Page 120 of Hidden Nature

“I think of you, Clara.” Gently, he smoothed a blanket over her. “Night and day, day and night. You just rest now, and let me take care of everything.”

She lay back, closed her eyes. She was the luckiest woman in this world.

She sent out a prayer of thanks.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Sloan spent her finally free Saturday doing what she hadn’t had time to do over the past two weeks. Starting with a workout in her makeshift gym.

While she curled and pressed, she imagined the possibility of turning her serial killer basement into the perfect fitness area, maybe including a three-piece bath—with shower—and an organized storage area.

After she gathered her laundry, carted it down the steep, narrow stairs, crossed the pockmarked concrete slab to the washer that had surely left the showroom in the previous century, she admitted that possibility would mean a serious budget and time crunch.

Not an impossible crunch, but serious.

And she could probably cross off that bathroom.

Upstairs, while the fire crackled, she gave the house a good Saturday cleaning, and that felt gratifying.

She headed downstairs again to shift the first load into the equally ancient dryer, and put in the second.

And thought, maybe, depending, she could do the bathroom if she held off and saved for a year or eighteen months.

So that project went on her mental list. At the bottom.

Next on the current list: groceries.

She left her clean, quiet house for town and with the plan of coming back, putting away the groceries, folding laundry. And then, chores complete, sitting down by the fire and continuing her search.

She couldn’t say why Janet Anderson stuck in her mind. Maybe,maybe because her disappearance coincided with when she herself had felt helpless and pulled away from her own life.

A pretty young woman running to the store for groceries as Sloan did now. Then gone, just gone.

After pulling into the crowded lot, she reminded herself why she tended to food shop after work rather than on the weekend. Add the forecast called for snow. But since she hadn’t managed a stop in the last harried couple of weeks, she needed some essentials.

Coffee, Cokes, frozen pizza topped that particular list.

So she braved the madness, which proved not as bad as she’d feared. She followed the list on her phone, and considered it a sign of her returned health that she added some Flamin’ Hot Cheetos to her cart. They called to her, and she remained four pounds shy of her prehospital weight.

She wanted those pounds back.

By the time she got in the checkout line, she calculated she had about two weeks’ worth. In Annapolis, she’d tended to shop more often because it was easy to swing in for a few things, or if work crowded her schedule, have groceries delivered.

Here, grocery shopping became more of an event, and one—with careful planning—she could limit to two, maybe three times a month.

“Sloan Cooper! You cut your hair. I almost didn’t recognize you.”

She turned to the woman who’d slid into line behind her.

They’d called her Diane the Disher in high school, as Diane Howe, now Blakley, always had the latest news.

She had her curly brown hair in a jaunty tail scooped back from her pretty face. Deep brown eyes sparkled as she leaned in for a hug.

And Sloan felt the baby bump, and a quick, decisive kick.

“Diane! You’re going to be a mom!”

“Five weeks to go. He’s going to be a hell of a field goal kicker, like his dad.”

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