to her and smiled. “Of course, honey.”
She sounded genuine, so why didn’t Caitie believe her? Could she and Caitie’s dad be having problems?
Her parents had always had a good marriage. Sure, they argued occasionally. What couple didn’t? Mostly about money or the diner. But Caitie’s mom had always seemed happy with her modest, small-town life. At least, that was the way it had always appeared to Caitie.
When Caitie had presented her mom with her college acceptance letter, and finally had the courage to admit her plan to move to the East Coast, her mom’s reaction had surprised her.
“If you want out of this town, if you want something more from life, leave while you can,” her mom had told her. “Don’t let anything or anyone hold you back.”
Caitie had done exactly that, but her mom’s words haunted her for months afterward. Had it been her way of saying she regretted giving up the chance at a lucrative and prestigious modeling career to stay in Paradise? And had that regret begun to cause a rift in her parents’ relationship?
She would ask her sister what she knew, but Kelly had been so self-absorbed with school and her very active social life, she wouldn’t see a tsunami coming until it crashed down over her head. No that was unfair. Kelly had always been self-absorbed. She had inherited their mother’s beauty and her pinup model figure. She had always been the pretty one. Not that Caitie had gone three rounds with an ugly stick. She was attractive in an average way. Pleasant to look at, but nothing to get all excited about.
There had been times when she wondered what it was that Nate saw in her, when there were other girls—prettier girls—who would have given anything to be with him. Those first few months of dating him, she’d lived in a constant state of flux. Happy beyond her wildest dreams, yet always waiting for the ax to fall. For him to realize how much better he could do. She truly believed it was only a matter of time before he dumped her and moved on to someone else.
Her mom replaced the pan lid and set down the spoon, saying offhandedly, “So, did anything interesting happen at the diner this morning?”
Way to be subtle, Mom. “Did Dad tell you?”
“We talked,” she admitted. “He said there was tension.”
A minimalist point of view. “Dad was being kind.”
Her mom winced. “It was that bad?”
“At first Nate wouldn’t even look at me. Like he thought he would turn into a pillar of salt should our eyes meet.”
“What did you expect?” she asked, looking puzzled. “A hug?”
Caitie blinked. Whose side was she on? “No, of course not. But—”
“You knew you would see him. You had time to prepare. Imagine if Nate had just suddenly shown up unannounced. Would you have reacted any differently?”
She sighed. “Probably not.”
“It’s also possible that deep down he still has feelings for you.”
“He has feelings all right. He hates me.”
“He did stop to help you.”
“Only because he had to. It’s his job. It was obvious he didn’t want to be there.”
“He drove you home. And let you wait to fill out a report. He didn’t have to do that.”
Let’s give him a medal. “Why does it seem as if everyone is on his side? Yes, I left, and I didn’t do it very well, but I spent most of those first few months miserable, lonely and missing him, while he was back home knocking up and marrying my best friend.”
“Just remember that there are two sides to every story.”
“I don’t care about his story. It’s done. I’m over it. I’ve moved on.”
“It seems to me that if you had truly moved on, you wouldn’t care what Nate did or didn’t do.”
Oh, ouch. A direct hit. And the worst part? She was right. When it came to speaking her mind, Betty Cavanaugh rarely held back. She didn’t sugarcoat either, sometimes making her keen observations a bitter pill to swallow.
“I really hate it when you use your Vulcan logic on me,” Caitie said, dropping her chin in her hand. She wouldn’t bother trying to deny that she and Nate had unresolved issues. Issues that he clearly had no desire to work through. And she just flat out didn’t see the point. They’d had their inevitable, awkward confrontation—which, if anything, made matters worse—and now it was over. The trick was to avoid him as long as she was here, and then, after she’d returned to New York and got back to her real life, she could forget all about him.
As if.
After seven years, she still hadn’t figured out how.
“Any plans for the rest of the day?” her mom asked, and Caitie was grateful for the change of subject.
“Job hunting.” Caitie grabbed an energy drink from the fridge, but as she was walking through the doorway to the living room, she had a thought. She stopped and turned back to the stove, where her mom was stirring the sauce again. “Just out of curiosity, Mom. Why did Dad send those papers home to you?”
Her mom blinked, looking confused. “What do you mean?”
“Couldn’t he have just brought them home tonight? Since you said yourself it was nothing urgent. Or better yet, why didn’t he just email then to the home computer?”
Her mom sighed, realizing the jig was up. “Your dad said you were very upset after seeing Nate. He just wanted an excuse to get you out of the diner. But he knew if he tried to give you the rest of the day off you would balk.”
He was right. “Did Deb really come back early, or did he have to find someone else to cover the rest of the shift?”
“He called someone in. Though I’m sure he wouldn’t have sent you home if he knew it would become such a fiasco.”
“I could have worked. Yes, I was upset, but I would have gotten over it.”
“He was just trying to help.”
She knew that, and she loved him for it. But she was a grown woman now, and this was one problem she needed to figure out on her own.
* * *
On his way back to the station, Nate checked his phone, which had been ringing almost nonstop for the past thirty minutes or so, and saw that his ex-wife, Melanie, had left him three messages. He didn’t have to hear them to know what they were concerning. Paradise was a hotbed of gossip, and Mel’s salon was the main hub, with Simmons Hardware trailing at a close second.
Nate stuffed his phone back in his pocket. This was a conversation they needed to have face-to-face.
He drove to the salon and steered his cruiser into an open spot on the street out front. The door jingled and the stench of acetone and perm solution assaulted him as he stepped inside. Being the only salon within ten miles, business was steady. All but one of the six hair stations had customers and two nail techs worked on manicures. Meaning fourteen pairs of curious eyes settled on him.
Clearly everyone had heard the news.
Nate usually took comfort in the fact that when he walked down the street, or entered a local business, nearly every face there was a familiar one. Today, he longed for a modicum of anonymity. Or at the very least, a little personal space.
“Good morning, ladies,” he said.
Mel stood at her station finishing a comb-out on Mrs. Samuels, who at ninety-two still kept her flat black hair teased into a beehive and sprayed to the consistency of fiberglass. Which not only added six inches to her four-foot-eleven-inch frame, but gave her papery skin an ethereal, grayish cast. Nate had seen corpses with more color. Once, a few years back, when Mrs. Samuels had dozed off under the dryer, she was so