Mr. Write (Sweetwater) (11 page)

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.”  Shaking his head, Mason reached for his door handle.  Then stilled.  “You didn’
t mention the others.”

“What?”

“In all this warning me away from the women next door, you failed to mention Josie and Sarah.  The old woman is both a little frightening and… well, old, so that I understand.”  He tilted his head.  “Does this mean that Sarah is fair game?”  

This time the jumping muscle belonged to Tucker.  “I didn’t say that.”

“No, you didn’t,” Mason murmured.  “You did, however, seem even more irritable than usual after your little confrontation in the driveway the other morning.”

“I was getting ready to visit my grandfather.”

“And yet, I don’t think that explains the cold shower you took before your visit.”

“I was
hot.”

“That much was obvious.”

Tucker’s eyes narrowed, but the twinkle in Mason’s made it clear he wouldn’t win this point.  “Just… get out of the truck already.”

Chuckling, Mason did so.  “So tell me again why we’re visiting the library? 
Between your e-reader and those crates of books I lugged in, I’d think you’d be set on reading material until sometime in the next millennium.  Not to mention,” he added dryly “that there’s a lovely bookstore about to open next door.”

Tucker ignored that, w
hatever embarrassment he’d felt a moment ago fading quickly.  “I’ve tried to find old accounts of my father’s… accident online, but the Sweetwater paper doesn’t have their back issues uploaded beyond a few years ago.
I need to look at their microfiche.”

The sympathy on his friend’s face wasn’t manufactured.  “I thought your mother said he lost control of his car.”

“She did.”  A storm.  Wet roads.  A missed curve, and his father’s car plunging into the river.  Though she’d become so distressed whenever he’d asked about it, that he’d stopped bringing it up.  “She didn’t like to talk about it.”

“Understandable,” Mason
said as they headed toward the building’s marble steps.  The library appeared newer than some of the other civic structures in town.  And its stark formality seemed out of place, considering most of Sweetwater exuded coziness.  “Judging from what I saw, she must have loved him very much.”

Tucker was sure she had.  After all, in nearly thirty years, his mother never remarried. 

But he could hear his grandfather’s voice, taunting him. 
You think you know what happened.
“I guess I just need to read about it for myself.”

“Then by all means, lead the way.”  Mason opened the
beveled glass door, ushering him inside.

The smell hit him first.
  Ink and paper, just the slightest bit musty. And something unidentifiable that Tucker had always thought of as bottled possibility.  Pull the cork – open the book – and there, at your fingertips, were whole worlds just waiting to be explored.

He closed his eyes, remembering quite clearly sitting on his mother’s lap, listening to her read story after story.
  They’d moved around a lot in those early days, his mom taking odd jobs that allowed her to keep him with her, since he was still too young for regular school.  When she couldn’t find work, they’d spent untold hours in the public library.  It had seemed so huge, and there’d been so many people.  But the two of them… they were a unit.  And even though he’d grown up, moved out, created a life for himself, he guessed on some fundamental level that had never changed.

Breathless with loss, Tucker opened his eyes to see that Mason had moved over toward a small bronze plaque set into the wall.  Allowing him a moment to compose himself, Tucker knew.

Grateful, he filled his lungs and then went to join him.

And felt the air leave his body again.

The Augusta Beaumont Pettigrew Memorial Library.

He’d seen rooms, or even wings, dedicated to
someone before, but rarely an entire building.  His mouth twisted into a grim smile.  That donation must have been a doozy.

“Relative of yours?” Mason murmured.

“I assume so.”  Tucker looked at the dates, did the math, and guessed Augusta had to have been his father’s mother.  “Probably my grandmother.”

Mason gazed at him over his shoulder.  “You aren’t sure?”

He shook his head.  “My mother never talked about her.  She would have been dead for several years by the time my parents met.  And Carlton didn’t exactly bring her up when he was pontificating on the sanctity of the Pettigrew name.”

Mason gazed at the raised numbers on the plaque.  “She died
rather young.”

“Seems to run in the family.”
 

Because he was still feeling just a little raw, Tucker turned away before Mason could comment.  He headed through the empty lobby, toward a reference desk where a woman with long red hair bent over her
computer keyboard.

Tucker’s steps faltered. U
ntil her head came up, and he saw that the eyes regarding him from behind horn-rimmed glasses were both wide and brown.

Not the pale green of new leaves
,
he thought, irritated by the extra little beat in his pulse.  

“I’m looking for the microfiche,” Tucker told her.  “If you could just direct me…?”

Since verbal communication wasn’t getting the job done, he snapped his fingers in front of her face.

“Oh. Of course.”  Her cheeks
darkened in that way only a redhead’s could.  Or at least most of them.  Some redheads were likely too damn stubborn and opinionated to blush.

Even when they waltzed around outside in their skimpy pajamas.

“We have a viewing room in the back. Do you have a library card?”

“I need a library card to look at microfiche?”

“Well.  Not technically.”  She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose.  “But we always encourage our new residents to apply for one.  That is…” her cheeks flushed again, but she had a certain gleam in her eye that Tucker was beginning to recognize. “Assuming you’re… new.  To the area.”

“Actually, he
was born here.” Mason came up beside him and leaned against the desk.  The librarian looked stunned at his appearance, which was normal, but then flicked her gaze back toward Tucker, which was not.

“Really?”

“This library?” Mason leaned in even further, conspiratorially, and Tucker wanted to kick him. 
“Named for his grandmother.”

She widened her eyes
even further, until they resembled dinner plates. 

When the heel of Tucker’s size thirteen work boot came down on Mason’s toes, however, his muffled grunt was gratifyingly real.

“The microfiche?”

The librarian jumped a little at
Tucker’s tone.  “It’s all the way in the back.  Last door on the left.”

“Thank you.”

“If you need anything –”

“I won’t,” Tucker said as he w
alked away.

Mason was limping, but he quickly caught up.  “You are a wooden spoon,” Tucker gritted through his teeth.

His supposed friend chuckled.  “I’m sorry mate, but I’m
not the one stirring things up.
You
did that just by coming here.”

Because he guessed it was true enough, Tucker didn’t argue.  “What is wrong with these women?”

“Maybe they’re taken with your manly form.”

Tucker turned down the hall
which the librarian had indicated, and shot Mason a look.  He might be built well, countless hours of physical labor having made him hard, and he knew his type of rugged looks appealed to certain women.  But Mason was… well, Mason. 

“Not when I’m standing next to you, Pretty Boy. 
Any normal place on the planet, I’d be chopped liver.  But it’s like the females in town hear
Pettigrew
and lose all common sense.  I mean, who bakes a casserole for some guy she’s never met?”

Mason sighed.  “I wish you would have let me open the door for that one.  I could do with a good home-cooked meal.”

“Maybe I should take out a billboard or something. 
I am not Carlton T. Pettigrew’s heir.”

“Or maybe you could just enjoy the attention.”

“Some of us aren’t completely superficial.”

“
More’s the pity.  Although I have to admit, it
is
rather amusing to be the wingman for a change.  God knows with your multitude of personality flaws, you need all the assistance you can get.”

“Are you finished?”

Mason considered.  “For now.”

Tucker tried the knob, found it wouldn’t budge.  He’d just shaken it for a second time when the librarian came around the corner, hurrying as fast as her
spiked heels would allow.  “Sorry!  I just remembered that we locked that room last night, because there was an art guild meeting in the conference room.”

“Why,
” Mason teased, flirting by rote. “Do the artists come in and splatter paint on the microfiche?”

Her cheeks turned a shade deeper than her hair.  “We’ve just discovered that it’s better not to leave any of the
other rooms unlocked during meetings.”

“Sounds like splatter of a more personal nature,” Mason murmured while she wrestled the key into the lock.
  Despite himself, Tucker grinned.  Until the librarian turned around, mistaking it for something directed at her.

“There you are, Mr. Pettigrew.”

Hell, maybe he should just change his name.  After all, he’d done so before.  “Thank you.”

“DeeDee.”

“I’m sorry?”

“My name is DeeDee.” She stuck out a hand.  “DeeDee MacKenna.”

Tucker stared at her hand as he might at a loaded weapon, then took it briefly in his. 

“If you need anything else
…”

She l
et the thought trail off, and when Mason made an abbreviated wing motion behind her back, Tucker shook his head. “I won’t.”   

SARAH
waved goodbye to Mr. Pinckney as she left the hardware store.  The little old man had been a fixture there for as long as she could remember, the deep pockets of his bib-overalls always holding a collection of starlight mints that he handed out to his customers’ kids.  She’d probably eaten a hundred of them over the years.

A hundred and one, she corrected, smiling as the taste of peppermint tingled on her tongue.  She hadn’t been able to refuse him.

Her smile broadened when she spotted Bark, tied to the wooden bench, right where she’d left him.  Well, he
had
exerted himself enough to crawl beneath the seat.  She’d left a dish of water, but from the looks of things it hadn’t pacified him.

He greeted her approach with a mournful expression.

“I swear, you’d think you were a geriatric basset hound instead of a relatively young… whatever you are.”  Bark’s breed was indeterminate; though from his size and coloring she was pretty sure he had some yellow lab in his genes.  Mixed with slug, and maybe donkey. 

“Exercise is good for you,” she told him as she bent down to release his leash from the bench’s arm.

“Looks like it did wonders for you.”

The bag holding the wire brush crinkled as
Sarah’s fingers jerked.  That voice…

She closed her eyes, transported back a dozen years.  She’d heard it countless times before, taunting, teasing.  But that night she’d smelled the
alcohol, heard it behind her. 

And known true fear.

Gathering herself, Sarah drew on the self-confidence that had been so hard-won.  And rose, turning to meet Austin Linville’s derisive stare head on.

Except the
face gazing back at her wasn’t quite the one she expected.

This wasn’t
Austin.  It was his brother.

“Jonas.”  She greeted the younger Linville coolly. 
If she’d been thinking, she would have remembered that Austin was still in jail. The realization that she hadn’t been thinking – had merely reacted instinctively – disturbed her.

“Sarah.” His tone was mocking.
 

Though she knew th
e brothers shared the same dirty blond hair and bulky builds, she’d never realized how similar their voices were before.

Probably because it was usually
Austin doing the talking.

C
onstruction work had kept Jonas’s former football player’s body hard, but time outdoors, plus the cigarettes of which he reeked had aged his face beyond his years.     

He shifted his weight, and
Sarah glanced down at his left foot, which had borne the brunt of his brother’s ire.  “Couple of broken bones,” he said when he saw where she was looking.  “No big deal.”

Yeah, except for the fact that those bones were
broken when his brother
shot
him.  But as much as they fought, she knew the Linville boys tended to circle the wagons when it came to outsiders.  They might pound the hell out of each other, but if someone took issue with one of them separately, they became a solid unit.  That intense family loyalty might have been admirable if it hadn’t blinded them to common sense.