“That’s the stripper who gave me the invitation,” he declared, pointing at the screen at the picture of the younger woman whowas also the woman at the front desk. “Dominic? That shit can’t be right.”
“What?”
“This man is the same man I met with that weekend when I met the stripper. He was the one who took me to the club after we handled some business,” he explained, pointing at the farmhand.
“Dominic?”
“Yes. That’s him.”
“This article says that the older woman is Marion Grace and the younger woman is Hope Grace.”
“So, you’re sitting here telling me that these two women we’ve interacted with on multiple occasions were from the past?”
“That’s what the article says.”
“That can’t be. I don’t buy no bullshit like that.”
“Then how do you explain the woman you met at the club looking exactly like the woman at the B&B and the woman in this article, Bryson?”
“Hell if I know. They could be her descendants, and the two of them could be cousins or sisters or anything.”
“But you said they look exactly alike. I know this picture of Hope looks just like the girl at the front desk.”
“Descendants. As far as the girl at the front desk and the stripper are concerned, they could be identical twins for all I know. They say everyone has a doppelganger.”
“I don’t know. I mean, I was always drawn to that lake. I always felt a sense of peace there, same as Marion Grace did.”
“And yet, something tragic happened to her.”
“I know. This is all just so bizarre, especially when we were told the people who helped us didn’t work at the B&B. I had no idea how to explain that.”
“Come here, girl,” he demanded, patting his lap.
I set my laptop aside and walked to where he sat. He pulled me down onto his lap and kissed my temple. We stared out of the windows together for several long minutes. It was a beautiful fall evening, and we had a fire going in our firepit.
“You wanna make some S’mores?”
“Over the firepit?”
“Yeah.”
“Sounds like a plan to me.”
I got off his lap and waited for him to return from the kitchen with the s’mores supplies. He grabbed a stick from outside in the back and returned to me. We sat in silence, with me on his lap again, making s’mores and eating them for almost twenty minutes before he spoke.
“I haven’t told you how proud I am of you lately.”
“What?”
“How you’ve taken to this promotion. The last two weeks, you’ve been training under Milicent’s hand, but you’re still keeping track of time and getting home at decent hours. You haven’t even worked on the weekends. I appreciate that.”
“And I appreciate you. You’ve taken time out to see how my day is going, still dropping by to bring me lunch, and even listening to how my day is going when I talk about it incessantly.”
He laughed. “And thanks for the daily texts that you send me to update me on your day and to check on mine.”
“I have to make sure my baby is safe out in them streets. You do work with the criminal element of the city, you know?”
“Damn, you make my clients sound like riff-raff.”
