Kitabı oku: «A Montana Homecoming», sayfa 3

“Shane,” Beau cautioned.

“She shouldn’t be staying in that house, much less wasting time and energy fixing it up, and we all know it.”

Laurel angled herself away from Shane. “You’ve made your opinion more than clear about that house. I don’t really need to hear it again.”

“Evidently, you do. Because you’re still there. You don’t have to fix it up to sell it.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Who on earth would buy it in its current condition?”

Evie made a faint sound.

“All rightee, here we go.” The waitress arrived, bearing plates of food. She brushed her hands together when she finished unloading. “I’ll be back to top off your drinks. Anything else I can get for you?”

Laurel’s appetite for her fried chicken was definitely waning, but mindful of the concerned look in Beau’s eyes and not wanting to add to it, she picked up a drumstick.

“Probably should have a contractor look at your dad’s place,” Stu said. “Jack Finn’s the best around. He wouldn’t have to do the work, necessarily, but he could steer you in the right direction.”

Stu either possessed a remarkable ability to remain oblivious to the irritation rolling off Shane in waves or he simply didn’t care. Either way, Laurel wanted to lean over and kiss him. “Finn? He’s Freddie Finn’s dad, isn’t he?” She was surprised at the ease she had recalling old names, old faces.

Stu buried his attention in his burger as he nodded. “Call Jack. You won’t regret it.”

Laurel glanced at Evie. She would have to think about calling the contractor. It certainly made the most sense to get advice from a professional. But the cost was a consideration she couldn’t ignore, no matter how wise it would be. “Is Freddie still in Lucius? She was in your grade, wasn’t she?”

“Yes. And she’s still here.”

Stu made an unintelligible noise.

Evie rolled her eyes. “Ignore him. He’s just irritated because he signed a lease for her to rent the barn he converted a while back. And she’s holding him to it, even though they can’t agree on the color of rice.”

Laurel buried her nose in her glass of tea. Stu’s barn was probably old Calhoun’s barn, unless he’d built another one.

She didn’t dare glance at Shane.

Evie, fortunately was chattering on. “Freddie runs a tow service with Gordon, but if you ask me, she’s the brains behind keeping the business going since her brother hardly has the sense God gave a goose.” Evie flicked a look at her father. “Sorry, Dad. But it’s true.”

“Gordon’s a hard worker,” Beau said, looking slightly amused. “There’s a lot to be said for that. But I agree with Stu about calling Jack Finn, Laurel.”

Shane breathed an oath that only Laurel heard. “Laurel shouldn’t be in that house at all, and we all know it.”

Silence settled over the foursome, and Laurel wished she were anywhere but there.

“So, Dad, have you heard from Nancy?” Evie finally broke the silence, her voice deliberately cheerful.

“Nancy Thayer,” Beau supplied to Laurel. “She directed our junior choir. Kids in fifth grade through eight. She eloped last week. And no. I haven’t,” he told Evie.

“Far be it from me to stand in the way of true love,” Evie’s voice was a little tart at that, “but she couldn’t have timed it worse.” Her blue gaze shifted to Laurel. “The junior choir still spends every year raising enough money to travel to Spokane to participate in the choir festival there. Now they won’t be able to go.”

“Never put my truck through so many car washes.” Stu dumped more ketchup on his French fries.

“Or bought so many homemade brownies,” Beau added. “Think you financed two kids’ expenses on that alone.”

Stu just grinned.

Laurel didn’t quite see the problem. “If they have the money, why can’t they go?”

“Without a director, they won’t be able to sing.” Evie shook her head. “Rules.”

“You can’t hire someone else? Or maybe have a parent fill in temporarily?”

Evie’s eyebrows rose pointedly. “The only other parent aside from me who’s even willing to try that is Tony Shoemaker, Shane’s senior deputy. And he can’t carry a tune in a bucket.”

“Neither can you, Tater,” Shane drawled.

“A person doesn’t have to sing themselves in order to direct a youth choir. Surely you can find someone.” She flushed when she realized Beau was studying her.

“The festival is next weekend,” he said.

“What about you or your associate pastor?”

“Jon is on study leave for a month, and I can’t leave for three days without someone to fill the pulpit on Sunday. Believe me. If I could figure out a way of not disappointing Alan and the others, I would.”

Alan, Laurel knew, was Evie’s eldest son. “There’s not anyone?” Her stomach felt in a knot. She wasn’t so oblivious that she didn’t know where this was headed. The hopeful look in Evie’s eyes was enough to tell her that.

“Not so far.” Beau dropped his napkin on his empty plate. “Some things just can’t be helped. They’ll have a chance to go next year.”

Laurel swallowed. “Maybe I could, um, fill in as director. Just to get them through the festival.”

“No.” Shane’s voice was flat.

Laurel bristled, her nervousness shriveling into irritation. “Why not?”

“Joey Halloran is in that group. He’s hell on wheels. He got caught shoplifting last week at the thrift store.”

“All the more reason for him to keep involved with more appropriate pursuits. But I suppose being the sheriff, you think anyone who even slightly breaks the law ought to be punished, rather than resolve the issue at the root of the problem?”

He looked equally irritated. “I didn’t say that.”

She turned in her chair and looked at Beau. “It’s been a long time since I’ve sung—” a severe understatement “—but I can probably keep a group of kids on key.”

Shane shoved back his chair. He was surrounded by people bent on ignoring reality. Laurel didn’t need to be filling in for that twit who’d eloped, any more than she needed to be fixing broken steps. “I’ve gotta get back to the office.” He tossed some cash on the table and ignored the disapproval in Beau’s eyes as he turned to the door.

The wounded look in Laurel’s eyes, though, followed him all the way back to his office.

When he got there he stopped at Carla’s desk and picked up the stack of pink messages awaiting him.

“How was court?” she asked.

“Too long.” He knew she wanted a blow-by-blow account because she always did. And, as always, she’d have to get her gossip from somewhere else. He flipped through the paper messages as he headed back to his office, only to stop. “What’s this number?” One of these days, he needed to get the county to spring for a voice-mail system. Carla’s writing had never won any awards for legibility.

Carla craned her neck, peering at the message. “Um, a five.”

He nodded and started for his office again. Behind him the door jangled.

“I’d like to make a complaint.”

He stopped cold. Slowly turned.

Laurel stood in the doorway. Her hair was still pinned back the way it had been in the café, but her cheeks were flushed, her golden eyes snapping.

“Excuse me?”

“I have a complaint.” Her voice was as crisp as her eyes.

Carla was watching them avidly. She liked hearing gossip almost as much as she liked sharing it.

“We’ll talk in my office.”

“I don’t want to talk in your office.”

“Laurel—”

“Good heavens. You’re little Laurel Runyan. I should have recognized you the second you walked in.” Carla was around her desk in a flash. “Carla Chapman. I used to sit in a quilting circle with your grandmother. She was the oldest, I was the youngest. Neither one of us could abide any of the other women. She used to bring you with her, though. You’d sit in a corner in the quilting room with your own squares and a big ol’ darning needle and yarn. I’ve heard you’re a teacher. That’s a fine thing. Lucille would be proud. And my condolences on your daddy passing,” she added belatedly.

Laurel looked a little dazed. “I remember the quilting circle.”

Carla looked pleased and only slightly abashed when she caught the look Shane was giving her. She cocked her eyebrow and returned to her desk.

Shane grabbed Laurel’s arm, ignoring the start she gave, and led her back to his office. He let go of her as soon as they entered his cubicle and flipped through the messages again without bothering to look at them. Mostly he wanted to rid his hand of the feel of her supple arm.

“Okay, what’s the complaint?” He sat down behind his desk.

She, however, didn’t sit. She crossed her arms, looking at him with a schoolmarm look that probably did wonders for straightening up mischievous third-grade boys.

For a thirty-five-year-old man, it did not have the desired effect.

“Just because you loathed my father, and dumped me the second you’d finished with me, does not give you the right to harass me about what I choose to do or not do with his house, or to dictate what I do with my time while I’m here!”

“I didn’t dump you.” He kept his voice low. His conscience, however, was screaming at him with the ferocity of a freight train.

Her eyes went even chillier. “There may be some things I don’t remember, Sheriff, but I remember that quite well.”

He wished she’d sit. Or pace. Do anything but stand there the way she was, looking as cold and brittle as a narrow icicle. An icicle that could snap in two as easily as a whisper.

“I didn’t know how much you remembered.” He’d been an ass. An ass who’d been old enough to know better than to get involved with her. Eighteen or not, she’d still been too young and innocent.

Neither fact had stopped him back then.

He hoped to hell he’d learned something in the years since.

Her expression remained glacial. “Not remembering what I saw the night my mother died does not mean I cannot remember the exact details of how you dumped me an hour before it happened.” Her chin lifted a little. “Therapy,” she clipped, “does wonders for enabling a person to state…unpleasant…facts. And the unpleasant fact is that you don’t want me in Lucius at all. You probably figured that with my father’s death, your town was finally free of Runyans.”

He leaned back in his chair. The springs squeaked slightly. “That therapy may have done you a world of good, but you are way off the mark when it comes to reading me.”

“Really. You can’t wait for me to sell my father’s house. To dump it, really. You nearly came unglued when Evie was talking about someone—me—replacing Mrs. Cuthwater. And then this festival business? What’s the matter? Are you afraid a Runyan will bring rack and ruin to the innocent children of Lucius?”

“No. I’m afraid Lucius will bring rack and ruin to you.” He exhaled roughly, wanting to rip out his tongue. Where the hell was his control?

Her lips parted, and all the color drained from her cheeks.

He went around to her, taking her arms. “Sit.”

She shook off his hold. “I don’t need to sit.”

An icicle. Too easily snapped in two. “Laurel, please. I didn’t intend to upset you.”

“Of course not. Heaven forbid you upset the crazy lady. She might just lose her mind again.”

“I never said you were crazy.” Maybe he was. Maybe that was why he sometimes still—all these years later—woke up sweating in the middle of the night with the vision of her inside that room at Fernwood, rocking herself to sleep, her eyes roiling pools of despair.

“You didn’t have to say it,” she whispered. “When everything you do makes it obvious you think it.”

Then she turned on her heel and walked out of his office.

Chapter Four

The next day, Laurel took the bus back to Lucius from Billings after returning the rental car there. Keeping it longer was simply an excuse she couldn’t afford. But standing in the depot, she very nearly changed her mind about climbing on the bus.

Wouldn’t returning to Colorado be preferable to returning to Lucius?

She could find another teaching position. She did have good credentials, after all. She’d left her last school on good terms. Had even helped find her replacement. She’d been planning on marrying. Martin had wanted to travel. See the world. He was forty-five and more than financially able to take an early retirement. Giving up her job had been perfectly understandable, considering the circumstances.

There was no earthly reason why she had to return to Lucius. The junior choir would survive without her intervention. Mrs. Cuthwater could keep on substituting for third grade. Laurel could contact that attorney—Mr. Newsome—and put him in charge of disposing of her father’s house and personal effects.

She didn’t have to go back.

The worst memories of her life lived in Lucius.

But so did the very best memories.

When she went up the ramp of plywood that covered the perilous porch steps at her father’s house, she couldn’t pretend that she hadn’t chosen to return willingly.

None of it had anything to do with Shane, of course. Heavenly days, no. Where would be the sense in that?

Whether or not he admitted it, at worst the man thought she had a screw loose. At best he thought she needed coddling to make sure her screws didn’t come loose.

So she unlocked the flimsy lock and went inside, leaving the door open for the fresh summer air. Even after only a half a day of being closed up, the house felt stuffy and close.

In her marathon cleaning sessions before the funeral, she’d managed to rid the house of its suffocating layer of dust, but instead of making the house look better, she’d only managed to make its rundown condition more evident. Yes, the windows were clean and shining again, but the cracks only glistened more. Yes, the cobwebs were gone, but the walls and ceilings now screamed for fresh plaster and paint.

She dropped her suitcase on the couch. She knew she needed to get to work on the place. She’d done enough vacillating. Whether she fixed the house up to remain in it or fixed it up to sell it, either way the work needed to be done.

While in Billings, she’d called Martin and asked him to sell her car. It wasn’t worth much, but it had been reliable enough for her needs. Going all the way to Denver to retrieve it though seemed more effort and expense than it was worth. His son from his first marriage—a high school senior—had been begging for a car for a year. Now he’d have one. She’d hung up feeling better and worse. Better that she’d made a productive decision. Worse because Martin was simply too good. He hadn’t deserved her treatment, and she still felt badly about it.

But not badly enough to go through with a marriage that had put her in the worst panic attack she’d had since she’d been a patient at Fernwood

She’d left Denver. She had no intention of going back. She’d had friends, but no one—other than Martin—who’d been truly close. Aside from him, she’d spent nearly all of her time teaching. Teaching during the regular year. Teaching during the summers.

And dwelling on it all accomplished nothing.

Martin was sending her money for her car, and she’d find something economical in Lucius. On Monday she would open a bank account in town, have her funds transferred from Colorado. She’d have enough to tide her through the summer, hopefully enough to accomplish the most necessary repairs on the house, if she was careful. And then…and then, she would see.

Concrete plans. Achievable goals. Such behavior had gotten her through a lot of years. She could do this.

She would do this.

“Laurel?”

She started, pressing her hand to her heart when it jolted. She turned to the doorway. She hadn’t seen Shane since she’d gone to his office. “What do you want, Sheriff?”

She didn’t need to see his expression clearly through the screen to know he was irritated. The way he yanked open the door and stepped inside told her that quite well enough.

He swept off his dark-brown cowboy hat and tapped it against the side of his leg. “What are you doing here?”

“Where else would I be?”

“You left town this morning.”

“How’d you know that?”

“The grapevine is as active now as it was when you were a girl. More so, I ’spose, considering half the town has cell phones now. You drove out of town and word spread.”

“And I wasn’t allowed back?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

She felt herself flush when she realized she was staring at his legs, strong and long and clad in fading blue jeans that fit extremely well. He looked delectable and she looked…as if she’d just spent a few hours on a bus. “I had to return the rental car in Billings.”

“How’d you get back to Lucius?”

“The bus.” Looking at his dark-blue pullover didn’t help her any, either, because the fabric did little to disguise the massively wide chest beneath.

She settled for focusing on the faint dent in his stubbornly square chin.

He tossed his hat and it landed unerringly on the corner of the coffee table, right next to a footed glass bowl of ugly plastic purple grapes. “For crissakes, Laurel. You could have called someone.”

She sank her teeth into her tongue for a moment. “Is it the bus you object to, or the fact that I didn’t remain out of town?”

“I never wanted you to leave town in the first place.”

“No, leaving was what you liked to do.” Her words seemed to hang in the air, giving her mortification plenty of time to set in good and deep.

If she’d wanted to prove that the brief past they’d shared was completely irrelevant to her now, she was doing a miserable job of it.

“Leaving is what I had to do,” he said finally. “If I’d have stayed, I wouldn’t have been able to keep my hands to myself again. Not after we’d—”

“Stop.” Heat filled her face. She had only herself to blame for opening up the matter, but she really didn’t want to go into those details. “It was a long time ago. No need to rehash it.”

“Maybe not for you. I always meant to tell you that I was—”

“Please, this isn’t—”

“Sorry.”

“—necessary.”

He frowned at her, looking very much as if he had plenty more to say. After a moment, though, he just raked one long-fingered hand through his hair, ruffling the deep gold into soft spikes. “So you really do mean to stay while you work on this house.”

She could feel her scalp tightening. “Yes.”

“Despite what happened here.”

There was no possibility of pretending she didn’t know what he referred to.

“Was Holly in the hospital when she died?” she asked.

His eyes narrowed. “No.”

“Hospice care?”

“She was at home.” His voice was clipped.

“With your father.”

“Yes.”

“Did he leave his house after? Sell it?”

A muscle flexed in his jaw. “No.”

“And you still visit your dad there. At the house where you and your brother and sisters grew up.”

“Apples and oranges, Laurel. My father didn’t—” His teeth snapped together. “God. What is it about you that pushes me right off the edge of reason?”

She crossed her arms, stung. “Why don’t you just finish it, Sheriff? Your father didn’t kill your mother. And you believe—just like your predecessor, Sheriff Wicks—that my father killed mine. Well, he didn’t. Her death was an accident.” She dropped her arms and stepped closer to him, forcing the words past her tight throat. “I may have been stuck in a straitjacket five-hundred miles away, but even I knew the charges against my father were dropped. Sheriff Wicks obviously changed his mind. So why can’t you?”

“You were never in a straitjacket.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I visited you there.”

Shock reared her back. “I…what?”

He stepped past her, pacing the close confines between the faded couch and the equally faded rocking chair. He rounded the back of the couch. Stopped. Closed his palms over the back of it. “Guess I don’t have to ask if you remember that.”

She stared at him. His fingertips were white where they sunk into the faded floral upholstery.

“You…saw me there. At Fernwood.”

“Three times a week for three months.”

She couldn’t breathe. Her lips parted, but she simply could not draw a breath. She sat down on the rocker and pressed her forehead to her hands.

Everything she’d thought about him for all these years tilted.

She finally dragged oxygen into her lungs. “I didn’t know.”

“There was a sunroom there. Plenty of windows. A lot of fake palm trees planted in pots.”

She didn’t even have to close her eyes to recall the room. To this day she preferred any tree other than a palm. “It overlooked a parking lot. The nurses tried to brighten it up with the plants.”

“Right.”

She remembered the room, remembered so much of Fernwood.

But not his visits.

Which meant he’d been there only at the first. She knew, because she’d been told, that she’d been moved to Fernwood within a month of her mother’s death. But the time between that and the wintry morning when she’d sat looking out at the falling snow and her mind had just…clicked on again…had been nearly six months.

“Your father told you I was at Fernwood, I suppose.” She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She knew Beau had been instrumental in getting her placed at Fernwood, a private mental health facility outside of Denver, where she received more care than she would have through the system in Lucius.

“Holly told me. She came to visit me at seminary. Came to give me a piece of her mind, actually, for going for weeks on end without calling home. That’s when I learned what your father had done. What had happened…to you. After I’d dropped you off that evening, I picked up my suitcase from the house and kept driving. I didn’t know about any of it until Holly came to see me in California.”

She pressed her fingertips into her eye sockets. “My father didn’t do anything.”

“Then you remember that? You remember what happened that day, but not the hours you and I spent sitting in that bloody sunroom at Fernwood.”

“I remember enough!” She dropped her hands, staring at him. Wondering why the pain of it was as sharp as it was, when time was supposed to dull this sort of thing. “You slept with me in Calhoun’s barn, and then you dumped me, and after you drove me back to my house—insisted on it, in fact—I arrived in just enough time to see my mother accidentally fall down the stairs. I don’t care what everyone said. My father did not push her.”

“Because you remember it.”

Her eyes burned. The truth was that she didn’t remember anything beyond the sight of Shane driving away in that old pickup truck while she stood on the porch, silently crying. “My father wouldn’t have hurt my mother.”

“Did you ever talk to him after you left Lucius?”

The question came like a slap. “Yes.” Often, once she left Fernwood. Then over the years dwindling down to just once a year. On his birthday. Calling him more often might have been the right thing to do, but she hadn’t been able to bear the constant disappointment.

“And? What’d he say?”

“What does it matter to you? It wasn’t a confession, I promise you that.” She knew her father would never have made such a confession. Not to her. Not to anyone.

He had been a miserable man, but he hadn’t been an abusive one. No matter what the rumors around Lucius had said.

She ought to know.

She’d lived under his roof.

He’d often raised his voice, but he’d never once raised his hand.

That had been her mother’s particular domain.

“Laurel.” Shane’s voice went soft. Careful. Gentle. “I’m just trying to—”

Coddling.

She hated it.

“He told me not to come home to Lucius,” she said baldly. “So I didn’t. He never came to visit me. His actions were perfectly clear. He didn’t want to be around me. But now he’s gone and what he wanted doesn’t matter anymore. I’m here whether you like it or not.”

“I don’t want you to get hurt again.”

“There’s nothing in this house that can hurt me.”

“Hurt doesn’t have to be physical.”

She knew that as well as anyone.

And she was still grappling with the revelation that he’d visited her at Fernwood. “I’ll be fine.”

Something came and went in his eyes. “I guess I’ll be close enough by to make sure of it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He merely straightened and rounded the couch, stopping in front of her. “Come with me.”

Wariness edged in again. “Where?”

He held out his hand. “You’ll see.”

She swallowed. Eyed his palm. She could see the row of calluses, the signs of a man perfectly accustomed to physical labor, despite his position as sheriff. His fingers were long. Square-tipped. His wrist corded.

She swallowed and gingerly placed her hand in his.

And even though she’d braced herself, the contact felt electric.

If he noticed, he hid it a lot better than she did.

She rose.

He led her out the front door. The plywood vibrated under their feet as they went down it. There was no sign of Shane’s SUV. Instead, there was a small blue sedan parked at the curb.

It didn’t look at all like a car he’d ordinarily drive.

But then, what did she know?

She absently noticed that a breeze had cropped up. It felt welcoming, given the heat of the afternoon. Given the heat charging up her arm to her elbow to her shoulder and beyond…

He walked the length of the house, then around the southern side. Fifty yards behind the house, the land rose sharply. Growing up, she’d done a lot of sledding in the wintertime on that hill.

“I’ll be close by,” he said, letting go of her hand and pointing. “Because we’re neighbors.”

She stared.

The house on the hill was his.

The house that was so incredibly beautiful. She’d spent more than one night watching the wooden and stone structure sleep in the moonlight when she hadn’t been able to find any such rest. She’d admired the gleaming windows, the stone chimneys, the inviting porch. The house had been built while she’d been gone from Lucius, yet it didn’t reek of newness at all. It possessed only a timeless beauty.

“You lived behind my father.”

“Yes.”

She didn’t know what to do with her hands. One was still tingling. The other felt cold.

She forced them to remain at her sides, fighting the burgeoning need to wring them together. Her appreciation for the house now seemed like another betrayal of her father. “Who built the house?”

“I did.”

“You?”

“I’m capable, too,” he drawled, his voice impossibly dry.

She ignored the small jab, not doubting his capabilities for a second. The man undoubtedly exceeded capable on every front.

Even if he was the sheriff.

The sheriff.

Who’d lived within eyeshot of her father.

She finally identified the feeling that was hollowing her out.

Disappointment.

“Were you so set on keeping an eye on my father that you chose to live behind him?”

Not even strictly behind him. Above him. Like some almighty watchdog waiting for the moment to attack.

Had her father been bothered by the sheriff’s proximity? Had he felt as if the law were breathing down his neck, just waiting for the moment to strike again?

Or had he been as unconcerned about that as he’d been unconcerned about his daughter?

Shane’s dark brows had jerked together over his sharp nose. His lips were thinned.

He was displeased, definitely. But he didn’t deny the truth in her sharp question. “I chose to build there because of the view,” he said.

The view of what? Her father’s rooftop?

The hollowness inside her widened. What had he expected her father to do? Once her mother was gone, when Laurel was gone, when the charges against him were dropped, he’d lived alone. He’d still worked as a maintenance engineer for the town of Lucius, but he’d still…been…alone.

Her father’s attorney had been very clear on that point.

She’d had no reason to doubt him.

And it made her ache inside to think of her dad being watched by the sheriff, as if his life was continually on display, under a microscope, awaiting a misstep.

If only he’d let me come home. The futile whisper screamed through her. Some portion of her mind realized she’d said it aloud even before Shane spoke.

“You could have come home if you’d wanted,” he countered.

“There was nothing here for me.” Her father had been adamant. Don’t come back.

Shane’s lips tightened even more, as if he’d taken her remark personally.

Which was simply ridiculous.

“You had friends,” he finally said.

She rubbed her palms together. The tingling stubbornly remained. “Jenny Travis moved away to college that year.” That year. As if there were only one year that was important.

“I wasn’t talking about Jenny.”

She knew that. “You left, too.”

A muscle ticked in his jaw, but he couldn’t change history. He had left. And he hadn’t returned permanently until his stepmother was stricken with cancer. He’d already admitted that to her.

“I really don’t want to rehash the past,” she said suddenly. She didn’t. She just wished she could get the past out of her mind for two minutes. But every time she looked at Shane, all she could remember were those summer days, when everything had been fresh and beautiful and full of promise. When she’d awakened each morning with anticipation and enthusiasm and hope.

Until it had all ended on one terrible, terrible Sunday.

“Suits me. The present is interesting enough. What are you doing about a car?”

It was such an abrupt switch, she was momentarily unnerved. “I, um, I thought I’d talk to Stu about it.”

He pulled something from his pocket. “You can use this in the meantime.” He held out his hand.

“That’s a key.”

His lips twitched. “So it is.”

“I don’t need any favors.”

“Consider it a neighborly gesture,” his voice went silky.

At least she retained enough good sense to recognize that the silkiness was not an auspicious sign. “It’s not necessary. I’ll have funds for a used car in a few days.”