Necessary Secrets. Barbara Phinney
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Название: Necessary Secrets
Автор: Barbara Phinney
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Зарубежные детективы
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He scooped up the books. Jeez, she’d just told him this morning. Was Lawrence already planning to be Sylvie’s labor coach? Dazed, he walked back to the shipping company, stopping only to dump the books on the front seat of the truck. Over the hood he spied Sylvie, lifting a large duffel bag over her shoulder. At her feet were two large barrack boxes and a rucksack.
What the hell was she doing?
He swore, long and loud enough for her to hear him. “Damn it, woman, I said I’d do that!”
He jogged over to the cement docking ramp and leaped up to glare at the young, pimply faced worker beside her. “What’s wrong with you, anyway? She’s pregnant, you know. And you’re making her lift all of this by herself?”
The worker blinked. “No, sir. I was going to put it all on a pallet and forklift onto her truck. I didn’t know she was pregnant. Sorry.”
Jon drew in a tight seethe. Of course he wouldn’t know. And he bet Sylvie wouldn’t ask for help.
Sylvie threw the lightly stuffed bag onto the wooden pallet the worker had hastily retrieved. “Good grief, Jon, quit ragging on the kid. I know my limitations, all right? This duffel bag’s practically empty.”
“The rest of it will be heavy. I know. I’ve got all of Rick’s stuff still sitting on my living room floor.”
She grabbed the shipping order and scrawled out her signature, tearing off her copy with the ease of someone who had worked in shipping all her adult life. Folding it with clipped, jerky movements, she snapped, “You still have his stuff in your living room? I packed his boxes two days after he died. They left by Hercules aircraft the day we had his memorial service. Isn’t it about time you sorted through that stuff? You’re only delaying the inevitable.”
Without waiting for his answer, she stalked down the steps to the truck.
Her expression still grim, she backed up the pickup, lining it up beside to the dock. Behind Jon, the young worker, now in the forklift, threw him a cautious look before carrying the pallet down a long ramp. When he reached the truck, he loaded the baggage onto the truck’s bed. “Um, I need the pallet back sometime, Ms. Mitchell.” He turned to Jon. “Is this all right?”
“Fine,” he muttered. Her stuff looked exactly like Rick’s. Rick’s stuff had had bright blue strips of cloth tied to the handles of the barrack boxes and duffel bag. Probably in order to easily recognize them in the sea of olive green Jon could imagine lined the floor of a Hercules cargo plane.
Sylvie’s strips of material were the same color.
Sweat beaded on his forehead. Yet his insides chilled him. He hadn’t received Rick’s stuff until six weeks after he’d buried him. And then, sick of not getting the answers he needed, and encouraged by his chief, he’d dumped his brother’s effects into his living room and called the airline. All that was left of Rick’s life had been sitting in his living room for almost a month.
Damn it, Rick deserved better.
Jon searched the horizon, a flat line broken up by the outline of the library beyond. Could Sylvie be right? Had he been delaying the inevitable? But to go through all of Rick’s things, every last scrap? What the hell would he do with it all? Longing ached his bones. Damn it, Rick, why did you have to die so young?
He studied Sylvie’s profile in the back window of the truck as she peered into the bed at something. How had she felt, sorting through her lover’s clothes and uniforms, packing up his personal items?
Being one hell of a woman, Sylvie would have managed, just as she’d manage parenthood. But she couldn’t give her baby the one thing he deserved: someone who could tell him about his father.
Already he was thinking of the kid as a male. A boy, a lively blond boy just like Rick. A boy who needed a man in his life, like Jon and Rick had needed their own father even before some coward killed him.
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