Page 14 of Love Again

The girl narrows her eyes. “Are you the press?” Then she takes a noticeable breath and smiles. “Sorry, I’ve just been through something crazy, so I’m a little suspicious of questions like that.”

I laugh. “No, I’m a . . .” What am I? What can I say that’s truthful, and yet doesn’t put Devon in a compromising position? “I’m visiting my brother right now, but I knew her in Colorado. We worked together, and she talked a lot about you. You’re Laurel, right?”

She was too young to be Chloe, and Claire had a veterinary clinic to run.

She grins.

This is so much easier than I thought it would be. Work colleagues—that’s how I could frame it. And that’s all we were going to be to each other for this next month. Which was true, after all.

“Oh my God, are you kidding me? You’re a smokejumper? I mean, are you a smokejumper?”

I shake my head and hand her the paper cup back. “Not anymore.”

“More?” she asks.

“Please. The water here is amazing.”

“Right? It’s out of the tap too.”

“I was a smokejumper for about a year with your sister. You’re the one with the little boy. Cory, right? The one Devon calls ‘Nugget’?”

“She used to call him that.” Laurel seems to make a decision. “Okay, you might be a walking treasure trove of information.” She wipes her hands and watches me drink the next full cup of water.

I start to laugh, but it hurts my back. Setting the cup down on the counter, I twist to the right, the only thing that gives some relief. “I don’t think there is such a thing as a walking treasure chest.”

“No, there is, and it’s you. Devon has said nothing about her time in Colorado. We don’t even try to talk about it anymore. She showed up one day and landed this apartment right above the store.” Laurel points to the ceiling and then continues. “My other sister, Claire, offered Devon her old room back over the vet clinic, but Devon wouldn’t take it.”

“I thought you all grew up at an inn.”

“We did until our parents died. Then we lived above the clinic.”

“And Chloe is the one who ran away—”

“Yes, but she came back last summer and lives here too.

“Here?”

“Well, no. She and Bryce Tucker moved into a cottage on Rock Island.” She points out the window to a looming shape within a stone’s throw of the wharf.

“And then there’s a brother, right? Travis?”

Laurel looks either confused or bemused, I can’t quite tell, but her eyes glitter just like Devon’s. “You were smokejumpers, and yet she talked about all this stuff with you? Devon doesn’t talk.”

The throbbing in my kidney begins to subside. I can only hope there’s no blood in my urine.

“When you’re in high-pressure situations, the stories come out,” I say. I don’t mention how these stories were often told while she lay in my arms or with her head on my chest, or sometimes, with my head in her lap as she stroked back the hair from my forehead. She told me stories about their family because she wanted me to be able to see them.

“So, who’s your brother? Saxton’s Bay is small, and Echo Bay even smaller. I bet I know him,” she says, wiping down the counter with a damp rag.

“That’s the weird part.”

“How so?” She glances up, and I almost want to laugh again.

“My brother is the chief.”

Her mouth opens, and then she claps a hand over it for a second. “Your brother is David Keller? That’s hysterical,” says Laurel and she starts laughing.

I can only hope the other Russos think this coincidence is as funny.