Chapter 12 teaser: Mac was sitting at the table, wearing what looked like the same shirt as yesterday – another plaid flannel, green and blue this time. He was bent over some task that had covered the table in white patches, too absorbed to look up when Nikki emerged from the girls’ bedroom.
“Morning, mountain man. I don’t suppose there’s a prayer of coffee, is there?” Nikki remembered with annoyance that there probably wouldn’t even be coffee makings available – Mac still didn’t drink the stuff, and he obviously wasn’t going to be feeding it to his grandkids.
“Check the cabinet by the fridge . . . I think Sam might’ve left something the last time he was up here. Lisa drinks espresso. And there’s about fifty million kinds of herbal tea.”
Mac obviously hadn’t shaved. She wondered if he had slept; but his eyes were sharp and bright, without the haunted shadows she’d seen so clearly last night.
Nikki looked at the table to see what he was messing around with. “
Index cards? Isn’t that a little, well . . . ”
“What?”
“Um, quaint? Nostalgic? Low-tech?”
“Neo-Luddite?” Mac grinned.
“Yeah, that’s the word.” She cocked her head sideways, trying to puzzle out the scrawls on the cards. Mac’s writing had always been terrible: there was an old story at Phoenix that Willis had once created a nearly unbeatable code system based on Mac’s handwriting.
Mac shrugged. “My mom and Harry and I used to do jigsaw puzzles. My mom would tell me to look at the pieces that were already in place, and they’d tell you something about the pieces that were missing.”
Follow the link for the full chapter: Chapter Twelve: InterrogativeOr begin at the beginning:Chapter One: Present Imperfect