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  “On behalf of my hypocritical countrypersons, I apologize,” Claire said. “I’m nosy and terrible but I just want to find out who killed Alan.”

  “If I can help you, I’ll be glad to,” Torby said. “Someone that evil must be brought to justice, and selfishly, any way I can spend time with you I’d like. I thought maybe you might like me that way, too.”

  “I’m in a relationship,” Claire said. “But I hope you and Ned will still be my friends.”

  He sighed.

  “I waited too long,” he said. “Alan told me I needed to sweep you off your feet, but I am not a good one for the sweeping of the females.”

  “You’re a catch,” Claire said. “I’ll help you find someone.”

  After leaving Torby’s office, Claire went to Ned’s, on the second floor of Florence Eliza Allen Hall, but he was just as unhelpful as Torby. He admired Alan, considered him a dear friend, and couldn’t imagine anyone hating him enough to kill him.

  “Would you be open to my approaching you for a date?” he asked her as she prepared to leave. “I have in the past noted that you and I have a rapport that could be interpreted as quasi-romantic. I am interested in the prospect of pursuing that inclination toward you, if you also feel that pursuit would be agreeable.”

  Claire reiterated that she had a boyfriend, and Ned bowed.

  “He is a lucky man,” he said.

  As Claire left campus and retrieved her car, she wondered about crushes and unrequited love. Both Torby and Ned had interpreted her openness and affectionate kindness to be romantic in nature, but neither of them had thought that of Alan. Had she encouraged that misunderstanding in some way, or was it merely wishful thinking on the part of two lonely professors far from home?

  Claire thought about times in her past when she had misinterpreted a man’s signals, sometimes to humiliating effect.

  ‘We see what we want to see and hear what we want to hear,’ she thought to herself.

  If it had made her feel better, even for a little while, to think a man had been attracted to her in a way that in reality he hadn’t, all she felt after figuring it out had been foolish.

  She had never wanted to murder the guy.

  Chapter Six

  You haven’t answered my texts,” Maggie said when Claire answered her phone.

  “Good morning to you, too,” Claire said.

  “What are you doing right now?” Maggie asked.

  Claire made a face she was glad Maggie couldn’t see through the phone.

  “My nails, why?”

  “I need you to cover the morning shift in the bookstore.”

  “Today?”

  “Yes, today.”

  “I need to work on a lesson plan for my class.”

  “Congratulations,” Maggie said. “Mom told me. That’s only three days a week, though, right?”

  “Maggie, what do you want?”

  “Jeanette’s retiring and I need someone to cover her shift.”

  “When is her last day?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “And you’re just now looking for someone?”

  “I didn’t think she’d actually go through with it,” Maggie said. “She’s threatened to retire before but this is the first time she’s actually done it.”

  “I’m supposed to volunteer at Pineville Hospice this afternoon.”

  “Tell them there was a family emergency,” Maggie said. “That’s the truth.”

  “Why do you own a bookstore if you don’t like working in it?”

  “I didn’t know that until after I bought it,” Maggie said. “I loved the setting up part and the ordering the books part.”

  “But you hate people.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “I will do it this morning, but not again,” Claire said. “You need to find someone else to cover after this.”

  “I suppose you’ll want to be paid.”

  “Forget it.”

  “No, no, I was just kidding. Thank you, Claire. I’ll see you in ten.”

  “More like twenty,” Claire said.

  “I promised Scott I would go to the Pine County Fall Festival with him,” Maggie said. “I’ve got to meet him at the station in fifteen minutes.”

  “Oh, all right,” Claire said.

  Claire walked in the bookstore as Maggie rushed out the door.

  “Kirsten will show you how to ring people up,” she said as she went out the door. “Thanks, Claire.”

  Claire looked from the irritated young blonde woman behind the bookstore register to the long line of people at the cappuccino bar on the opposite side of the store, to the frazzled additional young blonde woman behind the café counter, trying to make drinks and ring them up as fast as she could.

  Claire watched Kirsten demonstrate the cash register once before realizing she needed more time than Kirsten had to spare.

  “Just go on,” Claire said. “I’ll figure it out.”

  Once Kirsten was installed behind the café counter, the line moved along more swiftly due to the two young women working together like a well-oiled, blonde machine. Claire reflected that the dumb blonde stereotype was certainly not portrayed by Maggie’s efficient staff members.

  Claire considered the computer screen and keyboard of the book side cash register and shook her head. She turned the small key inserted in the cash drawer until it opened with a ding. She then rooted around in the drawer beneath it until she found a calculator and a two-copy receipt book. That would have to do until she could actually learn how to operate the register. She knew how to work the credit card machine from working in the bakery.

  At first, the bookstore side was not busy while the café side was overwhelmed. By ten a.m. she had sold a few newspapers, a magazine, two books, and several Little Bear Books sweatshirts. She was actually enjoying catching up on all the thick, fall fashion magazines while sitting behind the front counter, sipping a perfect skinny mocha cappuccino supplied with gratitude by the harried café workers.

  Then the student trade was replaced by the tourist trade, and her side began to heat up. Writing out the receipts took too long, and the customers were impatient. When she told them the register was down they looked longingly at the café side, where the line was so long it snaked among the book shelves.

  As if in answer to her prayers, Jeanette “just happened to stop by” and quickly took over.

  “I knew she’d pull something like this,” Jeanette said. “I thought I better rescue whomever it was she snookered into working this morning.”

  Magazines and newspapers were delivered in plastic totes, so while Jeanette worked the register, Claire pulled the old magazines out of the display and inserted the new ones, marking how many of each there were on a packing slip. She helped people find the books they asked for, although sometimes not before the customers found the books for themselves. She unwrapped, priced, folded, and restocked the many Little Bear Books long-sleeved tee shirts and sweatshirts that seemed to sell as fast she put them out.

  Mostly, she talked to the tourists, most of whom were high maintenance, irrationally entitled, clueless city dwellers who for some reason had decided to vacation in a remote mountain resort area, and then were surprised when it lacked the amenities they were used to having at home.

  “Yes, it is awfully cold at night,” she told everyone who complained. “You’re in the mountains, now.”

  “No, I’m not surprised the IGA did not have quinoa/organic kale/star fruit/Gruyere cheese,” she said. “You’ll have to drive to Morgantown for that.”

  ‘Or just go home,’ she thought, but didn’t say.

  “No, there is no overnight delivery service drop box in town.”

  “No drycleaner.”

  “No Chinese food.”

  “No cell phone service for that particular provider.”

  She gave them directions to the places their Garmins had given up on. She directed them to the small businesses in town that served food, sold gasoline, ibuprofen
, and blister pads, or provided hardware-based remedies for their troublesome rental properties.

  She listened to their complaints with what she hoped looked like compassion until she thought her face would crack, and said, “Bless your heart,” instead of “How about you try not to be such a dumbass?”

  In the short lulls between customers, Jeanette showed her how to ring up sales, void sales, process returns, and get change from the safe in the office. Claire took notes on the back of a receipt and then taped it to the wall by the cash register. Jeanette stayed for an hour, and then left, saying, “You tell Maggie I won’t be back again. I mean it this time.”

  Claire was overwhelmed by customers the rest of the morning, so she was relieved to see the second shift arrive. She was just about to leave as Maggie sailed in, looking irritated.

  “I don’t care if I never see another pumpkin, gourd, or fodder shock again in my life,” Maggie said. “How’d it go?”

  Claire picked up her go-cup of skinny mocha latte, the last of several to which she’d been treated by the overworked café contingent, and considered her cousin.

  “Never again,” she said, and walked toward the door.

  “That bad, huh?” Maggie asked her retreating back. “I guess Monday’s out of the question, then, right? Claire?”

  Claire made it to Pine County Hospice in time to cover her volunteer shift. She used the facility’s “spa room” to wash patients’ hair, which she took her time doing, letting the warm water and gentle scalp massage relax their delicate heads. She worked on a few family members as well. Sometimes they’d been keeping vigil for days, and were afraid to leave in case something (the inevitable something) happened while they were out of their loved one’s room.

  Claire listened to them and nodded her head, clasped their hands or expressed her sympathy when appropriate. Unlike the rich tourists, these people were legitimately traumatized, had something life-altering to be upset about, and she did sincerely bless their hearts. It was meaningful work but today, after her morning at the bookstore, it sort of sucked the life out of her.

  After her shift was over, she chatted with some of the nurses at the central desk, and made sure her volunteer schedule coordinated with her new school schedule. She was just about to leave when a young woman in a white coat with a stethoscope around her neck stopped her.

  “Are you Claire?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  The young woman introduced herself as “Sally” and shook her hand.

  “I’m interning here today,” Sally said. “Do you have a minute?”

  Claire led the way back into the spa room and shut the door behind them.

  “I know you’re only supposed to work on patients and family members,” she said. “But could you possibly wash my hair? I’ll even blow it dry myself.”

  “I’d be glad to,” Claire said, although she didn’t really think it appropriate for a staff member to ask for her services.

  “Thank you so much,” the young woman said. “I haven’t been sleeping well and these twelve-hour rotations are really kicking my butt. My hair is so gross I’m embarrassed.”

  She shed her white lab coat and underneath Claire was amused to see someone who could pass for an Eldridge student. She had on skin tight jeans and a tee shirt, but wore sensible boots instead of platform shoes. She had thick, dark hair and big brown eyes with dark circles under them. She wore sensible-looking, rectangular glasses frames.

  Claire helped her lie back in the shampoo chair, where she promptly fell asleep. Claire gently scrubbed her head with shampoo and applied conditioner. Once she was finished she wrapped a towel around her head and lightly shook her arm to wake her.

  Sally looked confused as she woke, and then to Claire’s consternation, she began to weep, saying, “I’m so sorry” as she did so.

  Claire said, “That’s quite all right, happens all the time,” and led her to the stylist chair, where she wrapped her in warm towels and blew dry her hair. Meanwhile, the young woman had a good, quiet cry and then wiped her face.

  “You want to talk about it?” Claire asked her. “I’m not a therapist but I go to one; I’m pretty good at telling other people what to do even if I don’t take my own counselor’s advice.”

  “I’m just so tired,” Sally said. “You hear about how brutal the schedule is but you just can’t prepare for it. I go to a different location in the county every day, and it’s all kind of overwhelming.”

  “I guess they’re getting you ready for the reality of being on call 24/7,” Claire said.

  “You would think that the people in charge of your life should maybe be the most rested,” Sally said. “It makes no sense to me.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Claire said. “I’d want the person saving my life to be in optimum thinking condition.”

  “Plus I’m having family issues,” Sally said. “I’m having trouble focusing.”

  “I am an expert on that,” Claire said. “What’s going on?”

  “I have this super sensitive mother,” Sally said. “My father left us when I was little, and she’s always kind of hovered over me, making sure I’m always all right. That sounds innocuous, I know.”

  “Sounds smothering to me,” Claire said.

  “Exactly,” Sally said. “I thought when I went to college it would help sort of wean her off me, but that hasn’t been the case. It actually got worse.”

  “You mean she followed you to college?”

  “I had to go to the college where she worked,” Sally said. “The tuition was free for me because of her, and it was a good school, so it just made sense that I’d live at home to save money.”

  “But now, surely, she can see you’re a grownup,” Claire said. “She has to know it’s inappropriate to cling to you now.”

  “No, she doesn’t,” Sally said. “She’s convinced herself that I need her, you see, and that without her I’ll fall apart and flunk out.”

  “Did you want to be a doctor?”

  “Oh, yes, always,” Sally said. “I just thought I would eventually leave the nest, and that the mother bird wouldn’t follow me.”

  “Sounds like she needs some counseling.”

  “Unfortunately, she thinks she’s brilliant so no one can tell her anything she doesn’t already know,” Sally said. “She thinks I’m lucky to have a parent so helpful and concerned.”

  “That’s not good,” Claire said. “Have you tried talking to her about it?”

  “Many, many times,” Sally said. “When I got this internship I told her this was it, I was going to come here on my own, but suddenly she lost her job and had no way to support herself. I really think she sabotaged her career so I’d have to take her in.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Claire said. “It doesn’t sound good.”

  “I know,” Sally sighed. “She’s so helpless, and she sacrificed so much so that I could get this far, I can’t just abandon her now.”

  “I think you both need counseling,” Claire said. “Have you talked to anyone?”

  “I don’t have time,” Sally said. “I really appreciate unloading all this on you, though. I do feel a little bit better.”

  “Any time,” Claire said. “I’m here three days a week. I’d be glad to listen when you need it. Everything said in here is confidential, so no worries on that score.”

  Sally gave her a hug before she donned her white coat and hung the stethoscope around her neck.

  “I may take you up on that,” she said.

  Reverend Ben was waiting for Claire in the garden outside the hospice facility.

  “What have you got?” he asked her.

  “Vending machine special,” she said. “Peanuts and diet pop.”

  “You need to eat better,” he said.

  “What about you?” Claire said. “That bacon and egg biscuit isn’t exactly diet food.”

  “I know,” he said. “They’re my weakness.”

  “I have been eating better, which is t
o say, eating at all,” she said. “I’m letting myself have anything with protein in it as long as there are very few carbs.”

  “Baby steps,” he said. “How’s everything else?”

  Claire got him caught up with her new position at Eldridge, Hannah’s troubles, and Alan’s death.

  “It sounds like you’re busy,” he said. “Are you sleeping all right?”

  “You know how before the antidepressants, my dead friends and relatives used to visit me in my dreams?” she said. “And I could hear them in my head during the day?”

  He nodded.

  “At first I was relieved when that stopped,” she said. “But now I kind of miss it.”

  “What do you miss about it?”

  “Well, like with Alan, who just died.”

  “Yes.”

  “I keep waiting to hear from him,” she said. “But there’s nothing.”

  “How does that make you feel?”

  “Sad,” Claire said. “Disappointed.”

  “Remember we talked about how hearing your dead friends and family speak to you was part of your grieving process?”

  “I still think they really did communicate with me,” Claire said. “And when they’d finally move on I could understand it was time to let go.”

  “So with Alan …”

  “I just feel disconnected, like he hung up on me without an explanation.”

  “Well, he died suddenly, unexpectedly,” Reverend Ben said. “It would be nice if we could get closure every time someone passes away, to have that sense that they were okay with leaving and you would be okay without them. Unfortunately, that rarely happens.”

  “Maybe more so here,” Claire said, gesturing at the building behind them.

  “How are you doing with your affirmations?”

  Claire groaned.

  “You said you would at least try them.”

  “I feel so stupid saying that kind of stuff out loud,” Claire said. “My snarky interior audience is very judgmental of self-indulgent self-talk.”

  “Your interior audience.”