The Liar

“How about my place, Saturday night?” Griff asked. “We’ll throw something on the grill and strategize. If you don’t want to ask your parents to watch Little Red, bring her along,” he added, anticipating. “We can always hang her in a closet, stick her in a drawer.”

“Let me work on that. I’d better get going, and let you get back to work. Pretend I gave you another hug, Matt. You’ve made my very best friend happier than I’ve ever seen her. So I’m inclined to love you a lot.”

“I’m getting married,” Matt said when Shelby left.

“That’s right, pal. Hold on a minute.” He set down the nail gun he’d just picked up, jogged after Shelby. “Hey. I didn’t get a pretend hug.”

“No, you didn’t, but that’s because I’m going to give you a lot more than that later. No pretending.”

“Oh yeah?”

“On the instructions of my mama.”

“I really like your mama.”

“So do I. Bye now.”

“We’ll probably knock off around four, four-thirty,” he called out.

“I’ll be there.”

“Nice to know,” Griff said quietly, then grinned down at Snickers, who’d followed him and his boot laces. “Really nice to know.”

•   •   •

SHE WENT BY THE MARKET FIRST, as she’d decided on what she’d fix for dinner when she’d seen Griff at his job site.

She settled down in his kitchen, angling herself so she could see out those wonderful glass doors to the view whenever she looked up.

But once she opened her mother’s keepsake box and began reading, she didn’t look up often.

She broke to work on dinner, get it in the oven. And think.

It was odd and fascinating to see herself, to review her own perspective through the prism of time. Only a handful of years, really, but a lifetime altogether.

She could see it now, the naiveté, the nearly blank slate she’d been. Richard had seen that, too, and used it very well.

Callie had changed her—she could read that, too, in photographs and letters. What she’d written, how she’d written it, had shifted after Callie was born.

Had her mother been fooled by the bright tone of the letters, the e-mails, the quickly dashed postcards once the daughter had become a mother herself? Shelby doubted it. Even now she could hear the tinny tone under the brightness.

She’d been so unhappy so quickly, all the fierce self-confidence gradually, carefully, she saw now, wiped away. The only true happiness broke through when she wrote of Callie.

No, her mother wouldn’t have been fooled. Her mother would have seen, very well, how she’d written less and less of Richard.

But in the first year or so, there had been plenty, and minute details of where they’d traveled, the people she met, the things she saw.

She could follow herself easily from her own words, and begin to see.

She’d think a great deal more, she promised herself. She might never have the answers, but she’d found a bank box from a key in the pocket of a jacket.

So she’d think a great deal more.

She had the counter set for dinner, the wine she’d bought—she’d have to hope for good tips on Friday night—ready when she heard Griff’s truck.

She got out a beer, opened it and walked out to meet him.

He looked hot, sweaty and all but edible when he smiled over at her, leaned on his truck, tipped his sunglasses down to look at her over them while the dog ran in circles over the front lawn.

“Now, that’s what’s been missing from the front porch. A beautiful redhead with a cold beer.”

“I figured you’d be ready for one.” She walked down the steps. “I have brothers.”

“I’m more than ready for one. I’m still not touching you. May turned to August today.”

“It often does.”

“You should brace yourself for after I get a shower. How’s Callie doing?”

“About to have hot dogs on the grill for supper with her cousin and her best friend, and that’s after they were all stripped down so they could run around in the sprinkler.”

“Sprinkler sounds pretty good. Hot dogs don’t sound bad.”

“Those’ll have to wait for next time.”

“When I have a beautiful redhead with a cold beer fixing dinner, I’m not picky.”

He walked in the house with her, with the pup rushing to keep up. Griff sniffed the air. “What’s cooking? It smells great.”

“Meat loaf with baby potatoes and carrots.”

“Meat loaf?” He sniffed again. “Seriously?”

“It’s a warm day for it, but a manly meal. You looked like meat loaf for supper when I saw you today.”

“I haven’t had homemade meat loaf since the last time I was in Baltimore and sweet-talked my mother into it. Why don’t most women appreciate the loaf of meat?”

“You just answered your own question. I’m just going to go check on it.”

“I’ll grab that shower. Then brace yourself, Red.”

Amused, stirred, she went back to the stove, judged she’d timed it well. Then reconsidered.

Self-confidence, she thought. She remembered what it was like to be confident and bold.

She turned the oven down and went up the back stairs.

Griff chugged the cold beer while cool water rained blissfully down on his head. It felt like pounds of sweat and grime sliding away. It was going to be a nice deck, he thought, but he hadn’t been ready for the change in the weather.