Even Now Read Online Free Page B

fingernail buffer, much less
     a matching manicure set. “Can you make a decent living on summer tourists alone?”
    “Suckers know no season, fortunately. And fortunately I’m not in it to make a living. You’ve heard of ‘marrying well’? I divorced
     well. You married?”
    “Yes, he’s . . .” I glanced around. “Somewhere.” Frances Mason drained her bottle. “Excuse me while I get another.”
    Left alone, I wandered outside and gazed appreciatively at the fringe of forest, black feathers against the navy sky of evening.
     Dangling from hooks above me, moss baskets dripped pink blossoms of fuchsia. I closed my eyes and tilted my face to the delicate
     cascading blooms.
    “Sorry,” a man said, sliding open the screen door. “I didn’t realize this hiding place was taken.”
    Feeling foolish, I swiveled. “I wasn’t hiding, I was—”
    “Oh, go ahead, admit it.” He smiled from a face still ruddy with summer’s sun, made darker still by the faded aqua-striped
     shirt and the dim gold of torchlight. Smiled as if he’d caught me. His eyes were dark, the pinpoints of reflected torchlight
     seeming to emphasize his accusation. “Just listening to the quiet, then,” he said.
    “You must be Rod McKuen.” He was wearing white tennis shoes, old-fashioned thick-soled canvas versions not meant for any activity
     but comfort. “Except you’re too young to know Rod McKuen.” The sneakers inexplicably charmed me. “I like your shoes.”
    “I keep them in the closet right beside my Wallabes. Proof enough that I’m old enough to know Rod McKuen?”
    I laughed. “I
was
hiding.” It was enjoyable to flirt with this man, whoever he was; to indulge in harmless play with its harmless message:
This is fun. Your turn.
    “And I’m Peter Whicker,” he said, extending one hand to me and raking hair from his forehead—a funny backward sweep of his
     knuckles—with the other. A pale slice of untanned skin flashed before the hair fell disobediently forward again.
    “Hannah Marsh.” His hand closed around mine. He must be another teacher at the Academy. . . English, I decided. The eighth-grade
     girls probably wrote about him—transparently disguised—in their short stories and creative writing journals. I would have.
    His dark eyes narrowed into a squint, thinking. “I forgot my cheat sheet, with everyone’s name and two-word description. You’re
     the sister who assists with the children’s choir, right?”
    “What?”
    “No,” Ceel said, stepping through the open door with a platter of crudités, “that’s me. So you’ve met . . .” She hesitated.
     “Nowadays you all have different titles. Are you ‘Father Whicker’?”
    I was confused. “ ’Father’?”
    “Didn’t he tell you?” Ceel asked. “This is our other guest of honor, St. Martin’s new rector.”
    “Oh, I . . . ”
    Peter Whicker drew a thumb across his upper lip. “I saw that.”
    “Saw what?”
    “You rearranged your attitude. Changed your entire manner—and opinion—of me. Didn’t you? Don’t lie.” He knit his brow, frowning
     sternly. “Thou shalt not, et cetera. See? See how terrifying I am, quoting commandments?”
    I laughed. “No, no, it’s just that I was expecting—”
Someone not so nice looking. So relaxed and regular, unstern and unsomber.
    “Wait, let me run through my file of stereotypes.” Again, the backward-knuckled gesture through his hair. “Fat. Bald. Friar
     Tuck.”
    I opened my mouth to say,
Exactly. Precisely. You read my mind,
and said only, “Something like that.”
    His grin was wry. “Fat and bald all in good time, probably.”
    “It’s that you aren’t. . . ”
    He touched his bare throat. “Wearing a collar.”
    Right again. “Is that allowed?”
    “Allowed?”
He laughed.
    Ceel sighed noisily, reprovingly. “Jeez, Hannah. No thought unexpressed.” She slipped between us, heading for the door. “I’m
     leaving before she says something worse. You two come get a plate