The In-Between Hour. Barbara White Claypole

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      Eight

      The pale green Prius from the day before crawled to the end of her driveway, and Will Shepard turned neatly to one side in a considerate act of parking.

      His author photo had revealed nothing. Black-and-white, it was taken from a distance as he glanced over his shoulder. Headshots didn’t seem to be to his liking. Hannah had seen a partial of his face years ago in an out-of-date People magazine picked up in the dentist’s waiting room. At the time, she’d just finished the third Agent Dodds adventure, and her radar had been tuned to all things Will Shepard. If she remembered correctly, the photo had shown him escorting a young heiress to a gala.

      Hannah fingered the key, and the dogs cowered around her. She could lavish ten more lifetimes of unconditional love on her babies, and still fear would stalk them. Daisy’s abuse had gone beyond neglect. The dog had been forced to fight. So many damaged creatures had passed through Hannah’s life in the past twenty years and most of them had come from Poppy. Now her friend had brought her a bestselling author and his grieving dad. A small happening that felt huge.

      Hannah read Will’s bumper stickers: “I’d Rather Be Writing,” and “Love a Climber, They Use Protection.” Climbing—that made sense since Agent Dodds was an extreme sports freak. Was his creator an adrenaline junkie, too? Or a nocturnal reveler who dated beautiful socialites? The two of them hadn’t signed anything. If she had even a twinge of doubt, she would renege.

      Will turned to talk with his father, and Hannah drummed her fingers on the porch railing. Impatience didn’t come often, but she had an appointment in... Unbelievable, she was wearing both her watch and her dad’s, and yet she had no memory of putting on either one. Focusing on life’s details was becoming impossible. She sighed.

      Would it be inappropriate to ask Will to sign his books? Or would he be offended that she didn’t own anything beyond volume five? Galen was scathing about commercial fiction, especially the kind of thrillers Will had produced in recent years. Her MFA poet preferred incomprehensible allegories written by alcoholics and drug addicts who’d been dead for at least a century. And he would not be happy when he discovered she was renting out the cottage. Privacy was everything to Galen, and since the age of thirteen, he had proved himself worthy of trust, not surveillance. But during the previous night’s phone conversation with Will, she had realized it was time, once again, to adapt.

      Coincidence spoke of connection, and renting the cottage to an aging widower was nothing short of symmetry. Her father would approve. No, he would applaud. After all, the cottage had been built as his refuge. And what if it went deeper than that? Her father’s last selfless act had been to protect Galen and Liam, to spare them from the moment of his death, to wander into the woods to die alone. What if some echo of that love reverberated across Saponi Mountain, telling her to contain Galen in his childhood room where she could keep him safe? Her mother had believed that the dead often remained tethered to the living—trapped either in their desire to right wrongs or in their refusal to leave loved ones. Hannah, too, was drawn to the idea that the dead never really moved on, although often it was the living who refused to let them go.

      Kookiness aside, renting the cottage was a sound financial move. Galen had become a dropout in need of aid. Her father’s money was gone and she barely made a living, but Will hadn’t quibbled at her inflated price. Overcharging, not undercharging, was oddly liberating.

      Will pulled himself from the car. She’d been right: he was small for a guy. His taupe knit shirt, however, revealed a muscular torso, and his thick, straight hair was only slightly less tousled than the day before. Obviously, he didn’t own a comb. He walked toward her, not with the swagger of someone whose name was a long internet search of awards, but as if he were a kid dragging his body to a reprimand. An unexpected blend of curiosity and recognition tightened in her gut. He was so familiar she almost said, “Oh. It’s you.”

      His eyes were concealed behind funky green-tinted sunglasses, which wasn’t helpful. You could learn СКАЧАТЬ