The Last Breath

“Don’t be ridiculous. He’s the new vice principal at the high school, and she’s a stay-at-home mother of two adorable girls. They’re perfectly normal, everyday members of society. They’re neighbors. We’re being neighborly.”

“Whatever. I don’t like him.”

Ella Mae wasn’t surprised. She’d only known Dean a few hours, but already she could see he wasn’t a man’s man. Too groomed, his clothes too stylish, his looks entirely too playboy handsome. Oh, yes. Cherokee High’s newest vice principal would certainly be a popular man about town, but not with the husbands.

“Let’s get back to our guests, shall we?” Ella Mae slid the last piece onto a plate and pointed Ray to the forks. “And be nice. I’m looking to make a new friend.”

Over the course of the next hour, Ella Mae tried. She honest-to-God tried. She asked Allison about her kids and if the girls played any sports. She asked about her favorite books and if Allison would be interested in joining the book club. She even offered to take Allison on a tour of the town and show her the best places to shop. Allison was painfully shy, said all of ten words over the course of the entire meal. By the time they moved outside for coffee and brandy on the porch, Ella Mae regretted her offer, and she dreaded those hours alone in a car with Allison.

Her gaze landed on Dean, sipping on a glass of Ray’s best brandy and looking more comfortable in his skin than an out-of-town semistranger should. Talk about opposites attracting. Dean was gorgeous and funny and charming, and for the life of her Ella Mae couldn’t figure out what a man like him saw in quiet, mousy Allison.

Three hours alone in a car with him, on the other hand...

Dangerous. Just thinking about Dean in that way was dangerous. Ella Mae flushed to the tips of her ears, and she gave herself a good scolding. Married women should not be thinking naughty thoughts about their equally married new neighbor, no matter how sexy he might be.

And then Dean laughed, a low and raspy sound that resonated somewhere deep in Ella Mae’s belly.

Oh, God. She was thinking naughty thoughts about Dean Sullivan again.

“Thank you again for dinner,” Dean said, his gaze lingering on Ella Mae a smidge longer than necessary. “I can’t imagine a more perfect greeting on our first night in town.”

“You’re welcome anytime.” Goose bumps tightened her skin, and Ella Mae looked away, out over her backyard, blinking into the inky blackness. There. Much better.

“And thanks for asking Gia to hang out with the girls tonight. I keep telling Allison they’re old enough to—” Dean broke off at his wife’s sharp look. “Well, we just worry.”

“Our younger daughter was diagnosed with Type I diabetes last June.” Allison’s voice was quiet as ever, but for the first time, Ella Mae heard footprints of fire in her tone. “Gave us quite a scare.”

Ella Mae felt a familiar tug, like some sort of phantom limb in her uterus, at the mother’s worry she saw in Allison’s expression. She loved Ray’s three kids fiercely, honestly she did, but it wasn’t the same kind of love she had for her own flesh-and-blood child.

“That must have been terrifying,” Ella Mae said.

“It still is,” Dean said. “Every time we think we have things under control, Caroline gets the flu or has a growth spurt, and we have to adjust her diet and insulin.” Dean turned to Ray, gave him a wry smile. “I have a feeling we’re about to become the pharmacy’s new best customers.”

Finally, a subject that got Ray to smile, really smile, and he puffed out his chest. “Glad to hear it. Though lucky for you, the money won’t be coming from your pocket. The school system recently overhauled their employee insurance plan, as I’m sure you know. I was an advisor to the task force.”

“Then I should thank you, since their plan is one of the reasons we moved here. There aren’t many plans out there robust enough to cover anything more than the bare minimum of insulin.” Dean shook his head, made a sour face. “No matter what you think of her husband’s politics, Hillary Clinton is right. The health care system in this country is flat-out broken.”

Ella Mae winced. Uh-oh. Dean had said the C-word.

Ray grew about four inches in the wicker chair, and his tone took a turn for the nasty. “Now I know politics in Chicago are a whole lot bluer than down here in the South, but let me assure you in no uncertain terms. Hillary’s plan is a disaster. Too top-heavy, far too regulated. Anybody who thinks it would work in the real world, isn’t living in the real world.”

Unlike his neighbor, Dean didn’t seem to get the least bit riled up. He lifted his lips in a friendly smile, crossed his legs casually at the ankle. “I’m living in the real world, Ray. And my world has gotten a lot more expensive since our plan back home dropped the coverage for dependents. Do you know how expensive it is to find insurance for a kid with diabetes? I’m not saying she’s not worth every penny. Just that her care is expensive and that clinics and hospitals seem to be in the business of making sure she stays sick, instead of caring about her health.”

Ella Mae popped out of her chair. “Ray, honey, would you like some more Scotch?”

Ray raised his glass in the air, jiggled it around. Dangit. Still a good two fingers left.

She whipped her head around to Allison. “More ice water?”

But Ray wasn’t to be distracted, and he turned back to Dean, his tone and stance on edge. “I’m not saying the insurance system isn’t broken, Dean. Just that the healthcare system is fine as it is, and the Clintons should concentrate on what’s really ailing this country—the economy.”

“Then what do you suggest for families like mine?” Dean’s voice was as amiable as ever. “One whose employers drop the dependents from their insurance plan when one of their employee’s family members is diagnosed with a chronic or life-threatening illness.”

Before Ray could respond, Ella Mae stepped in front of him, blocking his view of Dean and reaching for his still full glass, and giving him a look that left no doubt as to how quickly he needed to stop picking a fight with the neighbor. “How about I refresh y’all’s glasses?”

“That’s all right, darlin’.” Ray clenched his jaw and stood, snatching back his glass. “I’ll go in and do it myself.”

And then he went inside without another word, without catching the screen door so it didn’t slam shut behind him.

Ella Mae sank back into her chair, and the three fell into an awkward silence punctuated by the angry cry of a cicada.

Allison broke it first, standing, smoothing her skirt. “I better get back to Caroline. Thank you for a lovely night, Ella Mae. Will you thank Ray for me, as well?”

Ella Mae cleared her throat. “Of course. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

At the bottom step to the side yard, Allison paused. “You coming, Dean?”

Dean pushed off the railing to go and then thought better of it. “I’ll be over in just a minute. I want to wait for Ray, apologize for getting him so riled up.”

“Oh. Okay, then.” Allison glanced at Ella Mae, smiled stiffly and then disappeared, swallowed up into the shadows. “Don’t be long,” came her voice from across the yard.

“I won’t.” Dean’s answer was distracted. His attention was elsewhere. On Ella Mae elsewhere.

Ella Mae went as still as an opossum on a country road. Across the lawn, a door squeaked, fell shut with a click. Inside Ella Mae’s house, the low notes of a TV hummed. Ella Mae was breathless. Her heart might have even stopped beating. She was alone with Dean Sullivan on the porch, and something about the way he looked at her made her think he’d been waiting all night for this moment.

“Seems we chased everybody away,” Dean said.

“Not that far away.” Ella Mae’s tone held a note of reckless warning, her eyes a flash of daring. Daring him, and maybe also herself.

A breeze kicked up on the front lawn, chilling Ella Mae’s skin and tickling her nose with the scent of honeysuckle. This was the tipping point, Ella Mae knew. Dean could get up now and walk away, go home to his new house and boring wife and sleeping daughters, or he could send them both into a frenzy.

He turned and leaned his elbows onto the railing, staring off into the black night. “I love it here already. And that view is sure something else.” He glanced at Ella Mae over his shoulder. “Too bad we can’t see it now because it’s pretty spectacular, don’t you think? Especially now the leaves are about to change.”

Ella Mae said nothing.

He straightened and whirled back around, and his dark gaze found hers immediately. “Principal Whitehead told me I’ve not lived until I’ve seen Great Smoky Mountains Park. Are the trees there as pretty as he says?”

Trees? He was really talking about trees? Disappointment spread across her skin like a bruise, and she reprimanded herself for it. “He’s right. They are pretty.”

“What’s that, about a forty-five-minute drive?”

She bit her lip, nodded again.

And then his mouth rode up into a wicked smile. “Do you think that’d be far enough?”

Ella Mae’s heart took off in a wild gallop.

Frenzy. Definitely frenzy.