Gibbes shoved his hands deep inside his pockets, his eyes narrowed. “You’re not the kind of woman I imagined Cal marrying.”
Merritt sucked in a breath, as if his words had physically assaulted her. “When Mr. Williams told me that Cal had a brother, I wondered what you’d be like, too. Because Cal didn’t just leave this town, or this house, or his grandmother. He left you, too, didn’t he? And I figured there had to be a reason why.”
A tic began in Gibbes’s jaw, but he didn’t say anything, and Loralee thought it might be because he was aware of Owen, who’d stopped chewing and was straining his head forward to listen.
Clutching the paper plate, Merritt headed for the stairs. “Let’s start upstairs and work our way down.”
Loralee picked up the plate of cookies to take back to the kitchen. “I’m going to go clean out the kitchen cabinets and put that new liner paper inside that we got at the Piggly Wiggly last night. I should probably wash all the dishes, too.”
Merritt placed her hand on the thick wood banister where it swirled at the bottom of the steps and where Loralee had placed her pocketbook the previous evening. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I know. But it’s my small way of thanking you for letting us stay. For a little while,” she added quickly.
“Thank you.” Merritt put her first foot on the bottom step and began walking up. Her hand must have caught the pocketbook’s strap, because before Loralee could tell her to be careful, her purse had plopped to the ground on its side, with all of its insides spilling out onto the floor.
Multiple tubes of lipstick, her compact, brush, small toothbrush, and tweezers slid to a stop at the edge of a faded blue rug, but four prescription pill bottles and a tube of antacids rolled in the other direction, stopping at Dr. Heyward’s feet.
“I’ll get it,” she said, taking a step forward, but she was too late. Gibbes had already picked up all four bottles, casually looking down at them before meeting her eyes.
“I’ve got ulcers, and a few other pesky issues I’m dealing with right now,” she offered in explanation, waving her free hand in the air. Brushing aside Merritt’s apology, Loralee stooped down to pick up her pocketbook with her free hand and held it up for the doctor to dump in the bottles.
“If you’re going to be staying here for a while and need doctor references, I’d be happy to help. Just let me know.”
She smiled with relief. “That would be real helpful—thank you. I’ll let you know.”
Merritt continued up the stairs and Gibbes followed, staring at Merritt’s straight back as if he were trying to read something written on her shirt.
Loralee handed the plate to Owen. “Can you please take these back to the kitchen while I hunt around for the rest of my stuff?”
His eyes gleamed and she knew there would be fewer cookies on the plate by the time it reached the kitchen, but she didn’t say anything. When he was grown, she wanted him to look back on his childhood and remember these small things that made him happy.
She knelt on the rug and began picking up the tubes of lipstick, thinking about Merritt’s straight back and the reason Cal had left his brother and his life behind him and never looked back. She clutched the tube of Passion Pink in her fist, poised to drop it into her pocketbook, and thought of one more thing to add to her journal: Everybody carries their hurts in different ways, but everybody’s got them. Everybody. Some people are just better at hiding them.
Using the spindles to help pull herself up, Loralee walked slowly toward the kitchen, her heels tapping across the floorboards as her smile found its way back to her face before Owen saw her.
chapter 6
MERRITT
I felt Gibbes’s eyes on my back just as surely as if he were pressing two fingers into my flesh. I paused at the top of the elegant stairs. “Where would you like to start?”
“My old room, I suppose. I’m assuming my grandmother didn’t throw anything away, and there are a few things in the closet I’m hoping are still there.”
I led the way to the room Mr. Williams had indicated had belonged to Gibbes and that Loralee was now staying in. I wondered what Gibbes was hoping to find—perhaps an old chess set or baseball glove. Nothing that meant more than recalling his youth. “Judging from what I’ve seen so far, I don’t think much has been thrown out or changed since you lived here.”