And why did I feel so compelled to defend myself to these women I hardly knew? When had motherhood become so damned competitive?
At my side, Francine was shaking her head and chuckling slightly.
“Honestly,” she whispered, rolling her eyes. “Some people.”
I felt reassured. I settled Jamie in a comfortable position and checked on the game. The Red Sox were at bat now. Timmy and his teammates were having a competition to see who could pull his batting helmet down the farthest over his eyes.
“How many innings do these games run?” I asked.
“Only three,” Francine said. “Feels like nine, though.”
“That’s because it takes about as long as nine in the majors.” I sighed and tried to find a more comfortable position on the unpadded metal bench. I was probably in for a lot of hours on these bleachers. Both Michael and my father adored baseball, so if either or both of the boys showed the slightest shred of athletic ability, they’d undoubtedly be playing T-Ball in another five years.
So I’d get a head start planning how I was going to cope. For example, figuring out how to volunteer for a cushy job before getting assigned an impossible one. I didn’t want to be bench coach, for example. It was like playing a game of whack-a-mole with live preschoolers. Not an assignment I should take on.
But the mother who was sitting beside a grocery bag of snacks and a cooler full of cold treats, guarding them lest the team begin pigging out prematurely—now that was the job to have. Snack Mom.
Or perhaps even better, the job of the woman who came up and exchanged a few words with the snack mom before scribbling a few things on the paper on her clipboard. Snack Coordinator.
“I hope she brought something my monster will eat,” one mother muttered behind us.
“I think it’s more important that the snack be healthy,” another mother announced.
As I listened to the ensuing debate over the relative merits of organic trail mix and Cheetos, I decided that any job connected to the snacks was too controversial.
Base coach. You stood out in the field, you made sure the runner ran when the ball was hit, and in the right direction, and you tried to keep the baseman awake and pointed toward the game. And you stood far away from the bleachers and their gossiping occupants. My kind of job.
A job Terence Mann seemed to have given up on. He and the mayor had retreated to a more private place near the edge of the woods that surrounded the athletic field and were still having a visibly heated conversation. Mann seemed to be getting the worst of it—most people did when they argued with the mayor. But the mayor didn’t look happy either.
What were they up to?
The thought continued to nag at me for the rest of the game and all the way home. Michael was out in the barn helping with the animals, so I dropped Timmy and the boys with him and went back to the house to grab what I needed to run my errands.
And maybe one of my errands should be stopping somewhere to learn a little more information about what was going on in town. But where? Bothering the chief for information was definitely out, but if I ran into Horace, I could probably get a few tidbits about the murder investigation. Ms. Ellie, at the library, kept her finger on the pulse of local politics, and could probably hazard a guess at what Mayor Pruitt and Terence Mann had been arguing about. But I wasn’t sure anyone could answer the most nagging question—whether Parker Blair’s murder had anything to do with any of this. For that—
“Earth to Meg?”
Chapter 7
I glanced up to see Caroline Willner looking at me with a concerned frown on her face. No wonder. I was standing in the pantry doorway with my stack of fabric grocery bags in my hand, staring into space.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was just thinking. Sleep deprivation meets information overload. How’s everything out in the barn?”
“Fine, as long as someone sensible’s there to keep them organized.” Clearly from her tone, Caroline considered herself the number one if not the only person to fill the sensible post. “Can I ask you a question or two? About something I can’t seem to get a straight answer on from any of the Corsicans?”
“Sure.” I dumped my empty bags on one of the kitchen chairs and sat down myself. Even if Caroline’s question was a short and simple one, my feet were tired.
“You could use some tea,” she said. She grabbed two cups from the cupboard.
“You don’t have to bother,” I said. “I could do that.”
“Sit,” she said. “And give me the straight scoop on this Mayor Pruitt.”
“I’d call him a weasel, if that wasn’t an insult to any self-respecting mustelid. What about him?”