Janice Johnson - In Hope's Shadow

“Or a kid of any size. Trick-or-treaters don’t knock on his door, I can tell you that,” Rod said with feeling.

Time to lay it out. “Do you have any reason to believe Joel would be pulling these tricks on Mr. Rowe?”

He tried to meet her eyes and couldn’t. “It’s not me who is accusing Joel! It’s that son of a bitch next door.”

“Your wife seemed to be taking the accusations as fact.”

“She’s just pacifying the old man. Letting him think we’re dealing with it.”

“So you don’t believe Joel retaliated against him?”

He hesitated. “I don’t want to. Lynne...”

Eve waited him out.

“I’ve been working long hours lately.” He was a PUD lineman, and during winter in a wooded county, outages occurred with every windstorm.

Eve nodded her understanding.

“Lynne sees more of the boys than I do. Joel...he seems to resent her some, or at least she thinks so. He’s been a lot quieter lately. Kinda withdrawn. I thought he and Gavin would hit it off, but Joel hasn’t acted interested.”

Eve let herself look surprised. “He didn’t say anything like that to me.”

At last Rod met her eyes. “Would he?”

“Yes,” she said slowly. “I think he would. He’s been pretty open with me.”

Rod looked away again. Wondering what Joel had told her?

“It’s just teenage pranks.” Once again, he didn’t sound as if he quite believed what he was saying.

“Mr. Rowe could have been badly hurt by the rock through the window. That showed a degree of malice.”

Aforethought , she added silently.

He shifted in his chair, took a drink of his coffee, twitched a little. “Eve, I don’t know what I can tell you.”

They discussed Joel’s school performance, which was still excellent, his decision to go with the University of Oregon, Gavin’s adjustment to a new high school.

“He already has a girlfriend,” he said with a chuckle. “One of the cheerleaders, wouldn’t you know. Cute little thing.”

Eve hoped Joel hadn’t had his eye on that same cute little thing. She wouldn’t put it past Gavin to target a girl just because Joel liked her. Then she felt the smallest bit guilty about the antipathy she felt for a sixteen-year-old boy she really didn’t know that well.

She gave up shortly thereafter and let Rod make a hasty escape. Although she’d finished her tea, she sat where she was for a few more minutes, thinking. No great ideas came to mind. Her best hope was that the tricks had come to an end. As annoyed as she was at Officer Pruitt, his interest must surely be making the perpetrator nervous. He—and she couldn’t help seeing Gavin’s smug face—might not have believed Clement Rowe would call the police. Nothing had happened since Tuesday. Five days. That was good, right?

* * *

“IS SOMETHING UP?” Eve’s mother asked after passing her the butter. “We haven’t heard much from you lately. Or seen you.”

Her dad didn’t comment. A quiet man, he only continued eating, although Eve had no doubt he was paying attention.

She cast her mind back. In fact, the last time she’d seen her parents had been the Friday night at Seth’s when she’d met Ben for the first time.

“Just busy,” she said, and told them a little about Joel’s troubles. She’d bragged about him before, so they looked surprised.

“But he sounds like such a nice boy!” her mother exclaimed. “Surely no one really believes he’d try to hurt an old man.”

“ I don’t. His foster father isn’t being as supportive as I’d like, though.”

“Boy has a lot to lose,” her dad remarked.

“I keep thinking that, too,” she agreed. “A few months from now, he’ll be gone. Doing something like this, he’d be risking his full ride to college. He’s too smart to do that, even if he had a nasty streak, which I swear he doesn’t.”

Eve talked a little more about her work, hoping to divert her mother from her curiosity about what had been occupying Eve’s time. For some reason, she didn’t want to talk about Ben. Maybe she was afraid to jinx the tentative beginning they’d made.

But she should have known Mom better than that. Into the first pause, she said, “You’re surely not working twenty-four hours a day.”

“Well, not quite. I actually did work yesterday.” She hesitated, conceding defeat. “I’ve started seeing someone. A guy, I mean. We’ve had dinner four or five times, seen a movie.” She shrugged. Silence answered her.

“Goodness,” her mother finally said. “Is this anyone we know?”

Damn. They did know Ben. No way she could lie.

“Ben Kemper, Seth’s partner. The man who came to Seth’s for dinner that night, with his little girl. That’s where we met.”

Her mother had gone very still. “Yes, of course I remember meeting him.”

“His little girl is so cute.”

“Yes.”

Dad watched Eve with a somber expression.

“Is something wrong?” she finally asked. “Did you not like him? Or you’ve heard something about him—?”

“Not at all. I’m just wondering why you didn’t mention him. You must have known we’d be interested.”

Oh, wonderful. She’d hurt their feelings. These days, her specialty.

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