“I get it. I feel like that would be the extent of my interest in the rodeo, too.”
“I don’t really know him, he’s way older than me.” That made Marlowe feel like her bones were returning to dust. But, probably, Chris was nineteen or twenty, and so she supposed that would make Cody seem somewhat ancient to him. “But my mom kind of knew who he was, anyway, she said they were from a pretty trailer trash family.” He put his hand over hismouth like he just realized that what he had said might be somewhat offensive. “That’s what she said. I didn’t really think that. I mean, I only know him as being kind of a famous guy, actually.”
“I see.”
“I’ll get you your desserts. More wine?”
“Yes,” both Cara and Marlowe said.
They could walk to Cara’s house from the restaurant, and they had parked their cars there. That way, nobody had to be the designated driver, though they would have to be able to walk in a straight line so they could get home.
“It’s interesting to get the friendly small-town experience,” Cara said. “The general populace back home can be so insular.”
“I think that’s the difference between a tourist town and just a small town,” she said.
“It also seems to be that people in the Pacific Northwest are kind of chatty.”
“That’s true. Remember, we passed through that coffee stand a couple of hours from here, and it was like they wanted to hear our whole life story.”
“True.” Cara looked down into her wine glass. “So, have you talked to Aiden at all?”
“Not at all,” Marlowe said, practically grinding the back of her teeth together.
“Are you going to?”
“I don’t know. What is there to say? He betrayed me, and I feel like I never really knew him.”
“That’s fair,” Cara said. “But shouldn’t you talk to him about logistics and things? Money and all of that kind of stuff?”
“We didn’t really…” She was about to say they didn’t really have money, and they didn’t own very much, except they had all the money that they were supposed to use to buy the car, and she had been avoiding dealing with that. Because she knew. Deep down, she knew.
“The only money we have is for the car. The one we were going to buy when we got out here.” She bent down, reached into her purse, and took her phone out. Then, she opened up her banking app. Her fingers were shaking. “I haven’t looked.”
“At what?”
“I haven’t looked at the bank balance, because I’m afraid. Because I’m afraid that…”
She opened up the account, the one that they shared, and her stomach bottomed out. He had taken all of the money they had saved for a car, except for a thousand dollars. She kind of wished he had just drained it. This was like a weird sop for his conscience, and it still wasn’t enough. All of this was the strangest behavior. Like he had been body snatched.
“He took the money,” she whispered.
“What?”
When the waiter came back with their desserts, Cara waved her hand. “Can we box these up? And can I buy the bottle of wine from you?”
“Sure,” he said.
Chris brought the bill, and the chocolate cakes boxed up, and Cara quickly paid for dinner without hearing any objection from Marlowe and tipped their waiter generously.
Then they gathered up their belongings and headed back out onto the street. Marlowe tightened her coat around herself because now it was dark, and it was quite cold.
“I can’t believe he would do this,” Cara said.
“Well, neither can I, so… Is this some kind of psychotic break that he’s having?”
“The alternative is scarier,” Cara said. “Because it means that he’s just not the person that he pretended to be for all this time.”
The streetlights cast a gold glow onto the sidewalk, andMarlowe looked around. It was so quaint and quiet at this time of night. There were cars parked along every stretch of the sidewalk, and the two different bars on the main street were full. The parking lot for the Wagon Wheel was also full.
