Private Affairs. Tori Carrington

known running into her at some point was inevitable. While he’d visited his hometown a couple of times in recent weeks, he was now living here. At least for the foreseeable future. Which meant facing a great number of people from his past.

      “This isn’t a good time, Palmer,” she said quietly.

      He squinted at her through the waning light. “I would have called, but …”

      A sad attempt at humor that fell flat on its face, where it belonged.

      He cleared his throat. “I hadn’t meant to stop. I was walking back from Main on my way to Foss’s bed-and-breakfast …”

      She nodded. “I guessed as much.”

      She looked at him in a way that made him feel she was sizing him up and that he came up short.

      “You look good, Palmer,” she said simply.

      “So do you.”

      Her smile was self-conscious. “I don’t mean … physically.” She made a small sound. “It looks like you’ve done well for yourself.”

      And he had, hadn’t he? He’d accomplished everything that he’d hoped to when he left Earnest for Boston. More.

      Why was it, then, that he suddenly sensed he’d achieved nothing?

      “Hello?” a man’s voice called from inside the house.

      Penelope looked in that direction, apparently surprised.

      Palmer grimaced. While he hadn’t asked for the information, many townspeople that he’d encountered seemed to deem it important to fill him in on Penelope and her actions. He’d learned that she was still single. That she owned a small shop down on Main, one of the few that had managed to stay open in the struggling town of four thousand. He’d walked by it a few times after closing and had stood staring inside at the colorful tapestries on the walls and displayed on easels.

      In all the conversations he’d had, not a one of them had mentioned a man being in the picture.

      But of course there would be. Why would he even think differently?

      “Have you visited your father yet?” she asked, speaking to him rather than the man seeking her out.

      He suspected she knew the answer to that. Just as he knew many secondhand details about her, she’d probably plucked the details of his movements since he’d been back from the same grapevine. Not that it was a state secret, but he was pretty sure that everyone knew he had yet to see his old man.

      The back door opened and a familiar guy walked out. A guy who towered over him by several inches and had made it his business to stop by the industrial trailer that currently served as his offices. Sheriff Barnaby Jones had let him know in no uncertain terms that he intended to keep an eye on what was going on.

      At the time, Palmer couldn’t help sensing that there was a certain trace of animosity in the sheriff’s attention.

      Now he knew why.

      Penelope hurried toward the man. “Barney! Hi.”

      The sheriff’s gaze seemed a little too intimate for Palmer’s liking as he took in Penelope and complimented her on her dress. Then his attention fell on Palmer where he stood just inside the side garden gate. His expression changed.

      “Barnaby, I’d like to introduce you to … an old family friend,” Penelope said. “Palmer DeVoe, this is Barnaby Jones.”

      Palmer crossed to shake the other man’s hand. “I believe we’ve already met.”

      “Yes, we have.” The sheriff seemed to say it in warning.

      Penelope appeared to pick up on the undercurrents passing between them and stepped in.

      “Barney and I are attending the fair in Lewisville,” she said, and then looked confused, as if she couldn’t understand why she’d shared that. “It was … nice to see you, Palmer. I hope you enjoy your visit. You haven’t been home for a while and I know everyone is happy to see you.”

      Palmer squared his shoulders under the scrutiny of the sheriff and turned a full-wattage grin on Penelope. “Visit? I’m not visiting, Penelope. I’m back.”

       2

      THE INACCURATE COMMENT had earned exactly the response Palmer was looking for. But that meant little when Penelope had walked inside the house with Barnaby, leaving him alone to see himself back out the garden gate.

      “And remember, no matter where you go, there you are.”

      The quote from Confucius that his mother had liked to parrot trailed through his mind as he walked toward the B and B. He slid his hands into the pockets of his khaki pants, considering the words of the other woman he had loved and lost. But this time to death.

      Janice DeVoe had been so sweet that his father had once remarked that a body didn’t need sugar in his coffee when she was in the room. Of course, that had been long before things had turned sour. And before she’d gotten sick with an illness that she’d denied until it was too late.

      She’d been fond of telling stories about her only child, the unchallenged sunshine of her life, of how he proclaimed nearly from the instant he could speak that he was going to be someone important, the richest man in the world and, if he could fit it in, president. And she’d encouraged him in whatever direction he wanted to go.

      Until she lay near death, considering the son she’d loved so dearly … and the father that had initially been amused by the special mother-and-son bond, and then increasingly jealous of it.

      That’s when Janice had spoken the quote one last time, calling on both of the men in her life to reconcile their differences and come together. Told them they would need each other now.

      Then she was gone and he and his father had stared at each other, virtual strangers.

      Shortly thereafter, Palmer had left. And aside from brief phone calls around the holidays and on birthdays, they’d barely spoken since.

      Now, Palmer neared the corner of Maple and Elm streets and he stopped before crossing. Not because of traffic. There was none at this time on a Friday night. But because instead of walking straight toward the B and B he could turn right and within three blocks be on the street on which he’d grown up and had not been back to since he was nineteen.

      “I’ll be in the area next week,” he’d said to his father during a recent phone call.

      Thomas had made a sound. “I’ll alert the media.”

      There had been no invitation to visit. No indication that he’d like to see him. Just a sarcastic remark that Palmer had left hanging in the air between them.

      Before he knew that’s what he was going to do, he made that right and took the route he had taken so very many times before. Within minutes he stood in front of the house his mother had taken such pride in. A place he might not have recognized if not for the tilting, rusty mailbox at the unpaved curb that bore the family name.

      The simple, one-story clapboard house had at one time been painted a brilliant white with powder-blue shutters. The flower beds had been full of color, the shrubs neatly trimmed, the grass mown. Now everything looked abandoned, as if the only owner had been his mother and no one had lived there since.

      Palmer opened the gate that hung half off its hinges and stepped slowly up the weed-choked gravel path. The shrubs had grown unevenly to nearly halfway up the front windows and a newspaper sat on the cracked concrete front steps. He picked it up, verifying that it was today’s, and then leaned forward to knock. The screen door was so grimy that he hadn’t noticed the front door was actually open until he heard his old man’s gravelly voice as clearly as if he were standing next to him.

      “What the hell do you want?” he called. “If you’re selling something,