After Caroline by Kay Hooper

it.”
    “Good, just what I wanted,” she said, taking the fairly heavy book from him. “And do you have some kind of history of the area?”
    “Sure,” he said after what seemed to her a slight hesitation. “Over here, against the wall…” He led the way to the other side of the store, still talking casually—and still glancing at Joanna. “I guess you’re probably tired of hearing that you look like Mrs. McKenna, but it really is the most amazing thing. People can’t stop talking about it.”
    “I can’t help being interested in her,” Joanna said.
    “I guess you would be. Can’t say that I knew her all that well, even though she’d been a customer for years. She was always nice, like I said, but she didn’t talk about herself.”
    He was trying, Joanna thought, but she wasn’t really buying his disinterest. Whether he knew more about Caroline than he was willing to say or had merely disliked her and didn’t want to reveal that, it seemed clear to Joannathat he wasn’t being nearly as open and casual as he seemed to be. She had the distinct impression that he was weighing every “casual” word before he spoke it, and that he wouldn’t give away anything he didn’t want her to know.
    But why? What was it he didn’t want her to know?
    “What about Mr. McKenna?” she asked, casual herself.
    Sam’s rugged face never changed expression, but his eyes went shuttered and his voice turned decidedly cool. “Well, about him I couldn’t say much at all. Not much of a reader. He comes in now and again, but not often. Always perfectly pleasant, but … kind of cold, I guess you’d say.”
    Definitely doesn’t like Scott McKenna, and doesn’t care if I see it
. “He owns a lot in town, doesn’t he?”
    “Oh, yeah. The lumber mill about ten miles from here. Quite a bit of land. On the Corner and a couple of other stores. The Inn and several cottages he rents out summers. And then there’s the greenhouse.” Sam frowned, those guarded eyes briefly narrowed. “You know, that’s kind of funny now that I think about it. All the things he owns in this town, and the greenhouse is the only thing Scott McKenna put his name on.” He looked at the shelf in front of him and pulled out a book. “Here you go, Joanna—the best history of the area that I carry.”
    “Thanks, Sam.” Joanna went to the counter with him to pay for the books, still chatting casually, this time about nothing in particular. Sam wasn’t the only one who could present a calm and untroubled front, she decided. She could too. But inside, she felt more than a little uneasy. Maybe she was just being fanciful, imagining an ominous meaning behind what was likely no more than the natural wariness toward a stranger, but she couldn’t help thinking that there was no reason for Sam to be guarded with her … or was there?
    A few minutes later, she stood outside the store on the sidewalk, the two books—bagged—in her basket, and eyed the next store. She’d found one gossip who would nodoubt talk to a post, and one bookseller who had talked without saying very much at all; what could she expect to find in the old-fashioned drugstore besides a soda fountain?

    “Your Aunt Sarah sounds a lot like my Aunt Alice,” Mavis said, industriously wiping the immaculate counter in front of Joanna’s cherry Coke. “With a saying or proverb for everything. It does tend to make life simpler, though, doesn’t it? I mean, having an answer for most every question.”
    “It does give you rules to live by,” Joanna agreed.
    “That’s what I keep telling my boyfriend, Danny. He says the commandments are enough to worry about, but what I say is, the people who came before us had a few things figured out, and why shouldn’t we listen to them? My Aunt Alice lived through the depression and wars and—well, I think she’d earned the right to be listened to.”
    “Oh, I agree. Aunt Sarah never gave me bad advice, never.”
    “Neither did Aunt Alice.”