The Older Woman. Cheryl Reavis

fiddled around out there with plants and hanging baskets and clay pots. She apparently liked growing things—there were flowers all over the place. And wind chimes. The woman liked her wind chimes. He could hear them at night if he cut off the air conditioner and left the windows open.

      Occasionally Meehan just sat on a lounge chair by herself and read. She definitely had nice legs, nice enough that it was no hardship for him to pay attention to her comings and goings. She always waved if she happened to see him in the window, but she didn’t bother him. As far as he knew, she’d never checked up on him or anything like that. Apparently, his word that he’d wouldn’t upset old Mrs. Bee had been good enough for her, and he appreciated that.

      He hadn’t seen her much the past few days, though. It kind of surprised him that she hadn’t come to Rita’s wedding. He knew she’d been invited, and he knew she liked Rita and Lieutenant McGraw both. In fact, Meehan was one of the few people who had openly approved of the big Warren-McGraw romance—besides him. And he did ultimately approve, regardless of the current ache in his gut. He was nothing if not a realist.

      A woman either loves you or she doesn’t. Period.

      Doyle shifted his weight and kept watching out the window, mostly because Meehan and the boyfriend had just come out of the house. She was standing in the gravel driveway with her arms folded. She was standing—and the guy was pacing. And talking. Every now and then he gestured with both hands—a “What do you want from me?” kind of thing.

      Apparently nothing, Doyle decided, because it didn’t look as if Meehan answered him. She wasn’t even looking at him. She just stood there with the rain beating down on her.

      The boyfriend was talking again, waving his hands around a little too much, Doyle thought.

      Threatening?

      No. Not threatening. Or if he was, he wasn’t making much of an impression. Meehan didn’t seem to be intimidated by him. Still, this was not the Meehan he knew. He’d been a patient on her ward for months. She had a mouth on her. She was tough—tough enough to hand it out and then some if the situation called for it. And it sure looked to him as if this one required at least some kind of comeback on her part.

      The boyfriend said something else, then turned and walked to his car.

      Meehan stared after him, but she didn’t try to stop him. He slammed the car door and drove away, accelerating too much for the weather conditions in the process and slinging mud and gravel all the way to the street.

      Meehan stood for a moment after he’d gone. Doyle thought she was about to go into the house, but she didn’t. Rain or no rain, she abruptly sat down on a nearby stone bench.

      Was she crying?

      Nah, she wasn’t crying.

      Well, hell, maybe she was…

      Doyle abruptly pushed himself away from the window. Either way, it was all over now. The boyfriend had gone his merry way, and Meehan’s current emotional state was none of his business. He had enough troubles of his own.

      He held on to the furniture to maneuver to where he could get the cane. It hadn’t entirely hit the floor after all. It had caught in the chair rung, and he managed to retrieve it without too much difficulty.

      He stood leaning on the cane, out of breath but more than a little pleased that the retrieval hadn’t turned into some kind of major production. He suddenly remembered the drama in the backyard next door and lurched over to the window again. Meehan was exactly where he’d left her.

      “Damn, Meehan,” he said. “How long are you going to sit there like that?”

      He felt like rapping on the window pane until he got her attention, and then yelling at her to get in out of the rain—as if she was a little kid who refused to take note of the weather until somebody of authority insisted.

      But he didn’t rap, and he didn’t yell. He moved back to the chair, fully intending to sit down. He’d had enough of the “damsel in distress” thing with Rita. As knights in shining armor went, he was pretty dented up these days. He felt no need whatsoever to go riding to the rescue. All he felt was…aggravation. He was fully aware that he owed Meehan—for telling him about the apartment in the first place and for vouching for him with Mrs. Bee so he could move in. But, damn it all, he was tired. His day had already been hell, and it wasn’t even dark yet.

      He sighed and looked around the room, then at the clock. It was time for Mrs. Bee’s regular Sunday ritual. No matter what, Sunday afternoons were iced tea and cake time.

      Well, what the hell.

      He needed the exercise. He could just make a trip downstairs—and more than likely, by the time he got to the front hall, Meehan would have come to and gone inside. And then he wouldn’t have to worry about it. He could stop in the kitchen and shoot the breeze with Mrs. Bee instead, hopefully talk her out of a piece of that cake with the pineapple-and-coconut-cream icing he liked so much.

      He’d kill two birds with one stone—three if you counted keeping himself occupied so he wouldn’t think so much about the disconcerting state of his health—four, if you threw in Rita.

      Sounded like a plan to him.

      It took him a while to get down the staircase. The effort made his legs hurt a lot more than he anticipated, and he kept having to stop and get over it. He didn’t see Mrs. Bee anywhere. The front door was wide open, but the screen was latched. She hadn’t gone out on the porch.

      He could hear the rain beating down on the granite steps outside. Mrs. Bee didn’t like air-conditioning in her part of the house, and it was hot in the front hallway. An old brass-and-wood ceiling fan wobbled overhead, but it was way too muggy and humid for it to help much.

      He stood for a moment at the kitchen door, then hobbled inside to the far window. The toe of his left shoe kept dragging on the red and white linoleum tiles. Not a good sign. He was a lot more tired than he thought. He finally got himself situated in front of the window and moved the fruit-print curtain aside so he could see out.

      “Is Katie still out there?” Mrs. Bee asked behind him.

      “Yeah,” he said, relieved that a little old lady creeping up on him like that hadn’t made him jump.

      “It’s none of our business if she wants to sit in the rain,” Mrs. Bee said, peering past his elbow.

      “Right,” he agreed without hesitation. His opinion exactly.

      “But…”

      He could feel Mrs. Bee looking at him, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t dare. It hadn’t even occurred to him that she might have been watching out the window, too, and no way in hell was he going to walk into a loaded opening like that.

      “Calvin?” Mrs. Bee said after a moment. She sounded every bit the schoolteacher she used to be. Class was in session, and he had just been called on.

      “No way, Mrs. Bee,” he said, trying to stay ahead of her.

      “Somebody really ought to do something.”

      “You don’t mean ‘somebody,’ Mrs. Bee. You mean me.”

      “Yes, Calvin, I do. I can’t go. It will look as if I’m meddling. If you go, it’ll just look as if you don’t know any better.”

      He glanced at her.

      “Well, it will,” she said. “Men don’t know about these things—especially soldiers. It’s all that hunt the hill, get the hill, way of doing things. She knows you, Calvin. She likes you. She’s not going to be offended if you go.”

      He didn’t know about any of that. All he knew was that he’d had more than one occasion to see Meehan when she was “offended,” and it wasn’t something he cared to repeat.

      “Mrs. Bee—”

      “It’s just so…worrisome,” she interrupted. “Katie sitting out there in