Kitabı oku: «Bad Heiress Day», sayfa 4

Chapter 5
The Paul Hartwell Memorial Parking Lot

Darcy drew her finger around the curved edge of her coffee table. “How do I feel? I don’t know. I don’t imagine I feel anything different than any other person in this boat.”

Doug Whitman said, “I see,” in that I’m-not-going-to-comment-one-way-or-another-so-you-say-more kind of tone she knew psychiatrists were prone to use. Darcy didn’t suppose she could blame Pastor Doug; they were only passing acquaintances. Whitman liked her Dad; it was clear from both his eulogy and the string of stories he told her today. Darcy wished, though, that the guy had been less comfortable with the gaps of silence in their conversation. He hadn’t even bothered with the customary “How are you?” usually accompanied by a firm clasp of her arm and a polite show of concern. The kind of question that implied anything too deep in response would be unwelcome.

The kind she’d heard a dozen times a day in the week since Paul Hartwell slipped his mortal shell and upgraded to Heaven. No, Pastor Doug went straight to the real questions, the ones that required real answers.

“How do your days feel?”

Like hours. Like nanoseconds. Like endless blank journal pages. Darcy wasn’t sure which answer would get Pastor Doug off her back, and off her couch, and out the door fastest.

“Feel?”

“Yes. What is it like for you to get through the day this week? Hard? Easy? All of the above?” Doug kept trying to poke his straw through the lemon floating in his ice tea. The effort he put into the pursuit was almost amusing.

“I don’t know. They feel…plain.” She took a drink while she searched for the right answer to satisfy him but not open up a deeper conversation. Doug clearly wasn’t going anywhere until he’d either speared his lemon or “connected” with her somehow. She made a mental estimation that it would be eleven sentences before the word Jesus came up in conversation. “Empty, I suppose. I’ve spent so much time in crisis mode that it feels…well…odd to be doing normal stuff. Good, but odd. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, then I stop myself and realize it already has.”

Doug shuffled a bit in his seat. “Was there anything about Paul’s death that surprised you?”

Now, there was a loaded question. How much to reveal? If Darcy spoke of the inheritance, would Pastor Doug kick right into Building Campaign oh-but-we-need-that-new-nursery-wing mode?

“No.” The minute the word left her mouth, Darcy knew it had too much bite. Now there was no way the good pastor was going to back off his ministries. She took out her regrets on a Mint Milano, biting the crispy cookie rather than indulge the urge to bite off her own tongue.

He reached for a cookie himself, far too comfortable with the silence. His eyes took on just a shade of a faroff look—was he praying for her? Getting God’s permission to pry further? Did he need permission? Wasn’t prying an occupational skill for reverends?

“Darcy…” he began.

Darcy anticipated the patronizing tone of voice, that politely compassionate edge that colored nearly everyone’s attempts to “comfort,” ready to jump down his throat the minute she heard it. “I understand how you must feel…Time will ease your pain, let me tell you about the time my…I’m sure your children are such a comfort to you….” Darcy’d heard it all—and believed about two percent of it. She could smell it coming a mile away by now.

“…are you surprised at how angry you are at Paul for leaving the way he did?”

What?

“I think I would be. Hospice is never as peaceful as we imagine it will be. The dying leave us long before they’re dead. I’d be weary and bitter, and probably more than a little ticked off if I were in your shoes.”

Darcy nearly choked on the cookie. Before she could stop herself, she blurted out, “Are you supposed to say stuff like that?”

Doug inspected the chocolate inside his cookie. “I’m not supposed to say anything. I mostly try to figure out what’s true, and go from there. Near as I can tell, the truth very rarely turns out how we think it’s supposed to be.”

A sharp, white-hot crack split through Darcy’s chest. Yes, she was angry. Livid. And everyone was so busy giving her permission to grieve, to cope, that she hadn’t realized until this very moment that no one had given her permission to be royally ticked off. Except for Jack, who seemed to be ticked off enough for the both of them, forcing her into defending Dad’s indefensible actions. No, nobody had given her a chance to spout off. Like it had at the park, the anger erupted out of her, unbidden and unstoppable. Darcy didn’t really want to be so exposed in front of this man, but the force of what he’d started was more than she could stem. Half in self-defense, she sprang up off the couch to pace the room.

“Yes.” That one word opened the gates full force. “I am. I’m really mad. I did everything a good daughter’s supposed to do. I turned my life inside out to take care of Dad. And I wanted to—I didn’t do it out of some weird only-child obligation, I wanted to take care of him, to keep him comfortable.”

She ran her hand along the fireplace mantel, half gripping it, half wanting to knock things off it. “But he wasn’t comfortable. He was delirious and drooling, and pulling his bedsheets off in fear of something and choking and making sounds like he was drowning and…it was awful. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. He was supposed to have a peaceful end. Meeting his maker and all. Going home to Jesus. But no, it was just nuts. People were running everywhere and everyone was freaking out because of the terrorist attacks so it was like no one even noticed he was dying. Noticed he was gone.”

She stopped, her back to Doug, catching a sob. Her mind replayed the sound of his last breath. The halting, broken rasp. Then, the trailing, endless exhale.

It had been so far from what she expected, what she wanted.

It all had been so far from what she expected.

“How could he let me go through all that and then do what he did? How could he let me do all that disgusting stuff, handle all of those medical—” she searched for the word, trying not to be graphic “—indignities, and then hide his checkbook? How could he not trust me with this? How could he spring this on me and live with himself!”

The illogic of her last phrase, the way death kept winding itself into her speech like some sort of mean joke, stung Darcy.

She turned to look at Doug, half surprised that he wasn’t reaching for his coat and eyeing the door.

“Am I mad? Yes. I’m furious!”

Again, he said nothing, just looked her straight in the eye. No judgment, not even surprise, just looking.

Embarrassed, Darcy plopped back down on the chair, snagging a tissue on the way around the end table. She tried to blow her nose as politely as possible, dabbing her eyes. “Well,” she offered, “you asked.”

Doug folded his hands. “Yes, I did. And I’m glad you answered. You need to talk about this kind of stuff. It will eat you alive if you pretend it isn’t there. It isn’t disrespectful, it’s just human.” He looked up, and for an awful moment Darcy thought he was going to clasp her hand or some other pastory thing, but he simply continued. “Look, Darcy, if Paul left you with debts, we have some people who can offer you some good counsel in that area. It happens. You wouldn’t be the first to find out how expensive it is to die.”

The fiscal cat was practically out of the bag now. Might as well tell it all. Even if it did end up as the Paul Hartwell Memorial Parking Lot.

“No, it’s not that. Actually,” Darcy added, almost laughing, “I think that would be easier. There are no debts. Just the opposite. I went to a lawyer just after Dad died—Dad told me I had to, you know, back when he was still…with us mentally. The lawyer told me Dad had a whole bunch of money he’d never touched. Tons of it. And, well, now they’re my tons of it.”

Darcy looked up to check Doug’s expression. He looked genuinely surprised. That somehow made her feel better. “Well,” he offered, “that is big.”

“Yeah, you’d think. But evidently it wasn’t big enough for Dad. He had to take it a step further.” She took a deep breath before she continued. “Now, not only do I have one point six million shiny new dollars, I have to decide if I’m going to do what he says to do with it.”

Doug paused a long while before he asked, “What did he tell you to do with it?”

Darcy hedged. The Paul Hartwell Memorial Parking Lot and Hospitality Wing played across her vision. But Pastor Doug didn’t seem to be waxing predatory in front of her. She was gaining a sense, unfounded or not, that she could trust him. After all, Dad had.

Well, to a point. Which was as much as he’d been with her. Why not tell him?

“He told me to…he asked me to give it away. It was money won from a lawsuit over my mom’s accident. He didn’t want the money, but he’d promised her he’d keep it. It’s complicated. Anyway, he promised he’d keep it, but since I never made a promise like that, he says I can give it away like he always wanted to.” Darcy felt an odd, nervous laugh slip from her lips. “Death’s a good way to pass the buck, it seems.”

She felt stupid for laughing, uncomfortable at revealing something he could so easily pounce on. Darcy waited, watching for dollar signs to appear in his eyes like some Looney Tunes cartoon. But he kept looking at her. At her. Not mentally calculating the tax benefits of a major donation, just looking at her. It was the weirdly warm smile on Pastor Doug’s face that stumped her most. “Literally,” he quipped.

He quipped.

Darcy was so surprised, it took her a full thirty seconds to get the joke. A joke. Not at her, but with her. Yes! she thought, another person who found the situation absurd enough to joke about. Maybe Doug wasn’t so bad after all. Perhaps the Paul Hartwell Memorial Parking Lot and Hospitality Wing and Community Baptismal Pool wasn’t such a bad place to dump a fortune. Maybe it wasn’t so bad he knew.

He pulled his hands down over his chin, shook his head a bit, and chuckled. “Your dad was a surprising man. Every time I was sure I’d figured him out, he’d throw me a new curve. I have to admit, though, this is a good one—even for him.” Doug looked up at her. “Darcy, I haven’t the foggiest idea what I’d do in your place. What are you thinking you’ll do?”

I’m sure I know what I’d be doing if I were in your place, Darcy thought. I give it ten minutes tops. “Well, Jack and I have been discussing the issue practically nonstop. Everybody seems to have an opinion. And there are a lot of options.”

Doug pinched the bridge of his nose. Then he got a “Say, I’ve got an idea” look on his face. This guy was good. Not even three minutes, and it looked genuinely spontaneous. Darcy decided she didn’t really blame him. He probably had a furnace on the brink of death, stained nursery carpeting, two dozen committees to fund and all those poor hungry souls to feed.

“Darcy, I have an idea for you.”

Darcy smiled. Not even a month into Little Orphan Heiress and she could smell ’em coming already.

“We have a couple in our church…”

…Who feed tribes in Africa and teach them fractions, Darcy finished in her head.

“…who deal with this sort of thing every day. They are quite wealthy, but they seem to know how to handle it well. Ed’s a self-made man—grew a fortune going from selling newspapers to buying printing companies. I can’t help thinking you’d like them. And I’m sure they’d like to meet you. Maybe they can help.”

Darcy fought the urge to shake her head. “Huh?” was all she gulped out.

“Okay, it was a bad suggestion. I’m sorry to pry, I was just thinking—”

“No, wait, back it up a minute. You just…um…surprised me. Who are these people again?”

“Ed and Glynnis Bidwell. A couple—an older couple, actually—from our church. They have sizeable financial resources, but in my estimation they seem to know how to keep it in perspective. It was just a hunch…I’m sorry if I—”

“He’s not Chairman of the Contributions Committee or anything?”

“Ed? No, he’d never—Wait…Darcy, did you think I was going to ask you to give your dad’s money to the church?” He was putting the pieces together right in front of her. Astounding. Truly, the idea hadn’t entered the guy’s head yet. What kind of pastor was this guy?

Darcy shut her mouth, realizing that it was hanging open. Do you tell a white lie to a pastor?

“Ugh. Of course you did. Why wouldn’t you? Oh, Darcy, I’m so sorry I gave you the wrong impression. I don’t know what your dad told you about me, but in truth I am the most abysmal fund-raiser in history. Please, please believe that I knew nothing about what he left you. Oh, I’ve botched this.”

“No, really,” Darcy said, just because he looked so mad at himself.

“No, I should have said something right off the bat when you told me. I was just so…so…dumbfounded.” Doug stood up, pacing the room. Honestly, he looked like he was going to walk over to the wall so he could pound his head against it. “No, look, Darcy, I want you to know—right now—how I see things. If Paul had wanted our church to have that money, I know he’d have told you so. Paul himself used to lecture me about how I need to be more aggressive in seeking funds for the church. No, Paul’s got something else in mind for you. He’s—he was—a man who never left things to chance when he had an idea. If he didn’t tell you where to donate the money, then I truly believe he wants you to go through that decision process. And, even though my Stewardship Committee would probably boil me alive if they heard me say it, I’ve a good guess that it’s not Ohio Valley.”

“I don’t really know what I’m—we’re—going to do yet. Really.”

Doug sat back down. “I don’t think you can know what to do yet. That’s a huge, broad issue. Darcy, I really think the Bidwells could be helpful to you. Will you let me give them your phone number? If you don’t like them or they’re not helpful, you can never see them again, but I don’t think it will go that way. You’ll really like Glynnis. Please, Darcy, will you let me do this for you? After I’ve been such a jerk?”

Who could say no?

The pastor left after a dozen more apologies, not one sentence of Christianese, and not a single plea for money. Who’d have thunk it?

Chapter 6
Heiress Lessons

Jack practically craned his head out the window to take in the snazzy sports car in Ed Bidwell’s driveway. It was small and shiny—a take-no-prisoners red color—and slick enough for its own Bond movie. “Wow. Getta load of that thing, will you?” Jack had been none too keen on keeping this brunch date, but Darcy smiled to herself at Jack’s sudden change of heart. Evidently Pastor Doug knew just how to get Jack Nightengale’s attention. Or Someone Else did.

Not quite ready to chalk it up to divine intervention, Darcy surmised that all well-to-do men indulged in fancy cars. A testosteronized version of the three-stone, multi-carat ring every well-to-do woman seemed to own. The rings in the magazine and television ads, with adoring husbands shouting their affections in Italian streets and other wildly romantic venues.

Her brain flashed a quick, unlikely scene: Jack, in black turtleneck—unheard of—and leather sport coat—fat chance—and hair with just a touch of gel to make it look truly dashing—possible but not likely—by the Tuscan seashore. Crusty bread and Brie replacing Doritos and onion dip, a deliciously small black velvet box in his hand. Surging waves of violin music filled the air. With an elegant flair and a twinkle in his dark eye, he flips the lid to reveal one of those anniversary rings that are supposed to let you know he’d marry you all over again. Three whopping stones, cuddled next to each other in a bed of gold. Dazzling. Adding elegance to any hand, even one picking Play-Doh off the couch cushions….

“Dar?”

Jack was already out of the car, standing outside her door, hand ready to knock on the window if that’s what it took to get her attention. How long had that little daydream gone on?

“Oh, I get it,” Jack said, “I’m supposed to open the door for you and such now. This is a high-class affair.”

Darcy fumbled with her purse. “No, I just…My mind went somewhere.”

“No kidding.” Jack actually looked a little nervous. Darcy had to admit she felt the same. The whole setup felt odd and unnatural. Jack nudged Darcy with his hip, a gesture he’d done when they first dated. “Can I get one of those?” he said, pointing to the four-wheeled wonder.

“A two-car garage? Sure, hon.” She nudged him back. Wow. She couldn’t even remember the last time they’d done that to each other.

“Very funny.” Jack ran a fidgety hand through his hair as they started up the walkway to the Bidwells’ front door. “This feels weird. I don’t know about this. I mean, we don’t know these people from Adam.”

“I know. But it’s one brunch. Maybe they’re really nice. It couldn’t hurt. Besides, if you behave, maybe Ed will let you near that car….”

Jack rubbed his hands together in a let-me-at-’em gesture just before he pushed the doorbell button. “Think there’s a butler?”

Darcy giggled just a bit. “Jack…”

The door swung open to reveal Ed Bidwell. Or a man who Darcy guessed was Ed Bidwell. He didn’t look anything like she was expecting. He looked more like everybody’s favorite grandfather than a printing magnate. He had a round, jovial face framed by a balding wreath of white hair. Gold wire glasses, hosting a pair of rather thick lenses, gave his water-colored eyes an oversize, magnified appearance. He had on an ordinary-looking plaid shirt and khakis, but Darcy noticed his belt and shoes were of a thick, soft, expensive-looking leather. He held his hands out.

“Jack. And Darcy. Saw you come up the walk. Ed. Ed Bidwell. Come on in. Come on in.” He called down the hall as he took Darcy’s coat. “Glyn, honey! They’re here!”

“I can see out the windows just the same as you, Bid. I’m coming.” Both their voices held the tint of a Southern upbringing, but softened from what sounded like years in the Midwest. Glynnis Bidwell came down the hall, tossing a dish towel on a side table as she did.

She was the pepper to her husband’s salt—all dark but graying hair and wide brown eyes, her skin olive-colored to his fair skin. They were like a pair of ceramic salt shakers, the two of them: same size, same jovially heavy build, same sparkle in the eyes. They looked like the kind of couple you’d ask to play Mr. and Mrs. Claus at the church Christmas bazaar. That is, if Better Homes and Gardens ran your church Christmas bazaar.

“Darcy, so nice to meet you. I’m Glynnis Bidwell.” She reached out a friendly hand. Well manicured, still damp, and boasting a one-stone ring. It was, however, a rather large stone. Darcy chided herself for even looking.

“See you’ve met Ed. And you must be Jack. Glad to meet you, too. Don’t think I didn’t see you eyeing Ed’s baby out there in the driveway. Go on, Bid, show your toys off. I’d much rather have the two of you out of my hair than in the kitchen anyway.” She shooed the men off as if telling her grandsons to go play in the yard.

Ed smiled, not bothering to hide his enthusiasm. “Glyn never misses anything.” He winked at Jack. “Makes it hard to misbehave, but God must’ve known I needed watching, hmm?” Jack shot Darcy a quick you-didn’t-tell-me-they-were-one-of-those looks, hopefully too quick for Glynnis to catch. “Like Coke, do you Jack? I got a thing for Cherry Coke. Keep a whole fridge of it in my garage. Can I stand you a drink, sir?”

Jack put up no resistance whatsoever as he let Ed Bidwell guide him into what must surely be a Man’s Wildest Dream of a garage. Cool cars and Cherry Coke. Maybe Someone had known just how to put those two together.

Darcy looked back from watching them leave to find Glynnis eyeing her with one hand on her hip. Ouch. She had seen Jack’s quick glance. Funny though, she didn’t seem annoyed. More like she’d just received confirmation of a suspicion. “Jack wasn’t itching to come here, was he?”

“Well,” Darcy hedged, thinking she should be polite, but also quite sure no one pulled anything over on Glynnis Bidwell, “all of this has got us rather…baffled.”

Glynnis shrugged a bit in her orange cardigan, fastening the two bottom buttons. “The world’s a baffling place these days. Don’t blame you one bit for feeling like someone’s just shook the inside of your snow globe.” She looked up from her buttons. “If even half of what Doug’s told me is true—and I know he’s only told me the half of it—then you were up to your eyeballs in sticky issues even before the world went on red alert.” Glynnis turned, tucked Darcy’s arm in the crook of her elbow and headed toward the kitchen. “Let those boys drown themselves in sugar water.” She snatched the dish towel as she went past. “I’ve made us some ice tea.”

Darcy wondered if the sugar water remark was a joke as she watched Glynnis dump not two but four spoonfuls of sugar into her own ice tea. “I like life sweet. And I think saccharin is for the birds, even if my thighs might be thinner for it,” she said, catching Darcy’s glance. Man, this woman did not miss a trick.

Glynnis plopped herself down onto the counter stool beside Darcy. The Bidwell kitchen had a comfortably cluttered feeling—as if there was too much fun in life to be tidy. It was well decorated, but with an eclectic, impulsive eye. Glynnis surely had a thing for chickens—they were everywhere—on potholders, drawer pulls, wallpaper border paper, and an abundant collection of chicken figurines lined up like a henhouse above her cabinets. If a kitchen could be bustling in a house with only two people, this was it.

“The hens…” Glynnis began, catching Darcy’s sweep of the room. “Yes, well, I must admit there are a lot of them. Bid gave me one as a joke once, saying I should never become a biddy old hen because my name already had a bid in it and now I already had a hen.” She pointed to a rather riotous ceramic one given a place of obvious prominence overseeing the sink. “Things just sort of snowballed from there. Soon this place became a henhouse.” She offered Darcy a wink. “If the sky should happen to be falling, I’ve got enough Chicken Littles in here to be the first to know.”

Glynnis settled in closer to Darcy and wrapped her hands around her ice tea glass. “Sounds like lots of your sky has already fallen, my dear. I am truly sorry to hear about your dad. Paul and I didn’t travel in the same circles, but he seemed like a good man. Cancer’s an awful way to go. Are you doing okay?”

Even though a hundred people had asked her that question in the last month, Darcy knew Glynnis really meant it. Darcy found herself liking Glynnis Bidwell almost immediately. There was something wonderfully transparent about her—one look and you knew just what you were getting. “I’m not even sure I know what ‘okay’ is supposed to look like now,” Darcy replied with a small smile.

“I don’t expect you’ll know anytime soon. It’s important to have good people around you at a time like this. Have you got good friends helping you out?”

Darcy stirred her tea. “One really good one. Some people try to be nice, others don’t seem to know what to say. Only a few people know about…the money part. Mostly I haven’t had time for friends lately.” She put the spoon down, noticing it was a heavy, solid silver. Someone once told her the mark of a true Southern lady was that her silver set included ice tea spoons. Darcy wondered when her mind had begun cataloguing such obscure details about people. “It’s odd to have so much time now.” She continued, “I feel like I can’t remember what to do with it.”

Glynnis pushed a plate of crackers toward her. Darcy dunked one into a bowl—chicken patterned—with dip in it. “It’ll come back,” the older woman offered in warm tones. “It’ll all come back. But I imagine a few things are changed forever in your life now. You’re not the same person you were before Paul died. You’ve got new responsibilities and challenges ahead of you now.” Glynnis took a cracker and absolutely loaded it with dip before popping it into her mouth. “Listen, hon, lots of money is fun, but it has its own problems—and not everyone understands that. Things can get kind of messy before you find your balance.

“Bid and I, well, we got used to it bit by bit. Not that we didn’t make a colossal mess of things in places along the way, but we had a chance to learn as we went. You, you and Jack have a whole different ball of wax. Everything all at once is no picnic. You need lots of good counsel if you’re going to see it through.” She drowned another cracker in dip. “It’s a funny little niche Bid and I have carved for ourselves, helping people deal with big finances, but we like it. It’s no accident Doug hooked us up, you know. God’s been sending us people for years now, letting us help them over the—how does Bid say it?—‘the big bumps that come with the big bucks.’” She chuckled as she selected another cracker for saturation. “That’s my Bid. Always has a way with a phrase. Now, Darcy, tell me more about your dad….”

“Play golf, Jack?’ Ed Bidwell snapped the tab on his Cherry Coke with a satisfied grin.

“No, never could quite find the time.” Jack pulled the tab on his own can.

“Good.” Bidwell hoisted the can in a salute. “Hate the game, myself. All those men chasing that silly little ball around a hunk of nice landscaping. Ah, give me a horsepower over a good tee time any day.” The man looked lovingly at his sports car.

Jack had to admit, it was one lovable car. A beauty, and brand spanking new from the looks of it. Hadn’t he seen one of those on the cover of Car and Driver? “What is it?”

Ed walked out into the driveway with the swagger of a man who felt king of all he surveyed. “That, my young friend, is a Ford Thunderbird. Hot off the line. Packed to the gills and gleaming in the sunshine.” He continued to spout off a collection of technical specifications that made Jack’s head swim. Jack could just picture the car zipping through the windy streets of Mount Adams, Cincinnati’s upscale, steep-hilled section…

…and skidding all over the place. This was a car that belonged on the autobahn, not slipping down the hills in a Cincinnati winter. Totally impractical.

But one fabulous little car anyway.

“’Course,” Ed continued, as if reading Jack’s thoughts, “she’ll be about as useless as a woman in high heels when the weather turns cold. But that first day of spring, when the weather gets warm enough to pull her out again and put the top down, well, that’s a day I’m looking forward to with a huge hunk of pleasure.”

Jack had to nod.

“I’ll get another month out of her at least, but I don’t think she’ll hit the streets after October. Too much salt on these hills. Wouldn’t want to rust these lovely curves now, would we?”

“No, sir.” Jack thought about the blotches of rust gracing the “curves” of his car. It would practically be its own salt lick by February. The transmission was getting ready to give out soon, too. Not to mention the sad shape of the tires on Darcy’s van—they might not last the winter, either.

Ed plucked a handkerchief from his pocket and rubbed at a nearly invisible smudge on the front headlamp. “How’s Darcy holding up now that her dad’s gone?”

Jack wasn’t sure how much he wanted to get in-depth on this topic just yet. He gave his standard response. “As well as can be expected. We’ve known this was coming for so long, it mostly feels over. She gets blue some days, then on others she’s her old self again.”

Ed didn’t look up from the headlamp, moving to inspect the other instead. “Dying’s hard on a family. On a marriage, even. Glyn and I had more fights the year her mother died than we’d had in our entire marriage until then.” He turned to look at Jack. “’Course Glyn’s mom was a stubborn old battle-ax, and Paul was a saint, hmm?”

Jack wasn’t quite sure what to make of that last remark. Was Ed speaking well of the dead, or inviting Jack to share his honest opinion? He sure didn’t know this guy well enough to read between his lines. He sipped his Cherry Coke to bide a bit more thinking time.

“You’re a smart man, Jack.”

“Pardon?”

“I know half a dozen fellows your age who wouldn’t have seen that comment for the minefield that it was.” He laughed, folding the handkerchief back into his pocket. “You knew there was no real safe way to respond to a remark like that. I could spot it in your eyes. I like a man who knows that sometimes the best answer is not to answer at all.”

Jack eyed him, half annoyed, half impressed. “Do you always test people for their conversational—” he searched for the right word “—agility so quickly after meeting them?”

“Only if I think they’re worth it, Jack my boy, only if I think they’re worth it.” Ed tossed his Coke can into a large recycling bin clear across the garage in one perfect long shot. “I think I’m ready for lunch.”