“Mark,” said Carrie, dryly. “Meet Ethan Nash, owner of said dogs, as if you didn’t know. Ethan, my little brother. Mark, you’re an idiot. One of his dogs wanted to play ball with Amanda’s kid, that’s it. No chase, no contact. No bites, no growls, no blood.”
Something twitched inside Ethan’s chest. Carrie had taken his word as truth, without question.
The boy gave Ethan an abashed glance. “Sorry, man. Just repeating what I heard.”
“Next time, consider the source.” Carrie reached across and poked him. “And you can repack those eggs. I saw what you did.”
Ethan stood just outside the doors, waiting for Carrie to complete her purchase.
“Thanks,” he said. “Rain check on the steak dinner?”
“Just take me home,” she said. “I’ve lost my appetite.”
Chapter Nine
‡
Carrie sat in her office with the door closed, pretending she wasn’t aware of Ethan upstairs, moving from door to door and window to window. She’d tried to tell him that she didn’t actually need the system installed, but he suggested that Scott Norman seemed like the kind of person who would ask about it. She’d had to admit he had a point.
Then her grandfather would hear about it and insist on coming by to check it out.
No, she’d suggested a security system, so she was getting a security system. There was a certain comfort in the thought, she realized. Or maybe it was just the quiet movements of someone else in the house.
Someone who was doing more than knocking over water glasses and falling into toilets, at least. Ethan’s arrival had sent Belinda into hiding. Carrie smiled, wondering how long the cat would sulk.
She was supposed to be going over her schedule for the rest of the summer, though she’d gotten lost in an internet search, making sure that the images Ethan assured her were back in hiding, were indeed hidden.
That damn photograph, she thought, looking at the original. That girl looked so free, so easy with herself, it was hard to believe it was actually her.
Technically, the image was mediocre. The composition was overly busy and the lighting too harsh but considering the tiny, south-facing third-floor San Francisco apartment she’d been in at the time, not bad.
She’d posed for the photo when she was still a raw student, high on the triumph of studying where her parents would never have allowed her to go without the scholarship.
Disapproving in the non-specific way of those being pushed past their comfort zones, they’d been full of caution at how living so far from home might affect her character, leave her open to the temptations of a worldly nature.
Unaware of the honor it was for her to be selected.
Unaware of how badly prepared for life their oldest daughter was, thanks to their overly-conservative parenting.
Unaware of the emotional trauma that had brought her back home to them.
Her office line rang and Carrie jumped. It had been a long time since she’d thought about the girl she’d once been.
“Forever Yours Photography.” Her voice was higher than normal, her words too quick. She forced herself to take a breath.
“Carrie? It’s Karen, from the festival committee.”
Carrie had gone to high school with Emma Stanhope, Karen’s daughter. She’d heard Emma was back in town, doing something on Uncle Robert’s orchard.
“I’m confirming that you’ll be our official photographer again this year,” Karen went on. “I know you always do it but I also know how busy you are. I didn’t want to assume.”
Busy. Right.
“Of course I’ll do it again,” she responded. She cleared her throat and looked away from the screen. “I love the festival.”
She counted on this contract and hadn’t realized until just now, how worried she’d been about it.
Family portrait work was unpredictable. Her two biggest and most reliable contracts were with the school board and the city. They paid the majority of her bills and she couldn’t do without them.
“I’m glad,” said the woman. “You always make us look good. Do you want to run your usual ad in the brochure?”
“Definitely,” said Carrie. It was the kind of you-scratch-my-back, I’ll-scratch-yours situation on which small towns ran. As long as everyone stayed itchy, it worked fine.