“Yes,” she replied. “I’m such a cliché,” she said, then turned another page and pointed. “Who’s this?”
Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. He looked at the pretty blond girl on the page, her hair a tumbled mass of curls, her skin tanned and healthy, her eyes clear and unclouded. Her smile lacked the twist of bitterness that had crept in between her second and third rehab stints. She looked like she’d march out of the picture and smack someone around, and make them like it. “Tanya.”
Her eyebrows lifted, nearly sending her glasses down to her nose. “Oh. How stupid of me. Of course it is.”
“Don’t bother,” he said, cutting her off. “That was before she started using.”
Alana went back to the gardening books, and he went back to sealing the pipe. A tense silence ensued and he wondered when that boy lost the ability to charm a woman into the backseat of a car, or bed, rather than just making himself available for a one-night stand, or a series of them.
“What’s this?”
He glanced down at the page she was reading. She pointed at a tiny pencil drawing of a rose blooming around a small stone. “That,” he said as he turned back to the pipe, “is a drawing of Gran’s first engagement ring. She took it off all the time because the bud would get crusted with pie and bread dough. She’d tuck it in her apron pocket, then put it back on when she was finished. One day when she went to put it back on, it was missing. They looked inside, outside, nearly tore the house apart looking for it, but they never found it.”
“How sad!” she exclaimed.
He looked at the drawing. “I promised her I’d find it. On rainy days we’d have a treasure hunt in the house. She’d hide things for me to find, the silver candlesticks, her spoon collection. When I found them I’d take them back to the blanket fort in the living room. When I got older I took off all the baseboards, just in case the ring slipped between the cracks, look for it when I weeded the garden through the summer. It just disappeared.”
“You tried,” she said softly.
He shrugged. The memory felt distant, like someone else made that promise, searched that hard for something long gone. “I didn’t find it.”
“But she knew you cared that she lost it, and was sad about it. Did they buy a new ring?”
“Money was always tight, and she still had her wedding band. Grandpa bought her a ring for their fiftieth.”
“That’s lovely,” she mused.
The ring discussion sparked another thought in his mind. He set the wrench in the toolbox and reached in his back pocket. “Does this look familiar?”
She pursed her lips and studied the picture. “That’s Gunther Jensen, right?”
“Yes, but not the people. The ring on her finger.”
Alana tipped her glasses from her forehead to her nose and examined the picture more closely. “It’s a daisy. A really tiny daisy.”
“It’s the ring that was stolen when Gunther’s house was broken into. His wife’s gone, but he had planned to give it to his granddaughter for her sweet sixteen in a few weeks.”
Another small hum to indicate she’d heard him. “I haven’t seen it before,” she said.
“Keep your eyes open.”
“Why? You said it was stolen.”
“I went to pawn shops in Brookings today. None of them had it, but all of them said they’d think twice before they took something like this on pawn. The resale value was almost nonexistent, because the diamonds are so small.”
Alana peered up at him through those blue-rimmed glasses. “It’s a charming ring,” she said staunchly.
“It’s out of style.”
“According to men who staff pawn shops,” she pointed out, amused. “Why do you think I’ll see it?”
He didn’t respond, but her intelligence headed the list of things he liked about her.
“You think Cody did that. You think Cody broke into Gunther’s house and stole this ring, and when he can’t pawn it, he’ll hold onto it.”
She wasn’t asking a question. She was stating facts that transformed her from a rather sweetly shy woman to a staunch defender.
“I don’t know,” he said. “There’s too many mouths to feed in that trailer, and his brother’s home with a felony conviction under his belt. He’ll have a hard time finding a job.”
“Cody’s certainly not eating enough,” she said, as if that made him less likely to steal, not more.
“Cody’s a kid in bad circumstances. He’ll try to do the right thing until he doesn’t have any more options. Then, who knows what he’ll do?” He sighed. “I’m not accusing him. I’m just asking you to keep your eyes open. You see more of those kids after school than I do. Maybe you’ll see it on a girl’s finger, or in someone’s bag.”
“I’ll pay attention,” she said.
“Come on a ride along with me,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because if you’re renovating the library, you need to see more of Walkers Ford and the county than just the route between the house, the library, and the Heirloom. You need to see the darker side of this town.”