Page 19 of With Stars in Her Eyes
“Or you could google her.”
“I’m not going to be that person. And in any case, there are three other moderately famous Courtney Starlings, including a retired congresswoman and a Christian teenybopper pop star, which seriously dilutes the useful results. If I’m going all the way to page five of the search results for answers, I start to feel like a creep.”
Marshall burst out into real, bellowing, and dorky laughter. It had been too long since I had heard him laugh like that. “If you like this woman, you should go for it. Take it slow but do it right. I think I’ve wasted too much damn time on things that didn’t love me as much as I loved them.” The bitterness in his voice felt more chilling than the weather.
I gave him a side-armed hug, trying to put a lot of things into the hug he probably wasn’t ready for me to say out loud. “So what am I supposed to do?”
“You thinkIknow the answer? I’m pretty sure I’ve established that I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing with anything right now. Figure out how to woo her, Thea.” He ruffled my hair.
“Woo her. Sure. Fine. Okay. So easy.” I pushed my mussed hair out of my face, feeling small snaps of static electricity between the gloves. “God, it really does smell like snow, doesn’t it?”
“Forecast says it might be a pretty big one. I’m going to drive to my meeting in Wichita on Saturday morning just in case it rolls in earlier than expected.”
I put the lens cover back on my camera. “Maybe the snow will tell me what to do.”
CHAPTER 6Thea
Each step toward my car was a battle. The wind lashed my face, causing the tall trees around St. Clare Circle to creak and crackle like a chiropractor realigning a spine. The streetlights were barely visible. The main street was a snow emergency route, so I’d parked in the small lot that now felt miles away.
The snow blurred everything in sight in hypnotic swirls.So this is what they mean by whiteout.
Even the radio weather team seemed surprised by how quickly the light snow became a blizzard. I had rushed through closing up, but the snow was already above my knees when I locked the door behind me. It had been dumb to refuse a ride back to my car from the last customer of the day, whose boyfriend showed up in a giant SUV. Denise had called and left several messages on the shop machine, but of course I hadn’t received them until too late. While listening to the last one, the power went out entirely.
The pub lights were off, so I couldn’t duck in there to get warm. Marshall had gone to Topeka to pick up his dad from the airport, not knowing whether the flight would get in. The only visible light around was a subtle glow in the bookstore window.
Movement darted inside the shop. I blinked a few times, trying to decide whether it was an actual human inside or just my eyes playing tricks. I peered through the frosted glass.
Someonewas inside, pacing by the desk area lit by several candles. A second person sat on the floor holding something in their arms. That might be Courtney because I could just make out that heavy quilted coat she wore sometimes—not that I hadbeen watching out the window and noticing whenever Courtney and Samantha walked by…
A howl of wind interrupted my observations. But why would Courtney still be in the bookstore if the power had gone out there too? Who else was with her? Samantha was out of town according to Denise.
A flash of bright blue sent me whirling back so quickly I nearly tumbled into a snowdrift. A rumble sounded in the distance.
“What the hell was—”
Hands grabbed me and yanked me inside. The store wasn’t exactly warm, but at least the painful impact of the wind was gone.
“Why in the world are you out walking all by your damn lonesome in this? You trying to freeze to death?”
That voice wasn’t Courtney’s. It belonged to a gray-haired woman with steel-gray eyes.
“Um…”
“Can’t you see that there’s a blizzard happening?” The gravelly voice was muffled by several scarves and her wiry body beneath was swallowed by an oversized peacoat. The woman’s head was covered by a hat that would look appropriate in an adaptation ofDoctor Zhivago.
“It’s Thea, Ms. Jeannie. Marshall’s friend who’s living with him.” Courtney turned back to me, arms still cradled in an odd way.Is she hurt?“Seriously, what the hell are you doing just walking out there? What if you had fallen all by yourself?”
I fastened my hands to my hips and stood as tall as possible, like being out in the storm was anything other than an accident. “Well, I could ask you the very same question, honey.”
“Honey?” The note of accusation in Courtney’s voice vanished into something closer to amused surprise.
I spluttered before I could make my thawing lips speak again. “Forget that.” Another flash drew my attention to the window.
“Thundersnow,” whispered the older woman.
Courtney peered as close to the glass as possible without touching it. “Thundersnow. Oh… wow.”
“Thundersnow?That’s a thing?”
