California Girl by Patricia Rice

his nose. “And they had bubbles!” She rummaged in her sack to produce a
small red bottle. “They had a wand that blew enormous bubbles but I didn’t think we had room for that.” She
dipped the wand into the bottle and produced a twinkling stream of fragile
bubbles with the first wave.
    “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what you plan to do with
those?” he asked. She was such a mixture of child and wisdom that pinning her
into any one niche was equivalent to classifying bubbles.
    Her arched eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Play with them, of
course. Didn’t you ever play with bubbles?”
    “When my brothers were little, I guess.” He strode down the
block to the restaurant, darting glances down alleyways for the familiar sight
of his Rover. He didn’t need her analyzing the reasons he’d never learned to
play.
    Alys trailed behind him, leaving a string of bobbing bubbles
to the amusement of passersby.
    Smiling, she stopped to chat with an elderly lady who
admired the spinning gold-and-copper whirligig. The gnawing in Elliot’s stomach
demanded feeding. He ought to go ahead, grab a table, and let her catch up.
    But he lingered, watching her throw her dark hair back in
laughter. When was the last time he’d laughed like that? He wanted to smile
just looking at Alys. She was like the whirligig, bright and shiny, spinning
uselessly just for the fun of it.
    He didn’t have to approve. He could just enjoy.
    He’d enjoy a lot more if he knew Mame was safe. And that
Alys wasn’t deliberately dawdling to give Mame time to get farther ahead. He
should never have mentioned the assisted-living home. He had a feeling that had
pushed his travel companion over the edge to Mame’s side.
    She ran up to him a second later, catching his hand as if
she did it every day, dragging him onward. “She thinks she saw Mame earlier.
People notice strangers in small towns. The toy store clerk didn’t remember
her, but the owner was out to lunch. We could check back later.”
    Flabbergasted, not just by her observation but by the
electric shock waves elicited by her slender hand in his, Elliot accompanied
her into Café on the Route.
    Alys hadn’t been spinning uselessly. She’d been more focused
than he was. “Maybe you should be a detective,” he muttered, probably to
himself since she was busy looking for a bank safe in the restaurant. If this
crumbling structure had once been an old bank, outlaws should have robbed it.
    Heads swiveled at their entrance. Still holding Alys’s hand,
Elliot felt as if he’d been caught robbing a cradle, but he didn’t release her.
The old high school, gangly awkwardness threatened to turn him into a
hormone-fogged klutz as they threaded their way through chairs and tables.
Thankfully, Alys released his hand, so he could think again. There for a
moment, he’d been blinded by shining gold and copper.
    He remembered to scan the room for Mame and to ask the
waitress if she’d seen her. He felt foolish asking. What difference would it
make if Mame had come and gone? They couldn’t catch her any faster. The uneasy
possibility that this was a wild-goose chase lodged in his throat.
    * * *
    “You’re fretting again,” Alys said as Elliot slid into the
seat across from her, wearing such a serious frown that he almost had her
worrying. She loved Mame. She didn’t want anything to happen to her. But after
Elliot had explained the nature of Mame’s problem, and she knew Mame had been
taking medication and dealing with it for years, she honestly thought it was
best if Mame came to them and not the other way around.
    “I don’t like the idea of Mame driving alone,” he admitted.
“I was hoping someone had seen her so I could ask if she had anyone with her.”
    His heart was in the right place, Alys decided, although he
kept rubbing his chest as if he feared losing it. “We can stop at the
collectible store later. Mame couldn’t have resisted going in any more than I
could.”
    When he