Serenity Harbor. RaeAnne Thayne

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СКАЧАТЬ Maybe he had taken the boy, whoever he was, out of the store so he could cope with his meltdown in private.

      They were nearly finished shopping when Sam’s phone rang with the ominous tone she used to identify her mother.

      She pulled the device out of her purse and glared at it. “I wish I dared ignore her, but if I do, I’ll hear about it for a week.”

      That was nothing, she thought. If Katrina ignored her mother’s calls while she was in town for Wyn’s wedding, Charlene would probably mount a search and rescue, which was kind of funny when she thought about it. Charlene hadn’t been nearly as smothering when Kat had been living halfway around the world in primitive conditions for the last nine months. But if she dared show up late for dinner, sheer panic ensued.

      “I’m at the grocery store with Kat,” Samantha said, a crackly layer of irritation in her voice. “I texted you that’s where I would be.”

      Her mother responded something Katrina couldn’t hear, which made Sam roll her eyes. To others, Linda Fremont could be demanding and cranky, quick to criticize. Oddly, she had always treated Katrina with tolerance and even a measure of kindness.

      “Do you absolutely need it tonight?” Samantha asked, pausing a moment to listen to her mother’s answer with obvious impatience written all over her features. “Fine. Yes. I can run over. I only wish you had mentioned this earlier, when I was just hanging around for three hours doing nothing, waiting for someone to show up at the shop. I’ll grab it.”

      She shut off her phone and shoved it back into her little dangly Coach purse that she’d bought for a steal at the Salvation Army in Boise. “I need to stop in next door at the drugstore to pick up one of my mom’s prescriptions. Sorry. I know we’re in a rush.”

      “No problem. I’ll finish the shopping and check out, then we can meet each other at your car when we’re done.”

      “Hey, I just had a great idea,” Sam exclaimed. “After the shower tonight, we should totally head up to Shelter Springs and grab a drink at the Painted Moose!”

      Katrina tried not to groan. The last thing she wanted to do amid her lingering jet lag was visit the local bar scene, listening to the same songs, flirting with the same losers, trying to laugh at their same old, tired jokes.

      “Let’s play it by ear. We might be having so much fun at the shower that we won’t want to leave. Plus it’s Monday night, and I doubt there will be much going on at the PM.”

      She didn’t have the heart to tell Sam she wasn’t the same girl who loved nothing more than dancing with a bunch of half-drunk cowboys—or that she had a feeling she would never be that girl again. Priorities had a way of shifting when a person wasn’t looking.

      Sam stuck her bottom lip out in an exaggerated pout. “Don’t be such a party pooper! We’ve only got a month together, and I’ve missed you so much!”

      Great. Like she needed more guilt in her life.

      “Let’s play it by ear. Go grab your mom’s prescription, I’ll check out and we’ll head over to Julia’s place. We can figure out our after-party plans, well, after the party.”

      She could tell by Sam’s pout that she would have a hard time escaping a late night with her. Maybe she could talk her into just hanging out by the lakeshore and talking.

      “Okay. I guess we’d better hurry if we want to have time to make our salad.”

      Sam hurried toward the front doors, and Katrina turned back to her list. Only the items from the vegetable aisle, then she would be done. She headed in that direction and spotted a flustered Bowie Callahan trying to keep the boy with him from eating grapes from the display.

      “Stop it, Milo. I told you, you can eat as many as you want after we buy them.”

      This only seemed to make the boy more frustrated. She could see by his behavior and his repetitive mannerisms that he quite possibly had some sort of developmental issues. Autism, she would guess at a glance—though that could be a gross generalization, and she was not an expert, anyway.

      Whatever the case, Callahan seemed wholly unprepared to deal with it. He hadn’t taken the boy out of the store, obviously, to give him a break from the overstimulation. In fact, things seemed to have progressed from bad to worse.

      Milo—cute name—reached for another grape despite the warning, and Bowie grabbed his hand and sternly looked down into his face. “I said, stop it. We’ll have grapes after we pay for them.”

      The boy didn’t like that. He wrenched his hand away and threw himself to the ground. “No! No! No!” he chanted.

      “That’s enough,” Bowie snapped, loudly enough that other shoppers turned around to stare, which made the man flush.

      She could see Milo was gearing up for a nuclear meltdown—and while she reminded herself it was none of her business, she couldn’t escape a certain sense of professional obligation to step in.

      She wanted to ignore it, to turn into the next aisle, finish her shopping and escape the store as quickly as she could. She could come up with a dozen excuses about why that was the best course of action. Samantha would be waiting for her. She didn’t know the man or his frustrated kid. She had plenty of troubles of her own to worry about.

      None of that held much weight when compared with the sight of a child who clearly had some special needs in great distress—and an adult who just as clearly didn’t know what to do in the situation.

      She felt an unexpected pang of sympathy for Bowie Callahan, probably because her mother had told her so many stories about how mortified Charlene had been when Katrina had a seizure in a public place. All the staring, the pointing, the whispers.

      The boy continued to chant “no” and began smacking his palm against his forehead in rhythm with each exclamation. A couple of older women she didn’t know—tourists, probably—looked askance at the boy, and one muttered something to the other about how some children needed a swat on the behind.

      She wanted to tell the old biddies to mind their own business but held her tongue, since she was about to ignore her own advice.

      After another minute passed, when Bowie Callahan did nothing but gaze down at the boy with helpless frustration, Katrina knew she had to act. What other choice did she have? She pushed her cart closer. The man briefly met her gaze with a wariness that she chose to ignore. Instead, she plopped onto the ground next to the distressed boy.

      In her experience with children of all ages and abilities, they reacted better to someone willing to lower to their level. She wasn’t sure if he even noticed she was there, since he didn’t stop chanting or smacking his palm against his head.

      “Hi there.” She spoke in a calm, conversational tone, as if she were chatting with one of her friends at Wynona’s shower later in the evening. “What’s your name?”

      Milo—whose name she knew perfectly well from hearing Bowie use it—barely took a breath. “No! No! No! No!”

      “Mine is Katrina,” she went on. “Some people call me Kat. You know, kitty-cat. Meow. Meow.”

      His voice hitched a little, and he lowered his hand but continued chanting, though he didn’t sound quite as distressed. СКАЧАТЬ