Free It Happened One Week by Joann Ross

to leave. “With everything.”
    Matters taken care of to her satisfaction, Reva Carlson returned to her own work, leaving Amanda with the feeling that the woman’s parting comment had little to do with the upcoming challenge exercises.
    After she finished unpacking the boxes, Amanda headed down the hall to the kitchen, to thank Mary Cutter for the superb Continental breakfast, when she heard her name being called.
    Believing it to be someone from the agency, she turned, surprised to see two familiar faces.
    “Miss Minnie? Miss Pearl?” The elderly sisters had been guests the last time Amanda had stayed at the inn.
    “Hello, dear,” one of them—Minnie or Pearl, Amanda couldn’t remember which was which—said. Her rosy face was as round as a harvest moon and wreathed in a smile. “We heard you’d come back. It’s lovely to see you again.”
    “It’s nice to see you, too. It’s also a surprise.”
    “I don’t know why it should be,” the other sister said. “With the exception of the three years the inn was closed—”
    “A terrible shame,” the other interrupted. “As I was telling Dane just yesterday—”
    “Sister!” A scowl darkened a sharp, hatchet face. “I was speaking.”
    “I’m sorry, sister.” There was a brief nod of a lavender head that had been permed into corkscrews; the pastel hue complemented the woman’s pink complexion. “I was just pointing out to Amanda how sad it was that such a lovely inn had been allowed to fall into disrepair.”
    “You’d never know that to look at it now,” Amanda said.
    “That’s because Dane has been working around the clock,” the thinner of the two sisters huffed. It was more than a little obvious she resented having her story sidetracked. “As I was saying, with the exception of those three unfortunate years, we have been visiting Smugglers’ Inn since 1932.”
    “I believe it was ‘33, sister.”
    A forceful chin thrust out. “It was 1932.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “Of course. It was the year the Lindberg baby was kidnapped and all the guests were talking about the tragedy.”
    “I seem to remember everyone talking about those two bank robbers.”
    “That was two years later,” the other snapped with the certainty of a woman who’d spent forty-five years as the research librarian for the Klamath County Library insouthern Oregon. “Bonnie and Clyde were shot in 1934. That was also the year FBI agents killed John Dillinger outside that movie theater.”
    The term sibling rivalry could have been invented to define Minnie and Pearl Davenport. Recalling all too well how these arguments could go on all day, Amanda repeated how nice it was to see the women again and escaped into the kitchen.
    This room, too, was as she remembered it—warm and cheerful and immensely inviting. Fragrant, mouth-watering steam rose from the pots bubbling away on the gleaming stove; more copper pots hung from a ceiling rack and the windowsill was home to a row of clay pots filled with fresh green herbs.
    An enormous refrigerator that hadn’t been there the last time Amanda had sneaked into the kitchen for a heart-toheart talk with Mary Cutter was open.
    “Hello?”
    A dark head popped out from behind the stainless-steel door. “Amanda, hello!” Dane’s mother’s expression was warm and welcoming. She closed the refrigerator and opened her arms. “I was hoping you’d get a chance to escape those boring old business meetings and visit with an old friend.”
    As she hugged the woman, Amanda realized that Mary Cutter had, indeed, become a friend that summer. Even though, looking back on it, she realized how concerned Mary had been for Dane. As she would have been, Amanda admitted now, if some sex-crazed, underage teenage girl had been chasing after her son.
    “They’re not that bad.” Amanda felt duty-bound to defend the group.
    “Oh?” Releasing her, Mary went over to the stove and poured two cups of coffee. She put them on the table, andgestured