“He’s not there, Delilah,” I sighed.
“Who’s not there?”
Jumping, I spun around with a screech, dropping all the bags I was carrying and my tea mug, shoving out my hands in a karate chop that would intimidate maybe a three-year-old.
“Ellie! You scared the crap out of me.”
“Clearly,” she smirked. “So, you were saying?”
“What? Oh, nothing.”
“Uh-huh,” she chuckled. “It’s more than something when you notice your neighbor isn’t there. Why so concerned?” she mused.
“I’m not concerned,” I answered, gathering up the massive amount of bags I’d dropped on the ground. “I was noticing, which is not the same thing.”
“I hardly notice when my neighbors don’t come out.”
“You live next to the Hardys. They’re both in their nineties, and they hardly come out at all.”
‘’Right, which would mean I would probably notice more when they do come out.”
Ellie helped me grab the various bags from the ground and haul them to my car, all the while smirking at me.
“There’s nothing going on,” I said again.
“Sure.”
“I’m serious. Absolutely nothing,” I said, bending over, shoving the bags all the way across the seat just to escape her watchful gaze.
“Of course. I would never think otherwise. Or believe town gossip.”
My head banged on the frame of the car at her words. “Shit!” I gasped, rubbing the back of my head.
“Ha! I knew that would get you.”
“Well, maybe next time, say it when I’m not at risk of injuring myself.” I knew the jig was up if the whole town knew about it, not that I would admit that. “So, what is the town saying?”
“Oh, just that you spent an exorbitant amount of time with him recently.” The wide grin plastered on her face clued me in that there was so much more she wasn’t telling me.
“It wasn’t an exorbitant amount of time. It was just during the storm.”
“Uh-huh. Cuddled up under the covers?—”
“We got snowed in together!” I argued.
“Right.” She turned and looked at my house, then JR’s. “I could totally see how he would be snowed in. All those miles and miles he would have had to trudge through to get home.”
“The power went out!”
“Brings new meaning towalking uphill in the snow both ways.”
“I had food and he didn’t.”
“Every child in town will now know that their parents were lying when they used that phrase.”
“It was snowing really, really hard!”
“And I would imagine that even if he did make it back to his house in all that snow, with the miles and miles between the two of you, then he’d be freezing with no one to warm him up.”
