I got out of the Jeep and glanced at the California license plate, committing it to memory so I could run the tags if I needed to.
Even without a close look, I saw several hangers with dresses and maybe jackets hung in the back seat. Fingerprints scuffed the dust on the trunk, and road dirt flecked the wheel wells.
Someone had been on the road for a while. Maybe visiting, maybe moving.
I wondered who that somebody was.
I balanced the pie, coffee and beer, thinking it might be too much—too much like an overreaction, too much like an apology I’d overthought and I wasn’t sure would be accepted—and walked up to the front door.
I tried the handle. It wasn’t locked. I paused with the door half open.
I didn’t smell the grill he said he’d have ready for dinner. I didn’t hear the music Ryder usually played when he was home alone.
What I heard was a woman’s laughter. A stranger’s laughter.
Time stretched through atick, tick, tick, and everything in me went numb.
Why was there a stranger in our home? Why was she laughing, and why was Ryder laughing along with her, their voices pitched low like they were sharing secrets?
Was she a friend? A customer?
From another state this late in the evening?
My heart thudded against my breastbone, hot and sick. It felt like —
—jealousy—
—something was wrong. Something was wrong about a strange woman from California being in my living room.
Inourliving room.
I was over-reacting. I was taking huge jumps to conclusions that I had absolutely no facts to back up. Maybe Myra was right about the overthinking thing.
I just needed to be calm. To use logic.
But then, so many things in Ordinary weren’t logical. Following my instincts, following my gut, even overthinking things usually worked out for me.
All of those thoughts flashed by in seconds. Then I unstuck myself, took a quick breath and called out as I walked through the doorway.
“Hey! I’m home. I brought pie.” I strode into the foyer. Which led right to the kitchen and open living room.
The fire was going, even though it had been a warm day, but Spud and Dragon pig were not curled up as usual in front of it with their pile of toys. As a matter of fact, all the toys that got dragged daily into the room were missing.
What else was missing was my fiancé, but from the voices coming from beyond the sliding glass doors, I knew he was outside. Maybe starting the grill.
Maybe dishing food for the woman, who was saying, “RyRy—that’s so great! Just so great!” in a we’re-not-doing-anything-we-shouldn’t-be-doing voice pitched loud enough I was pretty sure she, at least, had heard my entrance.
I stowed the pie in the fridge, put the beer in there too. I didn’t know what to do with the coffee, so I just left one of the cups by the toaster, and took a couple big gulps out of the other one.
Whoever it was sounded like a friend, someone Ryder knew. She hadn’t left a purse or a coat behind, there were no kicked off shoes in the entry, so she probably hadn’t been here long and wasn’t planning to stay.
Okay. A friend was good. I wanted to meet more of the friends he’d made when not living in Ordinary. The—
—jealousy—
—worry I’d felt when I’d first seen the car was gone now, shoved aside so that there was only room for curiosity. Ryder rarely talked about his friends from college, from the years he’d spent working for the architecture company in Chicago.
The only people he’d mentioned more than once were his boss at the firm he worked at, and a classmate he tried to keep in touch with online.
