Through the Fire by Christine Lynxwiler

Author:Christine Lynxwiler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Barbour Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2012-12-11T05:00:00+00:00

Fourteen

On Monday afternoon, Doris left a few minutes early to pick up her granddaughter from school, so Jessa was alone when Seth came in.

“Hi, Jessa. How’s it going?” His slight smile was a pleasant change from the almost sullen boy who had first started working for her. Maybe her efforts to draw him out were paying off. She felt a connection with him that was hard to explain.

“I’m doing pretty good. Remember a week or so ago when you couldn’t believe I’d never been fishing?”

He nodded.

“Well, I have now. Clint took me yesterday afternoon, and I caught one.”

A glimmer of interest flickered in his eyes. “What kind?”

“Well, you’d have to ask Clint. It was actually kind of ugly.”

“What lake did you go on? Millicent?”

She nodded. “Have you ever been out on it?”

“Naw.” He ducked his head. “You have to be a resident or a guest to fish on those lakes.”

Jessa could see the longing in his eyes.

“Where do you live?”

He blushed and named a part of town that she recognized as the poorest section of Lakehaven.

Big mouth, she scolded herself silently. “Well, we’ll have to make that our goal. To get you out on Lake Millicent.”

“No biggie.” He picked up the flower carrier and carefully loaded the bouquets in it. “I don’t have much time to fish anyway.”

Afraid of saying the wrong thing, she nodded and held the door open for him.

After Seth was gone, she wiped off the already clean counter and made a quick check through the front room for trash or anything out of place.

She looked up at the big clock. A few minutes after five. Clint should be off work.

She snorted with self-disgust. She’d thought of him more since she’d given him the “let’s be friends” talk, as he called it, than before. She couldn’t believe she’d explained to him that they could only be friends when he’d never really expressed any interest in being anything more. He’d probably been secretly relieved.

She shook her head. This line of thought was getting her nowhere fast. It was time to go home. She grabbed her purse and unlocked the back door.

A loud crash resounded through the building. She dropped her purse and ran into the front room, then slammed her hand to her mouth. Four of her most expensive silk arrangements lay on the floor, the vases shattered to smithereens. She stepped forward, being careful of the shards of glass.

“Jessa? What happened?”

She jumped and spun around.

Clint stood in the doorway, still in his Tri-Lake security uniform.

“I’m not sure. I unlocked the back door and was about to leave, then I heard the crash.”

Clint stepped up closer to examine the wall where minutes before a wooden shelf had supposedly been securely anchored to the wall.

“Come here and let me show you something.” He reached out his hand to guide her around the glass.

He pointed at two places where chunks of drywall had come out, apparently with the screws that had held the shelf. “Now look at these.”

Slightly to the right of each of those places was a small hole with a metal wall anchor in it.

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