The Broken Girls(49)

“So Sarah London knows,” he said. “Maybe Mary Hand was a student. If so, there should be something about her in the records.”

“That’s what Margaret thinks.” Fiona drained the last of her coffee. “She wants these records. She was a cagey old lady. I can’t figure out what her game is—whether it’s money, or ghosts, or something else she wants. But the records are definitely part of what she’s looking for. I think she suspected that I know where they are.”

“Well, we’re one up on her, then,” Jamie said, grinning. “Let’s see what happens when she knows they’re yours. Maybe she’ll come to you with a different game.”

Fiona smiled at him.

“What?” he said, glancing at her.

“You’re sucked in,” she said. “Just like I am. Admit it.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe,” she mocked him.

He pulled into Sarah London’s gravel drive and turned off the ignition. Her heart gave a little pop, because she knew that look in his eyes. Still, she watched as he put his cup down, leaned over, and took her face in his hands.

He kissed her slowly, properly, taking his time. She tried to stay unaffected, but he was oh so good at it; she felt the rasp of his beard and the press of his thumbs, and before she knew it, she was gripping his wrists and kissing him back, letting her teeth slide over his bottom lip as he made a sound in her mouth and kissed her harder. Sometimes their kisses were complicated, a kind of conversation on their own, but this one wasn’t—this was just Jamie, kissing her in his car as the bright sunlight slanted in, making the moment spin on and on.

Finally, they paused for breath. “Come to dinner at my parents’ tonight,” he said, still holding her face, his breath on her cheek.

She felt herself stiffen. She’d met Jamie’s parents once, briefly, and she was pretty sure a journalist was not whom they wanted for their precious son. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Sure it is.” He kissed her neck and she tried not to shiver. “We’ve been dating for a year, Fee. Having dinner with the parents is part of the deal.”

It was. She knew it was. But a meet-the-parents evening— Jesus. She wasn’t ready for this. “I’m no good at it,” she warned him. “The girlfriend thing. I’m terrible at it, actually.”

“I know,” he said, and he laughed softly when he felt her stiffen in offense. “But they’ve been asking about you. My mother especially. She wants to feed you pot roast and ask leading questions about what your intentions are.”

“Oh, my God.” Fiona didn’t even like pot roast. She’d had pretzels for dinner last night.

“I know we’ve taken it slow, Fee,” he said. “I get it. I wanted to take it slow, too. But it’s time.”

Damn it. He was right. There was only so long she would have gotten away with putting this off. “Look, I can endure it, but if we do this, they’re going to think we’re serious.”

She regretted the words—this could lead to the are we serious conversation—and thought he might argue, but Jamie just exhaled a sigh and leaned against the seat next to her. “I know,” he said. “But I have to give them something. My mother actually asked me when I’m going to find a nice girl and settle down.”

Fiona paused, surprised at how that alarmed her. The words bubbled up—Is that what you want? To get married and settle down?—but she bit them back. What if he said, Yes, it is?

They were not having this conversation.

It had been only a year. That wasn’t long; this was 2014. People weren’t expected to court and get married anymore like it was 1950. But Jamie was younger than she was, and he hadn’t grown up with freethinking hippie parents. He didn’t ask her for much. As much as she hated the idea of dinner with his parents, she could do it. For him. Just suck it up and go.

“Fine,” she finally said, halfheartedly shoving against his chest. “I’ll go, all right? I’ll eat pot roast. Now let’s get moving. You’re going to give that old lady a heart attack if she’s looking out the window.”

He grinned and grabbed his coat from the backseat.

Miss London wasn’t watching from the window. She didn’t come to the door, either, even after repeated knocking. Worried, Fiona pulled out her cell phone and walked to the end of the drive, looking for cell reception. She was partway down the street when she lucked into enough bars to call Cathy.

“I had to take Aunt Sairy for a checkup,” Cathy said. “The doctor changed the time, and she can’t miss her checkups. Just go around back to the shed. I left the key under the old gnome.”

So they walked around the house to the backyard. Miss London had no neighbors behind her, and her backyard sloped away into a thicket of huge pine trees, stark and black now against the gray sky. Beyond that were a few tangled fields and a power station crisscrossed with metal towers. Crows shouted somewhere overhead, and a truck engine roared from the nearby two-lane highway.

Standing behind the old house was a shed covered with vinyl siding in avocado green. Fiona felt for the key beneath the garden gnome on the back porch while Jamie cleared the shed doorway of the snow shovel and the wheelbarrow leaning against it. The door was rusted, held shut by a padlock that was dulled with age and exposure. Fiona had a moment of doubt that the old lock would even work, but the key slid in easily and Jamie popped off the lock and swung open the door.