I don’t know how long I sat like that. Suddenly she jerked awake. “How long have you been up?” she asked when she saw me. “What are you doing?”
“Watching you,” I said. “Did anyone ever tell you that you snore?”
“You’re not exactly blameless on that score,” she said. “But I chalked it up to your meds. How long have you been sitting there?”
“A while,” I said.
“Do you want something to eat?”
“I’m hungry enough I could probably tackle one of Ralph’s dead bagels.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Mel said. “When I went home to shower and change clothes, I brought you back some lentil soup from the Mediterranean Kitchen. That should be good for what ails you.”
I followed her into the kitchen and stood out of the way while she heated the food in my microwave, put it in a soup plate, and handed it over. (Had I been left to my own devices, I would probably have heated it in the styrofoam container and eaten it from same. I think I had forgotten I actually owned soup plates.)
“Thank you,” I said.
“I remembered how much you liked the soup the other night.”
“Not just thank you for the soup,” I said. “Thanks for everything.”
“You’re welcome,” she said. “But if you’re feeling better, maybe I should go so you can get some rest.”
“Rest?” I repeated. “I’ve been resting all day. When I fell asleep I had a houseful of company. Where’d they all go?”
“Home,” she said. “And that’s where I should be, too.”
“Stay for a little while,” I urged. “At least long enough for me to finish my soup, which is delicious, by the way.”
Mel sat down beside me and watched while I ate. It made me feel self-conscious. “You’re not having any?” I asked.
“I already ate,” she said.
So we sat there in silence for a while, but it didn’t seem that uncomfortable. In fact, it felt fine. It made me think about what Beverly had said—about my finding a life and a mate and doing something besides work. I thought about how it had been the last week—sharing work and coffee and soup and hospital waiting rooms with Mel Soames. It had been nice, far nicer than I would have thought possible.
I finished my soup and pushed the plate away. “The last thing I remember was Ralph Ames saying something about my going to Germany to pick up a new Porsche at the factory,” I continued.
“Sounds like fun,” Mel said. “I’ve always wondered what it would be like to drive on the autobahn, where there’s no such thing as a speed limit.”
“You’d probably be good at it,” I said. “Take to it like a duck to water.”
“Maybe so,” she said with a smile.
The depth of that smile made me feel all warm and fuzzy. At first I thought the pill might be kicking in again, but even at the time, though, I was smart enough to wonder if it wasn’t something else altogether—something that had the potential for making my grandmother a very happy woman.
Anne Corley had been gone from my life for a long time. Mel Soames wasn’t.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
J. A. JANCE is the New York Times bestselling author of the Joanna Brady series, the J. P. Beaumont series, and three interrelated thrillers: Hour of the Hunter, Kiss of the Bees, and Day of the Dead. She was born in South Dakota, brought up in Bisbee, Arizona, and now lives with her husband in Seattle, Washington, and Tucson, Arizona.
Also by J. A. Jance
JOANNA BRADY MYSTERIES
Desert Heat
Tombstone Courage
Shoot/Don’t Shoot
Dead to Rights
Skeleton Canyon
Rattlesnake Crossing
Outlaw Mountain
Devil’s Claw
Paradise Lost
Partner in Crime
Exit Wounds
J. P. BEAUMONT MYSTERIES
Until Proven Guilty
Injustice for All
Trial by Fury
Taking the Fifth
Improbable Cause
A More Perfect Union
Dismissed with Prejudice
Minor in Possession
Payment in Kind
Without Due Process
Failure to Appear
Name Withheld
Breach of Duty
Birds of Prey
Partner in Crime
AND
Hour of the Hunter
Kiss of the Bees
Day of the Dead
CREDITS
Designed by Cassandra J. Pappas
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
LONG TIME GONE. Copyright © 2005 by J. A. Jance. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ePub edition July 2005 ISBN 9780061748622
* * *
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jance, Judith A.
Long time gone/J. A. Jance.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-688-13824-
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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