She just wasn’t sure why this turnabout was happening, and it made her very suspicious. “I’m surprised to hear that from you,” she said. “It’s not what I would have expected.”
“Well, times change.”
She didn’t think about that, but something had definitely changed. As they walked, she passed Rosemoor and said, “Grandma is in here.”
“Ah,” he said, “well, I definitely don’t want to stop and visit her there—or anywhere,” he muttered, picking up the pace. “Come on. Let’s hurry up.”
She said, “I’m not rushing. I walk this way all the time.”
“But not with me,” he said. “I don’t even know why we’re really out here walking, not to a coffee shop, where we could be inside, where it’s nice and comfortable with the coffee.”
“It’s a beautiful day,” she said comfortably. “So no reason not to be out for a walk. I didn’t want to leave the animals alone.”
“Well, you have to leave them alone soon,” he said, “because you certainly can’t take them into the coffee shop.”
“My animals go with me everywhere,” she said. “The town is used to it by now.”
“Lord,” he said, looking at her in horror. “Tell me that you haven’t become the town crazy lady?”
“Huh,” she said, as she thought about it. “You may have something there. That may be exactly what I’ve done. Not everybody knows who I am or what I’m like, but probably just enough do.”
“Oh, dear,” he said. “You know that always upset me.”
“What? Rumors and being talked about?”
“Of course,” he said. “To think that other people are gossiping about you? That’s just terrible. Privacy is everything.”
“It is to you. I guess that’s why I’m wondering why you’re even here,” she said.
“I told you. I want to reconsider our future.”
“And yet there’s no reason for that,” she muttered. “You haven’t had anything to do with me in months, so why now all of a sudden?”
“When did you get to be so suspicious?” he asked in surprise.
She laughed. “You have no idea.” He stared at her, as if in question, but she just shrugged and moved on. “The bottom line is, I am suspicious.”
“I guess it must have been really tough for you these last few months,” he said sympathetically. “I should have considered that.”
“Considered what?” she asked. He just looked at her quietly. “So something is going on. I’m not sure what it is.”
At that, his phone rang. Something else that she remembered about him was how he was always on that phone. Not that she blamed him because it was such a digital age, but it seemed like, when they were together, he was always on his phone. He answered it while they were walking, and his voice rose sharply. She tried to block it out, but he sounded more and more like the Mathew she used to know.
“Well, find out,” he said. “It has to be somewhere.”
At that, her ears perked up. “What’s going on?” she asked curiously.
“Oh, just lawyers missing documents,” he said in disgust. “You’d think it would be simple to find stuff. We have digital storage, and we have paper storage, but no, no, no. Things still go missing all the time.” He got off his phone with a huff.
“I can imagine,” she said. She glanced around town, as they headed down to the corner of Lower Mission. “A Starbucks is up ahead,” she said. “We can always grab a coffee there.”
He nodded, but he was more absentminded now. “Did you talk to Robin at all when she was here?”
“She railed and ranted at me, but it wasn’t exactly a conversation.”
“No, when she gets off on her little moods,” he said, “it’s amazingly difficult to communicate.”
She wondered about the phone call. “I didn’t have anything to do with her, outside of her ranting and raving.”
“So you didn’t meet her for coffee? You didn’t have lunch with her?”
“Why would I?” she asked in surprise, quite shocked that he would even suggest that. “She screwed me over pretty badly.”
“Well, she was looking after my interests,” he said. “In all honesty, you should have expected that.”
“Why should I have expected it?” she said. “I hired her to represent me, not you.”
“Well, because we were already together.”
“But I didn’t know that,” she said in surprise.
He looked at her in shock, and then he started to laugh. “She had to disclose that.”
“Well, she didn’t,” she said bitterly. “I guess that I’m naive. I wasn’t expecting that.”
“Well, that’s why she’s was so irate when she contacted me then,” he said. “She said something about you making trouble for her.”
“What trouble was I supposed to make?” she said, shaking her head. “She’d already taken everything I had to give.”
“Interesting,” he muttered. But his voice was distant, as if he were thinking of something completely different. He started to chuckle. “No wonder she was so adamant about getting everything locked, signed, and sealed early.”
“But was it early?” Doreen asked.
“Well, it seemed rather fast to me.”
“Meaning, you thought I would put up a bigger fight.”
“Well, our agreement was pretty simple,” he admitted. “And, at the time, I was congratulating myself on Robin’s ability. But obviously she had another plan going.”
“What are you even talking about?” Doreen asked him in surprise. “What other plan?”
He looked at her and said, “Didn’t you know?”
“Know what?” she said. “I haven’t understood anything since that woman arrived at my doorstep. I get that you think that I don’t understand business and think I’m pretty stupid, but it’s hard to understand something if you don’t actually get any explanations. Or even enough information to make a proper decision about something.”
“No, no, no, of course,” he said, “that makes perfect sense.” But he started to chuckle.
“Will you explain?”
“No,” he said. “If you didn’t talk to her much …” Then his phone rang again. He looked at it, groaned, and said, “Just a minute.” He took a few moments to step farther aside. She eased her way toward him, as he walked away. She heard the urgency in this voice. “You’ve got to find it. … No, no, I’m busy. … Yeah, I know. … I’ll catch the plane. Don’t worry. Make sure you do too.”
And, with that, it carried on, but she didn’t catch most of the rest, and he finally pocketed the phone, stared up at the sky, and then turned to look at her. “Something has come up,” he said. He pulled out his wallet, handed her his business card, and said, “That’s my new cell phone. If you think of anything that she might have said or done that made you suspicious, let me know, will you?”