Tomorrow's Sun by Becky Melby Page B

neighborhood.”
     
    Knowing you
. The air through the window turned strangely cold. “I’ve met a couple. Um, what do you know about the things in the attic?”
     
    A carefree laugh glided on airwaves from Highway 1. “I didn’t even know there was an attic! Sorry I’m not much help. Luke and I were actually baffled that she’d left it to us. Other than that summer with you, I’d only been there a few other times. She was my grandma’s mom, you know. That’s kind of distant.”
     
    “I guess.”
     
    “So whatever you found, it’s all yours to keep or dump. Hey, I have to make a couple calls for work. Can I call again tomorrow? I need some guy advice.”
     
    This time, the sarcasm wouldn’t fit down her throat. “Sure. Call me. I’m the go-to girl on relationships.”
     
    “Don’t be like that. The past is past. Isn’t that what your counselor said? You learned from the Keith mistake and that makes you an expert.”
     
    “Right. Expert.”
     
    “Stop that! Forget I ever brought him up and go have an awesome day. What are you doing today anyway?”
     
    “Shopping for bedroom furniture.”
     
    “See? You’re headed in the right direction. But don’t get serious about anyone, okay? I’m scoping out the possibilities here. Love you!” With another airy California laugh, she said good-bye.
     

     
    It was much cooler in the barn than in the gravel drive where she’d parked the van. Emily unrolled the thin sleeves of her blouse as she followed Tina Palin around long tables filled with linens, glassware, and knickknacks.
     
    “Do you need a bed?”
     
    “No. I’ve got that covered.” No need to explain that she’d already bought a mattress—only a mattress, as the closer she was to the ground in the morning, the better.
     
    “Over here’s the air conditioner. It’s kind of massive. Does it look like it’ll fit?”
     
    Calculating the weight of the behemoth partially hidden by a tarp, Emily nodded. “It’ll be perfect.” She envisioned Jake fighting it up the folding stairs he’d just installed.
     
    “Good.” Tina bent over and shoved a stack of flowerpots out of the way. “I should send all these with you to give to Jake. Have you met his brother-in-law? Now there’s a piece of work. A friend of ours just closed her greenhouse and Ben Madsen bought, like, two hundred flowerpots from her. Weird guy.” She pulled the tarp away.
     
    “Don’t you try moving that.”
     
    With a laugh that bounced from the empty stanchions on one side to the hay hook swinging overhead, Tina shrugged. “I won’t. I’ll have Colt, my hubby, load it all in his truck and bring it to you. Though I probably could do it. I hayed the whole season I was pregnant with my first.” She prodded the slight bulge of her abdomen with one finger. “My OB says in a healthy pregnancy you’d actually have to be trying to hurt it for anything to happen.”
     
    An unseen hand stretched over Emily’s windpipe. She turned away, pretending to be engrossed in the curved arm of an old rocking chair.
     
    “That rocker belonged to my great-aunt. My mother got it when her cousin died. She was an only child and she’d never married, so there was no one to pass it on to. My mother said she was probably rocked in it when she was a baby, so it’s a little sentimental, but my sisters and I don’t have the room. I have my mom’s chair. She rocked us girls in it and nursed all my babies in this chair.” Her words used up the air Emily struggled to suck in through her closing throat.
     
    “You said you had a little desk,” she rasped. “May I see it?”
     
    “Sure. Sorry, I know I ramble.” She pointed at an oak desk with a single drawer. “You’re seriously going to live in your attic?”
     
    Following slowly, Emily breathed the spots from her eyes and the thoughts from her head. “I’ll be out of the way and I won’t have to move from room to room.”
     
    “Yeah, guess that makes sense.” Tina