Page 14 of The Fall Back Plan
Dang. If this is almost seventy, sign me up.
“How are you?” she asks when she finishes her mutual inspection. “And how long are you in town?”
“I’m doing well,” I say. One feels both entirely comfortable with Mrs. Herring and as if one must use one’s best grammar around her at the same time. “I’m back for good. I took over Sullivan’s.”
Her eyes brighten. “You’re the owner of Tequila Mockingbird? Of course you would call it something clever. You were always one of my best-read patrons.”
She’s worked here for decades, I know, but she might be telling the truth. I was and still am a hardcore bookworm.
I stand and push my chair in. “I’ll definitely be back. I need to reclaim my title.”
Mrs. Herring smiles. “No one has ever taken it. Should we go get you a new library card?”
I grin. “Yes. Yes, we should.”
Ten minutes later, I have a new library card in hand. It shows an illustration of the library on the front with the words “Passport to Magic” printed beneath it.
“Thank you, Mrs. Herring. I love it.” I hold it up next to my face and give her a bright commercial grin like I’m advertising toothpaste. “I’ll stop by later this week when I can block out some time to explore the shelves.”
“Do you still read a bit of everything?” she asks.
“I read a lot of everything.”
“Good. I’ll set aside some books for you, and we’ll see if you’ve already discovered them on your own.”
“This is my kind of personal shopping,” I tell her. “And if you find yourself further down Maple after closing anytime, stop in at the bar. We can gossip about the Thursday Murder Club folks over an adult beverage.”
Her eyes twinkle. “I should have known you already discovered one of my favorite series.”
I smile and leave with a wave, already looking forward to coming back, just like I did when I was a kid. But for the first time, my flashback to childhood is a good thing.
When I step outside, my smile widens. These Carolina skies aren’t bad either. And my morning coffee was excellent.
This isn’t how I thought my morning would go after witnessing the vandalism at the bar, but I lean into it, enjoying it even more when I think about how much it would tick off Shane Hardin if he could see me now.
The smile lasts until I clap eyes on the figure twenty yards down the sidewalk. It’s the esteemed town sheriff again.
Then just like that, the smile is gone.
Chapter Eight
Lucas
Therearen’talotof people who are neutral about an officer in uniform. I get lots of welcome looks. I get just as many scowls. So it shouldn’t bother me when Jolie’s face changes the second she sees me on the sidewalk, but it does. Maybe it’s because in the instant before she sees me, she’s smiling, something I’ve yet to see her do in the three times I’ve run into her so far.
In a way, it feels like more times than that because she’s been on my mind so often. I owe her a better apology than “I won’t give you a ticket.”
“Jolie,” I say. “You didn’t have to come all the way down here for an update. I’m sorry I haven’t had a chance to talk to Hardin yet. Had a bit of a detour.”
That “detour” climbs out of my cruiser now. I’d gotten a call from school almost right after leaving Jolie’s bar. It was the school nurse informing me that Brooklyn was complaining of a headache, and I needed to come get her.
“I was coming from the library, not to check on you,” Jolie says as Brooklyn shuffles over to me on the sidewalk.
Right. Of course Jolie wasn’t coming to talk to me.
Brooklyn joins me, her hood all the way up, a book pressed to her chest, her backpack hanging on one shoulder, but barely. She’s so slouched it looks like it’ll fall off any second, which means it could hit the concrete with her school-issued Chromebook inside. I want to tell her to hitch it up or put both straps on or straighten her shoulders, but lately, just breathing wrong with her can send her stomping into her room or make her cry. I decide not to risk it.
“Jolie, meet my detour. Brooklyn, Jolie used to tutor me in high school.”
