tell you something, Anton? Because you look as though you’ve been beating yourself up over this even more than I have. If I hadn’t written that letter, and you hadn’t given it to Katie all these months later, she and I might never have talked out the things we needed to talk out.”
He frowned. “There was some sort of circuitous logic in there that I couldn’t follow.”
“She reads the Saturday paper on the back step, with a mug of tea, like clockwork. When I put that letter in, I was so sure she’d see it. I needed a...”
“An ice breaker?”
Vee smiled at him. “Exactly. But then for some reason, she didn’t see it when she needed to, and I chickened out about showing her. So it’s good that you gave it to her.”
He felt the dog shift at his feet so that a heavy snout was tucked up against his ankle. The connection was a comfort. “I don’t know about that.”
“I do know, Anton. Trust me on this. Because of you, Katie and I have been able to work things out. Me and Katie are good. Really good, for the first time in a long time. So good, in fact, that I’m going to tell you a little secret.”
He took a breath. “This isn’t a Dear Anna thing, is it? Because I’ve given that up.”
“This is a Katie thing.”
“I’m listening.”
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
“I’m confused. I haven’t asked you a question.”
She smiled at him and rose to her feet. “Oh, Anton, of course you have. You drove all this way because you wanted to know something. And I’m telling you, the answer is yes.”
He took a deep breath. “You’re being very cryptic, Vee.”
“I know. I have to be. Katie’s an independent woman, and it’s not up to me to sort out her life; she’ll do a fine job all on her own. I’m just...giving you a little clue.”
And with a wink, and a waggle of her fingers to the dog, she was gone.
Yes.
One little word, and one little clue. He practiced the questions that might go with it in his head. Did Katie love him? Yes.
Was Vee okay with him wooing her sister? Yes.
“Or I’ve got this all totally wrong,” he said to Prince as he led him back to the car past two poodles and a Chihuahua in a candy-pink dog suit, all of whom Prince nobly ignored, “and the question Vee was actually answering, was Did you enjoy your hotdog?”
This was too important to get wrong.
He dropped gears as he wound the Jeep back down the mountain pass. He had a ninety-minute drive back to Redwood Cove. How many cryptic clues had he worked out over the years? Created, wrapped in neat black-and-white boxes, curated?
Hundreds. Thousands.
But this was the one he needed to get right.
He looked at his watch. Vee had said Katie read the Cove to Coast Herald cover to cover every Saturday morning on the back step. He had a plan. A wild, hairy, audacious plan...but did he have time. He tapped the talk setting on his steering wheel that linked to his phone. “Call Jules,” he commanded.
“Cove to Coast Herald, Julia speaking.”
“Jules, it’s m
e. I need a favor.”
“What, my love?”
“I want to change my page for tomorrow’s edition. What’s the deadline?”
“For tomorrow?” she squeaked. “Oh, pet, it’s sent.”
“Can we unsend it?”
“Well, yes, if I call Reggie up at the printers. How much time do you need?”
Shoot. He had another hour’s drive, and he had to visit a store in town and drive out to the airport too. Another hour to typeset. “Can I have until four p.m.?”
“For you, pet, consider it done.”
“You’re a sweetheart, Jules. I don’t care what Danny says about you.”
She giggled, as well she might. Danny loved Julia even more than he loved his antique safe. “What’s the big rush?”
“I just thought of the perfect photo for Page Seventeen.”
His next phone call was not going to be as quick. He hit the talk button on his dash again. “Call Dr. Alice Goodly.”
He had a cured patient to report.
Chapter 29
Katie opened the Saturday edition of the Cove to Coast Herald, swiping off the little curls of shredded newspaper that Rose’s canine teeth had created. She couldn’t believe she was awake at—she stared at her wristwatch blearily—five a.m.
She needed tea, possibly a whole pot of it, which was why she’d brought the old brown pot with its battered owl cozy out with her to the back step.
The sun was hours away, but the light from the open kitchen door spilled out like a small moon, giving her plenty of light to read.
Summer Festival articles, a full-page spread on the Mayor’s Green-the-Streets campaign, and—deep in the middle of the paper—the page Veronica had been using for her crossword lessons every week for months.
Katie rarely bothered reading Page Seventeen—the crossword clues had been a chore, not fun, and she had no interest in reading other people’s personal business—she’d just kept up with it because it was important to Vee.
Today, however, she looked. She really looked. Anton, and the terrible way she’d run out of his house the other day, had been top of her thoughts. She had to explain, and she would...she just needed to get herself together a little first.