Kitabı oku: «One True Thing», sayfa 3
But maybe force had been someone else’s style. Maybe that was why she was cautious and evasive.
But it wasn’t his business, remember?
He got two bottles of water from the refrigerator, then set the table. As the timer went off, he pulled the lasagna from the oven and stuck the foil-wrapped bread inside, then asked, “What’s your book about?”
She’d been looking out the window. Now her gaze jerked back to him. “My…my book?”
“The one you’re writing. The one that’s set here in Oklahoma. What is it about?”
“Oh…well…” Her fingers tightened even more around the chair back. “It’s…it’s a love story.”
“Most romance novels are, aren’t they?” he asked dryly.
“Yeah. Of course.”
Using insulated mitts, he carried the lasagna pan to the table, then returned with the bread. After he slid into the nearest seat, she slowly pulled out the chair she’d had a death grip on and sat. He waited until they’d served themselves, then gave her time to take a bite before asking, “So? What’s it about?”
“It’s about…” When she looked up, her face was warm but her eyes were cool and her full lips had flattened into an aloof line. “I’m really not comfortable discussing it. If I tell people the story in detail, then there’s not much purpose in writing it—is there?—because I’ve already told it.”
He wasn’t asking for a scene-by-scene description. A general overview would have been fine, something like “a story of a spoiled Southern belle during and after the Civil War” for Gone With the Wind. He didn’t need names, subplots or even the highlights.
“Do you publish your books under your own name?”
This time she didn’t look at him, but kept her gaze focused on the plate in front of her. “No, I don’t. You were right—this is excellent lasagna. Is it an old family recipe?”
“Someone’s old family, but not ours. Mom came across it years ago, made a few changes and has been fixing it ever since.” Just as bluntly as she’d changed the subject, he changed it back. “What’s your…aw, hell, I can’t think of the word. Your alias?”
For a moment he thought she might laugh, but the twitch at the corners of her mouth faded. “Alias?”
“You know, your fake name. Cassidy McRae aka what? Jeez, don’t you ever look at Wanted posters?”
“No, I can’t honestly say that I do.” She paused. “Do you?”
“I used to. A lot.”
“Looking for anyone in particular?”
“Not for pictures of myself, if that’s what you’re thinking. Trust me, if I was wanted by the cops, Reese would turn me in so fast I wouldn’t know what hit me.”
“Your own cousin?”
“He’s a cop first, my cousin second.” That wasn’t entirely true. Reese would never break the law, but he would bend it a little if circumstances warranted it. Sometimes that was the only way to see justice done.
“Then what’s your interest in Wanted posters?”
He wasn’t sure why, but he didn’t particularly want to admit that he’d been a cop himself. With his luck, she would probably have a lot of questions he wouldn’t want to answer. The few writers he’d met in the past, mostly reporters, were filled with them. “Curiosity,” he said with a shrug. “I watch America’s Most Wanted, too.” Once again he abruptly shifted direction. “You never told me what your alias—”
“Pen name.”
“—is.”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Maybe I want to pick up a couple of your books and see what they’re like.”
“They’re very hard to find. Most of them are out of print.”
“Then you could loan me some copies.”
Her smile was quick and uneasy. “I don’t have any. Sorry.”
“Oh, come on…you don’t have a single copy of your own books?”
“Well, of course I have some, but not with me. They’re back home in my office in San Diego.”
“Lemon Grove,” he corrected.
She grimaced. “Hey, it’s all one big city.”
“And they’re in storage, with the rest of your office.”
Her face turned almost as red as the sweet tomato sauce that oozed between the layers of noodles. “Yeah,” she agreed. “Everything’s in storage.”
His back was itching again. He shifted in his chair, rubbing against the spindles. If he checked Directory Assistance for Lemon Grove, California, would he find a listing for Cassidy McRae? Instinct said no, but that wouldn’t mean anything. Most women who lived alone in big cities had unlisted numbers. But if one of his cop buddies checked the utilities and didn’t find a recent account in her name…
It would prove she’d lied about where she lived. So what? She was an author, and no doubt had fans. For some people it was a short step from fan to stalker. If some stranger was buying his book and thought he was making some sort of connection, he would want personal information such as where he lived kept private, too.
As he pushed his plate away, he slumped back in the chair and fixed his gaze on her. “You’re not married.”
She shook her head.
“Any kids?”
“No.” That was accompanied by a faint regret. It wasn’t as if it was too late. She couldn’t be more than thirty, thirty-two. She still had time to bring a dozen or more kids into the world before Mother Nature said no more.
“Family?”
Her smile was faint. “Don’t have one.”
“No parents, brothers or sisters?”
She shook her head again. “No aunts, uncles, cousins or grandparents, either. I’m an only child from a long line of only children.”
“No family. Jeez.” Then… “Want some of mine?”
She pushed her plate away, too, having cleaned it. “Your parents live outside Buffalo Plains, your cousin is the local sheriff, and your cousin four times removed sells real estate around here. Who else is there?”
“Reese’s folks live in town. My mom’s parents are about forty miles from here, and her two brothers and three sisters all live within an hour or so. There are a lot of cousins, some great-aunts and -uncles, some in-laws and out-laws. Last time the family got together, there were about seventy of us.”
“That’s nice.”
It was nicer when he lived in another state and didn’t see them that often, he was about to retort but stopped himself. There was something wrong with complaining about too much family to a woman who didn’t have any. Instead he agreed—more or less. “Yeah. It can be.”
“Are you married?”
“Nope. Never have been.”
“Ever come close?”
He thought of Amanda and the diamond ring he’d been considering for a Valentine’s Day surprise. The few people he kept in touch with in Kansas City never volunteered any news about her and he never asked. “Nope.” It wasn’t a complete lie. They hadn’t been nearly as close to a lifetime commitment as he’d thought.
“Any kids?”
“Not without being married first, or my mother would tan my hide.”
“That’s an old-fashioned outlook.”
“She’s an old-fashioned mother.” He thought about digging up another question, then stuck to the subject. “She believes parents should be married before they start having children, that honesty comes first in a relationship, and that marriage shouldn’t be entered into lightly. You don’t have to stay in a bad marriage, but you damn well have to do everything you can to keep it from going bad.”
What if he had married Amanda? What if politics hadn’t derailed his career or had done so six months after the wedding? Just how bad could that marriage have gotten? Very bad, he suspected. Bitter-divorce-and-protective-orders bad. His mother would have been incredibly disappointed in him for making such a lousy choice.
So one good thing had come out of the mess. Amanda had saved him the hassle of a divorce down the road and spared him Rozena’s disappointment.
“Your mother’s a smart woman.” Cassidy slid her chair back, then held out her hand for his dishes. Stacking them with her own, she carried them into the kitchen.
He followed with the lasagna pan. “How long does it take you to write a book?”
“It varies.” She turned on the water in the sink, waited for it to heat, then put in the stopper and squirted in dish soap.
“Give me a ballpark figure. A week? A month? A year?”
She shrugged. “Sometimes three months, sometimes six, sometimes longer. Some days I want to tell the story. Other days, I can’t force myself to get within ten feet of the computer.”
“Did you always want to be a writer?”
“Not really.”
“How long have you been doing it?”
“A few years.”
Just like her earlier answer that she’d sold a few books. He’d pinned her down to a number then, and sometime he might pin her down on this, but not now. Instead he put the last square of lasagna in the refrigerator and took out the pie and a tub of whipped cream. “Where do you get your ideas?”
She scowled at him over her shoulder before turning her attention back to the dishes. If she scrubbed that plate any harder, she was going to take the pattern right off of it, he thought, and wondered why she was so tense. “They come to me in my sleep,” she said, clearly annoyed.
Another evasion, if not an outright lie. He was beginning to think “evasion” was Cassidy McRae’s middle name.
Too bad he was no longer in the business of finding out why.
Chapter 3
She had regrets—a lot of them. More than any ninety year old who’d squandered her life should be burdened by on her deathbed, and she was nowhere near ninety. Looking into his amazingly handsome face, with his sharp black eyes, his straight nose, his stubborn jaw and his full, sensuous, sensitive-looking mouth, and lying through her teeth to him was only the most recent in a long string of regrets.
He believed in honesty between a man and a woman—had said so in no uncertain terms, and yet she had lied to him.
And all the regrets in all the world wouldn’t stop her from doing it again.
Cassidy directed her sharpest scowl at herself. She didn’t regret lying to Jace any more than she regretted lying to anyone. There was nothing special about him, nothing that separated him from the countless people she had deceived in the past.
Except for the fact that he was handsome as sin.
And more tempting than chocolate.
She hadn’t looked twice at a man in thirty-five-and-a-half months— No, that wasn’t true. She looked two and three and four times, searching faces, praying she didn’t see any particular face. She looked at men as a potential threat to her freedom, her safety, her very life.
Jace was the first one she’d looked at as just a man. Someone to be attracted to. Someone to share a meal with. Someone to stir her long-sleeping hormones back to life.
Someone she couldn’t even think about getting involved with. He had that honesty thing going for him. She had a million lies and counting. He belonged here, with his family all around. She didn’t belong anywhere. He was an easy-going, unsophisticated part-time cowboy. She was a woman for whom people would kill.
All those things were among her regrets.
And hopefully, when she left here, Jace Barnett wouldn’t be.
Avoiding him would be the best way to prevent that. No matter that he was handsome and friendly and his mother made the best strawberry pie she’d ever had. No matter that she had been—to borrow a line from Hank Williams—so lonesome she could cry. She needed to stay away from him. He asked too many questions and she didn’t have the right answers. He was suspicious of her—she had seen it in his eyes yesterday at lunch. Maybe he wouldn’t do anything with his suspicions.
Or maybe he would.
The hell of it was, it was her own fault. All she’d wanted was a little time to do nothing. Peace and quiet in a place where she wouldn’t have to worry about fitting in, having friends or meeting enemies. She’d wanted to be as alone in her private little world as she was in the world at large.
She shouldn’t have lied to Paulette Fox, but the woman had been so damn nosy, wanting to know why Cassidy had chosen Buffalo Plains, refusing to believe that anyone would come to the shores of little Buffalo Lake for a vacation. After all, the lake offered no amenities beyond a few picnic tables. There was no resort, no place to rent a boat or Jet Ski, no charmingly quaint vacation cottages, not even a convenience store for a quick run. The only cabin for rent had no telephone and lousy television reception and depended on a window air conditioner to keep it cool.
You can tell me, honey, the woman had wheedled with a gleam in her eyes and a confidential air. What are you really here for?
Cassidy had thought of the paperback in her purse and the lie had found its way out before she’d even thought about it. I’m a writer. I’m looking for a quiet place to finish my book.
It wasn’t the first time she’d lied and wouldn’t be the last. Besides, how hard could masquerading as a writer be? It wasn’t as if she needed a degree to hang on her wall. She skimmed the author biographies in every book she read—and for the past few years that number was in the hundreds. There were doctors, teachers and lawyers writing, sure, but there were also housewives and mothers and high-school graduates.
And what did a writer do? She sat around dreaming up stories, then put them on paper. Cassidy sat around dreaming up stories—that sounded so much better than making up lies—and she could pretend to put them on paper. In fact, she’d decided to actually try her hand at writing. Lord knew, she had a story to tell.
There was just one small problem—at least, it had started out small. It seemed to get bigger with each passing day.
What she didn’t know about being a writer would…well, would fill a book.
And Jace was reaching that conclusion, too, if he hadn’t already.
Suddenly too antsy to sit still, she exited the Free Cell game, then stood and stretched before grabbing her car keys and purse. She needed a few groceries—she never wanted to eat another ham sandwich as long as she lived—and she could certainly benefit from some fresh air and a change of scenery.
After locking up, she climbed into her blisteringly hot car, backed out, then headed down the narrow dirt lane. The air conditioner was turned to high, all the windows were down, and the wheel was so hot that she steered using only the tips of her fingers, but she felt damn near giddy at the prospect of getting out and seeing people.
She was not cut out for a life of isolation.
A few hundred yards from her cabin, another narrow lane forked off to the northwest. She’d paid it little attention the times she’d been by it, but now she knew it led to Jace’s house—partly because it was logical, and partly because he was sitting there in a dusty green SUV, half in his driveway, half in the road, watching her approach.
Her car was small enough she could ease around him, give a neighborly wave, then drive on—and let him drive in her dust for the next ten miles—but she politely slowed to a stop.
Instead of driving on, he got out of the truck and leaned in the passenger window. “Where are you off to?”
“The grocery store.”
“Me, too. Why don’t you park your car and ride with me?”
She wanted to coolly say no, thanks, almost as much as she wanted to agree. She needed conversation, to hear other voices, and his was a damn easy voice to listen to.
But he asks questions, her own inner voice reminded her, and he wants answers. She could be satisfied talking to the clerk at the grocery store, couldn’t she?
Oh, sure, that would be a great conversation. How are you today? Will that be all? You want paper or plastic?
Apparently her reluctance was obvious, because he grinned a killer grin. “Aw, come on…I bet you don’t even know where the closest grocery store is.”
“The only grocery store is in Buffalo Plains.”
He made a sound like a game-show buzzer. “The Heartbreak store is five miles closer. I’ll even treat you to lunch at the Heartbreak Café.”
Heartbreak. Sounded like her kind of town, she thought with a touch of irony and rue. And lunch…in a restaurant…with people. Sounded too good to pass up. And it wouldn’t hurt, would it? Not just this one time?
“Let me take my car back.”
With another grin, he lifted his hand in a wave, then returned to his truck.
It took some effort, but she managed to turn around without getting too far off the road. On the brief drive to the cottage, she tried to talk herself into reneging, but when she got out of the Honda, she didn’t blurt out an excuse, rush inside and lock the door. No, she climbed into the cool interior of the SUV, buckled her seat belt and glanced at Jace.
He wore gym shorts in white cotton with a gray T-shirt, worn-out running shoes and no socks, and his black hair was pulled back in a ponytail again. As a general rule, she didn’t like to see men with hair longer than her own, and she couldn’t help but think he would be a hundred times handsomer with it cut short. Even so, he was still incredibly hot. Heavens, she was hot just looking at him.
She adjusted the vent so the cool air blew directly on her, then crossed her legs. Deciding it would be in her best interests to start—and therefore hopefully control—the conversation, she asked, “How big is Heartbreak?”
“A better question is how little is it. I believe Paulette likes to refer to it as ‘a wide spot in the road.’”
“Yeah, I heard that phrase from her a couple of times.”
He grinned. “You don’t need to spend much time with Paulette before she starts repeating herself. She can be annoying, but at heart she’s a good person.” At the end of the lane, he slowed almost to a stop, then turned east onto the dirt road. “Heartbreak…let’s see…. It has an elementary school, middle school and high school, though if the number of students keeps dropping, they’ll have to close them and bus the kids to Buffalo Plains. There are a couple of cafés, a hardware store, a five-and-dime, a grocery store, a part-time doctor and lawyer, a post office—oh, and a boot-and-saddle maker. If you want to take home a one-of-a-kind souvenir, you should see her. There’s also a couple of small junk stores—pardon me, antique stores—and a consignment store. That’s about it.”
“All the necessities of life,” she said with a faint smile.
“If you’re not looking for anything fancy. If you are, you have to go to Tulsa or Oklahoma City.”
At the intersection where they would have turned left to go to Buffalo Plains, he turned right instead, then asked, “Get any writing done today?”
So much for controlling the conversation. “A little.”
“After you write the book, what happens then?”
She stared out the side window for a time, some part of her brain registering pastures dotted with cattle, occasional houses, barbed wire fences and acres of the scraggly trees Paulette had identified as blackjacks. Finally, when the expectant silence began to gnaw at her nerves, she gave him a narrowed look. “Didn’t we agree yesterday that I didn’t want to talk about my career?”
His laughter was warm and unexpected. “Oh, honey, we haven’t agreed on anything yet except that my mom’s a good cook. Besides, you said that about the book you’re currently writing. I’m just asking about the process in general.”
“Why?”
He gave the same answer he’d offered in regard to the Wanted posters. “I’m curious.”
“Why?”
“I haven’t met many writers before, and most of them were newspaper or TV reporters.”
She grabbed the chance to turn the conversation back on him. “Now you’ve made me curious. How does a small-town Oklahoma cowboy manage to run into so many newspaper and television reporters? They do many stories on branding and castrating around here?”
Now it was his turn to think before he answered. “Nope, not many. But if there’s a reporter around, they seem to lock in on me. Must be my charm.”
Must be female reporters, Cassidy thought dryly.
“Okay, we’ll drop that part of the discussion. Can you at least tell me what kind of research you did before coming here?”
Absolutely not. She’d chosen Buffalo Lake the same way she’d chosen every other place she’d temporarily lighted in the past three years—spread out a map of the U.S., closed her eyes and pointed. “Just general stuff,” she fibbed. “Climate, topography, industry.” Please don’t ask, she silently prayed, but of course he did.
“And what did you learn about the climate?”
In the outside mirror she watched dust clouds swirl behind them. Looking ahead she saw heat waves shimmering in the air. “That it gets hot in summer. Damn hot.”
“And?”
She gave him another of those narrow gazes. “Why are you quizzing me? I’m not a student and you’re not my teacher.”
“I bet I could teach you a few things,” he said, his voice huskier than normal. Then he gave her a long, intimate look. “And you could teach me a few.”
Her throat had gone as dry as the road they were traveling. She couldn’t think of a response, though, until he turned back to the road, when the air rushed out of her lungs and she sank back against the seat.
As if the moment had never happened, he gestured toward the house ahead on the left, identifying it as Easy and Shay Rafferty’s place, where he helped out occasionally with the horses. Farther down the road on the right was Guthrie and Olivia Harris’s ranch, where he helped out occasionally with the cattle. Two young girls were playing in the yard. One, dangling upside down from a tree branch, waved so enthusiastically Cassidy feared she might fall. The other, sitting primly on a quilt underneath the tree, raised her hand without so much as a wiggle of her fingers.
“That’s the Harrises’ twins. Elly’s the tomboy and Emma’s the prissy one,” Jace remarked. “Which were you as a kid?”
“I wasn’t prissy.”
“Did you play with dolls?”
“Of course. That’s what little girls do.”
“Let me rephrase that—how did you play with dolls? Did you play house with them, like Emma, or cut them open and stuff them with firecrackers to see if you could blow them to bits, like Elly did last week?”
She’d played house, but she wasn’t about to admit it. Instead she folded her arms over her chest and pressed her lips together.
“That’s a clear enough answer,” he said with a chuckle. “Did you ever climb trees? Collect spiders? Make a pet of a mouse and keep him in your pocket? Or did you like to sit in the air-conditioning with your dollies and books and not get dirty?”
“I climbed trees,” she said in her defense. And she had, too. At least, a time or two. Until she’d fallen from an unstable limb and broken her arm when she was eight. After that, she’d kept her feet on the ground.
“And the rest?”
“I kill spiders and the only mouse I want around is attached to my computer.” Her expression slid into something that felt remarkably like a pout. “Besides, what’s wrong with staying cool and clean and reading?”
He laughed again, not a chuckle this time but a full-throated laugh. “So you were prissy. Of course, I could tell just by looking at you.”
“How?” she challenged.
“Because girly girls always grow up to be such womanly women.” Again that low, husky tone. Again the dry throat, the air rushing from her lungs, the general weakness spreading through her body.
Spending the next few hours with him couldn’t hurt, could it? she had convinced herself back in the Honda. Not just this one time.
She would have snorted in disdain if she could have found the breath. He was a dangerous man, and his relentless questions were only the half of it. Questions she could avoid. Emotions, though… She couldn’t escape them no matter how she tried. Feelings in general were okay. Feelings for other people weren’t. Those were the rules that governed her life.
The sooner she remembered and acted on that, the better.
Jace parked in downtown Heartbreak, climbed out of the truck and waited on the sidewalk for Cassidy. As she got out and walked toward him, her gaze was swiveling from side to side and around. Looking for anything in particular or just trying to take the whole town in at once?
He’d never tried to see his hometown through someone else’s eyes. It was so familiar to him that he wasn’t even sure he saw it through his own eyes, but rather through the eyes of the kid who had once lived here. He usually didn’t notice that the buildings looked pretty shabby, that the sidewalks were cracked, that half the buildings on the next block were boarded up. He didn’t pay attention to the paint peeling from old wood or the crack that had extended through the insurance agency’s plate-glass window for as long as he could remember. He looked and saw home.
What did Cassidy see?
He gestured toward Café Shay—really the Heartbreak Café, owned by Shay Rafferty—and they started in that direction. Just two days ago he hadn’t wanted Reese and Neely to see Cassidy, and now here he was taking her to lunch in Gossip Central. Somebody would be on the phone to his mother before they made it to the grocery store across and down the street.
But he didn’t even consider taking back the offer.
The bell over the door announced them and several dozen pairs of eyes turned their way. About half the customers greeted him before speculatively looking back at Cassidy.
Hell, they probably wouldn’t even be through with lunch before someone called his mom.
They’d just claimed the only empty booth when Shay showed up, balancing a chubby-cheeked baby on one hip. She set down two glasses of water, then two menus. “Hey, Jace, how’s it going?”
“Not bad. Shay, Cassidy.” He gave the briefest introductions possible, then reached for the baby, who came to him with a toothless grin and a drool. “And this is Liza Beth.”
“That’s her name today because she’s in a good mood,” Shay said, “but we’re thinking of changing it to something like…oh, I don’t know. Difficult. Tough.”
“Nah, she’s too pretty for a silly name like that,” he responded, directing his words to the baby who was gazing with great interest at his finger closest to her mouth. “Besides, one unconventional name per family is plenty.”
Shay smacked him on the shoulder. “Who are you calling unconventional? Easy or me?” Then she smiled across the booth. “It’s nice to meet you, Cassidy. Are you visiting from K—”
Jace shot her a look and she smoothly shifted. “Or are you making your home here?”
“I’m just here for a while.”
Cassidy gave him a vaguely curious look over Liza Beth’s head, no doubt wondering what Shay had been about to say. To distract her, he announced, “Cassidy’s a writer. She’s finishing up a book.”
“Really?” Shay’s blue eyes brightened. “That’s so cool! What kind of book?”
A flush flooded Cassidy’s cheeks, so Jace answered for her. “She writes romance novels. The one she’s working on now is set in this area.”
“How wonderful. What is the name and when will it be out?”
“I—I don’t—” Cassidy broke off to take a sip of water. “I haven’t settled on a title yet, and I don’t know when…when it will come out. Probably never, if the guy next door doesn’t stop interrupting my work time.”
Shay grinned at Jace. “That would be you, I presume. He’s a terrible distraction,” she said to Cassidy. “Wants attention all the time. Just like Liza Beth.”
“Hey, we resent that, don’t we, Liza?” He moved the baby to cradle her in his lap, and she snagged his finger at last, guiding it into her mouth. “I’d’ve been perfectly happy not having any attention last winter, but it didn’t keep any of you away, did it?”
“What happened last winter?” Cassidy asked.
Shay opened her mouth, looked from Cassidy to him, then closed it again and smiled. “I believe I’ll take my child and send the waitress over to take your order.”
“Nah, let Liza stay—at least until the food comes. She’s happy enough for the moment.”
“You don’t have to say it twice,” Shay said with a laugh. “Cassidy, nice meeting you. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you around.”
She left and a young waitress appeared. Without looking at the menu, Jace ordered a double cheeseburger and onion rings. Cassidy studied the menu for a moment, then asked for the lunch special. Then she folded her hands together on the tabletop and gave him a raised-brow look.
He ignored it as long as he could before faking a grouchy look of his own. “What?”
“What happened last winter?”
“Not much. Oklahoma winters can be really mild or really cold—but then, you know that, having researched the climate.” He let a little good-natured sarcasm slide into his voice on the last words. “We had a couple ice storms that shut things down for a day or two, and we had a tornado in January. That’s something you don’t see a lot of.”
She continued to look at him, her expression unchanging.
“They have tornadoes where you come from?”
“Occasionally.”
“In San Diego? I wouldn’t have thought so.”
“Lemon Grove,” she corrected him. “And none of that answers my question. What happened with you last winter?”
He leveled his gaze on her, as steady and measuring as hers was, then smiled coolly. “I’ll make you a deal. You answer all those questions of mine you’ve danced around, like what your pen name is and what your book is about and what kind of research you did, and I’ll tell you about last winter.”
She smiled, too, a bright smile that involved her whole face without bringing one bit of warmth to it. “It would serve you right if I agreed.”
He shrugged.
“Fair enough.” Then she lowered her gaze to the baby. “She doesn’t look anything like her mother.”
“Nope. She’s the spittin’ image of Easy, except she’s prettier and has all her fingers. He’s only got seven.”
“Jace! You shouldn’t joke about that.”
“Hey, I’m just repeating what he said. Besides, I think we’re distantly related. I’m mostly Osage and he’s mostly Cherokee, but a few generations ago somebody from his father’s side married somebody from my mother’s side.”
“So you’re probably tenth or twelfth cousins.”
