“That your aunt and my grandmother like each other? No. That my grandmother has been hiding this huge secret about herself all my life? Yeah. It really does.”

Arthur grew still. Then he leaned back, his eyes newly hooded. “Are . . . you saying that Jo isn’t out?”

I shook my head. “Yes. She’s, I guess, super in, if that’s the right way of saying it. Which makes no sense.”

He blinked several times. “No. It doesn’t,” he murmured quietly, almost to himself. Then a second later he stood abruptly. “Pardon me.”

He started for the door.

“Hold up,” I called and followed him.

He paused, his hand on the doorknob.

“Where are you going?”

“Quick errand.”

“Oh.”

He opened the door but I grabbed his black cable knit sweater by the elbow to stop him again.

“What about tonight?” I asked.

“Tonight?”

“Well, I mean, yeah. About Christmasy things. I texted you earlier?”

A nod of recognition. “Ah, yes.” But he added nothing further.

“So, your aunt told me that she’s going to dinner with Grandma Jo, but did you, um, maybe want to still do one of those Perfect American Christmas activities?”

He gazed at me so long I wondered if he heard me at all. Then he shook his head. “No, thank you.”

The curtness caught me by surprise, which he must have seen in my expression because he attempted to soften it with a smile. But it failed to reach his eyes and that earlier tingle of concern became an electric current of dread. Those walls of his that had been down as late as last night were suddenly all the way back.

Something was definitely wrong.

Yet before I could draw in a breath to ask him what was going on, he already had the library door fully open and was gone.

Twenty-Three

Ten minutes after my unnerving library encounter with Arthur, I was standing in the inn’s parking lot staring at Mrs. Buzzard’s dark blue 2004 Lincoln Town Car. I was trying to determine whether I really had enough knowledge about how to drive because I knew replacing a wrecked car was a whole lot different than replacing burned pans.

My goal upon exiting the library had been to grab a slice of banana nut bread left over from yesterday’s lunch then swing by the hot chocolate bar and head up to my room, whereupon I would at long last veg out and process everything that had happened to me. But especially try to determine what the hell was up with Arthur.

None of that happened.