“Mm? What does that mean? Have I got my facts wrong?”
“What do you know about her ex-boyfriend?”
“What doyouknow about her ex-boyfriend?”
“He was two years behind me in school, but he did band, and he used to poke me in the back with his clarinet, but someone else always got blamed for it because no one believed that Lucinda Camille’s son couldpossiblyever misbehave. Whatever Bea has planned for you on Saturday night, I approve.”
I slap my hand over the rear door to the house as Lana reaches for it. “Whatever she has planned for me?”
“You’re going to JC Fig’s grand opening?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Do you know who owns JC Fig?”
“Should I?”
“Her ex-boyfriend, Simon. Her ex-boyfriend is opening JC Fig.”
Bea’s ex-boyfriend.
Bea’s ex-boyfriend is opening the restaurant she wants to dine at for their grand opening on Saturday.
“Was it a cordial breakup?” I ask Lana.
“From what I hear, Jake and his family have all been quietly spreading borderline defamatory rumors about her and the reasons for the break-up. If Mr. Camille—Damon—wasn’t an attorney, they’d probably be all the way into slanderous territory.”
“Then why would she—oh.Oh.”
Her ex-boyfriend.
Jake.
The man who rushed me on Saturday.
The man she squirted with ketchup.
A tingle touches my fingertips as my shoulders tighten and my chest constricts.
“She intends to use me to make him look bad,” I breathe.
“It’s been a long time since I lived here. I’d like to think people can change. But from everything I’ve heard, Jake’s an even bigger public charmer now than he was in high school, which probably means he’s still metaphorically stabbing other people in the back with his clarinet, but with more resources. I just have this gut feeling about him. So if that’s her plan—to steal his thunder by making the entire night about you and whatever you do at the grand opening—then like I said, I approve.”
My hand curls into a fist.
How lovely for Lana that it’s so easy for her to approve of me being used as a pawn in a lovers’ quarrel.
She sighs, then touches my elbow. “She’s not your parents, Simon.”
“Bloody well aware of that,” I grouse.
“So ask her. Ask her if she’s planning something bad for the restaurant’s grand opening. I don’t know her—she was several years behind me in school, probably close to ten or eleven, actually—so we never really met. The boys were three or four when her parents died. I remember one of them shitting in ahouseplant when I was on the phone with Mom while she was telling me about the fire.”
“You didn’t know her, but you remember that?”
“Their house was three blocks from Mom’s, and it’s the biggest tragedy to ever happen in Athena’s Rest. Also, it’s the only time either of the boys ever shit in a houseplant. The memories are forever linked.”
“That’s…astonishing.”
