July Thunder. Rachel Lee

we’d go.”

      “Sounds like a great philosophy.”

      “It was.” To a point. Sometimes it drove him batty. Things needed doing when they needed doing. Like the roof. They went fishing, had a big early-afternoon thunderstorm, and he’d wound up having to patch the bedroom ceiling as well as the roof. But it would have felt disloyal to say that to Mary, so he kept it to himself.

      “Still,” Mary said, almost as if she were reading his mind, “I guess you’d need to watch your balance.”

      “Sure. And I’ll be the first to admit that procrastination drives me crazy.” He shrugged. “I’m one of those people who just wants to get it done. So I guess I’ve lost my sense of balance the other way lately.”

      She nodded. “Maybe I have, too. It gets easy to let work and responsibilities substitute for life.”

      He’d never heard it put that way before, and he turned it over in his mind. “Yeah. Less painful.”

      “Exactly.” She sighed quietly and nibbled on her strip of bacon. Sam was making huge inroads into the mound of food she’d put in front of him. “It makes it easier not to think.”

      “It sure does.” He was tempted to ask her what she didn’t want to think about but decided he didn’t know her well enough. If she wanted to, she could volunteer. “Used to be I loved to sit out on dark nights and just look up at the stars. I used to feel this, um, connection to something bigger.” He was almost embarrassed to say that. It was a part of himself he hadn’t exposed to anyone in a long time.

      But to his surprise, Mary simply nodded. “I know what you mean. I feel that way sometimes, when I’m walking alone in the woods and the breeze is whispering in the treetops. It’s like being in a cathedral.” Then her expression turned haunted. “It also gives me too much time to think.”

      He could identify with that. He gathered they were both running from a bit of depression. Well, hell, most of the world was, one way or the other. He didn’t pretend his problems were any worse than anyone else’s. He just didn’t plan to set himself up for another round.

      But as he left Mary’s house and headed home, he realized he’d found a kindred spirit in her. And that really disturbed him.