“Talk about my opinions.”
“Is it boring?”
“Maybe to some people,” Charlotte allowed with a shrug, and Sutton felt that both she and her daughter were mesmerized by the way Charlotte’s hair fell over her shoulder in what seemed like a perfect moment. “But not to me.”
“To me?”
“Well…” Charlotte flicked her gaze to Sutton, and she wanted to say she couldn’t read it. She wanted to say that she had no idea what those honey brown eyes were saying to her. But she did, or, at least, she thought she did. She thought Charlotte was advertising some uncertainty. Sutton was admittedly very curious as to where this was going, so she arched her eyebrows and shrugged, gesturing for Charlotte to address Lucy.
She did. “I’m not exactly sure what you’re interested in.”
Lucy lit up.
As her daughter launched into a conversation around her interests and hobbies, Sutton shook her head and leaned back in her chair. So, so odd..
And maybe, perhaps, a little nice.
Sutton hummedunder her breath as she slowly made her way back into the living room after tucking Lucy in and reading a section fromFantastic Mr. Fox, one of her bedtime favorites. Then she moved a little more slowly.
Then she stopped and looked at herself in the ornate mirror hanging in the connecting hallway.
Her hair was half up in the bun she’d pulled it up in to cook earlier and hadn’t taken down because, well, she hadn’t thought of it at all. On a normal night, she would leave it up like this until her bedtime shower.
She’d long since wiped off the light makeup she’d worn to work.
On display were the little lines next to her eyes, at the corners of her lips, the little signs of aging that had happened here and there. They were unnoticeable in the day to day of her life, but she wondered… How did Charlotte see them? When Sutton had last truly seen Charlotte without makeup, without any extra boosts to her appearance, she’d been twenty-five.
She’d been so shocked by Charlotte’s appearance and subsequent entrance into her home, with Lucy appearing to take their attention by storm as well, that she hadn’t even registered it.
Charlotte was sitting out there in a designer suit, looking immaculate, and Sutton?—
She glared at herself again in the mirror.
It didn’t matter what she looked like, right? There was no reason to fixate. Charlotte hadn’t intimated that she was looking for something beyond friendship.
And not even a full friendship.
She wanted to befriendlyand review their notes so that Sutton could finish the write-up she had to do for their editor. That was all.
Sutton took a deep breath and turned to enter the living room, then hastily reached up and pulled the rest of her hair down, smoothing it quickly with her fingertips.
She entered the living room only to falter when she saw Charlotte standing at the mantel, looking at her photos. Specifically, the photo she still had up of herself, Layla, and Lucy from four years ago, from their first family vacation to Disney World. She didn’t keep many photos up from her marriage, admittedly.
She’d thrown many of them out, actually, in a fit of anger she had never felt before, six months after that picture had been snapped. When Layla had first confessed to her affair and stated that she wanted a divorce.
But that sole picture remained, for Lucy’s sake.
She cleared her throat. Still, even though Charlotte definitely hadn’t known she’d been there, she didn’t jump or move in any way that betrayed surprise. She merely straightened from looking at the mantel and turned just enough to gesture at the picture. “Your ex-wife?”
Sutton could have sworn there was an emphasis on “ex,” but she could have also been reading into things.
“Uh, yes. Layla.”
Charlotte’s lips pursed ever so slightly, the right side ticking down in a barely perceptible motion. “Hmm. I thought… I had assumed she’d be in more photos.” She used her hand to gesture to the entire wall, full of framed snaps.
Sutton scoffed a laugh. “Well, when your wife cheats on you, you don’t really want to keep many photos.” She nearly slapped her hand over her mouth. She could joke about this now; it had been nearly four years. But this was Charlotte she was talking to, not Regan and Emma, who had both been ready to kill Layla at that time. Regan very much still was.
Sutton still wasn’t convinced that it hadn’t been Regan who had somehow slipped away from Manhattan and been responsible for Layla’s two flat tires the following week…
