Between the Lines

Whit's daughter Jana is moving to Odyssey for a year, and everyone at Whit's End is excited: she has taken a job doing public relations for Robin Mallory, the famous author of the Main Street books, who moves to a new small town every year and writes a novel about it. But Connie's mind is on something else. Ever since Whit's fainting spell a while back, she has been fussing over his health, delivering bran muffins with flaxseed and urging him not to do anything strenuous. Whit insists Dr. Graham has run plenty of tests and found nothing wrong, though he is still waiting on some blood work.

Meanwhile, Wooton's dream house is a disaster. His shower is in backward, his fireman's pole drops into the wrong room, his slide has no twirls, and his frustrated workers have all quit. Then a friendly contractor named William Winger appears at his doorless doorway, offering to help. When William says he can build a hexagon staircase, knows slide design, and likes raspberry soda, Wooton hires him on the spot. William's work turns out to be terrific, from a rocket-ship shower stall to a secret comic-room entrance, and Connie admits he seems very nice. Still, Wooton never checked his references, and when Connie passes William's business card along to Jason, Jason wonders why a contractor from Odenton would be working all the way over in Odyssey.

Jana arrives, trades some sisterly teasing with Jason about who really took the eternal showers, and plans a big event at Jason's antique shop to announce Robin's arrival, where Robin will give away a first edition of her very first book. Robin herself charms Whit, telling him how Odyssey reminds her of Danville, her hometown, and how she once resisted an editor who wanted her stories to be edgier and darker. Yet after she leaves, Whit admits to Jason that something about her makes him uneasy, even though he cannot say why. Jason feels exactly the same way, and then he finds a real clue: the acknowledgments in the first printing of Robin's first book thank the people of Richland, not Danville, as the town where she grew up. When Jason shares their concerns, Jana is offended and accuses him of "making a mystery out of a molehill." But Jason talks her into a road trip to Richland, just an hour away, to ask around about Robin and maybe scout the town for a future book.

Connie, meanwhile, has been staying up late researching Whit's symptoms online, from anemia to scurvy, and finally corners Whit with strange questions about whether he ever craves dirt. When Whit gently asks why she is so worried, Connie admits the truth: she keeps thinking about losing her mom. "I can't lose you, too. You're like my last parent," she tells him. Touched, Whit invites her along to his appointment, where Dr. Graham patiently reports that every test Connie can name has come back negative and Whit needs nothing more than a vitamin B12 supplement. Whit and the doctor even share a running joke that the only test left to try is a pregnancy test.

Over raspberry sodas, William tells Wooton how blessed he is to have found Penny, and Wooton gushes that meeting her was like the first time you put mayonnaise on a BLT, "but times a million." When William mentions that Connie seemed fun, Wooton and Penny hatch a scheme: since Connie hates blind dates more than staplers, Penny will simply bring her to glow-in-the-dark golf, where Wooton and William will just happen to be too.

But as Connie heads out the door for glow golf, Jason calls with startling news. He looked into William Winger, and the real William Winger is a sixty-seven-year-old retiree who never worked in Odyssey. The phone number on the business card was crossed out and replaced. Whoever is building Wooton's house has been using someone else's name. As Jason puts it, "One thing's for certain, he's not who he says he is," and the mystery is left hanging until the next adventure.