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The back door opened and Claire stuck out her towhead

"Reka," she called The porch light ator there?"

Eureka and Brooks shared a smile in the darkness "No, Claire It’s safe to coirl tiptoed as far as the edge of the doormat She leaned forward and cupped her hands over her mouth to project her voice "There’s someone at the door A boy He wants to see you"

7

REUNION

"You"

Eureka dripped on the doorway’sat the boy who’d hit her car Ander had changed back into the pressed white shirt and dark jeans Heup that creaseless shirt in the locker roo on the trellised porch in the dusk, Ander looked like he’d come from another world, one where appearance wasn’t subject to the weather He seemed independent of the atled hair, her bare, mud-splattered feet

The way his hands were clasped behind his back accentuated the span of his chest and shoulders His expression was inscrutable He see his breath It made Eureka nervous

Maybe it was the turquoise of his eyes Maybe it was the absurd commitment hich he’d averted that squirrel’s doom Maybe it was the way he looked at her, like he saw so she hadn’t known she yearned to see in herself In an instant, this boy had gotten to her Hefurious at hi with hi Eureka did

Ander’s eyes warripped felt like it was heated from within

"How did you knohere I lived?"

He opened his mouth to reply, but then Eureka sensed Brooks behind her in the doorway His chest brushed her shoulder blade as he rested his left hand against the doorframe His body spanned hers He was as wet as she was from the storm He peered over Eureka’s head at Ander

"Who’s this?"

The blood drained froh his body hardly htly, sending his shoulders a centimeter back His knees bent as if he were about to ju cold and poisonous had taken hold of hilare at Brooks made Eureka wonder if she’d ever seen fury before that ht with his redneck friends at Wade’s Hole on weekends They fought with his brother, Seth, who had the saot Brooks into trouble, but none of the brains that got him off the hook In the seventeen years Eureka had known Brooks, he had never once thrown or received a punch He edged closer against her, straightening his shoulders as if all that were about to change

Ander flicked a gaze above Brooks’s eyes Eureka glanced over her shoulder and saw that Brooks’s open wound was visible The hair that usually fell across his broet and swept to the side The bandage he’d peeled back h the rain

"Is there a proble a hand on Eureka’s shoulder with more possession than he’d used since their one date to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at the New Iberia Playhouse in fifth grade

Ander’s face twitched He released his hands fro to punch Brooks Would she duck or try to block it?

Instead he held out her wallet "You left this in my truck"

The wallet was a faded brown leather bifold that Diana had brought back from a trip to Machu Picchu Eureka lost and found the wallet--and her keys and sunglasses and phone--with a regularity that bewildered Rhoda, so it wasn’t a huge shock that she’d left it in Ander’s truck

"Thanks" She reached to take the wallet froertips touched, Eureka shivered There was an electricity between them she hoped Brooks couldn’t see She didn’t knohere it came from; she didn’t want to turn it off

"Your address was on your license, so I thought I’d come by and return it," he said "Also, I wrote down my phone nuhed into his fist

"For the car," Ander explained "When you get an estirinned back like a village idiot

"Who is this guy, Eureka?" Brooks’s voice was higher than nor for a way toabout?"