Coming Home Read Online Free PDF Page A

them all with affection. This was his town and he loved every inch of it, even the uneven and cracked sidewalks—where there were sidewalks. To his fond eye, St. Galen's had a charm all its own. Rough and contrary, but appealing in its own down-to-earth-take-me-as-I-am fashion.
    He parked his truck in front of Heather-MaryMarie's and not bothering to lock the door, slammed it behind him as he got out. Walking past the oak half barrel filled with pink cosmos and white petunias, he pushed open one of the double-glass doors that led inside the rectangular log building.
    Heather-Mary-Marie's was as close to an old-fashioned dry-goods store as one was likely to find in this day and age. A little bit of everything could be found on the shelves, from clothes to plastic funeral wreaths. The store was owned and run these days by Cleo Hale, the granddaughter of the original founder who had named it for his three daughters. Not only did the store sell gifts, cards, Lotto, and clothing, but nearly half the population was in and out of its doors every day. Cleo was as good as any newspaper for being able to impart the latest news—and no censor ever put a lock on her tongue.
    Cleo was busy wrapping up a package for a customer when Jeb stepped inside and the tinkle of the bell on the door brought her brilliant red head around. Seeing Jeb, she grinned at him and said, “Go on back to the storeroom. Those shirts I ordered for you are on the shelf to the right just as you enter. Be with you in a sec.”
    The customer, Sally Cosby, who worked as a waitress across the street from Heather-Mary-Marie's at The Blue Goose Inn, giggled. Her friendly brown eyes dancing, she said, “Better be careful, Jeb. If I were a good-looking guy like you, don't know if I'd go in the back with Cleo.”
    Jeb had known both Cleo and Sally all his life. At sixty-five Cleo was old enough to be his mother, but there was nothing motherly about Cleo, although she did have a daughter from the first of five marriages. Cleo stood six feet tall, and while slim, she had the shoulders of a football player. A pair of gold earrings dangled almost to the top of those broad shoulders and she was wearing her hair in an improbable shade of red and twisted up in a French roll that had gone out of style in the sixties. A purple silk shirt and tight black jeans completed the picture. On anyone else those earrings, those clothes, and that hair would have looked bizarre, but not on Cleo. She had never been a beauty, her features tending toward heavy and plain, but with her big blue eyes, wide smiling mouth, and that torchlight hair, it seemed a perfect fit. Jeb kinda liked the whole picture—even the earrings. And he adored Cleo. She'd been razzing and ragging him for as long as he could remember but she also had one of the kindest hearts he'd ever known. In any crisis in the community, Cleo Hale was one of the first people to react and send out the call for help.
    As for Sally, he'd watched her grow up and had danced at her wedding fifteen years ago when she'd married Tim Cosby, a local logger. Sally came from a long-time valley family and was a noted local horsewoman—her thirteen-year-old twin daughters seemed to be following in their mother's footsteps. They already had a reputation for being hell on horseback, as their mother had been at that age, and had ridden half the boys in the valley into the ground. There wasn't much he didn't know about Sally and Cleo—or them about him. There were few secrets in the valley.
    Cleo snorted at Sally's comment. “Oh, hell, honey, he's safe—he's too old for me.”
    Jeb chuckled, waved a hand in their direction, and ambled to the back of the store. In the storeroom he found the half-dozen shirts Cleo had mentioned. Picking out three of them, all plaids and cowboy fit, he headed back toward the front of the store.
    For almost noon on a Thursday, with Sally gone, the store seemed oddly deserted. Plopping the shirts down on the wooden