A Creed in Stone Creek - Linda Lael Miller [90]
Brody grinned. “You mean, like a toothbrush, Boston? Hell, I haven’t sunk that low.”
“You’re not going to tell me about the time you’ve been away, are you?” Steven asked, already knowing the answer.
“Not yet,” Brody said, with sadness in his eyes, briefly resting a hand on Steven’s shoulder. “You asked me for a favor earlier. Now, I’m asking you for one. Let me get around to talking in my own way and my own time. I’m still sorting through things myself.”
Steven nodded in agreement.
Brody left the room without another word, and a few seconds later, Steven heard the shower running.
FOR THE NEXT FOUR DAYS, Melissa’s life ran smoothly.
She worked. She gained two pounds after having supper with Ashley and Jack and the one-time flashers on several nights. The tenants, meanwhile, remained on their best behavior, probably because, one, there was a child in the house and two, Jack clearly wasn’t the sort to put up with any nonsense.
After work, she happily weeded her little patch of garden. She mediated more disagreements, thankfully minor, between the members of the Parade Committee, and ran into Steven fairly often—in the post office, in the grocery store, once at the Sunflower Café, when she stopped for a bottle of water during her run, and another time at the dry cleaner’s next door to his new office. He introduced her to his visiting cousin, Brody.
These encounters, mundane as they were, both unnerved and excited Melissa, but she’d said it herself: Things had been moving pretty fast between her and Steven. She was grateful for a breather—and equally grateful that she saw him almost every day.
On top of all this, the weather was flat-out perfect. Warm, but not hot. Sunny, but not glaring.
Happily, there were no confrontations with Velda and no calls from Eustace Blake, lodging his interminable complaints about space visitors.
Nathan Carter had apparently left town again, because Melissa hadn’t seen him around, which was a weight off Deputy Ferguson’s mind, and hers, too.
Her cuts and bruises healed, and the last of the soreness faded away, although she could still feel ecstatic little catches of physical pleasure sometimes, when she allowed herself to remember how it was, making love with Steven Creed.
Rummaging through Ashley’s closet one evening, she even found a killer dress to wear to the dance on Saturday night—an aqua-blue sundress with thinnest-of-thin vertical silver stripes shimmering through the silky fabric.
Life was downright idyllic, all things considered. Which was precisely why she should have been prepared, she would think later.
On Saturday morning, she met with the members of the Parade Committee, as agreed, for the walk-through—a sort of rehearsal, but without the costumes and the floats.
Bea Brady and Adelaide Hillingsley were still on the outs over the toilet-paper question, but the ice was broken when Tessa Quinn and a few assistants showed up at the meeting place in the park with coffee and a big bag of fresh doughnuts, her contribution to the community effort.
Melissa, suitably clad in blue jeans, sneakers and a T-shirt, her hair pulled up into a Saturday ponytail, her face bare of makeup, shepherded everybody into line—Tom had temporarily closed Main Street by placing a sawhorse at each end—and appropriate gaps were left for the high-school band and drill team, the sheriff’s posse, and the annual offering from over in Indian Rock.
Stone Creek and Indian Rock tended to be a little competitive, as far as their town floats were concerned, but that only served to up the quality of the event.
Oscar Vernon, who owned a used-car dealership and salvage yard outside the city limits always put the Stone Creek float on the road, and he was invariably secretive as far as colors and subject matter were concerned. He was keeping his mouth shut this year, too—wouldn’t give so much as a hint of what he planned—but since he’d done the place proud every year since 1978, nobody really pushed him for answers.
Everyone was poised to begin when Steven and Matt sprinted across the