On the Slam by Honor Hartman

Author:Honor Hartman [Hartman, Honor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781943772896
Publisher: NYLA

Chapter Sixteen

“Can you tell me what it was he confided in you?” I asked. “Whatever it was, it’s obviously bothering you.”

“He didn’t ask me not to tell you,” Sophie said slowly. “So I suppose it’s okay.” She looked away from me for a moment. “I’m really worried, Emma.”

“Then what did he tell you?” The more matter-of- fact I tried to be, the better it would be for her. She didn’t handle emotional upsets all that well, though goodness knows, she’s had plenty of experience with them.

“He really is a nice guy,” she told me, face and voice as earnest as I had ever experienced with her. The trouble was, I had heard those words from her before, and always about a boy, or a man, who really wasn’t that nice in the long run. “I mean it, Emma, he really is. He’s different from all the others.”

“I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt,” I said. “Just tell me what he told you.”

Hilda appeared suddenly at my side and began talking to me. As usual she managed to pick an inconvenient moment for me when she decided she needed attention. Standing on her hind legs, her front legs braced against the side of the chair, she butted my leg with her head. I reached down to rub her ears in the special way she liked, and she kept up the chatter.

“Sorry,” I told Sophie, who appeared slightly annoyed over this distraction. Hilda was still muttering away.

“That cat,” was all she said for a moment. She raised her voice slightly to be heard. “Nate asked his father for some money because he wants to quit his job and go to graduate school full-time.”

I shrugged. “That doesn’t sound like much of a motive to me.” All at once, Hilda decided she’d had enough attention. She dropped to all fours and padded away. Such a little princess she was.

“The bad part about it,” Sophie said, “is that Janet had a fit about it. She didn’t want Gerald to give Nate the money, and she was really nasty to Nate.”

“Why should she care?”

Sophie sighed deeply. “Because she and Gerald had already spent a lot of money on Nate. They bought him his own business when he got out of college, but that failed. Then they gave him the money to start up another one.”

“And that one failed, too,” I said when Sophie fell silent.

“Yes,” she said, “but it wasn’t really Nate’s fault. A lot of dot-com businesses failed then, so it wasn’t just Nate.”

“And so now he wants to go to graduate school?” I wasn’t about to get into a discussion with her over what seemed to me Nate’s obvious lack of business acumen. “What does he want to study?”

“He wants to be a librarian,” Sophie said. She had such a funny look on her face I almost laughed. Frankly, I wasn’t expecting something that practical—or useful—from Nate.

“Good for him,” I said, and I meant it.

“He’s been working in one of the branches of the public library system,” Sophie said, “and he really likes it a lot.

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