Knox: Save my seat for dinner tomorrow. I’ll get there as quick as I can. Missing you.
Hope and joy are reborn.
Thursday, the hours pass at a torturous pace.
Now, I check the time on the clock, the same clock I’ve looked at ten times in as many minutes. Seven-twenty-two.
No Knox. I dig my phone from my apron.
Are you still coming?
Nothing.
I’m sorry he’s having a rough time, but I’ve foolishly denied signs before.
It’s Marlene’s day off and I tried calling her twice earlier in the day to see if she could fill in the gaps of what’s so awful at the jobsite. but all day long she hasn’t returned my calls—another red flag. As much time as she and Cliff spend together, she knows something.
The knot in my chest cinches to the point of physical pain.
Dinner isn’t our busiest time, and tonight is extra slow. Suzy, Uncle Charlie’s second-best waitress, can handle things for half an hour, right?
I fill a to-go container with chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes, corn, and a fresh roll. I even box up a slice of pumpkin pie.
Have I chosen poorly yet again?The thought plays on repeat as I cross the main highway to the other side of town. A cold mist keeps my windshield wipers busy.
I park along the shoulder of the road. Unlike Knox’s truck parked near a trailer surrounded with temporary light poles, my SUV doesn’t have four-wheel drive. Plus, it has an aversion to mud on its shiny black paint.
Hmm. Is that something the infamous Becca might have said?
It’s a good thing I’m wearing ugly shoes I care nothing about, because these atrocious, no-slip slip-ons are going to need hosing down after tonight.
The jobsite is lit up like Christmas, and despite the darkness, work is in progress. Multiple industrial-sized lights are keeping the crew in business.
There are shiny yellow bulldozers and backhoes. Orange and white ones with giant treads moving about, and stacks of giant pipes I assume will soon be buried in the dirt.
The workers are mostly toward the rear of the site, but a man in a suit paces a few feet from the trailer, phone to ear. He has to realize the mud has already contaminated his shiny loafers, though he appears to have bigger problems on his mind.
The man, listening to someone on the other end of the call, tracks me with vague curiosity as I screw up my courage, nod politely, and take the three steps to the trailer door.
My worst fear reinvents itself into blinding reality as I take in the scene inside the trailer. There are a couple of metal and vinyl chairs, a filing cabinet, and a desk, behind which sits a beautiful—and I do meangorgeous—blonde. She’s almost the spitting image of my last boss’s trophy wife.
From her striking, platinum blonde hair, surely shored up by extensions, to her pointy, shiny fingernails, to her custom tailored dress, the woman looks straight from one of those swanky events littered with the who’s who of whichever world she comes from.
Knox leans in the doorway behind the desk, grinning down at her and her laughing fuchsia lips.
I catch a flash of her return smile, and weirdly, the thing that comes at me hardest is the unnatural perfection of her high-gloss white teeth.
I want to knock them from her head.
Unclench your fists, Ev.
“Everly.” Knox’s surprised smile falters before rebuilding brightly.
Too bright?
“What are you doing here?” He and his adorably tussled hair meet me in the middle of the room. He holds out his hand.
My glance encompassesheragain, then him. Yep. There was a smile on his lips before, but now, tightening lines frame his eyes. I’m crashing his party, no doubt.
