He stopped within sight of the law offices of Tanner, Moscovitz, and Graves and straightened his tie. The raised-hair sensation of being watched struck him right in the back of the neck, making him turn toward the large display window of the Starfall Point Snow Globe Emporium. Was it his imagination or was Gerda Henderson glaring at him from behind a row of tiny glittered Starfall Ferry globes? That seemed unlikely. For the last two years, Gerda made him thumbprint cookies with homemade jam harvested from the blueberry bushes in her backyard. Because he said he liked them once at a Friends of the Library meeting.
But the look she was giving him was decidedly frosty. His access to the cookies could be in danger. Even more confused, Edison climbed the front stairs, gripping the old brass doorknob to the law office with trepidation. Maybe he wasn’t ready to talk to Ms. Denton’s niece. Clearly, he was not capable of predicting the behavior of the women who were already in his life—much less the ones he didn’t know yet.
But the decision seemed to have been made for him when Norma Oviette jerked the door open, crossing her arms across her chest. “You should be ashamed of yourself, deeply and profoundly ashamed.”
Edison’s breath caught in his chest, and he forced himself to inhale deeply. Norma couldn’t possibly mean that the way it sounded. She didn’t know his reasons for coming to Starfall. She couldn’t know how much fear it struck in his heart to hear those words, or how right she was. He cleared his throat as she wrapped her bony, yet not at all frail, brown fingers around his wrist and dragged him into the law office’s elegant waiting room.
“Can I ask what I did?” Edison inquired, which he supposed was one of those questions that annoyed people. Also, he clearly wasn’t imagining things. Those ladies definitely had been glaring at him. Norma was also currently glaring at him.
“What did I do?” he asked again.
“You locked that poor girl out of the bathroom when she was so desperately ill—and distraught. Edison Held, my heart just broke when I saw how green she was. How could you do that to such a nice young lady? And what were you doing on the ferry anyway?”
Relief and confusion went to war in his head. How would the Nana Grapevine get wind of his ferry activities? The only people on the deck were those schoolkids and Alice Seastairs, who really didn’t talk to locals much. Unless…
Oh, no.
The door to Clark’s office opened, a pair of small red Keds—clad feet stepped out onto the beige carpeting, and a feeling of doom settled over him.
Norma knew about his ferry activities because she got word of them directly from the awful, but fetching, mouth itself; the mouth that managed to produce a remarkable degree of vitriol, even while “so desperately ill.” Clearly, Norma had used the time Edison spent hiding in his office to activate the Nana Grapevine, resulting in the glares.
“You!” the shoe violator growled. She looked decidedly less miserable than the last time he’d seen her. And she was even more beautiful without the deathly pallor and the shadows under those gray eyes, heaven help him. She was definitely not middle-aged, but…more than halfway to embittered, given the hard-set line of that generous mouth.
“You,” he groaned. “You’re Nora Denton’s niece?”
“Apparently,” she intoned.
“Um, is everything all right?” Clark asked, coming out of his office behind Norma and looking back and forth between the two of them like a lost tennis fan. “Edison, this is Riley Denton-Everett, the late Nora Denton’s niece. Riley, this is the head of our local library, Edison Held.”
Edison’s hand stilled at his side. Nora Denton was dead? That couldn’t be true. Nora was a force of nature, too tough and too smart to be outdone by something as trifling as time or mortality. A new sort of shame, hot and dull, washed through him. He’d never been on good terms with Nora, and he would never get the chance. She’d been a curious, complex woman, and Edison was sorry that she was gone. He was even sorrier that he’d started off on such a bad note with Nora’s niece. How was he was going to fix this? Why didn’t Margaret say anything? Or had he misheard Clark? “Excuse me…did you just say…?”
“What is happening here?” Clark asked, the confused expression still wrinkling his brow. “Do you two know each other?”
“We’ve met,” Riley said dryly. “On the ferry. And he didn’t make a great impression.”
Edison shook his head, murmuring, “No, I did not.”
“Wait, hold on, Ed, you rode on the ferry?” Clark exclaimed.
Still at a loss for words, Edison realized that the least he could do was offer his condolences. “I’m very sorry to hear about your aunt. She was an interesting woman. The island will be a lesser place without her.”
“Thank you,” she said, but the response didn’t reach her eyes.
“And I’m sorry for the unfortunate incident on the ferry as well.” And just when her expression started to soften, his stupid mouth took over and he added, “I have a condition that um…makes the ferry ride difficult.”
“Do you suffer an anaphylactic reaction to selfish jackasses?” she asked. “I have a similar condition. It can make life so difficult.”
Oh, no, he was in so much trouble. She was not only achingly beautiful in that otherworldly way that made him think of boyhood days reading Tolkien, but she was smart. The kind of smart that would keep his interest long after he’d forgotten how damn pretty she was—if that was even possible.
“Forgive me,” Edison said, “I think we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot—”
The color returned to her cheeks in a violent bloom. Unfortunately, it was angry color—bright, virulent red. “The wrong foot? What? Is this about the shoes? Maybe if you hadn’t just stood in my way, your fancy footwear wouldn’t have suffered.”
Edison’s jaw dropped. “Not at all! It’s just, if we were in each other’s shoes…or if the shoe were on the other foot…Oh my god.”
“Look, I don’t have time to deal with your twisted foot-related humor. And I definitely don’t have the money to replace those designer loafers…so good luck with that. Just please, stay away from me while I’m here. I think it would be best for both of us,” she said, smiling with an acidic false sweetness that made him step back. Then she added, “Watch yourself,” as Clark rolled her suitcase toward the door.
Over his shoulder, Clark mouthed the words, “What the hell, Edison?” at him before slipping out the door behind her.
“She’s not that nice,” Edison muttered.
“I beg your pardon?” Norma said, arching her iron gray eyebrows. “I think she was restrained, all things considered.”
Edison sighed, knowing Norma was right. Riley could have gone at him a lot harder. She clearly had the vocabulary for it. “So, she’s going to stay?”
Norma shrugged. “We don’t know yet. She’s just suffered a loss, and I think it’s hit her pretty hard, even if she didn’t know Nora all that well. But it won’t help if you go around poking at her. Just leave her alone for a bit, Edison. Maybe she’ll be able to talk to you without thrashing you verbally after a few days.”