by Becky Wade
Until. Until Harrison had met the love of his life.
And it hadn’t been ordinary, hometown her.
It had been fresh and creative Rory. Even her name was fresh and creative. Rory. She’d come out of the sort of East Coast family that summered on Nantucket. She possessed a calm demeanor and a face and body that were, if you looked closely, rather normal. However, she came across as dazzling thanks to her amazing sense of style. Impeccable makeup, an ability to layer clothing artfully, and a knack with accessories went a long way. As did her perfect bangs (too few appreciated how hard it was to get bangs to lay perfectly), coupled with the sleek mahogany bob she wore tucked behind both ears.
On her blog, Say Yes to Beauty, Rory discussed style, makeup, hair, interior design, art, and cooking. She’d started the blog in high school and amassed such a staggering number of followers that she now made her living blogging.
Harrison and Rory met at a coffee shop near the University of Washington, where he’d been finishing dental school. It had only taken him fifteen days of friendship with Rory to realize she was the one for him.
Fifteen days.
He’d come to Nora and broken their engagement as honorably as possible. He’d not yet asked Rory out at that time, and he’d been properly remorseful. Tearful, even. With anguished candor, he told Nora that it couldn’t be explained, but he believed he’d suddenly found, in Rory, his soul mate. Which had been honest of him and all. Kudos to him for his forthrightness. But his confession left Nora feeling wretched.
In order to assuage his guilt, Harrison had doted on Nora in the days and weeks following their breakup. His cloying care had made the whole situation worse. If he’d been a jerk, she could have cut him out of her life and told herself she was glad to have discovered his true character before the altar.
Rory had ended up saying yes to Harrison the same way she said yes to beauty on her blog. The two of them married ten months after Nora’s canceled wedding date.
For a good long while, Nora had tortured herself by reading Rory’s blog. Via her posts, Rory detailed her beautiful and tasteful romance, her beautiful and tasteful home, her beautiful and tasteful clothes, cooking, makeup, and knowledge of art. Rory had flair and an understated sense of humor. She was a gifted writer. The posts caused Nora to like Rory about as much as she’d automatically loathed her on principle.
When this past New Year’s Day had rolled around, Nora had given up Say Yes to Beauty as a New Year’s resolution. Thank goodness for that. A beautiful and tasteful pregnancy would have been more than she could have handled.
Before Harrison had ended things with her, Nora had believed that her boyfriend loved her, that he was trustworthy, that she’d found her partner for life, that they’d honeymoon on Fiji, and that she’d have baby #1 by the age of thirty.
She’d been completely wrong. She’d been completely wrong about all of it.
The predicament with Harrison, even three years later, was still a miserable and confusing emotional stew. “Did you ever have to see Corbin again after the two of you broke up?” Nora asked. Willow had had a handful of boyfriends over the years, but Nora sensed that her sister had only deeply loved one: NFL quarterback Corbin Stewart.
“No. I had a close call once. I learned at the last minute that we were both scheduled to attend the same charity event. Luckily, I found out in time and skipped it.”
“But you could have gone and been all stunning and haughty and sent him into an agony of regret.”
“True. But then I’d have had to see him with his date, which might have sent me into an agony of regret.” Willow sipped her water and carefully folded and re-folded the tiny paper wrapper that had held the gold-flecked chocolate. “Remember how you insisted I start dating again after Corbin and I broke up?” Willow asked.
Uh-oh. She could see where Willow was headed.
“You prodded me to go out again after four months,” Willow continued. “You haven’t dated anyone in three years, so I think I’m past due in demanding that you put yourself back out there.”
Nora pulled a face.
“You haven’t sworn off dating forever, have you?” Willow asked, completely serious.
“No!” Not forever, anyway. Just for the next forty years or so. Nora liked to think she might enjoy dating when she was an elderly person. “Merryweather doesn’t exactly have a bustling singles scene.”
Nora had a wide pragmatic streak. After Harrison, she’d decided to abstain from dating and focus instead on old buildings and older genealogy records. Whenever anyone asked about her love life, she boldly announced her contentment with her singlehood.
She was scholarly and dependable, but not particularly pretty. She’d self-diagnosed herself with a low libido and often thought that God had no doubt wired her that way so she’d be well suited for a life as an unmarried auntie to Willow’s and Britt’s kids.
Willow extended her palm. “Let me have your phone.”
“My phone?”
Willow waited. Nora passed it over, and Willow went to work. “You have lots of apps on here, but I don’t see any dating apps.”
“Goodness, no.”
“I’m going to download one that will show us the single guys in this area.”
“I will murder you if you put a profile of me on a dating app.”
“I’m already doing it. Go ahead and try to murder me. I’m taller and stronger.” Willow looked up with a bemused smile. “Remember when we used to wrestle with Dad when we were kids?”
“What if someone I know sees me on the app?”
“Then that’ll mean they’re on it, too, and they’ll have no room to judge.”
“Willow,” she growled.
“We’ll just jump on for ten minutes and check out some of the men. If you don’t like it, we’ll delete it. No biggie.”
Nora bared her teeth.
Willow busily punched things into Nora’s phone. “You’re right about the singles scene in Merryweather,” Willow said. “So why not get a little help from online dating services or apps?”
“Do you use online dating services or apps?”
“Certainly not.” One final tap. “There. You’re on. And look. Here’s someone to consider.” Willow set the phone on the bar’s surface and the sisters bent their heads over it.
A picture of a plain man with a massive Adam’s apple filled the phone’s screen. Even though the picture revealed only his head and shoulders, he appeared to be extremely tall and skinny.
“Swipe right if you’re interested and left if you’re not,” Willow said.
“But I feel horrible about rejecting this poor guy based on nothing but his looks! He might be really sweet or funny or smart.”
“Do you want to go on a date with this man? Yes or no?”
Nora didn’t harbor the smallest speck of attraction for the guy with the Adam’s apple. While apologizing to him mentally, she swiped left.
Instantly, another man appeared.
“No!” Nora wailed. “That’s Evan from the post office. This is all your fault, Willow. I can’t unsee this. Every time I visit the post office I’ll remember that Evan’s looking for love.”
“Looking for love is nothing to be ashamed of. He’s decent looking.”
“And he’s perfectly nice, but he lives with his mom and has several pet ferrets. Plus, he smells like mustard.”
“Left or right?”
“Left!”
An image of a man who resembled a sumo wrestler materialized. His LA Dodgers baseball hat sat on his head like an acorn cap on top of an orange.
“Left,” Nora sighed.
A message came up announcing that there were no more matches in their area.
“That’s it?” Willow demanded.
“Is it too late to go back and give the guy with the Adam’s apple a second chance?”
They giggled.
“Now delete it,” Nora said, “before Evan sees me on there. I’ll be mortified if he asks me
over to meet his ferrets.”
More giggles as Willow deleted the app and handed back the phone. “This situation is more serious than I thought.”
“I’m happy with my non-dating life. I have Northamptonshire.” And I have my working relationship with the mouthwatering John Lawson.
“I think we need to take drastic measures.” Willow tilted her head, then slowly swept her attention down to Nora’s toes and back up to her eyes.
“You’re frightening me.”
“I’m constantly worked on by makeup artists, hair stylists, manicurists, fashion people, and on and on and on. I’d love a chance to work on someone else for a change.”
“You think I need a makeover.” Nora tried not to take offense. When she and her sisters were young, they’d freely criticized and made fun of each other. They’d stopped that years ago, however. Nowadays, they operated on a plane of mutual respect. Pointing out one another’s flaws violated their unspoken code.
“Not a makeover,” Willow answered. “I think you look great. But it’s been three years since Harrison, and maybe now’s the time to leave the past behind. If you’re ready for a change, I’d like to help. That’s all.”
It would be churlish not to accept makeover help from a successful model. Yet it was humiliating to accept makeover help from a sister. “That was very diplomatic. Everything you just said.”
“It would be a treat for me. A creative outlet.”
“The baked French toast recipe isn’t creative enough for you?”
“It’s not creative at all. That’s just me trying to follow Mom’s steps exactly.”
Change. The siren song of change was enticing, Nora had to admit. It had been ages since she’d changed anything about her clothes or hair.
“C’mon.” Willow rose without waiting for an official okay. “We’ll start with your closet.”
“You own a lot of cardigans, Nora.” Willow zipped hanger after hanger along the bar mounted on the inside of Nora’s small walk-in closet. “A whole lot of cardigans.”
Nora sat on the edge of her mattress. “I live in a cool, rainy climate.”
“Hmm.”
“I really like cardigans. You’ve convinced me of the benefits of change, but I don’t . . . well, I don’t want to wear clothes that aren’t me. You know?”
“I want to make you more you, not less. This is about enhancing your sense of style.” Willow selected a heather-gray cardigan and a white collared shirt. “Do you have a pencil skirt?”
“Plenty of skirts but no pencil skirts.”
Willow pulled out a navy, knee-length A-line skirt. “Can you try this outfit on for me?”
“Sure.” This was exactly the kind of outfit Nora already wore to work every day. She came out of the bathroom moments later.
Willow approached, opened the neck of the white shirt, and turned up the collar. She unfastened the cardigan and then snapped Nora’s wide belt around her waist on top of it. “Do you have any clothespins?” Willow asked.
“No. This is the era of the clothes dryer.”
“Chip clips, smart aleck? You know, to hold your chip bags closed?”
Nora retrieved three chip clips. “If my Ruffles go stale, it’s on you.”
Willow gathered the back of the skirt against Nora’s legs, rolling the excess fabric in and clipping it to hold it in place. “This will simulate the lines of a pencil skirt.” She selected a pair of high heels.
Nora dutifully stepped into the heels. “I’m not a fan of high heels—”
“Keep an open mind.”
Willow retreated a few paces to assess. “Can I take a look at your jewelry?”
“Yes.”
“Any brooches?”
“A couple of vintage ones.”
Willow sorted through Nora’s jewelry. “You could do a big chunky necklace with this outfit. Since you’re wearing neutrals, accent jewelry in a color like jade green or pink or turquoise might be fun. Or strands of silver beads. That kind of thing. Today, though, let’s try this.” She pinned a fifties-era sunburst brooch above Nora’s heart and clicked three bracelets around her wrist, bracelets Nora never would have thought to pair together.
Once again, Willow moved back to study her progress. A slow smile moved across her lips. “I’m good at this.”
She positioned Nora squarely in front of the full-length mirror mounted on the inside of her closet door.
“Wow,” Nora breathed, somewhat stunned. “You are good at this.”
Written by Willow:
To Do . . .
1) Take Nora shopping
2) Get her eyebrows threaded
3) Purchase all new makeup for her
4) Think about how to convince her to get a new haircut without in any way offending or criticizing her
CHAPTER
Six
John entered the Mason County auditor’s office five minutes before ten o’clock only to find that Nora had already arrived. He was used to running earlier than, well, everyone he knew. Except her.
She was in the middle of a conversation with three of the office’s employees. They were talking like close friends, which probably meant that Nora spent quite a bit of time at the county auditor’s office.
As John approached, something within him eased at the sight of Nora’s reddish gold hair and wry expression. He was . . . glad to see her, he realized.
She motioned him forward with a smile.
He was very glad to see her. Almost as if he’d . . . missed her?
“I’d like you to meet John Lawson,” Nora said to the others. “He runs Lawson Training Incorporated in Shore Pine.”
“Yes.” One of the ladies nodded. “I’ve heard of it.”
All three of the strangers watched him with interested faces.
“We’re working together,” Nora stated. “We met when I served as a volunteer for one of his company’s training exercises. It turned out that I was ghastly at the role of hostage.”
“That’s true,” John told the ladies. “She was bad.”
“I’m not used to being bad at things,” Nora said. “If I could have another turn, I really do think I could be an exceptional hostage.”
“No more turns for you.”
The employees looked hesitant for a moment, then laughed.
“John!” Nora protested. “The fact that I froze was all the fault of the sprinklers.”
“Everyone else had to deal with the sprinklers that day, too. None of them froze.”
“It’s very uncharitable of you to point that out. I want another turn.”
“No.”
Another round of laughter.
When they parted from the ladies, Nora led him toward a deserted corner of the building. She hadn’t asked any of the employees to help her find the deeds belonging to 3476 Regent Drive, the house Sherry Thompson had lived in at the time of his birth. She didn’t seem to need help.
Nora located an aisle of shelves, then skimmed her fingertips over the spines, searching volume after volume.
Her hairstyle reminded him of Lucille Ball. She wore jeans and a pale blue blouse with white dots on it, with sleeves that she’d pushed up her slim forearms. She carried the same big bag over her shoulder that she’d brought with her the last time he’d seen her.
“This is the one.” She started to tug at one of the books.
“Let me.” John freed it and followed her to a table at the end of the row.
Nora glanced at the book’s index, then flipped to the page for 3476 Regent Drive. “Here we are.” She scooted the volume toward him and leaned back slightly so that he’d have plenty of room to study it.
He read the property’s location details and age. It had been built in 1925. Carefully, he turned pages in search of the title deed that covered the year he’d been born.
Here. This was it. The grantor, the seller, of the house had conveyed the property to the grantee, the buyer. The grantee’s name was Deborah Thompson. “I think we’ve found a
relative of Sherry’s,” he said.
“Yes.” Nora’s brown eyes sparkled. “I was worried that we’d come upon a landlord’s name. This is much more helpful.”
“Are you thinking that Deborah Thompson might be Sherry’s mother?”
“Maybe. She could also be Sherry’s older sister. Or a cousin. Or some other relative.”
He reread the record. Deborah had purchased the house two years before his birth. The next deed revealed that she’d sold the house two years after his birth. “No husband’s listed,” he commented. “Deborah was the sole owner of the property.”
“Yes. Just to be sure they didn’t keep the house in the family, let’s make our way through the names of the owners that followed Deborah to see if Thompson appears again either as a middle or a last name.”
They checked, but the name Thompson didn’t reappear.
Once Nora had photocopied Deborah’s deed and added that page to the binder, she set her laptop on the table between them. “I’m interested to see whether anyone named Deborah Thompson still lives in Shelton or its surrounding towns.”
He watched her fingers speed across the keys. She ran searches on three sites back-to-back for Deborah’s phone records, property records, and ancestry records.
No hits.
“She doesn’t live near here anymore,” John said.
“Maybe.”
He grinned. “That’s twice now that I’ve tried to draw a conclusion and you’ve said maybe.”
“That’s because I’m an investigator. Until the data gives us a definitive answer, I have to keep an open mind and consider all the things that could be true.”
“I was thinking maybe you just liked to shoot me down.”
She met his gaze, amusement tipping up the edges of her lips. “Well. There is that.”
A long moment passed. John caught himself staring and jerked his gaze away.
Nora turned back to her computer. “It might be that Deborah really doesn’t live near here anymore. Or she might have passed away. Or she might have gotten married and changed her last name.” She studied the screen as if it held hidden answers. “I’m going to try one more website real quick.”