A String of Beads (Jane Whitefield, #8)(119)

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I already added enough to your Volvo’s repair bill to cover anything you did to the VW.”

“Please,” she said.

“Not a chance. I’m already charging too much. Come on in, and I’ll get your bill and the keys to your car.”

He went behind his workbench where there was a counter with a computer and printer, and in seconds the printer was rolling her bill out onto the tray. “I heard Jimmy Sanders came home too.”

“That’s right,” she said. “They had an Edge of the Woods for him today.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I heard that was happening, but I couldn’t go on a workday, with people waiting for their cars. I’ll go see him in a day or two.”

“He’ll be glad to see you.” She took the bill, looked at it, and said, “Two hundred dollars? Two hundred?”

He shrugged. “I’m in a good mood.”

“You’re always in a good mood,” she said. “I don’t know what’s the matter with you.” She pulled a wallet out of her purse, gave him two hundreds, and took her Volvo’s keys. “I’ll see you, Ray.”

Ray watched her get into her white Volvo and drive off. He walked to the Volkswagen Passat to see what sort of wear she had actually put on it. He opened the door, sat in the driver’s seat, inserted the key, and listened to the engine while he surveyed the interior, and then looked down toward the odometer. He couldn’t see the dial because there was a stack of bills propped in front of it. He took it off the dashboard and counted twenty-five hundred-dollar bills. Jane had known he wouldn’t take the money before she’d even gotten out of the car, so she had left it there.

A FEW HOURS LATER, DR. Carey McKinnon walked in the kitchen door of his house carrying a bottle of champagne and a bouquet of summer flowers. He set the bottle on the counter, handed his wife the bouquet, and took her in his arms. They kissed, and they stayed that way for a long time before she pulled away.

She set the flowers on the counter. “How did you know?”

“I read the newspapers. I saw that this Crane guy was pretty much posthumously convicted of the killing.”

“So you knew I’d come home.”

“Not necessarily today,” he said. “You may have noticed the roses I bought yesterday, or the orchids from the day before. They’re in vases in the living room and dining room. It’s like a funeral parlor in there.”

“I saw them,” she said. “It was a nice way to come home. I could tell you had been thinking about me too.”

“Too?”

“Of course,” she said. “And maybe that you weren’t so mad at me for going away.”

“I don’t know. How mad did you think I was?”

“Pretty mad.”

He shrugged. “If you have enough time alone with your feelings, they start to separate out like ingredients in a suspension, and you can identify their proportions. Anger wasn’t the biggest part. Worrying about you was the biggest, and missing you was most of what was left.” He paused. “And I guess after I thought about it for a while, I felt ashamed for pretending I didn’t understand some things, when I really did.”

“What things?”

“That they’re your family too. They were around when you were a kid. You share a lineage and a language and a history that I don’t, and they have a claim on you. I pretended to both of us that I didn’t know, so I’d have a right to my irritation.”

Jane hugged him, and held him to her. She said nothing about the things he understood or the ten thousand things that he didn’t.

He lifted her chin and looked at her closely. “So you’re done now, right?”

“Done?”

“Jimmy’s safe, and the clan mothers are satisfied?”

“They said they were.”

“You’re home for good?”

“If I can be.”

They looked into each other’s eyes, and Jane could see that a hint of the sadness had returned, but he pretended he didn’t know what she’d meant.

“Want to go out to dinner?” he asked. “I made reservations at the Strathmore.”

“The Strathmore?” she said. “You must have amputated a few wallets while I was away.”

“It’s the only way I can get my patients to lose weight,” he said. “While you were gone I tried to keep busy.”

“What time are our reservations?”

“Seven,” he said.

Her eyes widened and she gently released herself from his arms. “Then we’ve got to get ready right away.” She walked out of the kitchen, across the dining room, into the living room. She reached the stairway and went up a few steps, then glanced over her shoulder to see him watching her, and smiled. “Too bad for you.”

“I could call them and make it tomorrow night.”

She took another step and looked back. “I would if I were you.”