*As Hadley was refilling the coffeepot, Stella bumped her shoulder. Water splashed over the machine. “Used to see Jesse in here once a month if I was lucky. Now he’s turned into a regular.”
Hadley grabbed a cloth to soak up the water and then glanced at the door. Sure enough Jesse had just walked in and was claiming the corner booth. “Isn’t that a good thing?”
“It might be. If Jesse was coming in here with his father, his wife, or his boys. But he’s coming alone. I wonder if Fallon knows that while she’s babysitting your kid, her husband is—”
“Is what, Stella? Having lunch alone in a public diner?”
Stella arched her eyebrows, conveying utter skepticism. “He’s not here to see you?”
Hadley raised her chin. “Of course not.”
“Then you won’t mind handling the counter while I wait on Jesse?”
“You’re the boss.” She watched as, with an exaggerated sashay of her hips, Stella headed toward Jesse’s booth. Then she forced her gaze away, refilling coffee cups for the two old-timers at the counter. She hoped they hadn’t overheard her exchange with Stella. The men, who’d been previously chatting about the Blue Jays’s new pitcher, had become suspiciously quiet.
“Anything else?” she asked them.
“Pie for me,” said the chubbier of the two, pointing to the lemon meringue.
Stella was still standing by Jesse’s table. Hadley hoped she wasn’t giving him a lecture too. The woman was damned annoying, especially since Hadley suspected she was right. There’d been a flicker of disappointment on Jesse’s face when he’d realized Stella—not Hadley—was coming to take his order.
She cut a slice of the lemon meringue and eased it onto a plate. How did Stella get such a thick, golden meringue with not even a single bead of moisture on top? When it came to pie and human nature, Stella was an expert.
“Cut another slice for Jesse,” Stella said on her return to her counter. “And you might as well take it and a coffee to his table. He wants to talk to you.”
Hadley endured another of Stella’s raised eyebrow indictments, as she followed her request. At Jesse’s table, though, she refused his invitation to take a seat.
“Better not. Stella’s pissed at me today.”
Jesse glanced around the room. “It’s not like you’ve got a lot of other customers. I’m here after the rush.”
“That’s true. But still.” She folded her arms over her chest. “What did you want to talk about?”
His handsome face became troubled. “It’s kind of private. Can we meet somewhere just the two of us? Maybe tonight?”
Hadley didn’t like the sound of this. She did not need more complications in her life and this sure sounded like one. “Jesse, why? What’s this about?”
“I just need to talk to you.”
“Fine. Come to my house at eight. Madison will be asleep by then.”
“People might see me. I’d rather no one knew about this.”
She liked this guy. She had once loved this guy. But right now, he sure was annoying. “If you insist. How about the cemetery? Make it eight thirty.”
She didn’t know why the cemetery had popped into her head, but it would work. On a Wednesday evening it was sure to be deserted.
She would ask Bobbie or Riko to babysit. Madison had become very fond of both of them. Yesterday Bobbie had asked her to help fill the bird feeders in her backyard. Madison had been gone for over thirty minutes and when Bobbie brought her home, she had an Audubon book of birds for children in her hands and was thrilled that a chickadee had taken a sunflower seed right from her hand.
Watching her daughter’s excitement had brought back a similar memory for Hadley. She’d been jumping in a pile of leaves her mother was raking when Bobbie asked her if she knew how to press leaves. “That way they stay beautiful forever.” Bobbie had asked her to pick some of the prettiest leaves then had taken her up to her magical turret library. They’d placed the leaves between sheets of tissue paper, then stacked several heavy books on top.
About a week later, Bobbie had taken her up to the turret again. They’d glued the delicate leaves onto construction paper, then gently brushed clear shellac over them.
Jesse put a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll see you later, then. Thanks.”
He put money on the table and left without touching his coffee or his pie. The two older men were on their way out as well, and Jesse held the door for them before leaving himself.
The restaurant was now empty.
Stella flipped the sign to Closed and locked the door. Then she came and sat at Jesse’s booth. She pulled two forks from her apron pocket and handed one to Hadley. “No sense letting good pie go to waste.”
Hadley sat opposite her boss and dug in. The flaky pastry, the creamy tart filling, and the light as air sweet topping were the perfect marriage of ingredients. “You can be a pain in the ass, Stella. But you sure know how to make good pie.”
“Hey. I know trouble when I see it. And you and Jesse…that’s where you’re headed.”
“I’m not interested in breaking up Jesse and Fallon’s marriage, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Honey, girls like you break up marriages without even trying.” She sighed. “Believe me, I should know.”
“What do you mean?”
“Never mind. It’s ancient history now.” Stella pressed her fork against the plate, rounding up the last crumbs of pastry.
“Were you married once?” Hadley guessed.
“Long time ago. Met him one summer when I was working in a hotel kitchen in Osoyoos. It was a whirlwind courtship. Brought him home to meet my folks and he fell in love with Tangle Falls. We decided to stay, and we had a few happy years until I realized he was falling in love with my best friend. See, she’d been recently widowed, and he thought she needed him more than I did.”
Hadley suddenly wished she hadn’t eaten any pie. She felt like she was going to be sick. “Your best friend…you mean my mother?”
Stella gave a brisk nod. “Thing is Denise didn’t even realize he’d fallen in love with her. She was so sad about your father, so busy trying to take care of you. She thought my Steven was just being kind. But I knew. And when I confronted Steven, he admitted it. We separated that very day and were divorced one year later.”
“And yet, you stayed friends with my mom? Even gave her a job.”
“I knew it wasn’t Denise’s fault. But another woman, say a woman like Fallon, might not be so understanding.”
*
Hadley was sitting at her mother’s grave site by a quarter after eight that evening, worrying her friendship bracelet and thinking over Stella’s cautionary tale. She’d come early, using the shortcut through the forest. Madison had been thrilled that Bobbie, not Momma, was going to read her bedtime stories tonight. Honestly it had hurt, a little bit, even though Hadley knew it was healthy for her daughter to develop attachments to other people. Like a ladybug, her painfully shy daughter was learning to spread her wings. She couldn’t fly yet. But she could coast.
“You’d be so proud of her, Mom. She’s already memorized the names of all the birds in the book Bobbie gave her.”
Bobbie and her husband had been wonderful neighbors back when Hadley was a kid too. She remembered Bobbie’s husband, Colin, whose gruff exterior had been the thinnest of veneers over a marshmallow center. He’d helped her with all sorts of things including building a bird house once for a school project. She felt guilty she hadn’t appreciated Bobbie and Colin more. Thinking back on those years was so painful now. Her mood swings, her selfishness, her profound sense of entitlement.
“I don’t know how you put up with me, Mom.” If she’d realized her time with her mother would be so short, would she have been more loving? More appreciative? Hadley honestly didn’t know. She’d had such a chip on her shoulder back then.
The sound of an approaching vehicle on Church Avenue caught her attention. She watched as Jesse pulled up in a dirt-coated, older-model Dodge Ram. The vehicle looked like what it was. A working man’s truck. Not that different from the pickup he’d driven back in high school. For a moment she expected a seventeen-year-old Jesse to step out. He’d push his thick wavy hair off his forehead then give her that special grin that told her she was just the person he was looking for.
In reality Jesse looked even better at thirty-seven than he had back then. His hair was still thick, his body lean and strong. He paused at the official gate to the cemetery, looking around. Obviously, he hadn’t spotted her yet.
She got to her feet, brushing dead grass from the back of her denim shorts, and he gave her a wave. She waved back but turned her attention downward. Better to avoid too much eye contact. She passed by the grave marker for her father, then moved on to her grandparents’ graves. All had died when she was very young.
When she thought of dying, she had always imagined her ashes being sprinkled over the ocean, or maybe thrown out to the wind on the top of the mountain. But there was something enduring about a carved stone in a graveyard. She imagined Madison, as an adult, standing in this spot. Remembering. Grieving.
Healing.
“You’re early,” Jesse said. “I didn’t see your car. Did you walk?”
“Yeah.” She pointed to the forest pathway, barely visible through the trees.
She kept a careful distance from him as they strolled along a row of grave markers. For a few moments neither said anything. Then she asked, “Does Fallon know you’re here?”
“She doesn’t. Which is wrong. But I needed the chance to talk to you. We haven’t been alone, truly alone since—”
She held up her hand to stop him. “We promised we would never speak of that night. It never happened. We both agreed.”
“The past few weeks have been crazy. Finding Dean dead. Learning he’d been murdered. I’m still trying to process all that. But it doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking about you, Had. I have.”
Life wasn’t fair. Hadley wanted to stop and put her hands on his shoulders. To search his eyes for feelings that she had long since relinquished the right to expect. She’d been alone for so long and she was desperate to be held. To be loved. To let someone else be the strong one for a change.
But Stella’s warning was fresh in her mind. Not that she needed it. She had so many regrets about how she’d behaved when she was younger. She needed to be a better person now. She hadn’t come back to Tangle Falls to destroy the marriage of the two people who had once been her closest friends.
“I don’t know what to say. I’m not here to cause trouble.”
“If there’s trouble, it’s my fault more than yours.”
They’d been moving deeper into the grounds and now they were at the fence dividing landscaped cemetery and wild forest. Well beyond the view of anyone passing by. Hadley stopped walking and inhaled the deep woodsy aroma. Then she turned to face Jesse. Looking into his warm, serious gaze, her anxiety grew.
She should not have come here. She glanced at the path, just beyond Jesse, that led to Providence Avenue, and home, and sanity. Her impulse to run came a moment too late. Jesse gripped both her shoulders and locked eyes with her again.
“Just tell me Hadley. Is Madison my daughter?”