Death on a Deadline

marathon. As the Love Me Tender credits rolled, I confessed I was afraid I’d grow old alone. Then she blew me away with a confession of her own. She thought Travis’s defection had given me a deep-seated lack of trust for the male race. Yep. She accused me to my face of sabotaging my own relationships because of my reluctance to commit.
    I’m not sure how it happened, but by the time the sun came up, I had committed to a deadline. Find Mr. Right or, as I told Carly, Mr. As Good As It Gets by my thirtieth birthday. Or at least make a serious effort.
    And even though I’m the first to admit I have commitment issues, I’ve tried. I honestly have. As the hot water showered down on me, I ran through the list of possible candidates, one more time.
    One man I went out with made a pass at the waitress before we even ordered. And I’ll never forget the cop who leaned over to me in the middle of the movie and said, “So I guess if we start dating, I can work out at the club for free?” Then there was a guy from our singles’ group at church who brought over an X-Files DVD for us to watch. I actually enjoyed the episode, but after it was over, he showed me passages in the Bible that he claimed proved Jesus died for aliens, too.
    The list could go on. Unfortunately. Which led me to Brendan Stiles. Maybe my date with him tomorrow night would be better than I expected. A girl could hope. It had been almost two years since that night I set the deadline with Carly as my witness. My big 3-0 was less than four months away.
    After my shower, I found Carly sitting in the living room, flipping through the channels. Neuro amused herself by scratching at the pile of clean blankets. I picked up a quilt and tossed one end to Carly. “Make yourself useful.”
    “Thanks. I never get to fold laundry.” She stood and took the proffered corners and joined me in a ritual we’d performed together since elementary school. Mama had taught us simple steps to accompany the chore of folding towels and sheets, as well as quilts and blankets. Between our own house and the ten cabins we rented out, there’d been plenty of work to keep us busy.
    “Remember how Mama always made work a game?” Carly seemed to read my mind.
    “Yes.” I’d helped with the cabins, but my swim training had come first. The bulk of the work had fallen to Carly.
    “She doesn’t understand why I can’t do the same thing with the twins and Zac.” Carly slammed a folded quilt onto the pile. “Maybe now since we’re living with her, she’ll see it’s not as easy to teach kids things these days.”
    For Carly, that constituted a tirade. I didn’t know what to say.
    She flopped back onto the couch. “I guess that sounded ungrateful, didn’t it? I’m thankful Mama and Daddy let us move in with them. And, goodness knows, I need the job helping out with the cabins. But Zac is like a stranger these days and, for the life of me, I can’t figure out what’s happened to my precious little twins. . . .”
    “I know.” The twins had gone from being as close as two pieces of gum in the same wrapper to elevating sibling rivalry to an art form. And as for Zac, well, teenagers are hard to figure out. I’d learned that firsthand when I taught P.E. and coached. Anything could happen. I shuddered. Anything at all.
    My phone on the end table rang. With the instinct of a mother whose children are not with her, Carly glanced at the caller ID.
    She groaned. “Oh, no. I bet the twins are at it again.”
    I nodded for her to answer the phone.
    “Hi, Mama. The girls drivin’ you nuts?” Carly held the handset between her ear and her shoulder and picked up a quilt to fold.
    All the color left her face. She slammed the phone down and shot to her feet, dropping the quilt like it burned her hands.
    I grabbed her arm. “What’s wrong? What did Mama say?”
    “The police.” She jerked away from me and snatched her keys from the table.
    “What about the police?” Carly’s legs are shorter, but I found myself running to keep up with her as she darted down the hallway to the door.
    “Zac.”
    Was I going to have to shake the facts out of her? “Carly, talk to me here. What do the police have to do with Zac? Is he in trouble?”
    “I don’t know. Oh my goodness.” Tears streamed down her face.
    As we reached the car, I gently pried the keys from her fingers. “I’ll drive.”
    She nodded. “It’s Hank Templeton. They found his body in the park.”
    I clapped my