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Chapter Three

J osiah stared at Claire Baney.

Well, it wasn’t Claire Baney anymore. Whatever her married name was, he didn’t know.

But she looked just the same as she had in high school, when he’d had a bit of a crush on her.

Of course, he’d been skinny with glasses and a nerdy reputation, and someone like Claire wouldn’t have looked at him twice.

She didn’t really look at him twice now, although he’d changed a good bit since their school days.

He was one of those kids who hadn’t really started to grow until their senior year in high school.

He’d filled out a good bit after that too, but of course, Claire hadn’t been around to see it.

“Hello, Claire,” he said as she continued to stare at him.

She seemed to shake herself.

“Hello, Josiah,” she said, looking like she was forcing herself to be polite. “It’s good to see you. Unfortunately, I have bread rising in the kitchen, so I’d better go check on it.”

He stood there while she turned around and walked into the kitchen.

Then his gaze turned toward Miss Mattie—most people around here called her Grandma.

Miss Mattie shrugged and then said, “That toilet is back here,” and she led the way to the bathroom, where he could hear the toilet running long before they got there.

There were a couple of kids watching him from inconspicuous places, and he assumed those were Claire’s children. He’d heard she had two, but he wasn’t exactly well plugged into the underground gossip vines of Raspberry Ridge, and he wouldn’t be surprised if his information was inaccurate.

His mom had suffered from multiple sclerosis since he was in junior high, and he’d foregone college so he could stay and help her and his dad.

His mom was still doing okay, and his dad still worked as a radiology tech at the Blueberry Beach Hospital. And he still hung around, taking care of his mom and helping out around the house for his dad as well.

He supposed most people would figure he had a lack of ambition and look down on him.

In reality, he loved his small town and spent a lot of time trying to figure out how he could earn a living so he could stay right where he was.

“Once you get that fixed, don’t you run off.

We’re having homemade bread for supper and fresh egg salad with eggs I just gathered.

I also have eggs for you in a carton on top of the refrigerator.

Don’t leave without them, and make sure you get yourself some fresh bread, okay?

” Miss Mattie put her hands on her hips and gave him her no-nonsense look.

He could no more disagree with her than he could back-talk his mom.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, meeting her gaze before he turned back to the running toilet.

It sounded like it might need a new float, and he didn’t have one of those with him.

But once he got the lid off, he might be able to figure out something else.

He ought to at least be able to figure out a way to get it to quit running until he could get to the hardware store and get the pieces he needed.

She’d told him she had a toilet that needed fixing, but she hadn’t given him any details.

He’d done a good bit of work for her around the place in the last year or so. It was almost like she was gearing up to host her granddaughter, but if she’d known about it, she hadn’t told him.

She had jobs lined up for him through the summer too. One of those included fixing the trellis beside the rosebush on the gable end of the house.

He remembered back when he was a kid, the deep red roses that had climbed up there every spring.

He could still smell them if he thought about it and remember how he thought about climbing up the trellis to Claire.

Not that he’d had an idea to pursue Claire for very long. She’d been pretty clear that she wasn’t interested, and somehow her lack of interest had convinced him that he was wasting his time.

It took about an hour to fix the toilet. It turned out it wasn’t the float after all, and he was able to use the tools in his bag to fix it.

He’d figured out that he was pretty clever at fixing things and putting things together when he was in junior and senior high.

Of course, at that point in his life, he hadn’t considered that he might be able to make a living out of it.

But it turned out there were millionaires who had large yachts that ran on Lake Michigan, and with just a little bit of advertising—but mostly word of mouth—he’d been able to pick up jobs at the port down in Blueberry Beach.

He only needed one or two jobs a month, and then he could spend the rest of his time in the small town he loved.

Interesting the way life worked out sometimes.

He thought that again as he walked into the kitchen and saw Claire in there. He hadn’t thought he’d run into her again. There was a lot of water under the bridge, but they did have some history.

Nothing she would probably want to remember, although he thought back on it with fondness.

“And then, once you have the loaves formed, you can put them into the pans you buttered, and then you have to wait for them to rise. Usually takes about thirty or forty-five minutes,” Miss Mattie said as he walked into the kitchen.

“I just wanted to let you know I was all done. The toilet’s fixed. I thought I would need a new float, but it turned out I had the pieces I needed in my bag.”

He’d set his bag by the door, and he’d been tempted to walk out, but Miss Mattie had specifically asked him to stay, and he found he couldn’t deliberately ignore her request.

“My goodness, that took hardly any time at all. Come on in. The bread isn’t quite ready, but you can sit at the table and catch up with Claire. I think you remember her, don’t you?”

“I do. We went to school together,” he said, after pausing for a moment to see if Claire would speak up. She was looking at him from the corner like he was some kind of spider that had crawled out of hiding.

It was kind of the way he remembered her looking at him in school too.

But he couldn’t change that. He wasn’t quite sure what her issue was, although… Maybe he had an inkling. Still, she’d been through a good bit back in school, and he had no idea what she’d been through since then. He could cut her some slack.

“I don’t want to stay too long. My dad?—”

“Oh, don’t you worry. Your mom expects me to feed you, and you told me yesterday that your dad was going to be home tonight, so it was a good night for you to come over and fix the toilet.”

He’d said that. It was true. His dad got home early on Thursdays and had Fridays and the weekends off. He worked fourteen- and sixteen-hour shifts Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.

“Claire, have you spoken with Josiah since high school?” Miss Mattie was obviously trying to facilitate a conversation between the two of them.

Josiah felt a little bad for her. After all, Claire was obviously not wanting to talk to him. He noted that the boy who had been there earlier was nowhere in sight, but Miss Mattie had been teaching the girl about the bread while Claire stood against the counter, her arms crossed, watching.

“Josiah, go on. Sit down for a bit.” Miss Mattie smiled engagingly. “I have some chocolate cake that I was holding back, but… I’ll get you a piece. That ought to make waiting a little easier.”

He did have a weakness for chocolate cake, and she knew it. Which was why there was cake there, he was sure. He couldn’t decline her offer.

“Claire, darling, why don’t you grab the cake that’s on top of the refrigerator and cut a nice generous piece for Josiah. You can get one for yourself too if you want to. You look like you could use a little meat on your bones.”

Miss Mattie wasn’t wrong. Claire looked as skinny as a rail. Unhealthily skinny, if there was such a thing, although the more he looked at the weight tables in the doctor’s office, the more he felt like being so skinny that your bones stuck out was what they considered healthy nowadays.

When he was younger, he was all elbows and knees and knobby bones that stuck out in odd places. But he’d filled out some and put on some muscle, so he didn’t look like a toothpick with elbows anymore. Still, he’d probably never be heavyset.

“It’s been a while, Claire,” he said as she set the cake down on the table without saying anything.

Miss Mattie set two plates down and the spatula to scoop the cake out with. Claire murmured a thank you, and then she looked directly at Josiah.

“It has. On purpose, for my part.”

Okay. He wasn’t sure what to say about that. Was she talking about him, or was she talking about being in Raspberry Ridge in general?

“It’s good that you’re back.” He tried to rack his brain for something else to say. “It’s pretty this time of year.”

The weather. The good old standby when a person couldn’t think of anything else to say. And Claire was not exactly looking welcoming at him in any way.

“I suppose,” she said, and he didn’t know whether she was answering his first comment or his second. Maybe she was combining both answers into one.

This was going to be a long half hour until the bread was ready. He wasn’t sure he was going to be able to endure this level of passive-aggressive almost glaring from Claire the entire time.

“You know what, it’s pretty warm in this kitchen with the oven heating up and everything, so why don’t you two take your cake and go sit out on the front porch?

Lana and I will tidy up in here, and then we’ll go make sure that Dan didn’t wander off.

We’ll have to talk to him about lake safety soon. ”

“Yeah, I wanted to do that, but I haven’t gotten around to it. I figured after they get back from school tomorrow, we’ll?—”

“We’re going to school tomorrow?” the girl said—what did Miss Mattie call her? Lana? She didn’t sound very happy.