“We’ll have to find something else to put on the wall,” Mrs. Battle said. “The historical society will have some pictures. That will do. Anchor the room in our past while we look to the future.” They paused in front of the beer garden. “You’re sure you can’t stay?”
“I’m positive. If I’m not back in Chicago by Saturday for my stepfather’s awards banquet, my mother will have my head on a pike.”
“This is very important to your family.”
“Six hundred people are flying in from all over the world,” she said. “It’s being held at the Palmer House, with a four-course meal, wine, and speeches by some of the most powerful people on five continents.”
“That sounds much more delightful than a little country carnival.”
“I don’t know about that,” Alana said. “You got the funnel cake machine. I love funnel cakes.”
“They’re delicious. Completely outside my diet, of course.”
“I’d share one with you,” Alana said.
Tears shone in Mrs. Battle’s eyes. “I’m going to miss you.”
“I’m going to miss you, too.”
“We’ll all miss you. Including Chief Ridgeway.”
Alana laughed lightly. “Oh, he’ll be happy to get me out of his house so he can finish the kitchen renovation.”
Mrs. Battle studied her. “I’m old and my eyesight’s not what it used to be, but I’m not blind yet, my dear. He’s going to miss you.”
“I don’t think he feels much of anything anymore,” Alana said.
The hug surprised her. Mrs. Battle barely came up to Alana’s chin, but she turned and hugged her with a ferocity that nearly stopped her heart in her chest. Just as quickly she stepped back. “You drive carefully,” she said.
Alana swallowed the lump in her throat. “I will.”
She was going home heartbroken, leaving things unfinished. That wasn’t in the cards. But neither was not going home. And she always left things unfinished. She had her job, her tasks in the project plan. Other people carried on in their wake. But this time the people carrying on weren’t strangers, or nongovernmental organization workers. They were friends, and more.
? ? ?
SHE WALKED BACK to her house—Lucas’s house—through a warm spring evening. A month made such a difference. The flowerpots were in full bloom, and the air was actually warm. She would open the windows when she got home.
Lucas’s truck popped and cooled in his driveway. Duke trotted out of the doggie door when she walked up the driveway, sniffing at her skirt and wagging his tail. “Hey, big dog,” she said. “Where’s Lucas?”
“Hey.”
She looked up to see him standing in his doorway, one shoulder leaning against the frame, a bottle of beer in his hand. A lump swelled in her throat as she looked at him, so handsome and strong and holding so much inside. She had to go. She had to. She had no business getting attached to people. Her life was elsewhere, and thanks to Lucas and the library renovation project, she was ready to go back to it.
Falling for her rebound guy wasn’t in the project plan.
“Come over for dinner?” she asked.
He studied her for a long moment. “You didn’t blush that time.”
She had nothing more to hide. “Please?”
He nodded and reached back to shut the door behind him. They crossed the driveways, Duke trotting beside Alana to the screen door and waiting until she opened it. She didn’t care if the neighbors were watching. She didn’t care if people gossiped. She had one more night with Lucas, and she intended to wring every moment out of it with both hands.
She set her bags down in the living room. Lucas surveyed the boxes and suitcases. “You’re finally packed.”
“I am,” she said lightly as she walked down the hall to her bedroom. Her last suitcase lay open on the neatly made bed. She swapped her skirt and sweater set for the pair of jeans and long-sleeve T-shirt she’d make the drive in the next day.
Duke was nosing around the suitcases, his tail drooping.
“Does he know what suitcases mean?”
Lucas nodded, then clicked softly to call Duke to him. In the kitchen, Alana unpacked the take-out pork chops and dirty rice she’d picked up from the Heirloom Café on her way home.
“Need any help?” Lucas asked. He was sprawled on the bare plywood kitchen floor, Duke nosing around him before he curled up at Lucas’s chest. “We could go over to my place.”
“I’d like to stay here,” she said.
NPR filled the silence in the room. Alana mixed up a quick salad to finish off what was left in the fridge. Braced on his elbow, Lucas scratched behind Duke’s ears, then the dog’s broad chest, finally rubbing his belly. The dog let out a grunt and rolled onto his back. Lucas stroked his belly.
“That’s one happy dog,” she commented.
“He’s comfortable here.”
He wasn’t the only one. Alana looked out the kitchen window at the rosebushes growing persistently toward the sun, buds forming on the stalks. The grass was spring green, just waiting to darken in the summer sun. The kids who lived in the house behind her played on the swing set in the yard across from her picket fence. Their laughter reached through the open window.