Making It Right (Most Likely To #3)

“Glynis can’t keep a secret. If she knew something, I’d know something.”


Mel’s foot did this nervous twitch thing when she was thinking. “Josie? Everyone talks to the bartender.”

“Maybe.”

“I always talk to my hairdresser. Did your dad go to Russell’s barbershop?”

“Back when Russell Senior cut hair.”

“Worth a shot to ask around.”

Jo had to admit that Mel had some great ideas of places to start the search for the woman her father had some kind of involvement with.

“We could be wrong. Your dad might have just sworn off women,” Mel said.

“I’m craving Gill and it’s only been a week.”

Mel smiled. “Wait until you’re pregnant. Everything funnels right down here.” She made hand gestures to her groin and squirmed in her seat. “Pregnant women shouldn’t be this horny.”

“I bet that makes Wyatt a very happy man.”

“As long as he leaves my boobs alone, we’re golden. My girls hurt.”

They talked about the changes in Mel’s body and the liberation of married sex. Later, with a list of the graduating class of a decade past in her hand, Jo walked the few short blocks to her house in thought.

Her father hiding a woman in his home wouldn’t have happened. Wherever he might have gotten his engine started, it had to have been somewhere else. And since he didn’t leave town often . . .

Jo looked at the houses surrounding hers with renewed interest.

Someone had to have seen something.

But who . . . and who in River Bend could keep a secret?

When her eyes swept the neighborhood a third time, Jo paused.

“Miss Gina,” she whispered to herself. Miss Gina could carry a secret to the grave.





Chapter Twenty-Two




“Who was my dad sleeping with?” Jo stared Miss Gina down and jumped right to the point.

“Are we having this conversation without alcohol?”

Jo pointed to the badge on her chest. “I am.”

“I have guests. Let’s take this out back.” Out back referred to Miss Gina’s porch, which covered the span of the house overlooking the backyard and guesthouse that Gina herself used.

Her skin prickled, like it did when a knock came to your door at two a.m.

Instead of sitting, Jo leaned against the banister and took several deep breaths as Miss Gina made herself comfortable on a cushioned Adirondack chair.

“Let me start by saying I don’t know who she was, just that there was someone.”

Disappointment hit.

“What do you know?”

“You were in middle school. That preteen walking mess made worse by a lack of a woman in your life. I remember the first time Zoe convinced you to stop here. Something had upset you enough to make your friends want to take care of you. I soon learned that wasn’t the normal pattern.”

Jo wasn’t sure about that. Seemed Mel and Zoe were watching out for her those last years in school.

“How does this timeline play into my father’s lover?”

“I paid attention at that point. For all I know it was going on before then, but after, I was certain.”

“I’m listening.” Jo tried to remember that time in her life. Her mother had been gone long enough that she’d strained to remember the sound of her voice, the smell of her perfume. Puberty had hit and her father understood nothing. Looking back, he’d done his best, but he had been rather clueless.

“When you, Mel, and Zoe started to come around, Joseph started stopping by with some regularity.”

“You said he did that after I moved away.”

“He did. There was a time when he’d already deemed me safe and didn’t bother hovering over you here. I agreed to call him if I thought you were in trouble.”

“So my father watched me through you.”

“A little.”

When Jo was a teenager, she would have felt betrayed. As an adult, not so much.

“I’d always known your father. We’d have a conversation or two over the years, but as a respected citizen of River Bend, one that didn’t need to be escorted out of R&B’s, we didn’t cross professional paths. Outside of when your mother passed and I invited guests at her funeral to stay overnight.”

“But you managed to get to know him after.”

“I did. He never came right out and told me there was someone, but when I hinted that he was a little more relaxed than normal, he’d give me that grin that said both . . . yes, and what are you talking about?”

Jo knew that look well.

“How is it possible you never figured out who she was?”

“It wasn’t my business. I didn’t pry, didn’t look around with a magnifying glass.”

“Why would he keep it secret?”

“Maybe it wasn’t serious.”

“How long did this go on?”

Miss Gina narrowed her eyes as if searching her memory for a clue. “Your dad was really uptight when you were in high school.”

“Frustrated,” Jo said.

“Probably.”

Frustrated meant he wasn’t getting it. She knew that feeling well. Or he could have been fed up with her behavior and sex had nothing to do with it. “Do you think he took a woman up to the cabin?”

“Could have. It wasn’t like anyone drove up there to check.”

There hadn’t been so much as a tube of lubricant up at the cabin to indicate a sexual rendezvous.

Jo turned around to look at the line of trees surrounding the property. She hadn’t needed a cabin when hooking up as a young adult. Her father may have had higher standards, or maybe not. It wasn’t like she could ask him now.

“You think this lover was connected to his death, don’t you?”

“I think his lover is the only new thing I have to go on to figure out what really happened. My father’s death wasn’t an accident.”

Jo half expected Miss Gina to deny her allegation.

“I agree.”

“I’m not sure they are connected, but if my father could keep something as transparent as a girlfriend, lover . . . or whatever she was a secret, what else had he been hiding?”

“Well, if there is anyone who can figure that out, it’s the woman who stepped into his shoes. You live in his house, have his friends, his colleagues, his office . . . hell, you’re sleeping in his room. You live his life.”

“Until lately,” Jo mumbled. Gill’s presence and the desire to get out of River Bend and find something to occupy her world outside of potholes and barking dogs was a complete departure from life as she knew it.

“What about the year he died?” Jo turned to watch Miss Gina’s face.

“I think he was itchy. We’d sit right here on this porch, drink my lemonade, and he’d get that look in his eyes.”

“What look?”

Miss Gina pointed a finger at Jo. “That one. The one that said he wasn’t happy and wanted a change.”

“So why didn’t he leave? My mom was gone, I was gone.”

“That’s the ten thousand dollar question.”