Someone Like Her by Janice Kay Johnson Page B

decided to come home to work with his dad, who’s a contractor.”
    “I hadn’t noticed any new building.”
    Was he bored? Or sneering at her town? Just because she sometimes thought Middleton was dull didn’t mean she’d put up with an outsider saying so. Eyeing him suspiciously, she said, “They do more over in Sequim than here in town, but we have new houses, too. Plus, they do remodeling.”
    He nodded, but she wasn’t sure he’d even paid attention to what she said. His steps had slowed. “You have an attorney in town.”
    The office that had caught his attention was narrow, sandwiched between a gift-and-card shop and Middleton’s only real estate office. On the window, gold letters announced in an elegant script, Elton Weatherby, Attorney-At-Law.
    She waved through the window at Mr. Weatherby, who she happened to know was seventy-four years old. He and her grandfather had been in the same grade inschool. He was thin and stooped, with a white shock of hair and a luxuriant mustache that actually curled up on the ends. He waved back.
    “I suppose he doesn’t do much but write wills,” Adrian said thoughtfully.
    “Why would you think that? Middleton’s a normal town with all the usual lawsuits and squabbles. He does quite a bit of criminal defense, although most of it might be small potatoes by your standards.”
    “Tavern brawls?”
    Lucy was pleased to find that she was starting once again to dislike Adrian Rutledge. His condescension annoyed her.
    “We have murder and rape and domestic disturbances, just like everyone else,” she said shortly, then nodded at a business on the next corner. “We’ll stop at the Hair Do later and talk to Cindy.”
    “Your sister mentioned her. She said Cindy cut my mother’s hair.”
    He always said my mother in the same, stilted way. On impulse Lucy asked, “You must have called her Mom when you were a kid.”
    Adrian glanced at her. “That was a long time ago.”
    “You just always sound so…uncomfortable. As if you don’t want to acknowledge her.”
    Out of the corner of her eye she saw his jaw muscles knot. After a minute he said, “But I have, haven’t I? I’m here.”
    Immediately ashamed, Lucy said, “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
    They walked in silence then, Lucy nodding at passersby whom she knew. She was very conscious thateveryone was noticing them, wondering where they were going and why.
    It was lowering to know that nobody would speculate, even for a minute, that Lucy Peterson had snagged herself a handsome new man. If she’d been Samantha, that’s exactly what they would be thinking. But she knew all too well what they thought about her. Poor Lucy would certainly get married someday, she was such a nice young woman and a good cook, too, but of course her husband would be a local boy, not anyone truly exciting. Because she wasn’t exciting.
    No, today they were staring because they’d heard Adrian had come to town. People were obviously dying to know why an obviously wealthy attorney’s mother had been homeless. As far as Lucy knew, she was the only person he’d talked to at all about his family history, and despite her mixed feelings about him, she would keep to herself everything he’d told her. At least until he and the hat lady were gone, and there was no reason that townspeople couldn’t gossip to their hearts’ content.
    The library was a block off the main street, built just four years back. When Lucy was growing up, the library had been on the second story of an aging granite-block municipal building, which meant it wasn’t accessible to anyone who couldn’t climb the stairs. The room, cold in winter and hot in the summer, had only been about six hundred square feet. Since the new building opened, the collection had tripled and the library even had a meeting room for public use. The land it stood on was donated, and every cent spent on raising the building had been donated. Middleton was proud of its library. If Adrian