Page 69 of Secret Baby for Mr. Grump

“How?”

“I’m not sure yet,” he said. “But I have an idea.”

I cocked my head. “Which is?” I asked when it was clear my look alone wasn’t convincing him.

He sighed. “We’re going to find whoever killed Old Man Clancy all those years ago. And bring them to justice.”

* * *

I could feelstares on my back.

It was possible I was just being paranoid. Ever since the spray painting incident happened a few days ago, it seemed I was always looking over my shoulders. Sometimes, it was almost eerie, like I could feel the prickling sensation beneath my skin.

The feeling of being watched.

But this time, I didn’t think it was simple paranoia.

I caught a few people’s eyes, and they’d clearly been staring at me before I glanced their way. Even worse, the second our eyes met, they looked away from my friendly smile without returning it. The first time it happened, I thought the person simply didn’t have manners. But then it happened again and again. It was at least three people in under a few minutes, and all were people I would usually say ‘Hi’ to at church.

Something was up.

“Is it just me, or is everyone staring at us?” Athena asked, her eyebrows furrowing.

“You noticed it too?” I replied, and she nodded. That meant it definitely wasn’t just in my head.

“Yeah. I felt eyeballs on me this entire shopping trip.”

I felt Caleb tug my hand, and when I looked down at him, he pointed to the box of cereals on the top shelf. He seemed oblivious to the looks.

That was good,I thought.At least he’s not seeing it.

My son’s general behavior surprised me. Dr. Hammond even noted he was doing a lot better, a lot faster than he anticipated. He was even talking more now, but sometimes he still preferred to point to get his intention across.

I picked up the cereal, placed it in the basket, and continued on my way.

“This is really weird,” Athena said as she caught an elderly man staring. She frowned at him, and he looked away.

“Uh-huh,” I responded. I hadn’t yet told her about the threat spray painted on Marcus’ car. I wanted to tell my family immediately, but Marcus wanted us to keep it lowkey first while he ran his private investigations. Eventually, I agreed with him. If I told my family, they would freak out and immediately go to the police station. Or they would demand I move in with one of them.

Marcus had pretty much moved into my place over the past weeks, and this incident made it official that we were living together. Yesterday, he spoke about us moving to a bigger house, but I just blinked at him.

“With what money?” I asked blankly.

He smirked at me. “You’ll see.”

And then later, as we discussed what we were going to do about the threat, he gave me the rundown of the plan.

“I want whoever did this to think we’re not taking his warning seriously,” Marcus said. “Maybe that will make him mad, and the madder he is, the more reckless he becomes. Maybe he’ll try and do it again and leave more clues behind.

I nodded. It made sense when he explained it like that. Plus, he said he had a PI friend of his looking into the matter more closely, so I wasn’t as scared as I could have been.

Instead of telling Athena the true reason why people were watching, I said nothing as we went to the cashier and paid for our items.

On the way out, I told Athena that I needed to pick up some tools from the store for the renovations.

So we decided to make one more stop at the hardware store.

There was some buzz and conversation, but the minute we entered, the place became silent.

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