Page 55 of Her Wicker Guardian

I point at him. “That word is becoming a problem.”

He looks entirely too pleased with himself.

I get into the car still smiling.

Locke is already heading back toward the screened porch. He isn’t standing there watching me leave.

I like that.

Before I put the car in reverse, I remember the tiny green leaf in my shirt pocket. I take it out and look at it resting against my fingertip for a second.

Then I put it back.

I flip down the visor and finally get a look at the braid from the front.

He did an amazing job.

I like that too.

Chapter Ten

Locke

Rachel’s car disappears beyond the trees. I listen until I can no longer hear it, then go back to the small table on the screened porch.

The bear waits on the paper beside Shannon’s pictures of wicker bears and Harvest Festival displays. I stop on one showing a festival at night, people walking beneath strings of lights and tables crowded together.

The Harvest Festival will have many people, and the bear will go there.

I look toward the road. Rachel said they would figure that part out too.

A while later, the sound of a truck reaches me. This engine is deeper than Shannon’s SUV, and something rattles behind it as it turns onto the gravel. I stand.

The truck stops out front. Doors close. Shannon appears first around the cottage, and a man follows her.

I knew Tom was probably coming. Knowing that does not stop my body from going alert when a man I have never seen steps out of the truck.

Tom closes his door but doesn’t come any closer. Shannon takes a few steps closer and calls, “Everybody said yes.”

“Laura, Blair, and Janet?”

“All of them. And Tom knows he keeps this to himself.”

Tom gives one short nod. “I do.”

I study him while he studies me. He’s taller than Shannon, broader through the middle, with gray beginning at his temples and the kind of hands that look permanently shaped by tools. He doesn’t stare, which I notice immediately. His gaze moves over my face, my shoulders, then drops to the jeans.

“I guess those are mine too.”

I look down at them. “Yes.”

“Thought so.”

Shannon folds her arms. “You said you didn’t care about the clothes.”

“I don’t. I’m identifying my property.”

“You sound like Blair.”