“Maybe she’s in trouble,” Katy said, her smile and eyes growing wider as she stared at her phone.
I sat up straighter beside her. “Is she?” What was Katy hiding?
“Could be.”
“Katy.” My voice rose again. If she heard something and didn’t tell me, I’d make her pay.
She tipped her head to the side, as if the images on the screen needed to be viewed from multiple directions. I lunged for her, grabbing at the phone, but she saw me coming and moved in time, so I missed.
Unfortunately, her spastic movements caused a glob of cheese to fall on the leather sofa. “Katy, don’t fuck with me.” If Cassandra came back because she was in trouble, I had the people to help her.
Me.
Help her and then put her right back on a bus out of town to her happy new life. Rumors circled about her for years, but I knew the truth with Cassandra Cable.
Katy sighed. “No, she’s probably not in trouble.”
“How do you know?” Did she see her in town? Had she talked to someone? Did she have an inside line?
One of her shoulders rose. “She walked into the antique shop and no one had a gun on her.”
I settled back onto my side of the couch. “Okay, good.”
That meant I never needed to see Cassandra during her visit to Pelican Bay. I’d stay far away from downtown and her family members’ homes until I confirmed she’d gone back to her side of the country.
“What happened between you two?” Katy asked, turning and shutting off her phone. “Besides your Aunt Mary.”
I ran my hand through my brown hair, which was the same shade as my brothers. The Jefferson men all had matching looks. That was the only thing we agreed on.
“Nothing.” Katy hadn’t gotten the story out of me in the years since high school graduation and she wouldn’t pull it from me now. I’d guarded the secrets and hurt for so long I barely remembered the true story any longer.
It didn’t matter how our relationship broke. It only mattered how Cassandra destroyed my heart.
2
CASSANDRA
“Mandy, I’ve only been here two hours,” I whispered into my phone, doing everything to not draw attention to myself in the cluttered store.
I ducked, so I was walking as low as possible while I made my way to the glass case at the front of the antique shop on Main Street. Shit. The store had so many aisles with crap everywhere I couldn’t find my way out of the place.
“Just promise me you’ll get the box there,” my coworker replied.
Mandy worked with me as a dispatcher at Rapid Response, a private ambulance service. She asked me to bring a box to her cousin when I came to Maine. I thought it’d be a quick favor for a coworker, but the number of times she’d called me since I started this trip made me question my decision.
One box delivery didn’t sound like a big deal, but her persistence grew annoying. I’d barely arrived. In truth, it was my fault. There were early clues, like when she’d asked me to buckle the box into the backseat before I left.
“Absolutely,” I said while letting my gaze slide over the tiny items in the glass display case. “I agreed to hand-deliver the box to your cousin and I will.”
She breathed a sigh of relief so loud I heard it from my end of the phone. It sounded like wind rushing over the speaker. “I appreciate it, Cassandra. You’re saving me a long trip.”
The glass case was empty. None of the tiny figurines I’d wandered into the store to find were on the shelves. With Mandy still on the phone, I didn’t venture out to the warm streets yet. The phone would take some of my attention, and I couldn’t afford to lower my guard here. When your hometown was Pelican Bay and you hadn’t returned in almost a decade, it was imperative to keep a low profile.
With a quick look behind me, I slipped into another aisle and pretended to be engrossed in the collection of old wooden children’s toys.
I couldn’t get lax for any reason or I’d end up in Pearl Ashwood’s house hearing stories of her weed brownies and getting an update on every single person in town. Even the ones I didn’t know.
If I cared what those people were doing, I’d stalk them on Facebook. Since I didn’t, it explained how little I concerned myself with the comings and goings of Pelican Bay residents.
