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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“I
T
’
S
GOING
TO
snow tonight.” Dylan tossed his backpack into the backseat of Ben’s SUV and got in the passenger side up front. “Thanks for picking me up.”

It hadn’t been a problem—the small town near Montpelier where Dylan was parish priest was almost on Ben’s way to Fionnegan from Boston. But snow?

“Nah.” The National Weather Service had said it probably wasn’t going to snow. It hadn’t felt like it when Ben had left Boston two-and-a-half hours ago, either. Though he was driving into the Northeast Kingdom, where anything weather-related could happen and frequently did.

Dylan hiked an eyebrow at him. The resemblance to their father’s expression, complete with dark blue eyes, was like a punch to the solar plexus. Ben had to catch his breath.

“You doubt me, my brother? Even knowing who my boss is?” Dylan used his best pontifical voice.

Breathing normally again, Ben was able to laugh. “No, I doubt you knowing who my brother is. Fasten your seat belt.” Ben put the gearshift back into Park and got out of the car, lifting his face toward the breeze. He’d been sniffing out snow ever since he’d learned to ski—which he told everyone was before he knew how to walk. He circled the car, tugging his fleece jacket closer even though the buffeting wind was still warm. Except for where the cold was sneaking in behind and pushing it.

It was going to snow.

“I think you’re right,” Ben said, getting back into the car, “but don’t be telling anyone I said so. I’ll deny it.”

“No one will be able to ride except the ones who use fat bikes or studded tires.” There was a sneer in his voice—Dylan didn’t like the bicycles with the wide, underinflated tires that devoted winter riders used.

“They can only ride the fat bikes on packed-down trails, and there may not be time for that. You want coffee?” Ben pulled into a drive-through, knowing his brother would be ready for some junk food. The housekeeper at the rectory was bent on keeping her charges healthy.

“And a double-bacon cheeseburger with a large order of fries. And don’t tell Mom.”

“I won’t.” Ben rolled down the car window and gave the disembodied voice their order before driving forward to the pick-up window. “But you’ll have to eat again when you get there. You know that. Today’s Thursday, so it’s broccoli-cheese soup.”

Dylan looked surprised. “You’re not staying at Mom’s?”

“I didn’t all summer. Why would I start now?” It had been fun getting ready for Morgan’s wedding at the folks’ house. He’d liked the interaction with Patrick and Dylan, gathering as an all-for-one-and-one-for-all threesome with the bride and telling her in a warm and safe place how much they loved her. In the days after Tim’s death, it had been the right place to be, but it wasn’t home to Ben anymore. He was more comfortable in the inn, not sharing a bedroom or bathroom.

Kate had thought that was strange until her parents came to Vermont for Tim’s funeral and she’d become a daughter in her own house. Her mother had made the coffee in the morning and insisted Kate needed breakfast before her eyes were completely open. She’d had Kate’s bed made before her daughter got out of the shower and suggested that Sally would be happier living outside.

Ben had great affection for Kate’s mother, but not for her coffee. He’d taken thermoses of Dylan’s brew to Kate in her office each day Mrs. Rafael had been there. It had been a break from the heavy grief in his parents’ house. Sharing the space and time with Kate had given him the strength to get through the rest of the day.

He hadn’t thanked her for that.

Ben and Dylan were several miles down the road and the flavorful junk food was mostly a memory when Dylan’s words fell into the quiet between them. “I’m being transferred.”

Anger surged, and Ben gave his brother a furious look. “Don’t you think you might have mentioned that possibility sooner? Mom really doesn’t need her baby boy being shipped off to a parish in Timbu—”

“Oh, lighten up.” Dylan’s glower showed Ben he didn’t have a corner on fraternal irritation. “I’m coming back to Fionnegan. Father Jackson’s retiring.”

“Oh.” Ben sipped his coffee and burned his tongue. He guessed it served him right for popping off before he knew the details. “That’s good then, right? Or would you rather have not come back home?”

“I don’t know. It never mattered that much to me to get away from Fionnegan the way it did the rest of you. The other side of that coin is that I never felt compelled to stay there, either. Kate and I used to talk about that. She never understood how I could be so ambivalent about where I lived.”

“Yeah, that would definitely be a concept she wouldn’t get.” Ben spoke drily, his voice working its way past a hurting place he didn’t want to think too much about.

Dylan frowned at him. “Is it because you’re a doctor that you think anyone whose feelings differ from yours is completely wrong?”

Ben snorted. He took another sip of coffee. It was almost drinkable. By the time he got to the bed-and-breakfast, he’d be able to enjoy it.

“I think you’re a cool guy,” Dylan said carefully. “A great skier. You’re a good doctor, you’re generous and you’re nice to people most of the time. But you think your way’s the only way.”

“Everyone is like that, Dyl. Everyone wants their own way.”

“They do,” Dylan admitted, “but how many of them turn their backs on the loves of their lives rather than compromise?”

* * *

K
ATE
SAT
ON
a stool in Penny’s kitchen, icing cookies.

“The ride will still be on if it doesn’t snow that much,” Penny said. She pushed a cookie sheet into her oven, closed the door and turned back to the counter. “If I never frost a pumpkin face on another cookie, it will be too soon. Don’t these people understand that Halloween is over? It was last Friday and I had already made at least a billion pumpkin-face cookies then.”

Kate eyed the cookies she was frosting critically—her pumpkin faces tended to look a little drunken. “It’s your own fault yours taste so good. Your customer promised her kids a Halloween party—she had no way of knowing the entire fifth-grade class was going to get the flu. Including Michael.” She put down her knife to hug Penny and Dan’s youngest as he came through the kitchen. He still looked pale from his illness.

“Michael got sick just to irritate me, didn’t you?” Penny gathered him close and did a fever check with her cheek against his forehead when he reached past her for a handful of cookies. “When did you get as tall as me?” she demanded in mock outrage.

“When you weren’t looking,” he responded obediently. “You need to get a new line, Ma. The other kids told me what to say to all your old ones.” But he kissed her cheek before continuing on his way to the television in the living room.

“No video games,” his mother called, reaching for the green icing to add stems and the occasional leaf to the cookies Kate had already put faces on. Penny held one out in front of her, squinting. “This looks like Skip Lund. Did you do that on purpose?”

Kate snickered. “You’re a wicked and evil person.”

“That’s redundant.” Penny put the completed cookies in boxes, taping them closed.

“Huh?” Kate concentrated on what she was doing. Just a little more gel from the tube in her hand and...perfect. “What’s redundant?”

“Saying wicked and evil both. If I’m one, I’m automatically the other.” Penny stacked the boxes neatly in a large paper bag with a Penny’s Good Stuff logo on the side. “Of course, we both know I’m neither.”

“Look.” Kate held up the cookie she’d been working on. “Doesn’t that look like Ben when he’s being a doctor and has his glasses on?”

“It does.” If Penny thought it was odd that her best friend was making cookies that looked like an old boyfriend, she didn’t say so. “Do you want to drop these off for me on your way home?”

“What about the ones in the oven?”

Penny took them out and turned off the dial, leaving the door open to allow the heat to warm the room. “These were in case I messed up any of those. I didn’t, so it’s open season on one sheet of pumpkin cookies and all extras that look like Skip Lund or Ben McGuffey.”

“So I can have them?” Kate smiled hopefully. “The kids shouldn’t eat them, you know, what with the orthodontist and all.”

Penny sighed. “I gave him some, hoping to soften him up on his bill, but it didn’t work—it’s still like paying a mortgage. Thank goodness the girls had such nice straight teeth. I always knew girls were better, but Dan wanted to go ahead and keep the boys.” Her voice rose as she talked.

Predictably, Michael’s voice came from the living room. “Love you, too, Ma.”

“You’re my heart and soul, honey.” Wearing the I’m-so-lucky smile Kate envied with all her covetous heart, Penny put the last of the cookies into a plastic bag. “Here you go. You don’t need the icing. You’re sweet enough.”

“Yeah, right.” Kate picked up the cookies for delivery. “I’ll see you Saturday morning for the ride.”

The temperature seemed to have dropped ten degrees in the hours she’d been at Penny’s. Kate got into the car, glad she’d driven over after work instead of riding her bike. She delivered the party cookies, stopped at the convenience store for a gallon of milk—it looked like a good night for hot chocolate, plus there were all those cookies—and pulled into her driveway at nine o’clock on the proverbial nose.

Another vehicle pulled in behind hers, and she frowned in consternation. She had her cell phone and she’d just seen Dan’s cruiser pass the convenience store a minute ago—he was working the night shift for another officer again—which meant he would be close if she called.

But how close was close enough? She was virtually trapped by the SUV that had parked mere inches from her bumper. And now the driver’s door of the vehicle was opening.

She had gotten fairly intrepid when Ben was home for the summer. They’d walked in the dark most nights, with Lucy as a doubtful protector. Kate had ridden her bike sometimes with only streetlights for company in the well-lit part of town where Kingdom Comer was. But it was different being alone in a driveway on Alcott Street. Sally was in the house, lying on one of the wide windowsills a carpenter from A Day at a Time’s registry had built in Kate’s living quarters. Even though she was on the obese side of the cat-weight charts, Sally wouldn’t instill fear in anyone, especially from the other side of double-glazed glass marred by numerous nose prints.

Maybe Kate could bribe the perpetrators with cookies. The near-hysterical thought made her giggle, though it wasn’t funny. It wasn’t funny at all.

“Katy?”

Even muffled by her closed windows, Ben’s voice was recognizable. Relief was so big it became a passenger in the car with her. She pushed open the door. “Ben, where did you come from?” She hugged him hard, much happier to see him than was probably good for her.

He hugged her back, kissing the top of her head. “Boston.”

“Come on in. I have cookies and leftover soup if you’re hungry. It’s your mom’s soup—she made enough for an army. How unusual is that?” She handed Ben the cookies and the milk, then headed toward her back door with her keys jingling in a hand that still shook.

“Hot chocolate or coffee?” she asked when they were inside. She tossed their jackets onto the banister and took a moment to talk to Sally before she filled the cat’s bowls.

“Chocolate sounds good.”

She set mugs on the counter and got the cocoa mix out of the cupboard. She put the cookies on a plate on the table, except for the one that looked like Ben. “Never mind the soup. You get it all the time. I’m keeping mine.”

“Kate.” Ben came to where she stood at the counter, looking down at her with what she was sure was an enigmatic expression even though she’d never actually thought that word before, much less used it.

It was a long-standing family joke that Kate was as intuitive as a brick. If she got cold chills, it was time to turn on the furnace, because it had nothing to do with premonition or even emotional connection. Samantha and Mary Kate swore they wanted Kate to be their mother on date nights since, unlike Penny, she’d sleep on no matter how late they came home.

So she was startled when foreboding raced through her, chased by gooseflesh. When he took her hands in his, she wanted to pull away.

Ben, already tired from a workday and the trip up from Boston, wouldn’t come to her house at nine-something at night unless something in her life was about to go terribly awry.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Ben shook the hands he held as though to emphasize what he said, and a smile slipped in around his eyes. “I’m sorry if I scared you. It’s nothing terrible. But Dylan and I had a disagreement on the way to Fionnegan tonight, and I need you to answer a question.”

Relief flowed through her again, though not as powerfully as it had in the car a little while ago. Her reputation as a brick was intact.

“Go ahead.” She looked sideways at the pan on the stove. “Well, go ahead in a minute. The milk’s hot.”

“I’ll get it.” Ben stepped behind her, moving his hands to her waist briefly to scoot her to one side.

She felt the warmth of that touch all the way to her toes.

“Don’t you have any marshmallows?” he asked, banging cupboard doors as though he lived there.

“No,” said Kate. “But I do have some brandy my dad left here.”

“Even better.”

She got the bottle out of a cupboard. He hadn’t opened yet. “We can have a fire if you want to light it,” she offered. “I’m a little paranoid about having it when I’m here by myself, but it would be nice.”

“Okay.” He smiled at her as he handed her a cup. “Katy, I was just wondering—”

When he hesitated, Kate gazed into Ben’s face and deliberately crossed her eyes.

“They’ll stay that way,” he said automatically. “Mom says.”

“Only if you don’t ask the question,” she threatened. “I’d really like to drink this hot chocolate at some point.”

* * *

“L
ET
’
S
GET
THE
fire going.” Ben wished he’d never started the conversation. He wouldn’t have thought this whole pointless discussion would have his heart beating against his ribs like the bell on an old-fashioned alarm clock. But it did.