Free Knocking at Her Heart (Conover Circle #1) by Beverly Long

him. You just get your little butt back upstairs
and get into bed.”
    “But—”
    “She’s right,” Sam said. “You
should be resting.”
    She didn’t want to go. Didn’t
want to turn over control of her business. “I’ll just sit here and I won’t say
a word.”
    Both Sam and Carol shook their
heads. Maddie realized it would be futile to try to argue. 
    “All right,” she said. “But I’m
not happy about this.”
    “Don’t worry,” Sam said. “I’ll
come see you later and give you all the gory details. Then you can say I told
you so.”
    Maddie didn’t answer. She didn’t need
to be worrying about telling Sam why it was such a bad idea for him to be
around. She needed to spend some time telling herself.
    When she got upstairs, she poked
her head into her guest room, making sure that it was still in good shape. When
her parents had previously visited, they had declined her offer of the guest
room and stayed at a bed and breakfast five blocks over. They said they didn’t
want to impose.
    She supposed that could be
true. 
    But she kind of figured it was
because they were just as uncomfortable with her as she was with them. They
were strangers who’d shared a house for eighteen years. She suspected that
riders on the subway, sharing a bench seat, had more sincere conversations. She
knew little about their hopes and dreams and quite frankly, she’d stopped
hoping a long time ago that they might ask about hers.
    But given that her mother was
traveling alone and might be uncomfortable staying somewhere strange, Maddie
would once again offer up the guest room.
    Back in the living room, she sank
down on the couch and closed her eyes. She woke up sometime later when she
heard a persistent knocking on her door. She blinked, glanced at her watch, and
realized she’d been sleeping for over three hours. She opened the door,
expecting Carol, but was surprised to see Sam and Kelsie.
    “I hope you don’t mind,” he said,
motioning to Kelsie. “When Jean dropped her off, she was really worried about
you. I told her she can’t tell the other kids that she saw you.”
    The little girl, who had her
uncle’s dark hair and dark eyes, was half-hiding behind Sam’s leg. “It’s fine,”
Maddie said.
    “I’ll be back in a couple minutes
to get her. I don’t want to be gone too long. The Simmons twins look like
they’re up to something.”
    Ricky and Robert Simmons were
identical twins that, for the safety of others, should probably have been
separated at birth. What one didn’t think of, the other one did. 
    “You need to watch them very
carefully,” Maddie advised. “They’re small but incredibly quick and really
dangerous.”
    “I gathered that after I found
them climbing up the curtains. They were pretending to be cats.”
    After Sam left, Maddie patted the
couch. “Come sit here.”
    Kelsie didn't move. Maddie tried
again. "Are you going to color today?"
    "I thought you might
die."  Kelsie spoke the words clearly.
    What? Where had that come from?
Maddie got up from the couch and went to stand next to the little girl. She
carefully eased herself down onto the floor beside her so that she could be at
eye-level.
    "I'm fine. Your uncle and
all the other doctors took very good care of me. In a couple of days, I'll be
back to work."
    "I wouldn't have seen you
again if you had died." 
    "That's true," Maddie
acknowledged, not willing to lie to the child.
    “Uncle Sam knew somebody who
died.”
    So that explained the preoccupation
with death. “Was she very old? Like a grandma?”
    Kelsie shook her head. “No. I saw
pictures of her. She was old like you.”
    Maddie almost laughed but she
couldn’t. Not when Kelsie stood before her, so serious.
    “I heard Mommy and Uncle Sam
talking. Uncle Sam was crying.”
    Someone important to Sam had
died. She fought the crazy urge to pump a four-year-old for more information.
    “Kelsie, I’m not going to die.
The next time you come, I’ll be downstairs and