Free Town in a Wild Moose Chase by B. B. Haywood Page B

curiously as her friend flipped open her phone and began to key in a quick message. “So how are things going with you and Ben, anyway?” she asked after a few moments.
    “Fine.”
    “You guys been doing anything… interesting lately?”
    Absently, Candy answered, “Not really. He’s been tied up with work a lot lately.”
    “So I’ve noticed. What’s he working on that’s so important, if I may ask?”
    “He hasn’t talked much about it.”
    “Isn’t that strange? He’s talked about everything else with you, hasn’t he?”
    Candy glanced up at her friend as she punched a few more buttons. “What are you getting at?”
    “Well, since last summer he’s been hanging out with you a lot, telling you all these things about his life and his family. But he hasn’t said much about his work, has he?”
    Candy finished keying in her message and pressed the send button. As she slipped the phone back into her pocket, she squinted over at Maggie. “So?”
    “So I’m saying that this sort of thing has been happening a lot lately. For the past few weeks you’ve been telling me he’s been distracted a lot. How many times has he canceled on you this month?”
    Candy had to think about that. “Now that you mentionit, there
have
been a couple of times—two or three, maybe.” She shrugged. “He’s a busy guy.”
    “Yes, but doesn’t he seem busier than usual lately? When he comes in the dry cleaner’s, he barely talks to me. He seems like a different person.”
    “He
is
a different person, after what happened last summer.”
    “I know that, but something else has happened lately. I can sense it in him. He seems, well, more preoccupied than usual—if that’s possible. He mumbles a lot now—have you noticed that? And he walks with his head down a lot, like he’s looking for a lost fifty-dollar bill.”
    Candy nodded but said nothing. She’d noticed lots of changes in Ben over the past eight months or so, and most had been positive. So when he’d become immersed in some new project, she hadn’t overreacted. She’d asked him about it a couple of weeks ago, and he’d told her vaguely what he was working on—something to do with the history of the town, he’d said. She hadn’t pressed him on it, and hadn’t thought much about it at the time, but she realized Maggie was right. Whatever he was working on, it was starting to occupy more and more of his time.
    She was about to say something to Maggie when her cell phone buzzed. She fished it out of her pocket again.
    Ben had texted her a message:
Got held up sorry will touch base soon.
    “Well, shoot,” Candy said softly as she closed the phone and tucked it back in her pocket. “It’s happened again.”
    “Ben?”
    “He got held up.”
    “There you go.”
    “But I thought things were going so well,” Candy said, a little bewildered at this most recent development. “He’s been hanging around the farm so much for the past six months that I thought things were starting to get…”
    She let her voice trail off but Maggie finished the sentence for her. “Serious?”
    “Yeah, I guess that’s the right word. Though I’m still not sure if that’s what either of us wants.”
    “Girl, you and him need to have a heart-to-heart talk very soon and figure out what you want to do.”
    “I thought that’s what we were doing.”
    “Maybe he had a different reason on his mind for getting cozy with you.”
    “Like what?”
    Maggie shrugged. “He’s a man. Who knows? Why don’t you ask him?”
    “Maybe I should,” Candy said thoughtfully, trying hard again not to let herself jump to conclusions. But she couldn’t help wonder, in the back of her mind, if the events of eight months ago were somehow linked to the odd behavior she’d witnessed around town today.

NINE

    It was near dark when they left the inn. They chatted as they walked to their cars, hunkered down in their winter coats against the chilling air. A brisk wind had kicked up, flicking