Death on a Deadline

the windowsill, letting it support my weight. The thought made me dizzy. “Thank you for the flowers. They were beautiful.”
    His eyes widened, and he gave an incredulous laugh. “Why didn’t you say that then?”
    “I was ashamed.”
    He shook his head. “Until the other day when we were eating at the diner, I thought you blamed me because my dad and mom moved away and left you.”
    My turn to laugh. “We messed things up good, didn’t we? I was so self-centered to think that the world revolved around the Olympics.”
    “I should have tried harder to get through to you. I let my pride get in the way.”
    “Is that why you never tried again to contact me once you went away to college?” I had to know. Deep down even then I’d realized the way I acted after the Olympics was wrong. But I never expected him to just forget about me.
    “I didn’t want to be rejected again. By the time I got over that, it seemed like it had been too long.”
    “I’m sorry.” I didn’t mind saying it first. Pride wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
    “Me, too.” He reached for me and I didn’t pull away. “I wish I’d tried harder.”
    He traced my lips with his thumb and kissed me on the cheek. “Do-over?”
    “Yes,” I whispered as he brought his lips to mine. The ghosts of the past had been laid to rest. There was no strong sense of the familiar, no reawakening of a childhood romance. There was just me—almost thirty but far from desperate—kissing a strong Christian man I could easily imagine spending the rest of my life with.
    “Lucky you moved back to Lake View or we’d have never known, I guess,” I said a few minutes later.
    He grinned and raised one eyebrow. “Luck had nothing to do with it.”

Seventeen

    A buzzing noise jarred me awake. I lay still in the dark for a minute, listening to Carly breathe. I’d been deeply engrossed in a vivid dream. Alex and I were on jet skis, racing each other across the lake. We were both laughing, when suddenly a big wall emerged from the water, and he went to the left of it and I went to the right. No matter how far I went , there was never a break in the wall or a place to cut over to him. Some dreams weren’t worth analyzing.
    I fumbled around on the nightstand and winked at the red numbers on my alarm clock.
    5:29 a.m.
    Beside the clock, my cell phone was lit up. I picked it up and looked at the screen. One New Message. I held it in my hand as I relaxed back on my pillow. “Dumb phone.” Sometimes it wouldn’t show I had a new message until hours after the fact. Unfortunately, I never thought to check them until it buzzed.
    “Um, Jenna. . .” Carly’s sleep-blurred voice sounded beside me.
    “Yeah?”
    “You might be going a little ove rboard with the animal thing.”
    I raised myself up on one elbow and looked over at her. A shadowy figure I recognized as Mr. Persi was sprawled out on top of her and Neuro was curled up on her feet. I laughed. “You wanted me to commit.”
    “Yeah, but I had something a little more human in mind,” she mumbled.
    “Well, don’t start planning the wedding, but at least I’m working on that.” I shooed the animals off the bed and sat up. Mr. Persi usually came and got in my bed when he needed to go out.
    She kept her eyes closed but she smiled. We’d talked until one thirty or so about my date.
    “What about you?”
    Her eyes opened. “What about me what?”
    “Have you seen Elliott lately?”
    She gave a negative grunt and turned her back to me. “I need sleep.”
    I pressed the phone against my ear as I stumbled down the hall, the dog at my heels. The automated voice said, “You have one message sent at 9:34 p.m.” Of course, I’d left the phone upstairs while I was with Alex.
    I opened the back door and listened to the message as Mr. Persi bounded into the backyard. “Jenna? It’s Brendan. I still need to talk to you. It’s urgent. Call me in the morning or just come by. I’ll be up by six.” Silence crackled on the line, then, “And Jenna, please don’t tell anyone I called.”
    I saved the message. A dreadful howl sounded from the porch, and I hurriedly opened the door. Mr. Persi shot in. Not long after I had allowed him into my house to stay, I solved the mystery of that first night’s episode of horrible howling on the porch. The dog was highly attuned to sirens. Even when I couldn’t hear them, he could. And they apparently inspired him to mock them. “You ambulance chaser, you,” I