Barbara White - The In-Between Hour

His eyes were concealed behind funky green-tinted sunglasses, which wasn’t helpful. You could learn a great deal from a person by the way he held—or avoided—your gaze. He was also beautiful. A pretty boy young enough to be her son, if she’d gotten pregnant that first time.

Will paused in front of the cottage, squatted and waited. Rosie and Daisy sidled down the steps, their claws clacking on the wooden boards. He held out both hands, offering his palms, and a chunky silver sports watch slid down his wrist. He cooed something at the dogs, words Hannah couldn’t make sense of, but her girls clearly understood. Daisy flopped to the ground and exposed her belly; Rosie actually whimpered. Animal behavior rarely surprised her, but her dogs had just told Hannah all she needed to know about this man. Even if he hadn’t been polite enough to remove his sunglasses.

Hannah joined Will and the dogs. Up close, his face was a little too perfect, its bone structure a little too predictable. She preferred faces with wrinkles and scars, faces that spoke of struggles and triumphs. This guy looked no more than thirty.

“Will Shepard.” He rose slowly.

“Hannah Linden. I imagined you to be older.”

“I write fast.” Will extended his hand but flinched.

Now the sunglasses made sense. “Want something for that headache?”

“I thought Poppy said you were a vet.”

“A holistic vet. Treating pets often means treating owners. You’d be surprised how many clients ask for help with minor ailments. But if it makes you feel better, my father was a rural doctor. When I was a teenager, he let me help out with patients.”

“Is that legal?”

“Would it bother you if it wasn’t?”

He winced.

“Bad one?”

“Killer.”

“I have to visit a couple of clients this afternoon, but I’ll be back by early evening. I can pop over then with my acupuncture needles and a feverfew tincture. Should help you sleep, too.”

Will turned as his dad clambered out of the passenger seat. “I don’t sleep much.”

“Well, there’s your problem. Good sleep habits are the key to a healthy mind.”

“Really.”

She would excuse his snide tone, since her girls had given their approval. “By the way, we’re in a drought, so please be mindful of water usage.” Hannah handed over the key. “Short showers, minimal toilet flushing. And any water you’d like to recycle, please toss over there, for the garden.”

As she pointed at the huge galvanized tub under the outside shower, Jacob Shepard shuffled over. Hannah covered her mouth and swallowed. Jacob’s expression was identical to the one her father had worn in those final months of unbearable grief—his eyes, his mouth, even the skin on his cheeks appeared to be dragged down by sadness. The lines grooved between his eyebrows, the faint scowl, seemed to say, “I no longer understand the world in which I live.”

“Are we home, Willie?” Jacob said.

For a moment, she considered kissing Jacob’s cheek, whispering, You can be happy here. Instead, she strode to meet him with a smile.

“I certainly hope this will feel like home. You must be Jacob. I’m Hannah, a friend of Poppy’s. She’s promised to swing by this evening and see how you’re settling in.”

“Poppy?”

“My friend Poppy. The art teacher at Hawk’s Ridge.”

“Firecracker, that Poppy.” Jacob grinned, showing yellowed, higgledy-piggledy teeth. He was taller than Will—over six feet—and broad shouldered, despite a slight stoop. If she had to guess, she’d put him around eighty. Once again, Hannah glanced from father to son. These two couldn’t possibly share a gene pool.

“I—I’m not good with names, little lady,” Jacob said.

“That’s okay. I answer to anything. Call me Hey You if it’s easier.”

“Hannah,” Will said, his voice sluggish. “Her name is Hannah.”

“That’s a pretty name, name for an angel, but I like Hey You better.”

“Hey You, it is. I love your necklace.” Hannah nodded at the string of bear claws that hung on his chest. “Occaneechi?”

Jacob’s eyes crinkled.

“Yes,” Will answered. “My dad is Occaneechi.”

Will Shepard was Native American? Although, something about his square jaw and thick eyebrows... Yes, she could believe he had native ancestry.

“My mother—” Will pushed his sunglasses up into his hair, and Hannah gasped “—was not.”

* * *

“What do you mean you’ve seen his eyes before? Haunting as they are. Huge and icy blue.” Poppy swirled wine around her goblet and then drained the glass.

The sun disappeared behind the treetops, and Hannah brushed an oak leaf from one of the cushions under her arm. Dry and brittle, the leaf crumbled to ashes, then scattered into the air.

“I don’t know,” Hannah said. “They’re so distinctive, so familiar.”

Jacob was napping when Poppy had arrived, but she’d insisted on staying for a girls’ night. A feeble excuse, no doubt, to keep Will in her sights. And the overnight bag and large screw-top bottle of wine suggested Poppy intended to get snookered in the process.

Poppy had a proclivity for dating guys who were either married or inherently messed up, and Will Shepard clearly fell into at least one of those categories. The absence of a wedding ring meant nothing, but Will didn’t act like someone who was married. He did, however, act like a person in pain, pain that went beyond a mere headache. You didn’t have to be a holistic practitioner to understand that physical symptoms often hinted at emotional distress. Hannah chose not to think about the study she’d read that morning, the one linking depression with heart disease.

She and Poppy slid back and forth on the retro metal rocker, both of them watching Will retrieve a brown bag of groceries from the trunk of the Prius.

“Hubba-hubba,” Poppy said. “Look at the muscles on those forearms. Girl, I bet he gives new meaning to the term sexual endurance.”

“Maybe he spends his nights hanging from the rafters.”

“Think he’s dating right now?” Poppy fiddled with the array of elastic bands on her left wrist, none of which represented anything other than her love of bright colors.

“He has a son, Poppy. Kids tend to come with mothers.”

“It’s weird, there’s so little about his personal life on the web. It’s all work, work, work. Wikipedia doesn’t even mention that he’s a dad.”

So, they’d both checked him out.

“At one time he was linked briefly with that New York socialite who died a few months back,” Poppy continued.

“No idea what you’re talking about.”

“You should read the gossip mags, Han. She killed herself, her lover and their son. Smashed their car into a wall. Theory is her brakes went, which is pretty suspect. Smacks of a cover-up if you ask me. But nothing I found says he’s married. Used to be a player, these days he seems to be a monk. What a waste of that body.”

“I’m changing the subject. Tell me what you know about Jacob.”

“Not much to tell. Sundays were skeleton staff days at Hawk’s Ridge—the director told me sweet-shit-nothing about the residents. Jacob has short-term memory loss, adored his wife, worships his grandson. Figured all that out by myself.”

“And Will?”

“Didn’t know Jacob had a son until I butted into Will’s meeting. Bad blood between them, if I had to guess. What’s the Galen update?”

“He’s coming home next week. Inigo’s promised to pay for his ticket and give us a two-week pass before he visits. Until he can check his melodrama at the door, Inigo’s a problem I can’t handle. He was completely hysterical in California. It was like having a third child.” Hannah sighed. “Sometimes I wonder what my parents were thinking, allowing me to marry at nineteen.”