Three Little Words. Carrie Alexander

really.”

      “I feel like I know you from somewhere….”

      His features tightened. “I used to spend summers here, with my grandfather.”

      “Did you?” She tried to picture Connor Reed as a boy and no bells rang. Summer people. They came and went, very few of them leaving a mark except for the trash they threw off their boats, the cash in the tills of local businesses and the rising prices of shoreline property. Not many of them ventured into the library with the distraction of sun-soaked days at the beach beckoning so near. Lake Superior was practically lapping at her doorstep.

      “I don’t think we’ve ever met,” she said doubtfully, “so I can’t imagine how I’d know—”

      “You don’t. You don’t know me.”

      He was lying. She was certain. But why?

      “Who’s your grandfather?” she asked, letting her suspicion show. Close-knit families were important to local folks. Their ties were meaningful, binding, unbreakable. And closed to outsiders. She knew first-hand.

      Connor hesitated. “Addison Mitchell.”

      She shook her head. Nothing.

      “He moved away some time ago, but he’s been back for about a year now.”

      “In Alouette?” The town was small enough that she knew just about everyone, at least by sight.

      “Ishpeming. At a nursing home.”

      “I see.”

      Connor let out a soft breath. “He was once the Gull Rock lighthouse keeper.”

      The lightbulb went on. “Oh. Of course—Old Man Mitchell!” Tess’s cheeks got warm when she realized how that sounded. “I mean, that’s what we always called him. Kids, you know. He used to chase us away from the lighthouse grounds.”

      Connor said nothing in reply and her eyes narrowed. Sonny Mitchell had always lived alone, as far as she remembered, until the lighthouse had become automated and then decommissioned altogether a few years later. Gull Rock was quite isolated and austere. Sonny “Old Man” Mitchell had been a notorious crank.

      She prodded for more information. “I still don’t remember you, though, Mr. Reed.”

      “Connor,” he said. He glanced over her, up and down, making her toes flex inside conservative Payless pumps. “I’m older than you—we wouldn’t have connected when I was ten and you were…still in diapers?”

      She doubted there was that much of an age difference, even though he had a sort of weary, haunted look about him that made him seem…well, not old exactly, but sort of cynical and worn out. “I’m thirty-two.”

      “Thirty-nine.”

      Okay, he had a point. She wasn’t hanging out at the lighthouse when she was three. He might even be telling the truth about visiting his grandfather, except that she doubted he was telling all of it.

      Unless her suspicion was only her vivid imagination run amok. Which, admittedly, wasn’t all that infrequent an occurrence. It was fortunate she usually kept her fancies to herself. Outwardly, she was as regular as a metronome.

      “Now that we’ve established my provenance,” Connor said with a small twitch of one corner of his mouth. The hollows in his cheeks deepened. He was trying not to smile at her.

      Not used to being found amusing, Tess elongated her neck, tilting her head back. She was short; imperious was a stretch, but she tried. “Yes?”

      He sobered. “I have a favor to ask you. Or—well, not really a favor. It can be a job. I’d pay for your time.”

      She felt her eyes widen. He wanted her to help him load bear gallbladders off Gull Rock when she could barely stand to handle raw chicken giblets? Certainly not. She almost chuckled at the thought, before remembering that she was being ridiculous with her farfetched imaginings and really must stop.

      Right now.

      “I saw you with the children, reading, teaching…so I wondered, if it’s not an imposition—” Connor’s gaze held steady even if his words were hesitant “—whether you might be willing to teach…”

      Teach him how to read?

      Tess tried not to look shocked. Suddenly all the little details made sense. The way he’d concentrated on the lighthouse illustrations and not the text. How he hadn’t taken any notes. The intent look on his face when he’d watched her storytelling group. She’d taken it for his natural demeanor, but it might have been fierce concentration. Exactly the way Grady Kujanen concentrated on sounding out a new word.

      Heavens. And here she’d pegged Connor Reed as a former professor gone bad. She couldn’t have been more wrong!

      “Of course I’ll teach you how to read,” she said, stepping in with a reassuring squeeze of his arm when he continued to hesitate over the request.

      His eyes flashed. “Teach me?”

      CHAPTER TWO

      AT CONNOR’S OBVIOUS surprise, the librarian’s chin came down and she leaned closer, exuding warmth and understanding. “Trust me, it’s nothing to be embarrassed about. There are so many people like you, from all walks of life. I commend your courage in coming forward, really I do. This is your turning point. One day, you’ll look back and—”

      Suddenly she stopped the stream of platitudes, her mouth hanging open. Must have finally read his face.

      “It’s not me,” he said.

      She had clasped his hands with encouragement, but now she let go. “Would it be…” long pause “…a close friend?”

      “My grandfather.” There it was, baldly. Connor hoped Sonny wouldn’t kill him for involving a third party. The librarian seemed kind, and possibly discreet. She’d certainly been surreptitious about checking him out. But not sneaky enough, because he’d noticed every one of her shy glances and speculative stares.

      At first he’d noticed because she was an attractive woman, small and cute as a chipping sparrow, with bright eyes and darting hands and a shiny cap of copper hair. Then he’d realized that it was possible she’d recognized him as an infamous quasi celebrity.

      He’d come to hate when that happened. Over and over again, he’d suffered the lingering stares, the double takes. Eyes widened with recognition, hands slapped over mouths. That’s Connor Reed. The man who set the killer free. I’ve seen him on the news. Despicable! He should be ashamed.

      He’d put up with it through the hearings and the aftermath, but now that it was over—or so he hoped—he’d known he had to get away. So he’d run. As far as he could.

      Alouette, Michigan, a small outpost on the far northern border of the country, seemed to qualify as the ends of the earth. As he’d remembered from a few brief vacations at the lighthouse, people here were friendly but not intrusive. They’d gossip among themselves about Connor’s culpability in the Strange case, but they wouldn’t pillory him. Not in public, anyway. Even so, he planned to keep his head low.

      The librarian was nodding. “Uh-huh. Your grandfather. Well. There are literacy programs that will help. I can put you in touch with a teacher who—”

      “No. Sonny wouldn’t want a program. Nothing official.” As it was, Sonny would probably object to Tess Bucek, even on her own. He’d asked Connor to teach him to read—only Connor.

      The librarian blinked. “Why me?”

      Connor scrubbed a hand over his jaw. He was dead tired from a day and a half on the road—New York City to small-town Michigan in one shot—from one extreme to another in thirty-some hours. He’d gone first to visit Sonny at the nursing home, then drove into Alouette for a look at the old lighthouse, since that was all