Flora needed to get the boys as far from Stillwater as she could, possibly forever. If Leon wasn’t ready to do long-term, how could she ask him to uproot himself from the town he loved? The answer was simple. She couldn’t.
She had no way to predict the future. If they were meant to be together, it was possible this was a bump on their road map. Maybe the killer would be caught quickly, and she could come back again. There were a lot of unknowns in that sentence. It was hard to pin her happiness on the outcome of a police investigation.
When Leon didn’t come to bed, she wasn’t sure how to react. Should she go to him and tell him how she felt? Force him to confront the truth? What if he wasn’t ready, and he denied his feelings? Then she would lose the tiny sliver of hope she still had. No matter how much she craved his arms around her right now, she had to give him the space he needed.
Somehow, she managed to catch a couple hours of restless sleep. When she woke feeling like she’d been hit by a truck, she staggered to the shower. Emerging only slightly refreshed, she dried her hair, dressed, and went to wake the twins. The sounds of laughter coming from the kitchen told her Leon was one step ahead of her.
Pausing in the doorway, Flora took in the scene before anyone noticed her. Empty cereal bowls on the table indicated that breakfast was already over. Leon was kneeling on the floor sorting a pile of laundry, ready to place it into the machine. He was enlisting Stevie and Frankie’s help, but the twins were deliberately muddling up the colors.
“Blue,” Stevie said, placing a green T-shirt on the pile.
“Arghh!” Leon grabbed him and tickled him, provoking squeals of laughter from both boys.
“Red!” Frankie jumped up and down as he placed a pair of blue jeans on top of a stack of white clothes.
Leon dived for him, but Frankie skipped away and took refuge behind Tiny. A pursuit ensued that involved one doctor, two three-year-olds, and a dog. It wasn’t entirely clear who was chasing whom. Bungee, who had been curled up in his cat bed, gave the participants a look of disgust as he stalked from the room. The end result was a four-way rough-and-tumble.
“Come on, guys.” Leon sounded slightly breathless as, with a twin under each arm, he returned to the pile of clothing. He set them on their feet. “Before we finish the laundry, remember what we talked about?”
“There are safe people, and not-safe people.” The twins chanted the words together like a line from a nursery rhyme.
“And what do you do if you think someone isn’t safe?” Leon asked.
“Find a safe grown-up. Stay with them.”
Leon high-fived them both. “Now, let’s get this laundry started before mommy arrives.”
“Too late.” Flora managed to get past the lump in her throat and get her voice to sound halfway to normal. Emotionally, she was being torn in two. How could she walk away from this? How could she stay?
“Hey.” Leon came toward her, and she wished she could do something about the look in his eyes. The one that said he wasn’t sure how to act around her anymore. “We didn’t want to disturb you.”
She caught hold of the front of his shirt. “I don’t know what to do...”
“Not now.” Even though his eyes held a measure of nervousness in their green depths, his smile still had the power to punch into her chest and flip her heart over. “We can talk later.” He nodded toward the clock on the wall. “Because you have exactly five minutes to grab some coffee, while I persuade the twins that this laundry is a serious task.”
Reluctantly, she released him and headed toward the freshly made coffee. “After what happened yesterday, I don’t feel good about letting Stevie and Frankie go to daycare.”
“I spoke to Joe Nolan about keeping them safe when I called him yesterday.” Leon looked over his shoulder as he loaded the machine with laundry. “I just didn’t have a chance to discuss it with you.”
She regarded him steadily over the top of her coffee cup. “Go on.”
“He’s going to stop by the daycare center before it opens this morning and explain the situation to the staff. The security in Daisy’s place is first class, anyway. No one gets in without passing through a thorough check at the reception desk. But Joe will also have an officer stop by each hour during the day to ensure everything is okay, plus he’ll place an alert on the cell phone numbers of all the daycare assistants.”
Flora picked up her jacket from the back of a chair. “I’m still not sure.”
“What’s the alternative?” Leon’s reasonable tones calmed some of her anxiety. “Are you planning on taking them into your patient consultations? And it’s important to keep life as normal as possible for the twins.”
“You’re right, of course.” She looked at the two little figures, who were sprawled on the floor with Tiny. “It’s just...you know—”
“I do know. Believe me, it’s hard for me as well,” Leon said.
Reason and instinct were fighting a battle inside Flora, her protective impulses refusing to be silenced. Like a tiger watching over her cubs, she was prepared to face any threat, and fight any danger. She could only do that if she kept the twins at her side.
But Leon was right about security in the daycare center. It was one of the first things she’d checked out when she’d arrived in Stillwater and looked for a suitable place for the twins. There was probably a marginally better chance of breaking into the First Stillwater Bank vaults than
