The Sweetheart Secret by Shirley Jump Page A

friend’s cars running in tip-top shape. “Be there in five minutes.”
    True to his word, Pete showed up, waiting in the drive, the bright yellow and white Taurus idling softly. Earl descended the few stairs of the bungalow, cursing that he had to grip the handrail. It was the little things that told a man he was getting old. The tremors that knocked a fresh cup of coffee to the floor. The shortness of breath after a walk in the summer heat. The trepidation about something as simple as descending a flight of stairs. He’d never been a man to rely on help from anyone or anything.
    And that—that was what pissed him off the most about his age. That he needed help. Earl Harper prided himself on being a man who paid his own bills, pulled up his own bootstraps, and ran his own ship. Now he was living in someone else’s house, following someone else’s orders, and waiting on someone else to come and tell him what to do all over again.
    He climbed into the cab and shut the door. Relief at being out of the house filled him, but was chased by the emptiness that followed Earl, no matter where he went or how hard he tried to escape. “Hey, Pete.”
    Pete tossed him a grin. “You know, you can sit up front.”
    â€œFeels more official this way.”
    Pete chuckled, then tugged his ball cap brim a little lower. “If there’s one thing you’ve never been, Earl Harper, it’s official.” He put the car in reverse and began to back out of the driveway. “Same destination?”
    Pete asked the question as if he didn’t know the answer. Maybe he thought it made Earl feel less pitiful that he’d been going to the same spot for the last seven hundred Wednesday afternoons and had yet to find what he was seeking.
    â€œYeah. Thanks.”
    Pete just nodded and started driving. He kept up a constant patter of conversation as he wove his way through Rescue Bay’s streets, talking about his wife, his kids, his grandkids. Didn’t matter to Pete that Earl didn’t respond. Their decades-long friendship came with an understanding that if one man didn’t want to talk, the other just filled in the gaps. Earl had done a lot of chattering when Pete was going through his divorce, then he’d done a lot of listening when Pete and Colleen reunited. For the past fourteen years, though, Earl had done a lot of listening and not much talking.
    Finally, Pete pulled into a grassy lot, and shut off the car. He sat back, closed his eyes, and prepared to wait.
    Earl climbed out of the car and shut the door. His steps moved slow, but sure, guided by the memory of a well-worn path that he’d been traversing since he could walk. He’d come here with his grandfather, his father, and then his son and his grandsons. He knew every tree, every rock, every curve in the water. He knew the best spots for fishing and the best spots for thinking. And he knew the one spot that made his heart ache like a phantom limb.
    The birds chirped happy songs, flitting from tree to tree. A heron paused on the bank, alert and still. Earl eased onto a tree stump, his feet settling into a well-trampled space where the grass no longer grew. A fish flipped in the water, scaring the heron into flight, and sending a flutter of ripples across the lake’s placid surface.
    Earl sat on that stump until his legs grew numb. He sat there and he listened to the quiet song made by the trees and the wind. He sat there and he watched Mother Nature paint the world in blues and greens, then kiss it all with gold. He sat there until he couldn’t sit there anymore, because it hurt too much.
    Then he hung his head and he sat there some more, until tears moistened his cheeks and the day grew long. Peace stayed just out of reach, a fickle, mean mistress.
    *   *   *
    Break in through a window.
    Now that was something Daisy had experience with. Granted, not since she was a teenager trying to