The Anam Cara by April Berry

Author:April Berry [Berry, April]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-01-10T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

We drove over to the hardware store, and he got a cart. He was tossing in all sorts of things as I walked along. I couldn’t help but keep wondering who had been at our house. Was it the man that kept popping up in the shop? Someone else? Maybe a random intruder? Was it all really a coincidence? It had been a strange few days and I had very little sleep. Maybe I had left the door unlocked accidentally? Maybe Aunt Rose set something down shortly before she left. There wasn’t anything else out of place that I could tell, but my room was left in shambles by me so it would be hard to notice if anything was out of place.

Then suddenly a thought crossed my mind. “Jake, the shop. We should go check on the shop. What if whoever was in my house went to the shop last night?”

He stopped pushing the cart and tipped his head a bit. “We can go check it out. I think we’re about done here anyway. Let’s go pay for this and we’ll drive there first, okay?” He put an arm around me and pushed the cart with the other hand.

I must have been visibly shaken because he was practically cradling me alongside him. I hoped my gut was wrong, but I had a sinking feeling. Nothing there was incredibly valuable, pricewise anyway, but the idea of someone breaking in and snooping around just felt intrusive. It was bad enough I was almost certain someone was in our house. I tried to take a few deep breaths and stop overreacting while we were still at the hardware store.

Jake pulled items out of the cart and onto the counter for the cashier. She was pleasant and made some small talk with us. Jake was cordial back and mentioned the cold weather. I was so preoccupied I said nothing; she probably thought I was a jerk. Before I knew it, she was giving the total and I reached for my bag, but he had already pulled cash out and paid her before I could find my wallet. He turned and smiled at me before I could protest, then grabbed the bags in one hand and grabbed my hand with the other, leading me back to the car.

The drive was short to the square, and it was brunch time on a Sunday, so we had to park down a side street and walk over. I pulled my keys out when we got to the end of the sidewalk of the block the shop was on. Jake was close behind me, making way for others to walk past us, but he had a hand on my hip the whole time and I could feel him towering over me from behind. As we got closer my nerves began to run wild and my stomach churned. I was a few yards from the door; any passerby wouldn’t have noticed, but I had walked up to the open door many times and knew what it looked like when it was locked.

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