Page 73 of Cold Case, Warm Hearts

Deborah brushed off the words. “Even though your mother wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous, she was incredibly attractive, in that she attracted everybody. She and I hit it off, and suddenly I became one of the most popular girls in school. Which was weird for me, let me tell you. I’d always been a wallflower. But I knew my own mind, and your mother liked that. She didn’t like sycophants and fawners. And they flocked around your mother like pigeons in the park.”

“What about my dad. Was he a fawner?”

“Ah-ha. You are definitely your father’s daughter. Very insightful question. You knew him. What do you think?”

Aspen couldn’t help the smile she felt creeping across her lips. This woman might be a librarian, but she had the temperament of a first-grade teacher.

“I suspect my father was neither sycophant nor fawner.”

“You are correct. I wish I had a gold star.” Deborah beamed as if her favorite student had won a prize. “He was probably the only guy in school who didn’t fall over himself trying to get close to her.”

“There’s this picture, though.” Aspen flipped through until she found the one of her parents. “It’s the only one with both of them in it, and Dad’s looking at Mom.”

Deborah studied it, grinning. “Sure, he found her intriguing. We all did. She wasn’t just new to town. She was like nobody any of us had ever met. People couldn’t help but look at her. But that was as far as it went with Michael. He found her amusing like one might find a puppy amusing. He never gave any indication that he had feelings for her.”

“And yet,” Aspen said, “here I am.”

Deborah shifted her attention to Aspen, and her grin faded. “Yes, well… Your father might not’ve been interested in your mother, but she was most definitely interested in him.”

“Was that why? Was she the type to want what she couldn’t have?”

Deborah’s head tilted to one side, her eyes narrowing. “That’s an interesting question, and I won’t dismiss it outright. Your mother certainly wasn’t accustomed to people not immediately loving her. But I think it was more than that. I think your father had something she knew she needed. Stability. Her family had moved countless times during her childhood, and she was a little wild herself. I think, deep down, she knew she needed somebody like your dad, somebody to keep her grounded.”

“Dad was always like that, then. Grounded. Stable.”

“Always. I knew him from kindergarten, and nothing rattled him. He was as firm as the mountains and as predictable as the changing seasons.”

Aspen couldn’t help the smile. “That’s a very colorful description.”

“I’m a closet writer.” She winked. “I think all librarians are.”

Aspen liked this woman.

And she liked that her mother had also liked this woman. It was a connection between them, however tenuous. “How did they get together, then? If Dad wasn’t interested?—”

“Oh, that’s… that’s a little harder to explain.”

Aspen settled in her chair, trying to communicate without words that she had nowhere else to be.

Deborah sighed. “Truth is, they weren’ttogether.They never dated. They weren’t even really friends. In college, your mom and I got involved in the different clubs devoted to saving the environment. It was us and my boyfriend at the time, who I married after college, and another guy we went to high school with. And then, of course, a lot of other students at Plymouth. But the four of us were pretty tight.

“Your mom still had a thing for your dad. He’d pledged a fraternity, and she went to every party they threw trying to get close to him. But he wasn’t into that aspect of fraternity life.”

Aspen would have guessed that.

“During our freshman year, Jane’s parents moved away. She stayed with me for the summer. Your dad was back from school, too, working hard. We saw him out occasionally. At church, at The Patriot.”

“The restaurant was there back then?”

“Sure. It’s been in Coventry forever. And your dad went to the occasional party.”

“He did?”

“He wasn’t much of a drinker, but he had friends. He knew how to have fun.”

That was true, though Aspen couldn’t imagine him at a party with a bunch of teenagers. Of course, he’d been a teenager once too.

“Anyway, at the end of the summer, we were at one of those get-togethers, and your mother managed to get him alone. I don’t know what happened. I do know that she fancied herself in love with him. A month later, she told me she was going to have his baby.”

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