She wants a temporary fake romance

Can he make it real...and forever?

Driving across the country in an RV with her terminally ill godmother was not Daphne Merlotte’s idea. Nor was crashing the RV into a small-town coffee shop, nearly hitting local good guy Mel Greene. Now Daphne will do anything to keep her godmother from continuing the trip—even asking Mel to be her fake boyfriend. But there’s nothing fake about Mel’s intentions—he wants a real romance!

M. K. STELMACK writes contemporary romances set in Spirit Lake, which is closely based on the small town in Alberta, Canada, where she lives with pets who outnumber the humans two to one, and with dust bunnies the size of rodents—because that’s what happens when everyone in the household prefers to live in their imagination or outdoors—but she can also be found on social media, where you can share your comments on her stories or her breathless one-sentence bio on Facebook or at mkstelmackauthor.com.

Also By M. K. Stelmack

A True North Hero

A Roof Over Their Heads

Building a Family

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Coming Home to You

M. K. Stelmack

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08610-3

COMING HOME TO YOU

© 2018 S. M. Stelmack

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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www.millsandboon.co.uk

“You two have met,” Daphne’s godmother said.

“I drove Daphne home from the hospital the day of your accident. I appreciated her company,” Mel said.

Fran brightened, then smiled.

Later, Daphne attributed her next move to a fear for Fran and to the warmth in Mel’s gaze.

She walked over to Mel and sat beside him. “Yes,” she said. “There’s something you should know, Fran. Mel and I have had some very, very good...talks.”

She slid her hand over his knee and applied gentle pressure. He froze.

He turned to Daphne, tense. He was about to reject her. She knew that look well enough.

So she closed the distance and kissed him.

“That,” Fran said, breathless, “was great.” She clapped her hands. “You, Mel, are moving on to the next round. We’re staying.”

Dear Reader,

When Victoria Curran, my original editor, said that she wanted to hear Mel’s story, my first thought was “Mel’s too old to have a story of his own.” I mean, my gosh, he’s fifty! Oh, wait, that’ll be my age when this book is released. Do I feel too old to deserve a happily-ever-after? No. Well, then...time to give Mel his own, too.

Desperately seeking a wife and family all his adult years, Mel has been unlucky in love. I think we all know somebody—man or woman—who fits that description. You know the kind—that good-hearted soul who cares for others and prospers in the world just fine, but is ultimately alone.

Daphne is also battling loneliness. Single all her life, too, she must soon say a final goodbye to her terminally ill godmother and substitute parent. Strong for so many, Mel is there to help her, but in Daphne, he has found someone to help him deal with his own hidden and sorrowful past.

Together, Daphne and Mel prove that love is for all time and all ages!

I’d love to hear from you! Drop me a note at mkstelmackauthor.com or on my Facebook page.

Thank you all and best,

M. K.

To Victoria Curran—here it is!

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

Dear Reader

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Extract

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

MEL GREENE WATCHED through the plate-glass window of the Tim Hortons coffee shop at a traffic accident about to happen a couple hundred feet away. A motor home had stopped on the highway and signaled to enter the side street leading to Spirit Lake’s top shop for caffeine addicts.

But the turn was too sharp. Not much shorter than a railroad car, the unit would flip in the ditch or, worse, collect vehicles in the oncoming lane.

No one else had noticed. The other customers drank and ate, or stood in line. Coming up on seven o’clock on a sunny July morning, it was rush hour at the Tim’s—a couple dozen vehicles were likely funneling through the drive-thru at that moment.

“Mel.” Linda, his as-of-five-minutes-ago ex-girlfriend, sat across from him, her voice soft and confidential. “Are you listening?”

The motor home switched to the right-turn signal. Mel relaxed. Right led to a street of businesses for light manufacturing, and a minimal risk of injury or death, if the motor home crashed.

The unit swerved into the oncoming lane—empty at this hour—veered the other way before straightening and then trundled down a street that made no sense for it to go on.

Mel dragged his attention back to Linda and to the end of yet another relationship. His seventh, to be precise.

He managed a belated nod because it hurt too much to talk right now. Still, to show he was taking their breakup with grace, he sipped from his coffee with its swirl of whipped cream.

Linda tapped her upper lip, and he wiped the froth off his mouth. A routine exchange honed over the last eight months of starting most days with a simple forty-minute coffee together.

Not anymore.

“You’re a good man, Mel,” Linda said.

Not the first time he’d heard that. His third girlfriend had been the first to use that line when she’d dumped him for a guy who’d been arrested for stealing antifreeze at a convenience store.

After the fifth breakup, he figured he might be a good man, but also an unlucky one. He’d been engaged to that girlfriend. She’d had three kids from a previous relationship, and an instant family was convenient and predictable. Then she’d become pregnant with another man’s child.

“But—” Linda started.

Mel disliked the word but. It undid everything good just said. Nice try but... I see what you’re saying but... Thanks for applying but... You’re a good man but...

“—but I feel...I feel you want to be with someone, anyone, and you’ll do whatever it takes to make that happen.”

He would do whatever it took. Marrying a good woman was what he’d wanted pretty much all his fifty years, and Linda was a good catch. A retired nurse with a good pension. A full-time volunteer and grandmother. A widow with a good head on her shoulders and beautiful blond hair, which she did up, even this early in the morning.

She straightened, establishing more space between them and said, “And I refuse to settle. I know what it is to love. I want it again. And...and so should you.”

He was willing to spend the rest of his life with her. If that wasn’t love, what was?

“I wasn’t settling,” he mumbled to his coffee, finally speaking.

“You’re taking it awfully well, then,” Linda said. “I mean, look at you. Even now, I’m breaking up with you and you don’t seem to care. You’re staring at your coffee, or out the window at traffic.”

He forced himself to make eye contact with Linda. He’d probably often looked away from her throughout their relationship, giving her the impression he didn’t care. In reality, he was afraid if he gazed too long, if he fixed too much attention on her, she’d get scared and leave. Maybe he’d done that in all his relationships: wanted, yet hid his wanting. In the end, they’d all left, anyway. And it was always the women who broke things off because he’d neither the heart nor the guts for it himself.

“It’s not that,” he tried to explain. “It’s... I do care,” he finished lamely. “I’m sorry I didn’t show it right.”

Whatever the right way was.

Linda ripped at her coffee lid, the soft brown plastic whitening before giving way. “I suppose I can hardly blame you for not being emotional. Tim Hortons is hardly the place—” she waved a hand over the crumpled wrappers and bags on the table between them “—for this. I didn’t intend to say this to you today. It just sort of...spilled out. I’d been thinking about Craig. I guess after Craig died... I guess I just wanted someone to fill the space. We’d been together for thirty-six years, after all.”

So. She wasn’t over Craig. As usual, he’d missed the signs. He wasn’t even sure what the signs were. Shorter kisses? A few less dates?

She gave a wavering smile, probably to show she bore him no ill will and hoped he felt the same. Which inevitably led to the other line all seven women had trotted out. He braced for full impact.

“I hope we can still be friends.”

What to say to that? What did it really mean? He’d called up his second ex to ask her out to the theater a couple of weeks after they broke up and she’d said, “Mel, don’t you get it? We’re not together anymore.”

When he’d invoked the friend clause, she’d said that wasn’t how it worked. Decades later, he still wasn’t sure how it worked.

The motor home had reappeared on the highway, signaling once more its intention to come toward the Tim Hortons. He waited for the indicator to switch. It didn’t. The unit—a full thirty feet long—swung into the opposing lane, forcing an exiting truck to brake to avoid a crash.

“No,” Mel murmured. “No.”

Linda sighed. She must think he was answering her. He pointed out the window.

The RV slowed and entered the narrow two-way lane into Tim Hortons, and then headed right toward them.

People noticed now.

The early eastern light banked off the windshield of the RV and temporarily prevented Mel from seeing the driver. Whoever it was would have to make an impossible right to clear the restaurant on the left and navigate past the vehicles parked to the right.

This morning, the Spirit Lake Funeral and Crematorium hearse, with its extended rear, was right beside the entrance. Jim Creasley, the owner of the hearse and the funeral home, strode from the counter to the plate-glass window. Mel’s family had gone to him when their mom had passed a couple of years ago, and when Mel’s stepdad had died twenty years prior to that.

Jim was dressed like he was going to a—well, he was dressed for work, which, given the early hour, probably meant he had to drive a ways. He was known throughout central Alberta, hundreds of miles in all directions, for his compassion.

“If that brainless driver hits my vehicle,” he said, “there’ll be another coffin in the back.”

The RV clipped the back end of Jim’s hearse and knocked it into the adjacent red car, which triggered a shout from a beefy young woman in a safety vest at the coffee counter.

She tore outside, Jim a step behind.

“The driver’s a woman. A senior,” Linda said, her head cranked to see up past the painted brown tones of the coach to the driver’s seat. Sure enough, an older woman wearing aviator sunglasses was at the wheel, hauling on it for all she was worth.

Jim rounded the corner, waving and cursing as the motor home crept along like a giant steel sloth. As if watching an action movie, Mel stared, fascinated, disbelieving.

Around him, people found their voices.

“Get out of the way, Jim.”

“Brake!”

“She’s not going to make it.”

“Is she insane?”

The driver suddenly pitched to the side. Someone, another female, maybe the passenger, had pushed her and wrenched the wheel away. Mel caught a glimpse of a paperback, an arm covered in something white and lacy, and then the RV lurched to the left—too far to the left. The grille of the house-sized coach bore straight toward Linda and him.

The coach suddenly surged forward. Mel, half lifting Linda, ran for the safety of the counter. Brick, glass and steel groaned and splintered behind them. The impact brought the drama to a final, shuddering stop.

Mel shot from Linda’s side, through the still-intact side door of the Tim’s and ran to the coach door, slipping in ahead of Jim and the owner of the red car. Mel drummed on the door and rose on his tiptoes to see through the window at the top. No luck.

“Hello? Everybody all right in there?”

The door clicked a release and eased open, the running board steps automatically descending, to reveal the passenger. She stood on the top step of the coach and was clad in a full-length white nightgown, so long it trailed behind her like the train of a wedding gown. Her face was drawn and pale, and she clasped a black-and-yellow classic paperback to her chest.

He stepped onto the lowest step and tipped back his cap.

“Hello. I’m Mel. Let me help you.”

* * *

DAPHNE WAS COLD. The book trembled in her shaking hand, and the blood drained from her skin as it ran to her heart, which was pounding so loud that she could feel the vibrations in her ears. She was in shock.

Her gaze drifted to the green lettering on the man’s black baseball cap. Greene-on-Top. The logo showed a roof peak jutting up through the lettering. Beneath the cap, his hazel eyes were warm and steady. Was this what Elinor meant when she praised Edward Ferrars for “the expression of his eyes” in Sense and Sensibility?

“How can I help?”

Ah. Yes. He’d asked her that already. She needed to answer. “My godmother.” It sounded like an expletive, so she gestured to the driver’s seat.

The man—what was his name again?—looked past her to where Fran sat slouched, arms wrapped around the wide wheel, head down, in a kind of sitting dead man’s float. “I’ll be right back,” he said and disappeared inside the restaurant.

Before she could turn to Fran, two more people approached the door. A man dressed nicely with a tie and polished shoes, and a young woman in jeans and a neon yellow safety vest.

“You hit our vehicles,” the woman said, pointing a thumb to her fellow complainant.

Oh. Oh. He must be the owner of the hearse, the undertaker. Daphne had wrenched the wheel from Fran after she hit the hearse, only to ram into the building. She decided not to point out to the woman that Fran was the one in the driver’s seat, as they could very well see for themselves. Or that she was clearly not well. Instead, she pressed Sense and Sensibility to her chest. “Thank you for pointing out the obvious. You may go now.”

The woman looked ready to storm the steps, but the man touched her arm. “Let’s give the lady some room. She’s not going anywhere.”

Daphne was only too happy to let the man edge the neon-clad warrior away. Through the open door drifted a male voice on a phone. “Right away. Traffic’s backed up a quarter mile in both directions, the parking lot’s a mess...Okay, thanks.” Oh. A call to the police.

A long horn blast burst out, and Daphne whirled to see that Fran’s head had fallen against the steering wheel.

“Fran!” Daphne lifted her godmother’s head, easing off her thick sunglasses. Fran was deathly pale and her eyes fluttered shut. Was she having an attack? Had she mixed up her medications? What? What?

A young man in a Tim Hortons shirt appeared at the door. “Everyone okay here? Do you want me to call an ambulance?”

At the mention of an ambulance, Fran straightened in her seat. “Nonsense. I’m fine.”

“A man said he was going for help,” Daphne said. Wait. He’d said he’d be back, and she’d assumed he was going for help, only—

“I got this.” Mr. Greene-on-Top had reappeared with a blonde woman around Daphne’s age. The other woman made a beeline up the steps to Fran. Mr. Greene took up a position on the top step, while the Tim Hortons fellow scuttled back into the restaurant. Would he call an ambulance?

The woman crouched beside Fran. “Hello. My name is Linda and I’m a nurse. How are you feeling?”

Fran groaned. Daphne recognized it as a sound not of pain but of aggrievement. Fran had acquired the same pained tolerance with nurses that she had with her academic peers, and they with her.

“Not bad for stage-four terminal pancreatic cancer. And you?”

Linda’s mouth twisted in either humor or annoyance or pity. With Fran Hertz, likely all three. “Not bad either, considering you nearly ran me over.”

She turned to Daphne. “Did she lose consciousness at any point?”

“Just now, she closed her eyes. I don’t—”

Fran slapped Daphne’s hands off her head, one of which still clutched the paperback. “I didn’t lose consciousness. I didn’t get the chance before you nearly shook the teeth out of my head.”

A blatant lie.

Linda tossed out another question. “When did you first notice signs of impairment?”

“Impairment?” Fran said. “I haven’t been drinking!”

Daphne didn’t know how to answer except with the embarrassing truth. She held up her book. “I’m unable to comment. I was...reading.”

“The same story for the tenth time,” Fran said. “Can’t get enough of Elinor and Edward.”

More like the fiftieth. “Nothing seemed amiss until she attempted to negotiate the turn onto the street. I strenuously advised against it but she—”

“Wouldn’t listen. Story of my life. Anyway, all’s well that ends well.”

Mr. Greene looked out the windshield at the RV lodged in the restaurant wall.

Fran grunted. “I guess we’ll have to sort things out.”

“I’d like to see you lie down,” Linda said. “Do you want help to your bed or can you manage on your own?”

Fran opened her mouth in protest but the wail of sirens preempted her, and she sighed. “All right. Let’s do this.” She turned to Daphne. “You still not in clothes?”

Oh. Daphne glanced at Mr. Greene-on-Top, who suddenly found a great interest in the geometric floor tile. Oh! She clapped the book over her chest. To assist Fran, Linda edged closer to Daphne. Daphne shuffled out of the way, only to bump against her hide-a-bed, which was still folded out. Off balance, she plunked down on it, or more precisely, on a bag of chips, which crunched ever so finely under her bottom.

Linda eased her hold on Fran to lower her onto the bed.

“I’ll sleep here over my dead body!” Fran said. “Granted, that won’t be long from now, but still, I will not lay my bones on this refuse heap. My room’s at the back.”

More crunching, rolling and crawling of the three women ensued, ending when Daphne pressed against the small dining table to allow them to pass down the hallway.

“Just so you know,” Fran said as Linda ushered her through the bedroom door, “the second you leave, I’m back at the wheel.”

“That’s fine,” Linda said, “since I will have the keys.”

Oh, heavens. Fran thrived on adversity. Her fragile health always seemed to rally just so she could rail against someone who dared to oppose her. Which probably explained her deteriorating state on this trip, since Daphne avoided controversy the way a mouse skirts open spaces. Still, Daphne now had a reprieve to face—

Mr. Greene-on-Top was gone. Breathing a sigh of relief, she slipped inside the bathroom, which doubled as her dressing room.

She set her book by the sink. It wasn’t easy; her hand had gone into a kind of rigor mortis, and she had to pry her fingers from the cover and then flex her hand repeatedly to regain motor control.

She peeled off her nightie. Yes, the apparel was unseemly and impractical, but Daphne had been in desperate need of inspiration. Writing a book required some.

Unfortunately, all the nightie had served to do was embarrass her. Which was par for the course. Nothing on this sweaty, bumpy, boring, mosquito-tormented, quarreling, pill-driven, five-week and are-we-there-yet? excursion across the True North Strong and Free had turned out as intended.

She’d spent the past month secretly hoping they’d head home to Halifax. Back to her university office, crowded with shelves of silent, stationary books. Back to her apartment, with its full bookshelves and thick curtains and a quiet so profound that the starting of the fridge fan could jar her.

Well, with their means of transportation now stuck in the wall of a Tim Hortons in some Albertan town, her wish had partly come true. Not exactly a return to Halifax, but they wouldn’t be moving forward. At least, for a day. Longer, if at all possible. If not for Daphne’s sake, then for Fran’s. The accident had proved that neither of them were in any shape to continue.

Over the loud sirens outside and through the thin wall between the bedroom and the bathroom, Daphne heard Fran’s voice. “Rest with you here, ready to rob me blind? I might be dead tomorrow but neither was I born yesterday.”

Oh, dear. Maybe if the nurse could get Fran to the hospital, the doctors there could make her stop this insane trip. Maybe the police could strip Fran of her license. Surely, it was clear she was a hazard on the road.

The sirens cut out, signaling the police’s arrival.

“The cavalry’s here,” Daphne muttered. Still in her underwear, Daphne scanned the littered bathroom floor for suitable clothing. The university tracksuit she’d bought on a whim before leaving to wear in a pinch was lying in a heap on the floor. Five weeks in, every day was a pinch. The tracksuit reeked of campfire smoke, mosquito spray and her deodorant.

“Hello?” Mr. Greene again.

Daphne scrambled into the tracksuit, its stench wonderfully clearing her muddled mind, and then she exited the bathroom to the front.

This time, Mr. Greene was accompanied by a police officer.

“Hello. I’m Corporal Paul Grayson,” the officer stated from the other side of her bed. “Daphne, is it?”

He must’ve got her name from Mr. Greene. Daphne wished she remembered his first name. She never could remember names when they were spoken to her, which made the first day of classes excruciating. She’d invented a mental game of rhyming names to hurry the memorization process. Hopefully someone would mention the man’s name so she could use her trick. “Yes. That’s right.”

“Daphne,” he repeated in an extra calm voice, “do you mind stepping outside with me?”

Was he going to arrest her? Was carelessness a crime? Perhaps so, particularly since there’d been property damage. But she hadn’t been driving. Was she an accessory?

Her breath caught in her throat. Negligence. Yes, she knew that was a crime, one she’d magnificently demonstrated.

Then again, her arrest would stop the trip.

Had things so unraveled that she was actually welcoming the chance to be placed in cuffs?

“Very well.” With a straight back, she scooted across her bed and down the steps. Mr. Greene was already waiting beside the coach, like a flight attendant. When she reached the bottom step, he pointed at her bare feet with a thick, strong workman’s finger. Not too many of those on the university campus. Or on Edward Ferrars, for that matter.

“You need shoes. There’s broken glass out here.”

She blinked at him in the new morning light. “Oh. Yes. Of course.”

She mounted the steps, searching her mind for where she’d left her shoes. Any shoes. “I saw a pair under the bed,” he called after her.

“Oh. Yes. Thank you.”

As she got on her hands and knees, Daphne was quite sure she would beat Fran to death’s door and expire here and now from incurable mortification.

CHAPTER TWO

DAPHNE’S MORTIFICATION SWELLED when she viewed the damage to the motor home and the restaurant. One of the Tim’s windows was webbed with cracks, and the RV’s fender was twisted and stuck well into the bashed brickwork. At least Fran owned The Stagecoach, as they’d dubbed it, so they just had to deal with the insurance company.

A uniformed officer was taking pictures, and so was the Tim Hortons man. Should she be, too? Then again, to what end? Responsibility—hers and Fran’s—was undeniable.

Mr. Greene disappeared once more into the restaurant. She moved to follow him when Corporal Grayson said, “Can I get your full name, Daphne?”

Right. Business before doughnuts. “Daphne Merlotte.” She automatically spelled it for him.

“Date of birth?”

Daphne stated it, inexplicably relieved that Mr. Greene wasn’t there to hear she was five months shy of fifty. Daphne had always dismissed Fran’s claim that she barely looked forty, but on this particular occasion, considering what an appalling impression Mr. Greene no doubt already had of her, she hoped he’d give her the benefit of the doubt when it came to her age. If he thought of her at all.

“Address?”

She gave her Halifax one, and Corporal Grayson moved on to get the same information about Fran. Daphne was rattling off the address when Mr. Greene emerged, balancing a tray of coffees and a box of Timbits.

“Here,” Mr. Greene said, handing her a coffee. “Have one.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Go on,” Mr. Greene said, taking the Timbits box. “The tray’s heavy. You’d be doing me a favor.”

He smiled at her, making laugh lines crinkle around his eyes and his tanned face lift and lighten. His expression was one of pure joy and warmth, so unexpected on a man, at least in her experience with the anemic-looking professors of her faculty.

She obediently took the coffee and two mini cups of cream. “Thank you,” she said.

He held out the box of mini doughnuts.

“I couldn’t possibly.” Her stomach squeaked an objection to her objection.

He must’ve heard because he smiled again. Oh, that smile. She took a Timbit.

She popped the sugary ball into her mouth because, of course, it was the doughnut making her mouth water.

Mr. Greene offered the box to the officer. “How about you, Paul?”

“Mel,” Corporal Grayson said, “we already have to deal with the stereotype of police liking doughnuts without you perpetuating it.”

Mel! Mel, fell, sell, tell, well. Mr. Greene—Mel—Mel Greene shook the box invitingly at the officer.

“Okay, one. So you’ll leave me alone.” Corporal Grayson took two.

“I’ll take the rest and the coffees up to the ladies,” Mel said. Of course, Fran. If anyone, her godmother had proved how much she needed a coffee. “She likes her coffee with cream and sugar,” Daphne called after him.

“Got it,” he said, not breaking stride.

He entered the RV before she could thank him, another uniformed police officer right behind him. Through the shaded window, Daphne watched Mel and the stiff solidness of the police officer move to the bedroom. More authority to further enliven Fran.

Corporal Grayson brushed the sugar off his shirtfront. “Could you tell me what happened here?”

Daphne dropped her gaze. She’d found only her flip-flops under the bed, and her toes curled from the mild morning chill—or from her guilt. “I—I can’t tell you much, really. We stopped last night in Red Deer and planned—”

“In an RV park? Which one?” he asked.

Daphne tried to remember. The campsites were all running together as if Canada was nothing more than a string of campgrounds. “The one by the river?”

Corporal Grayson nodded and gestured for Daphne to continue.

“We departed early this morning while I was still sleeping.” She’d woken to books thudding off her bed as The Stagecoach swung onto the highway.

“How did Fran Hertz—”

“She’s my godmother.” It somehow felt important to state that Fran was more than a driver or a traveling companion or a full name on a police report.

“How did your godmother seem to you at that time?”

Mel Greene emerged from the motor home and walked its length to the rear. The other police officer slid into the driver’s seat and turned the ignition. The Stagecoach shuddered to life.

“Do you intend to impound the RV?” Daphne couldn’t keep the hope out of her voice.

“Just moving it out of the way,” he said.

“Oh.”

“We were talking about your godmother,” he prompted.

“As well as can be expected,” she said automatically.

The officer paused his writing.

“That is, she seemed fine. She was talking. Coherent.”

“How did she look?”

Daphne curled her toes completely under and confessed yet again to her inattention. “I—I couldn’t say. I—I was in bed.”

From the back of the RV, Mel called for the police officer to put the vehicle into Reverse. As he pulled back, the front grille severed from the restaurant wall with a loud scraping and a crumbling of bricks. The Tim Hortons employee took more photos of the wall and the front bumper, clearly to be used against Fran in a court of law.

If Fran was still alive to contest it.

“Sorry. You were in bed?” Corporal Grayson said.

Daphne pointed to the approximate place in the moving Stagecoach. “I sleep on a hide-a-bed right behind the driver’s seat. I don’t drive so I decided to read.” Today she’d reached for the nearest book, which happened to be Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility.

“So...when did you notice that your godmother’s driving had become erratic?”

About a week into our trip.

There’d been a terrifying incident where Fran had nearly driven them off a steep riverside embankment in Quebec when she’d momentarily closed her eyes. After that, Daphne had wrung a promise from Fran that she would drive for only two hours at a time and never in the afternoon, when she was especially drowsy. Daphne was clear that if Fran once, just once, broke her promise, they would cancel the trip then and there. No doubt taken aback by Daphne-the-Mouse’s rare display of ferocity, Fran had agreed and since kept her word. She had a tiresome habit of keeping her promises.

The RV continued its slow reverse. As the rear wheel reached the edge of the pavement, the back end hung suspended over the ditch. Mel flipped up his hand, and the cop halted the RV immediately.

Whenever Daphne had signaled in such a way to Fran, the older woman had maintained that a minimum five-second delay existed between Daphne’s signal and Fran’s response. It was the way the rig operated, she had said. No, it was the way Fran operated.

Somehow, she had to keep Fran off the road.

Refocusing on the officer’s question, Daphne looked to the corner of the highway and the side street. “There. I noticed that we were in trouble when she turned in.” More books had tumbled off the bed and Daphne herself had pitched to the side. Kneeling on the bed, she’d watched in rising horror as Fran had cranked the wheel, screaming her curses as she tried to funnel the motor home into the entrance lane.

“I told her to stop but—but she kept saying she could handle it if I’d only let her concentrate.”

With the RV reversed as much as possible, Mel jogged past the coach to the corner of the restaurant where the driving lane curved to the back. Now that rush hour had passed, the crush of vehicles ahead had magically disappeared, so there was space to maneuver. Mel motioned with two fingers and the motor home eased forward.

“When it was clear she couldn’t handle things anymore, I tried taking over.” And here, not only her toes but her shoulders curled, too. “I accidently hit the gas instead of the brake and—” she looked at the hole in the restaurant wall “—and that happened. Fran turned off the ignition.”

The motor home glided out of view, undamming the logjam of vehicles behind it. If only her own exit plan could flow so easily. Could she nudge events to her desired outcome? “Corporal Grayson. Perhaps you aren’t aware that my companion has cancer?”

“Uh...no.”

“Quite advanced, actually. And taking medication. Perhaps, she should be warned not to be on the road.”

“Have doctors ordered her not to drive?”

They hadn’t, and Fran could prove it. Daphne nudged in another direction. “Not exactly, but as you can see, she poses a danger. Perhaps there is some consequence from this accident that would...suspend her driving. Temporarily. For an extended period.” As in months.

Corporal Grayson frowned. “You want us to charge her?” He spoke as if Daphne was suggesting an act of cruelty.

Ironically, Fran would flourish under the charge. “No, no,” Daphne said, now with little hope that they could stop this trip. “I suppose we will have to rely on common sense to prevail.”

Corporal Grayson looked steadily at her. No doubt he saw a small mousy, stale woman who couldn’t stand up to an old, dying woman. Battle of the feebles. Whatever his thoughts, though, he kept them to himself. “I’ll need to see ID for the report. Your driver’s license will do.”

Not this awkwardness. “I don’t have one. As I said, I don’t drive. I do have a learner’s permit, though.”

For the first time in the interview, Corporal Grayson turned suspicious. “Have you ever had a driver’s license?”

Meaning had she lost it due to incompetence or intoxication or criminal convictions. “No. I haven’t. Never.” Three negatives should do it.

“So...your companion has done all the driving?”

“Yes.”

“From Nova Scotia to here?”

“Yes.” Daphne let the officer chew on that. She had long ago dispensed with explanations about why she had not acquired the ticket to freedom. Truth to tell, the people in her life had long ago stopped asking. After all, she lived within walking distance of the campus and a grocery store, there was a lovely city park right across the street from her apartment, and for trips to the theater or special events, she took a taxi or Fran picked her up. The annual Jane Austen conference required her to fly to different locales, but once there she didn’t need to drive. So there was nothing amiss with a contained, well-defined, perambulatory life.

“So—” Corporal Paul scratched his jaw and looked through the window at the counter with its coffee and glass display of doughnuts “—given the condition of Ms. Hertz and that you can’t relieve her, why are you two driving across Canada?”

“She and her husband traveled coast to coast on their honeymoon, and she wanted to do it with him before she died.”

“Him?”

Fran hadn’t told anyone but Daphne and Moshe, her son, about the real reason for her farewell cross-country tour. To everyone she met on the road, she declared she simply wanted to see Canada up close one more time. But if Daphne had to confess to her driving inadequacies, then Fran’s special peculiarity could also go on record.

“Frederick. He’s dead. She keeps his ashes in...in a fire extinguisher.” Along with his wedding ring, a martini recipe and an old dollar bill.

Corporal Paul paused in his note taking. “A fire extinguisher?”

“It’s carefully labeled. She wants to deposit his ashes in the Pacific. As he requested.” Actually, Daphne wasn’t sure if that had been Frederick’s wish. So much of what he wanted had been wrapped in his wife’s whims. “She asked me to go with her. I’m her goddaughter. I’m on a sabbatical, so I agreed.” And had regretted it every day since.

The officer scanned his writing. “I’m done here. Just need to get your address while you’re in town. Where will you be staying until you sort out insurance and repairs?”

Staying? Yes, they’d have to stay for repairs. In one spot. For days. Days for her to think of how to stop Fran once and for all from their mutual destruction. Thanks be for small mercies. Her toes uncurled and her shoulders relaxed. “Is there an RV campsite close?”

“One right in town, as a matter of fact.”

If she had to push the RV from here to there herself, she’d make it happen. “Then that’s where we’re staying.”

Provided she could convince Fran.

* * *

DAPHNE FOUND FRAN lounging on her bed amid a bevy of gold and purple pillows. With her coiled gray hair and her elegant length in wide-leg silk pants and a tunic, she might’ve passed for an aging Katherine Hepburn.

“This—” Fran waved her hand at Linda, her many rings slipping to her knuckles “—this nurse thinks she knows better than me. She insists I go to the nearest hospital immediately. It’s not necessary. I’m merely dying.”

“That,” Linda said, reading the prescription label on a pill bottle, “is all the more reason for doctors to assess your condition.”

Fran shot Linda the same look that made her law students flinch. “Its condition is imminent.”

Linda set down the bottle and picked up another. “And dangerous to those around you. You’re lucky your driving did not result in someone else having your imminent status today.”

Fran wiggled her bare toes. “I’m no more of a danger on the road than a cell phone user.”

Linda drew a breath for a return volley but Daphne didn’t want to encourage Fran.

“Linda,” Daphne said, “you are talking to a woman who argued for the rights of a dog to own his former master’s six-bedroom house—and won.”

Fran visibly brightened. “I’d forgotten all about that.” She bestowed an arch look at Linda. “I guess the point is settled.”

Daphne’s phone rang. She held it up for Fran to see the caller ID. “Moshe.”

“My phone’s off—that’s why he called you. Tell him I’m taking a shower and will call him later.”

Ordinarily Daphne would’ve complied, but today called for extraordinary measures. The phone rang again. “What about I tell him the police are considering laying charges against you of reckless driving causing...causing endangerment...and...”

“You don’t even know the terms for it,” Fran said. “He’ll figure out that you’re lying.”

“I’m not. You were driving recklessly. How about I say that you are refusing to cooperate with medical advice to go to a hospital, despite him having paid an inordinate amount of insurance so you could have extensive out-of-province care and that, yes, I recommend he fly out immediately.”

The last thing on earth Fran would want is for her only living child to feel compelled to fly to her side, especially with his wife in the last stages of a difficult pregnancy. The third phone ring was a loud exclamation mark to Daphne’s threat. “Or,” Daphne said, “if you promise to check yourself into the hospital, I’ll tell him that you are in the shower and you’ll call him back later today.”

Daphne held up the phone as though it was a torch and hoped her hand wasn’t shaking too much. Fran glowered at Daphne through the fourth ring, but on the fifth, she cast up her hands. “Fine. I’ll do it.”

A win. Daphne tapped on the green bar and moved into the wreck of a living area. “Good morning, Moshe.”

“Good morning, Daphne.” Moshe’s voice was as smooth as the granite countertops in his house. “How are you?”

He didn’t care. They’d been close as kids, along with his sister, but his conversion to Judaism, his marriage, his wife, his children, his work—life—had stripped their relationship down to just the Fran factor.

“I’m fine. You?”

“Good, good. Listen, I would not be troubling you but Mother is not answering her phone.”

“It’s charging.” Daphne picked up a book from the floor and looked about for a safe spot to put it. “She’s in the shower right now. Would you like her to call you back?”

“I’m in court for the rest of the day. I only want to confirm she’s okay.”

Daphne tossed the book on her bed. “She’s as well as can be expected.”

Her standard comment in all her texts and calls with Moshe. He had all the legal acumen and more of his mother, so the less said the better.

“You will contact me immediately if there is any change, as we agreed?” Like his mother, he was a fast adherent to verbal agreements.

“Of course, Moshe. Of course.” She delivered the lie with all the aplomb of his mother.

* * *

DAPHNE EXITED THE hospital that afternoon, wondering if she should do an about-face and check herself in. She ached to the bone, her tracksuit hung on her like garb for a homeless vagrant and she was light-headed enough to either sink to the warm cement or float off.

She was checking for the taxi she’d ordered when Mel Greene rounded the corner of the building from the parking lot. He was alone. Strange to see him without someone, as if he had a missing limb. He had shifted so smoothly between the nurse, the police officers, the restaurant employee and her that somehow she’d got it stuck in her mind that he was always with people.

He waved, and Daphne waved back. As if they were old friends. Had he come to see her? Or Fran? But why visit a cranky woman he didn’t know? Somebody else, then? She ought to speak to him. Update him on Fran. On The Stagecoach. Thank him for his help. Old friends had less to talk about.

Her taxi pulled up. “A moment,” she said to the driver as he emerged. “I need to speak with—” she wondered how to refer to Mel “—my friend.”

She turned to catch the guarded surprise on Mel’s face. “I acknowledge that’s not the most appropriate term,” she said.

“It’ll do for now,” he said and extended his hand to her. “We haven’t met properly. I’m Mel. Mel Greene.”

She decided to not let on that she knew his name as his hand, large and warm, wrapped around hers. It would only prove how much more significant he was in her life than she in his. “Daphne Merlotte.”

Mel carried on to the taxi driver and held out his hand. “Hello. How are you today?”

The man in a tunic and head scarf stared at Mel’s hand as one would stare at an unknown but sweet-smelling food. Daphne felt for him. Who made such an expansive gesture to a total stranger for no apparent reason? Was it a cultural faux pas on Mel’s part, or was it simply something Mel did? And if so, why hadn’t he done the same to her when they first met? Was it because she was wearing the hideous nightie, and was she overthinking this?

“I—I’m...fine,” the driver stuttered. As if to prove it, he thrust his hand into Mel’s and gave it a quick shake.

Stepping away from each other, the two men regarded Daphne. “Fran’s checked in, and I was returning to Spirit Lake,” she said to Mel. “To attend to the RV,” she added.

“I parked it over at the town campsite. I can drop you off there easy enough, and give you the keys. I had to come into Red Deer to pick up a few things and thought I’d swing by.”

He really had come to see her—Fran—them. So expansive gestures to strangers were part of his nature. The taxi driver frowned at Daphne. Fran pulled the same look when Daphne was on the cusp of refusing her. She handed the driver a ten-dollar bill. “To cover me calling you here.”

His lips thinned. Daphne kept the money outstretched.

“Seems fair to me,” Mel said.

The taxi driver snatched the bill from her fingers and muttered his thanks through gritted teeth. He pulled away and Mel waved, as if the man was family leaving home. The driver lifted his hand in farewell.

Mel turned to the hospital doors. “How is she?”

“As well as can be expected.”

Mel pulled on his baseball cap. “Not sure who’s expecting what.”

“You do know that Fran has terminal cancer? You were there when she told Linda.”

“Yes. Only—” he nudged his cap up to show his face more “—I’ve not much experience with Fran, and I want her to feel easy around me.”

Daphne felt as the taxi driver must’ve—surprised by kindness. “But you mustn’t feel obliged to visit her at all.”

This time when he smiled at her, it was too weak to reach his laugh lines. “I know. I guess... My mom died of cancer, but she had her family around her...and Fran doesn’t have that.”

“I’m family,” Daphne said, more sharply than she intended. “I mean, we treat each other like family.” Or, at least, Fran and Frederick, when he’d been alive, had invited Daphne to their family functions, and she’d tried to fit in. Into a corner with a good book.

Mel pulled on his baseball cap. “I’m sorry. That came out wrong.”

She was annoyed that he’d spotted a disconnect between Fran and Daphne. Still, she could hardly blame him for that. “No offense taken. She’s sleeping right now. She does in the afternoon, at any rate.” She suddenly remembered her good news. “Oh, and they’ve also increased her pain medication, which means she can’t possibly travel for the next five days until her body adjusts.”

“Oh.” Mel scratched his temple. “I don’t know if—”

“Yes,” Daphne said. “I completely agree. The good news is I have five days to think of a way to delay her further.”

Mel was staring at her with his full hazel scrutiny. The Edward Ferrars look. Wait. Had Austen noted the color of his eyes? Or Mr. Darcy’s? Or any of them? Surely after her endless readings, she ought to remember something as basic as that. Had she been so absorbed in issues of metatexts and contexts and textualizations and intertextualities that she’d overlooked a simple character description?

“You all right?” Mel asked. Was his voice softer than normal? What was normal for him?

She tugged her sweatshirt off her belly and her buttocks.

“As well as can be expected,” she said and when his hand drifted to his cap, she added, “Fine. A little tired but fine.”

“Should we head home, then?”

The casual drop of his question made Daphne think for a split second that it was possible, inevitable really, that he would bring her home. Off they’d go to Halifax to start a carefree life together of doughnuts and books and baseball caps.

Then she looked around at where she was. “Sure. I’d appreciate a ride back to the motor home.”

* * *

SHE WAS SHORT, no doubt about it.

From the corner of his eye, Mel watched Daphne climb into his company truck. She’d waited for the running board to descend and now gave herself a heave into the seat. She launched herself sideways to catch the open door and pull it closed. Her feet dangled, her flip-flops hung from her toes, and she quickly tucked them under the seat.

She was no bigger than his twelve-year-old nephew. Mind, with all the soft curves, you wouldn’t mistake her for a boy.

“I have never seen so many trucks in all my days,” she said, “than I have since crossing into Manitoba about two weeks ago.”

“Is that right?” Mel said, easing out of the parking lot. “You know, I’ve never been down East. What’s it like?” He tried to make it sound as if he’d been everywhere else but there. The fact was he’d not even made it to the Alberta-Saskatchewan border, three and a half hours east. He was probably the only healthy male adult in all of Spirit Lake who’d never got a passport. He’d wanted to travel when he was young, but he’d never had the time and money. Then when he had both, no one else could get away, and he didn’t see the point of experiencing new places alone. Or his friends or family wanted to go to a place that required flying, which terrified the socks off him. It was an irrational fear, but he figured everyone was entitled to one or two.

“Canada,” Daphne said, producing sunglasses from a purse so large that it filled her lap, “is many books long.”

“Oh,” he said. “How’s that?”

She told him how she read while Fran drove, and that she read while Fran slept. She could categorize the provinces by the books she’d read. The Ontario pile—very high—the Manitoba and Saskatchewan piles—shorter—and the Alberta pile—unfinished.

“I’m an English professor,” she explained. “Of nineteenth-century literature. Primarily Jane Austen, though I’m currently on sabbatical.” She dug again into her purse. “I’m currently reading this one. Well, again.”

He glanced at the title. “Sense and Sensibility. I remember from the accident.” What he remembered was Daphne clutching the book to her nightgown, the hem riding up her bare legs as she’d scrambled to let Linda and Fran by.

He concentrated on coming up with something bookish to say to someone who taught students better educated than him with his high school dropout status. Best to stick with questions. “I get the sense part but how’s that different from sensibility?”

“Sensibility means feelings, emotions, especially if overwrought.”

Overwrought. As in over-rot? Emotions gone bad. He’d go with that meaning. He didn’t want to ask for two definitions in a row, in case she came up with another word he didn’t know. “Sort of like Car and Driver,” Mel said.

Her mouth pursed into a little O shape. He’d bet behind her sunglasses she was blinking in complete confusion. She probably wondered if he was making a bad joke, which he wasn’t. “The thing,” Mel stumbled on, “and then the person that gets the thing moving.”

Yep, no argument about which of them was the brain. He might as well hurry up and finish.

“I’m no book expert,” Mel continued, “but it happens often enough in life. We use reason to justify the way we feel. Or to get what we want.”

“That pretty well describes every relationship.”

“Don’t I know it,” Mel said and he surprised himself at how bitter and frustrated he sounded.

Daphne tucked her hands under her thighs and looked out the passenger window at a city strip of grass and poplars.

He hoped he hadn’t scared her. It would be a new record for him to have a woman leave him and another one afraid of him on the same day.

“One more thing that came out wrong,” he said. “I just had a rough start to my day.”

“You, too?”

She had him there. “I guess we’ve both got stories to tell about this day.”

“Oh. What’s yours?”

He wasn’t about to say that he’d been dumped that very day. She’d see him for the loser he was—and her an attractive woman, a good bit younger and single from the looks of her bare ring finger. He had a little pride left.

Then again, who better to talk to about his romantic troubles? Here was an intelligent, attractive, single woman, clearly passing through. He could pick up pointers from her without any of the usual awkwardness or expectations. She could speak sense to his sensibilities.

“My girlfriend broke up with me.”

Her grip on her book tightened. “Oh. That is quite the story.”

“Not the first time I’ve told it, unfortunately.”

“Oh.” She wrapped both hands around the book. “I’m sorry.”

She sounded as if he’d announced a death close in the family. Ending things with Linda wasn’t anywhere as bad. He knew that for a fact. He was actually surprised at how little it hurt. Maybe getting dumped for the seventh time in a row automatically gave him the thick skin to take rejection. And the guts to finally fix whatever it was he was doing wrong.

“I’m good, actually.” He pushed on. “But I was wondering if you could explain something to me,” he said, “seeing as how you’re a woman in the business of explaining sense and sensibility to people.”

“I don’t claim to be an expert. Go on.”

“My now ex said that she got the impression that I didn’t want her. That I just wanted anyone who’d take me. And that I shouldn’t settle.”

“Yes.”

“You agree, then?”

“I don’t know her or you, so I can’t comment. But I agree with the part that you shouldn’t settle.”

He hitched himself higher up in his seat. “I guess I’m wondering how to go about making a woman feel that she matters when...” He needed to proceed carefully. He’d already said plenty to Daphne that had come out wrong. “When showing how much she matters might scare her off, too.”

“Why would a woman be scared off by hearing how much she was loved?”

Well, now. He gunned the truck to merge onto the highway, ahead of a fast-approaching red sports car, which immediately switched lanes and started coming up on his left. “I guess she might feel she has to give back the same amount, and I wouldn’t expect her to.”

“In other words, you’d settle.”

“No. I—Well, I guess.”

“Would you settle because you think no one can love you better than you can love them?”

Mel slowed for the turnoff to Spirit Lake, an exit he’d made a thousand times and never while having such a conversation. “No. Not at all. I have requirements.” He realized that expecting them not to be drunks or druggies might prove Daphne’s point, so he hurried on. “I don’t believe I’m better at loving.”

“But you may deliberately put yourself in situations where you will be because you secretly don’t think the women will love you.”

He took the reprieve of a stoplight to consider her words. “I suppose there have been...situations that might’ve made me feel that I gave more love than I got. But it’s not as if I prevented any of the women from proving they could love better than me. So why would they assume I was settling?”

Daphne feathered her fingers across the colored sticky notes sprouting from the top of her book. “Austen is often critical of how pride can impede or delay happiness. Both for men and women. I’m writing a book about how economics mold sensibilities in the Austen novels. I plan to devote a chapter to pride.”

Writing a book about books. The last thing Mel had read were parts of the provincial safety codes, years back. The red light switched to green and Mel released the brake. “I still don’t think it’s pride.”

“The lack of it, then?”

Lack he could relate to. “Maybe so. What would you suggest I do?”

“Do you want to reconcile with your girlfriend?”

Mel thought about the set to Linda’s jaw when she’d said she refused to settle. “That ship has sailed.”

“Well, then,” Daphne said and slipped her book into her purse. “I suppose you will have to wait for a woman who won’t be afraid of all the love you can give her, and you will have to prepare yourself for getting topped up yourself.”

“Huh. You don’t know of anybody like that, do you?”

She wrapped her arms loosely about her giant purse. “Mel, I said you have to wait for her.”

CHAPTER THREE

THE SUN WAS going down as Mel gave the chimney flashing a final resounding whack with his hammer and unhooked himself from the safety rope to take the ladder down off the roof and onto his customer’s backyard deck. No sooner had his boots hit the wood than out came Brittany, holding her eight-month-old daughter. She must’ve been on the lookout for him.

Brittany was Linda’s daughter. He’d taken her roofing job a month ago when things had been cozy between them all.

“Mom called today,” Brittany said. “She told me what happened.”

Mel wondered if she was referring to the breakup or the Tim Hortons accident that had gone viral across the region.

She twisted her mouth in a way that was all Linda. “I’m sorry.” Nope. She meant the breakup. Baby Emma uttered a sharp, gaspy squeal and kicked her chubby legs.

“That’s right,” Brittany said. “It’s Unca Mel.”

Emma tipped herself over, arms out to Mel. Mel took her, all soft and mini, and set her on his arm. She’d been born two weeks after he’d started dating Linda. He’d accompanied Linda to the hospital to see the new arrival, and from the second he’d clapped eyes on her tininess, he’d been sucked in. Though he’d gone home and had a bad night in which memories had become nightmares, it hadn’t stopped him from enjoying Emma. Gradually he’d learned to box away his memories and put himself back to sleep.

He kissed Emma’s downy head—maybe for the last time. Kids were always the awkward, dicey part in any breakup. He had none of his own, so a chunk of his experience with kids came from all but the first of his seven relationships. Six women and fifteen kids in total, counting Linda’s three grandkids. He was still in touch with eleven of them. Last year he’d gone to the high school graduation of the son of the fifth woman.

Did Daphne have kids? Grandkids?

No matter. Talking about family was first-date material, and he wouldn’t be going on one with her. No point of a first date if there was no chance of a tenth.

Arms now free, Brittany grabbed a straw broom and pushed stray shingle trimmings into a pile. His responsibility, but she was a neat freak like her mother. “I think she’s just not over Dad,” Brittany said.

“It is what it is,” Mel said, not wanting to apply any sense to his sensibilities right now. “Look, I’ve got a stop to make and I want to get there before they close. How about tomorrow, first thing, I’ll swing back, put on the new downspouts and finish the cleanup?”

Brittany eyed the mess on the deck. Mel felt a twinge of guilt. “Or I could come by later, if it’s still light enough.”

“No, no. It’s okay,” Brittany said, taking Emma with one arm, the broom still in the other. Ten to one, the deck would be clean before he returned.

He sneaked another kiss on Emma’s cheek. “You be good for Unca Mel,” he said and hurried down the steps. Fast exits were mandatory around single-minded babies.

“Hey,” Brittany called. He stopped. Brittany and Emma looked at him over the railing. “Just because things didn’t work out between you and Mom doesn’t mean you need to be a stranger.”

As always. Unlucky in love but rich in friendships. “You bet,” he said, and beat a path to the back alley, where his truck was parked. Behind him, he heard Emma kick up a fuss and Brittany try to distract her with the excitement of a moving broom.

Mel headed to the library for his own kind of excitement. Maybe he did have a problem with his pride, too much or too little. Or maybe with loss. Something was the matter with him. Seven women couldn’t all be wrong. But if he had to take Daphne’s advice to wait for the right woman, he could, in the meanwhile, work on making himself into the right man.

And if Daphne got her good advice from a book, then he could, too.

No sooner had he cleared the door into the library than his friend Judy hollered from her desk behind the library counter, “Mel! How you doing?”

Judy was a cheerful yeller. “All the better for seeing you,” Mel said. “I’m here for a book.”

“A book?” Judy said, not lowering her voice one bit as he walked up to the counter. “I thought you were here for me.”

Judy and Mel had never dated, but they sharpened their respective romantic saws on each other. Judy’s seemed sharper since she’d reached the altar three times. But sharper meant she got more easily cut. She’d been divorced three times, too.

“I am here for you,” he said, testing his blade. “How can I prove it to you?”

Judy sidled up to the counter. “Honey, you had me at book.”

He pulled on his cap and glanced around. A teenage girl wearing a tuque in July glowered at them, her lip curled in repulsion. She reminded Mel of Ariel—the teenager his sister, Connie, was adopting. That girl, too, was a real romantic.

“What are you staring at?” Judy said to her. “You should take notes for how it’s done.”

Mel wasn’t at all sure the girl should be doing anything other than warming her head outside in the sun. “Anyway, I’m serious,” Mel said. “I want a book.”

Judy hovered her fingers over the keyboard. “Any one in particular?”

“Sense and Sensibility.”

Judy’s fingers stayed suspended. “The Jane Austen book?”

“Yep.”

“You won’t like it. It’s a classic.”

“I know that. I...I’m doing...research.”

“You’re lying. Did Linda put you up to this?”

Mel paused. He’d met Judy when she’d caught her second husband with his third girlfriend. Mutual misery developed into a friendship they still had twelve years and a raft of romantic breakups on both sides later.

Not wanting to set Judy off in a place with a general expectation of quietness, but not wanting her to hear it from anyone else, he slowly held up seven fingers.

Judy growled, picked up the nearest thing at hand—a thick, shiny hardcover from James Patterson—and slammed it on the counter. Tuque Girl jumped in her seat. “You have got to be kidding me. What was the excuse this time?”

Mel shrugged. “The usual. It wasn’t me. It was her.”

Judy shook her head. “Women are insane. I have lost all confidence in my gender. All. You’re a great catch. Own your own business. Own your own place. Excellent health. No criminal record. You clean up good.”

“Why is it again that we don’t date each other?” Mel said.

“I like you too much,” Judy said.

“I knew it was something,” Mel said. “Listen, about the book?”

“You tell me the real reason you want it, and I’ll check to see if we have it.”

He didn’t want to bring up his discussion with Daphne. His time with her in his truck felt...well, not intimate but...private and new. Like an unbelievable bargain at an auction. “I could go check the shelves myself.”

“You could, but what would you do if we needed to order it in?”

“I could do that online.” It occurred to him that he might have a copy in the stack of old books he had in storage. No, more convenient to go through the library.

“I could figure out how to access your account and delete your request.”

“You can’t—” He sighed. “Ok, fine. I met a woman who’s reading it. She’s a professor.”

“Was this before or after Linda broke up with you?”

People shouldn’t change on his account. Still, he wouldn’t mind if Judy took up whispering. Everyone at the terminals—all six pale, acned kids—was staring. Apparently Mel’s love life trumped avatars on missions. “During,” he muttered.

“This I gotta hear.”

“You heard about the motor home that hit Tim Hortons?”

“Who hasn’t?”

“Linda and I were there and this woman was in the motor home.”

“You’re interested in the woman who drove into Tim Hortons?”

“No, her goddaughter. She was the passenger. And I’m not interested in her. She said something interesting, is all.” He had to get this moving. If he gave Judy enough time, she would drag every last detail about Daphne from him. “Could you check on the book now?”

Judy set to tapping the keys, humming. She could do nothing silently. She even talked in her sleep, which had contributed to the breakdown of her third marriage to an insomniac. “If she was in the motor home, is she even from around here?”

“Halifax.”

She frowned. “Then why—”

“The book, please.”

She typed and hummed. “Not here. I can bring it in, but it’ll take a week. However, we do have the complete works of Jane Austen in one book. Do you want that one?”

“I do,” he said.

Judy retrieved from the stacks an oversize hardcover book with old-fashioned illustrations and letters the size of ground black pepper.

“You’re squinting,” Judy said. “We’ve got the movies, too.”

“That’s fine,” Mel said. He didn’t like to watch movies alone. Especially funny ones. Laughing in an empty room made him feel loony. “But order the books separately. I don’t want to carry this brick around for longer than I have to.”

Checking it out required buying a library card, his patronage of the library before today having consisted entirely of chatting with Judy. When he would’ve taken the book, she held on to it and said in a voice that only he could hear, “Professor or not, there’s no point trying to catch someone who’s already on the move.”

First Linda, then Daphne and now Judy. All telling him not to settle. He tugged the book free from Judy’s hold. “I know that. All I’m catching is up on my reading.”

* * *

“DAPHNE MERLOTTE, YOU will give me those keys right now or I’ll—I’ll...”

Fran scanned the interior of The Stagecoach.

She had been released from the hospital after one night of observation under strict orders not to drive for five days until her body had adjusted to the new painkillers. The one hundred and twentieth hour had now passed, and she was determined to make it to the mountains before nightfall.

Only, she was not better. Her siestas nearly lasted all afternoon now, and when Daphne had arrived back from her walk this morning, she’d smelled the cloying scent of air freshener over the acrid stench of vomit.

Fran had denied all knowledge and spent the morning bustling around the motor home in preparation for a late-afternoon departure, scattering Daphne’s books and papers before Daphne hustled them all into the safety of cupboards and boxes.

Daphne could say nothing to dissuade Fran. Repairs to the RV were not yet done. Fran’s answer: Daphne’s fault for not seeing to it during the last five days. Her prescriptions were only partly filled. Fran’s answer: Daphne’s fault for walking the town instead of getting them filled. They didn’t have enough groceries. Fran’s answer was, of course, that Daphne was to blame.

Accusations that weren’t entirely untrue, yet belied Fran’s basic unfitness behind the wheel.

Desperate, Daphne had seized the RV keys.

Now Fran snatched Daphne’s Sense and Sensibility from the couch.

“Give me the keys or I’ll rip this up!”

Fran had it stretched open exactly in the middle, where Marianne learns of Willoughby’s deception. Nearly every word was underlined, and Daphne’s notes trailed up the side. She had inputted all her notes into her digital copy but still, this limp, dog-eared paperback grounded her. And Fran knew it.

Daphne gripped the keys so hard they cut into her palm. “I will not give you the keys.”

No one called Fran Hertz’s bluff and got away with it. Not breaking eye contact, Fran started pulling at the binding. The book sagged and twisted, but despite the worn spine, it didn’t tear. She was too weak.

Daphne’s heart folded like the book. “Fran, listen—”

Fran tossed the book into the kitchen sink, flung open a drawer and took out the barbecue lighter. Then she set Daphne’s beloved volume on fire.

Daphne screamed and ran for the sink, flipping on the water, which, if possible, damaged the book even more. She opened the door and slid open all the windows and set the fans whirring on high. She turned to Fran, who was sitting with a straight back and crossed knees at the small square dining table. “You knew how much the book meant to me.”

“It meant too much. More than me.”

Daphne drew a deep breath of damp smoke. “How can you say that?”

“You’ve had your nose stuck in one book or another from the moment we left Halifax.”

Fran was right. Daphne had deliberately ignored her. To talk long to Fran was to see not only the imminent death of her godmother, but of her entire family. Since the car accident that had killed Daphne’s parents when she was sixteen, Fran was Daphne’s one claim to family. And through Fran, she’d gained admittance to Moshe’s family. Once Fran was gone, in a few short months, Daphne would be well and truly alone. Better to bury herself in a book than confront the grief that hunkered in her heart.

“What else do you want me to do? I can’t drive, and by the way, I’m writing a book. I have a deadline.” It wouldn’t advance her argument to say that the deadline was more self-imposed than real.

“An utterly irrelevant book.” Fran waved her hand with its slipping rings, the polish chipped from two of her usually impeccably polished nails. “Who cares if a bunch of fictional characters experienced hard times?”

Fran had never criticized Daphne’s work before; she had instead lampooned Daphne’s marriageless, childless, near-friendless, petless life.

Daphne poked at her ruined book. The faces of Elinor and Marianne on the cover were blackened, their pale, diaphanous dresses burned away.

In her defense, she called upon the statement of purpose she’d presented to the faculty. “I intend to draw parallels between the economic and domestic realities of Austen’s fictional society, her real world and our contemporary expectations of women.”

“Could you not do that while worms feast on me for Christmas dinner?”

Daphne refused to cater to Fran’s morbidity. “I expect I will. In the meanwhile, I don’t see the harm, since I can’t help you drive.”

“The harm? The harm? I drove into a restaurant. I could’ve killed someone. If you hadn’t been reading, you would’ve seen what was happening to me. You are supposed to watch out for me.”

Everything went astonishingly still between them. The stench of burnt paper and lime freshener and vomit constricted around Daphne. In the past five days, she’d failed to concoct a plan to keep Fran from getting behind the wheel. Instead, she’d read and studied and wrote, or gone for long walks along the lakeshore when she couldn’t bear being in the presence of Fran’s terminal sickness anymore.

She’d contemplated phoning Mel. He’d left his number with the offer to call him if she needed anything. Short of granting Fran perfect health, she didn’t see how he could help her. She couldn’t very well ask him to brainstorm schemes to stall Fran. He was without a girlfriend, not a life.

Avoidance was no longer an option.

“You’re right.” She held up the keys. “And that is why you’re not getting these.”

Fran’s rings clacked as she curled her fingers around the table edge. “You’ll fail me again if you don’t let me have them. In three days, maybe four, I could dump Frederick into the ocean and die happy.”

Die happy knowing she was leaving Daphne behind. Daphne despised herself for thinking so selfishly about Fran’s death. Loneliness was not worse than death, was it? “But...you always said seeing me married would make you happy.”

“That, too.” Fran eyed the keys like an eagle with a mouse. “However, I have waited the past two decades for that to happen. Unless you can land a man like this—” she snapped her fingers “—we’re off to the coast. Now, give me the keys.”

Fran careening through the narrow mountain passes... “I’d rather swallow them.”

A knock sounded at the open door, and a face appeared above the staircase. Mel. In jeans and a baseball cap. Fran softly snapped her fingers and sent Daphne a smirk full of challenge. Surely, Fran didn’t expect her to... What? Propose to Mel?

“Hello there,” he said, his hazel eyes solid on Daphne.

“Hello,” Daphne said.

“I smell smoke.”

“Oh, there was an incident,” Daphne said. “It’s all good. Won’t you have a seat?” She gestured to the couch.

Fran stood, the fingertips of one hand resting on the tabletop. “I burned her book,” she testified. “There, I said it. And good riddance.”

Mel tipped back his baseball cap. “Sense and Sensibility?”

“Yes, that one. Now she can get on with living. Daphne was about to make lemonade for us all.”

She was?

“I’m not really here for lemonade,” Mel said. To Daphne, he offered, “I’m sorry about your book.”

Daphne eyed the campfire fodder in the sink. “It’s...it’s...”

“Don’t encourage her,” Fran said, taking up her patented lounging position on the love seat, her legs crossed, her wide-bottomed pants spilling around her ankles. “Tell me about yourself. What’s your name?”

“Mel Greene,” Daphne said, busying herself with lemons, anyway. He’d love her lemonade once he tried it. “He owns a roofing company. Greene-on-Top.”

Fran raised her painted eyebrows. “Well, now. I underestimated you, Daphne.”

Mel sat on the edge of the couch. With the expansion sliders in, his knees and Fran’s crossed ones were about the length of a standard hardcover dictionary apart. “Yep,” he said. “You did.”

Fran gave Mel the same long, speculative look she’d given a few eligible men just before launching them at Daphne in Fran’s decades-long crusade to pair Daphne up with someone who was not “insane, insolvent or indisposed.”

“You two have met,” she said by way of invitation to Mel.

“I drove her home from the hospital the day of your accident. I appreciated her company. You might show a little gratitude, too.”

Fran brightened, smiled and then volleyed her first question. “You’re here to tell me how to treat my goddaughter?”

“It’s not right that you burned her book out of spite.”

Oh, heavens. Lemons rolled from Daphne’s hands onto the tile and she scrambled after them.

Fran’s smile stiffened. “Now, why would you say it was out of spite?”

“Why else would you destroy something she loves?”

“Perhaps out of love for her?”

“I think there are other ways of showing it.” A lemon bumped against his work boot. He tossed it to Daphne. She caught it one-handed, like a pro. They grinned at each other. “I believe I have a copy of Sense and Sensibility in storage, Daphne. In pretty good condition. You’re welcome to it.”

Later, Daphne attributed her next move to a fear for Fran, who would soon be dead, and for herself, who would soon be alone. And to the warmth in Mel’s gaze and his propensity to settle for anyone.

Still holding the lemon, she walked stiff and slow, like a bride, over to Mel and sat beside him at an angle so her knees grazed his. “Yes,” she said. “There’s something you should know, Fran. All those walks I took. I wasn’t alone. Mel and I have had some very, very good...talks.”

She slid her hand over his knee and applied gentle pressure. He froze.

Fran was absolutely riveted. “Well, Mel. What do you think?”

He turned to Daphne, a tense block. He was about to reject her. She knew that look well enough, but she was sure—yes, sure—she also saw something like regret or at least, something like a desire for a different outcome.

He could be persuaded.

She closed the distance and kissed him. A few years had passed since she’d planted one on a man, but it was much like riding a bicycle. His face was rough, his lips soft and springy. Daphne parted her lips and plowed deeper. Mel cued well and went at it so convincingly that Daphne scrambled for an exit plan.

She pulled back all at once, an audible suctioning apart.

“That,” Fran said, breathless, “was indecent.” She clapped her hands. “You, Mel, are moving on to the next round. We’re staying.”

CHAPTER FOUR

FOR SOMEONE WHO didn’t clear his shoulder, Mel was hard-pressed to keep up with Daphne. Her flip-flops snapped out a mad beat on the asphalt walkway behind the RV park. She’d rushed from the motor home the second Fran had delivered her announcement, and he, like a dog on a leash, had followed.

“You might want to slow down,” Mel said. “I’ve been on a roof all day and my whole body is cramped.”

She slammed to a stop. To one side of the walkway was a culvert thick with tall, dried grass. On the other was a thin row of wild poplars that bordered backyards. A large dog set his paws against a wobbly fence and barked with intent.

“Come on,” Mel said. “We’d better keep moving. Slower, is all.”

They did, amid heavy sighs from Daphne. “I’m so sorry, Mel,” she said. “I don’t know... I was so desperate to keep Fran here... I’m sorry... I’ll go back and say I made it all up.”

“Just to be clear here. The plan to stop Fran from leaving is me?”

“No. At least, that wasn’t my intention. Only I hadn’t devised an actual plan, and I had this vision of me and Fran careening through those mountain roads and I... Well, you saw what I did.”

Felt it, too. His lips still tingled. He’d counted off the last five days and had come to the RV park to catch her in case she was leaving, maybe ask her out for a coffee, chat about his findings in Austenland. Not this.

“I don’t know that you’ve done anything wrong,” he said. “It was just unexpected.”

She looked up at him. She had a face like an emoji. Round and cheery and lively. “You’re at an emotionally vulnerable time,” she said. “You just came through a breakup not even a week ago. I shouldn’t have taken advantage of you.”

“Daphne. I’m a grown man.” He paused. “As you can see.”

Her eyes widened behind her glasses. “Oh. Yes. Indeed.”

Was she teasing him? He hurried on. “And you’re right to want her off those roads. I grew up in the mountains. Let me tell you, everybody knows somebody who died out there.” He heard an edge of the old fear creep into his voice and clamped his mouth shut.

She studied him, and he hoped she didn’t ask for an explanation. He relaxed when she said, “What would you suggest, then?”

He scratched his neck. He’d taken a quick shower before coming, but it meant nothing in this heat. He was as sticky as a cinnamon bun, and not nearly as sweet smelling.

“Fran is already convinced that we are dating,” Mel said, “so all we need to do is continue to fake it. It wouldn’t be more than two, three weeks, off and on. Right?”

“I’d steal out in the evenings and pretend that I was meeting you.”

“What if she wants proof?”

“What do you mean ‘proof’?” Her lips upturned into a tight smile, her cheeks rising into two blushing balls. She thought he was fishing for kisses. He wasn’t.

“I’ll tell her to mind her own business.”

She tilted her head. “I suppose she might ask you over. Maybe a couple of times, you will need to pick me up. Do you have a dress shirt?”

“And pants. And shoes and a tie. I went to my brother’s wedding a while back and I have my sister’s in December.”

“You have family?” She waved her hand. “Never mind. None of my business.”

Since they were kind of on a first date, he started in. “I’ve got a brother, fourteen years younger than me, a sister, eighteen years younger. And then my brother’s wife came with four kids. After my sister gets married, I’ll have a brother-in-law, too, though Ben’s pretty much a brother already. Oh, and Ariel. She’s the daughter of Connie’s high school friend. Who died. And Connie’s taking care of her. The daughter.” His family had become complicated in the past year. “You?”

“No. None. Well, Fran. And Moshe. That’s Fran’s son. And his family. He has four children, too, with another due any day. But they’re not blood. I was an only child, and my parents died when I was sixteen.”

“No cousins or anything?”

“I have an uncle, but he lives in Australia. I don’t even know how to contact him. Or what to say if I did.”

“I guess I’d be in pretty much the same situation if my mom hadn’t married my stepdad.”

“Is your father dead, then?”

“Nope. Though I keep checking the obits. Where there’s death, there’s hope.” Now, where had that come from? No one else in the world knew that he lived for the day he’d hear his father was dead, and it was probably not a good idea to tell a woman you were on any kind of date with that you hoped your father died. Especially one whose own father was killed in an accident. A sudden death meant you spent your whole life saying goodbye. “Anyway, I was in this heat for twelve straight hours. How about we go for dinner and talk more there?”

She emoji-ed through a bunch of looks until she settled on a thinking one. “We could call it a date. We could take a picture as proof, right?”

“Right.”

Her blue eyes flickered back and forth. “But you understand that we’re not actually dating? I would hate for you to make the mistake of settling on me. And you would be settling if you assumed we were dating. Which, clearly, we’re not.”

He picked his way through her twisting string of words before arriving at a conclusion. “If we were dating, I wouldn’t feel as if I’m settling, but since we’re not dating, I’m not settling. We’re actors playing a role.”

Her lips pursed in a gentle release of air. “What are we during dinner?”

“Rehearsing our lines, is all. Like a business dinner. Completely legitimate.”

“All right. Separate bills, then?”

He wasn’t keen on that idea, but he also didn’t want to send her any mixed messages, either. “I came over to tell you what I figured out from reading Austen, so—”

“You’re reading Jane Austen?”

“I am. You recommended her for my problem with women.”

“Yes, but the only men I know who have willingly read Jane Austen are those who signed up for my class. And other professors. Certainly no one who swings a hammer for a living.”

Mel liked the idea he had surprised her. “My point is, how about I pay for dinner and in return you let me tell you my theory about why men lose their pride?”

Daphne pivoted on her flip-flops back in the direction of his vehicle. “Indeed. I’m eager to get a layman’s perspective.”

A lay—Who? “It’s because they go around visiting all day instead of working. Take that Edward Ferrar fellow.”

“What about him?” Daphne said warningly, as if he were about to insult her best friend.

“I think he would’ve got around to Elinor sooner if he had told the aunt to take her money and stuff it.”

Daphne’s mouth dropped open. He’d surprised her again. The next few weeks were going to make for some really interesting conversation about couples, even though it would never apply to their situation...

* * *

WEDNESDAY NIGHT WAS officially known as the Greene Family Game Night. It was held out on the farm where Mel’s brother, Seth, and his wife, Alexi, lived with The Four Kids, the name Mel and Connie had given to Alexi’s adopted children. Every Greene and those connected to a Greene were expected to come.

They’d normally be outside, but a crackling good thunderstorm had them penned inside tonight.

The Twister mat was laid out in the middle of the living room, and Mel was bent awkwardly with his right foot on a green circle and his left hand on a blue one. He wasn’t built for this anymore. Daphne, on the other hand, would slot in nicely under him.

“Auntie Connie. Your turn,” Matt said and gave the spinner a whirl. “Left hand, red circle. Right foot, yellow circle.”

Connie edged and expanded her long limbs across the mat. “You haven’t forgotten about your Santa fitting tomorrow, have you, Mel?”

She’d talked him into playing the part of Santa Claus for her Christmas-in-the-Summer event next month. She’d also convinced Linda to be Mrs. Claus.

“Uh,” he said to Connie’s shoulder, “I haven’t. Have you... Have you talked to Linda?”

“She came by weeks ago for her fitting. We’re good.”

“Whose turn is it now?” Matt said.

“Linda’s,” Callie said from her acrobatic position on two adjoining yellows.

Matt said, “She’s not here, remember?”

And wouldn’t be probably ever again. He’d only told Seth that Linda couldn’t make it tonight. He’d best get the breakup out there now. “Did I mention what happened with the motor home at Tim Hortons last Thursday?”

His question was directed to the room at large, and it was answered at large. They’d heard the whole story, of course.

“Mom,” Matt said, “you take Linda’s spot.” Before Alexi could abstain, Matt said, “Right hand on blue and left foot on red.”

Alexi assumed the downward dog beside Mel, the exact position he was in. Only, she made it look effortless. “What you don’t know,” Mel said, “is that I was in Tim’s when the accident happened.”

Connie whipped to face him. “You what?” The sudden motion jarred loose her hand position and she fell to the mat.

“You’re out,” Matt said.

“But I... Fine... Stupid game,” Connie said and flipped off the mat. Mel envied her.

Connie plopped herself close to Ben on the couch and ate from his popcorn bag. “You better make this good, Mel.”

“Linda and I were having a coffee,” Mel said, “when I see this giant motor home turn to come into Tim Hortons. Only, it doesn’t—it goes the other way and I think that’s a good thing. Linda and I keep drinking coffee.” He remembered Callie. “I recommend whipped cream on top.”

Matt directed Callie to a position the girl accomplished in two quick moves. Mel cranked himself through his own moves and continued on. “But then the motor home comes for us again. No, I think. But it does. Suddenly the thing moves like an icebreaker toward us.” He had the whole table now. He unrolled the rest of his tale and then he gave the bonus material.

“Turns out the passenger and I have a lot in common. Her name’s Daphne. She’s a professor of English literature in Halifax. Lived there all her life, except for years in Toronto, where she went to get her degrees.” She’d filled him in on her life story when they’d gone to dinner. “She’s also been to Paris and England. She speaks at conferences.”

“Mel,” Connie said, “you haven’t done any of that. How can you say you have a lot in common?”

Mel met Matt’s eyes. The boy’s steady gaze asked Mel to dig deep. “Yeah, but when she told me about herself, it felt like I was there.”

Matt gave a small, satisfied smile and instructed his mom to reach for circles that forced her into a belly-up bridge. Mel would be in surgery if he tried that. Alexi not only maintained the position, but also managed to quietly ask, “How did you find all this out about her?”

Mel had known Alexi for a year now, and one thing about her stood out. She was a mother, which meant she figured out stuff that no one else had the foggiest notion of. He resorted to a careful response. “Now that Linda and I aren’t the friends we used to be, I have more time for Daphne.”

Mel’s news was an invisible ball that ricocheted from glance to glance around the room. Alexi to Seth to Ben over to Connie, who lobbed it back to Mel. “Uh, so, you’re telling me I need to look for a new Mrs. Claus, right?”

“Yep.”

“Daphne, by any chance?”

Daphne in a Mrs. Claus outfit. She would look so sweet and jolly.

A sight he’d never see. They’d only gone out to dinner last night. They’d chatted like old friends, yes, but he’d taken her at her word when, at the end of the evening, she’d given his hand a quick squeeze and thanked him for playing along and that she’d enjoyed their discussion. That was it. Nothing to look at here.

“She’ll be back in Halifax by then.”

Around the room bounced the glances again.

“If that’s the case, I don’t see the point—” Seth began, but he was cut off by Matt.

“Uncle Mel, you got left hand, green. Right foot, red. Try to get there without falling.”

It nearly split him up the middle but he succeeded. Alexi suddenly paled and had to lower herself to the mat to recover, and Callie collapsed her pose to tend her mom. So Mel actually took that round and claimed his prize of a doughnut with sprinkles. The conversation never returned to Daphne.

Later Seth and Mel walked together back to the truck. During the years they’d worked together, the two of them would leave the apartment they shared and go for coffee in the mornings. They’d seen more of each other than everyone else combined. Now the walk to the vehicle on Wednesday nights was sometimes all they had in a week. Mel didn’t begrudge Seth his wife and his family, but he did walk slower than necessary.

Tonight, when they got to the truck door and matters of the farm and the roofing business were sorted, Seth leaned on the truck hood and said, “I’m sorry about you and Linda.”

“It’s fine. I’m moving on.”

Seth leaned more heavily on the truck. “It’s just that this woman, from the sounds of it, is, too. As in, right out of Spirit Lake.”

Now was the time to set the record straight. It wasn’t as if Daphne had sworn him to secrecy. Except he liked how the two of them were in on a little scheme together. Just friends, but friends with a shared secret. “Daphne will be around for the next week or two. Her and me, we’re... We get along well, is all.”

Seth bowed his head. “The way you talked about her...it sounds as if you’re hoping for more. Mel. It’s a classic rebound.”

Mel knew about rebounds. His fourth girlfriend came to him on a rebound, and a week after they’d broken up she rebounded onto a newly divorced man. Eight years later, the word was she was still bounding about town. But his relationship with Daphne wasn’t a rebound. It was a plan, a favor, a chance to speak to a woman freely about other women without any expectation or innuendo.

He recalled something Connie had gone on about one time during a family dinner. “She’s a friend for a reason and a season. The season being two weeks.”

Seth tipped back his cap and looked Mel square in the eye. “And the reason?”

Mel yanked open his truck door. “To be with someone who doesn’t ask a bunch of interfering questions.” He slammed the door shut right quick before Seth could ask another.

* * *

AKIN TO ENSURING mutual corporate cultures during a merger, the ideal Austenian marriage, then, is a transaction with compatibility, not love, as its currency. And if compatibility was the foundation of marriage, then love operated in the field of illicit affairs, which rendered love by necessity as insidious and detrimental. This gave rise to an inherent internal conflict within the individual most tellingly realized in the modern revolt against—

“Daphne! What are you still doing here? Weren’t you supposed to meet Mel a half hour ago?”

Daphne jumped, her computer sliding off her lap. She grabbed it and checked the clock on the screen. Heavens. To stop Fran from nagging, she’d invented the date and then promptly forgotten about it.

“Oh, he texted me earlier, he had a roof to finish,” she said. “We might meet up later if he has time.”

“Time? Time? Is he dying of a terminal disease?”

Daphne raised her eyebrows, a strategy she’d developed to suppress the urge to roll her eyes. “No, and therefore he must earn a living.”

“Good for him, but not for either of us. You need to figure out if he’s your man, and if he can’t be bothered to participate in the process, especially on a Friday night, then we might as well take Frederick west.” Fran eased slowly onto the love seat.

This was new, this uncertainty that objects were solid and wouldn’t crumble or get whisked away. It pained Daphne to see Fran lose confidence in the existence of physical reality.

That was more Daphne’s territory. She could easily lose track of time and space while immersed in books and thoughts. And quite honestly, Mel-the-Love-Interest was like a character in a book to her, more alive in her imagination than in reality. To keep Fran convinced, she needed to do a better job of pretending he was real. She thumbed her screen and paused, as if reading. “He sent another text. He wants to know if I’d like to go for ice cream.”

“Again? You did that the last night. Surely, there’s something else happening in this hick town.”

Nothing that a single woman of a certain age could do. Then again, perhaps a woman of a certain age could do anything. Consider the widow in Sense and Sensibility. No longer on the marriage market, she was permitted to—Daphne reached for her laptop.

“Yes, google Spirit Lake and romance. See if anything comes up.”

It took effort but Daphne opened another window and typed what Fran suggested. A sunset picture of the lake, an old coupon special for a lakeside restaurant called Smooth Sailing, an XOX Valentines event at the library for women only. Women only? What was the point of that? She resorted to ad-libbing. “The ice-cream shop seems to be the best bet. There are many flavors for us to work through. The combinations are endless. Especially if you get a double scoop. Then you have to not only decide on the flavors but which one goes on top. Never mind the sprink—”

“Fine. Off you go. How come he never picks you up?”

Precisely the complication she’d discussed with Mel at the outset of their charade, but she hated to put him through the dress-up routine already. Perhaps she could talk him into dining with her as a reward. He certainly liked his food, and she could more easily fake a relationship in front of Fran if she could report on events that actually transpired.

“He probably doesn’t want to deal with you.” Daphne shed her laptop and books and papers and pens from her lap like a spinster with cats. This phantom dating was a royal nuisance. Just as she was getting somewhere with her book. Perhaps there was a work-around. She said, “Mel wants to know what I’m working on, so I’ll bring the laptop.”

“Honestly, Daphne,” Fran said, tightening her silk shawl about her. Feeling cold, too, was new. “He’s just saying that to be polite. Surely, you can think of something better to do.”

Daphne raised her eyebrows as high as they could go. “I’m sure I can.” She shoved the cords into the bag’s side pockets and settled its strap on her shoulder. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll be on my way.”

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