I just don’t trust easily.
I head to the café rather than standing there looking like a stalker, then decide this is the last place I should be today.
Willa was in early this morning, and she’s decorated the café for Valentine’s Day.
There are hearts hung on strings in the windows overlooking the lake. Pink and red streamers twisted from the fireplace in the center of the room to the exterior walls. Red candleholders with heart-shaped candles floating inside each of them.
“Are you participating?” she asks me as I’m taking it all in.
“No.”
She slides me a look that I interpret to meanbecause you’re secretly dating Sabrina, or because you have another reason?“I heard you were at Silver Horn with Sabrina and her friends last night.”
“Coincidence.”
“But her dog sat on you.”
“Her dog has awful taste in humans.”
“Nonsense. Theo’s his favorite human after Sabrina, and Theo is good people. Also, please leave the cappuccino machine alone until we’ve fully trained you.”
Between the décor and the very clearyou are causing issues herevibes, I decide it’s better to check out and run over to Tiara Falls for the morning. There’s an issue with the Bean & Nugget building that I’m selling there, and I’m happy to let that issue take my entire morning.
When I’m done, I take myself out to lunch in Tiara Falls. And since Sabrina’s shift should be over when I’ve finished, I head back to Snaggletooth Creek and the café there.
And I find it an absolute zoo. The parking lot is packed, and I have to park down the street and walk back.
Odd for midafternoon. This is the time of day when things usually slow way down.
When I step in the back door, the kitchen is empty.
But there’s a swell of voices louder than anything I’ve heard coming from the dining room.
I follow the voices into the front, then I go lightheaded at the sight before me and have to grip the doorframe.
It’s not that half the townspeople of Snaggletooth Creek seem to be here. It’s not that there’s no one at the register, where we have a small line of customers waiting to order. It’s not even that Sabrina’s still here and sitting in my favorite chair in front of the gas fireplace, with her dog on the floor gazing at the person in the matching chair with utter adoration.
It’s thatMimi is here.
“Boarding school!” Sabrina’s saying while everyone else crowds around. “That explains so much. Was it a specialized boarding school, or a general boarding school?”
“Don’t answer that,” I say to my grandmother as my vision clears, belatedly remembering that I told Sabrina myself that I went to boarding school.
My grandmother.
She isnot supposed to be here.
But she’s smiling in a way I haven’t seen her smile inmonths. Possibly longer.
Her straight silver hair is cropped close to her head, definitely newly cut, and for a split second, the thought crosses my mind that Sabrina’s mom might have trimmed it for her.
Ridiculous.
Of course she didn’t.
Mimi’s in pink lipstick and wearing bright-red dangly teardrop earrings that are making her ears droop more than the normal effects of gravity. Her wrinkled cheeks wrinkle deeper as she flashes me the brightest smile I’ve seen on her face since her sister died almost a year ago, sending her into a grief so much heavier than anything I witnessed when my grandfather died.
Considering just how much of a bastard he was, that makes sense.
