“DAD.” GABBY TROTTED beside Mitch on the way to the Bent Nickel the morning after her grounding. “You can’t be serious. I’ve apologized about the phone, and I took responsibility for the hair and makeup.”
She wanted her phone back.
“Overruled,” Mitch said. It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours. He adjusted his grip on the logs he was carrying to contribute to the Bent Nickel’s woodstove.
“Well, at least let me sit with Laurel to do my knitting later.” She switched tactics. “I learn a lot from her.”
That was just the thing. She learned all the wrong things. “Overruled.”
“Well, that’s not fair.”
They walked along the path he’d cleared earlier with the snowblower, passing the general store. Mack waved from behind the checkout counter.
“As your father, I reserve the right to limit the time you spend with the Monroes.” Meaning Laurel. She’d made some good points last night, but he wasn’t ready to reach out to shake her hand and declare a truce. Not unless it meant she’d leave.
“And now you’re just being stubborn.” Gabby hefted her neon-yellow backpack higher on her shoulder. “You let me hang out with Roy as much as I want, and he nearly started a forest fire when we went camping last summer!”
Mitch didn’t have to look at his daughter to know she was rolling her eyes. She used that roll-your-eyes tone of voice he was coming to hate.
“Dad, this thing you have against the Monroes is getting old. What Laurel said last night—”
“The only thing getting old is me.” He wished Gabby hadn’t heard everything Laurel had said. He was cold. The wind chafed his face. And he felt as if his daughter was slipping out of his protective embrace. Balancing the wood, he opened the door to the Bent Nickel, determined to keep trying.
“Dad.” Eye roll. Shoulder drop. Attitude. “You have to accept the fact that I’m growing up.” Gabby skipped to the rear of the diner with the other kids.
“No, I don’t,” Mitch said under his breath. He deposited the logs on the stack by the woodstove and moved toward the community coffeepot, stuffing a couple bucks inside the jar. It was going to be a several-cups kind of day.
“What’s shaking?” Roy got up from his chair near the woodstove and slapped Mitch on the back. Lucky for Mitch, the old man was wiry or that might have hurt. Roy lowered his voice. “Meaning what’s the Monroe situation?”
“Same as yesterday.”
But it wasn’t the same as yesterday because he’d learned too much about Laurel. She was hurting. She tried to make light of the rift in her family, but he could see in the lines framing Laurel’s blue eyes that it pained her. And that pain made him soften.
Mitch sat at the counter near Ivy, close enough to hear Gabby talk to her friends. Roy claimed the stool next to him.
Mitch studied his daughter, who didn’t seem as broken up about things today as she’d been yesterday. Her face wasn’t pale. In fact...
Was that makeup on her face?
Holy smokes. It was.
“Unbelievable.” He caught Gabby’s eye and swiped his hand over his own brown orbs. “Seriously?”
“Dad.” Ginormous eye roll.
Had Shannon sent cosmetics, too? Or was that something else Gabby had ordered online?
His daughter huffed. She puffed. And then she blew down any chance she had of being seen as a mature young adult. “When can I get my phone back?”
From behind the lunch counter, Ivy gasped, horrified. “You gave her a cell phone?”
The kids stared at Gabby in awe.
“I didn’t.” That earned him a sympathetic glance from Ivy.
Ivy understood exes and their inappropriate gifts all too well. Just last Christmas, her ex-husband had sent a video game console to her young boys with a set of video games rated for older teens.
The door opened and Shane came in. “Good morning,” he called out as if he was Second Chance’s favorite son.
Mitch wanted to roll his eyes, especially when several residents greeted Shane warmly in return. He grabbed some coffee and sat in his regular booth by the front windows.
Dori Douglas entered the diner next. She was seventy if she was a day and didn’t come out much in the deep winter months. She cast her gaze around before heading toward Shane’s booth.
“What’s that all about?” Mitch asked Ivy, tilting his head toward Dori.
Frowning, Ivy took a rare moment to stand still and stare.
Roy had spun his stool around when Dori came in. He spun back and pointed his thumb toward the odd couple. “Do you see what I see?”
“No.” Mitch glanced at Dori and Shane. There wasn’t anything wrong with Dori eating with someone, except she was here with a certain Monroe. And according to Harlan, Shane was a dynamo who could accomplish anything he put his mind to.
What had he put his mind to?
Maybe Mitch should worry. “What do you see?”
“Oh, my.” Ivy’s slim brows bent toward each other. “Shane is making friends. Is that a good thing? For us, I mean.”
Roy nodded. “I’ll take it as a sign. Shane wouldn’t sell out his friends.”
Mitch wasn’t so sure, but kept that thought to himself.
Roy bent over his mug and whispered to Mitch, “Where are you on your surprise for those Monroes?”
Mitch had told the handyman about his plans yesterday afternoon. He answered in a whisper of his own. “I found out how to file for historical significance. I requested more information and hope to hear back today.”
“Shane won’t see this coming.” Roy spun his stool back and forth, a quarter turn each way.
Odette entered the diner. She, too, surveyed the occupants before heading straight for Gabby. “I’ve come to check your work.”
“Uhhh...” Gabby closed her laptop. “It’s at home.”
“And...” Odette’s bushy brows lowered.
Gabby’s shoulders slumped. “I’m not as far as I should be.”
“I told you this was your last chance.” Odette didn’t wait for Gabby to say how far she was on her knitting. She turned on her snow-booted heel and stomped off. “Bring me what you’ve got later.”
“I bet Laurel is further along on her knitting than I am,” Gabby mumbled.
Mitch caught her attention. “Aren’t you here to do schoolwork?”
His question earned him another eye roll.
A LIGHT KNOCK on Laurel’s door preceded the door opening, which wasn’t unusual. Everyone seemed to barge right into Laurel’s room.
It was a good thing she was always dressed.
This time her visitor was Odette. Same bright red snow pants, same three-layered style above the waist—pink turtleneck, gray V-neck sweater, chunky black sweater over it all. “What’s with the do-not-disturb sign?”
“It was a test.” No one had passed.
The old woman hung the sign on the interior doorknob. “I came to look at your stitches.”
“I have a lot of stitches for you to see.” She’d gotten several feet of narrow scarf done, more than her end result since she’d unraveled row upon row of uneven stitches. “I used up more than one ball of yarn.” Laurel laid her work in progress across the bed.
Bending over, Odette inspected Laurel’s teal stitches between her thumb and forefinger, every inch. She straightened and frowned. “You’re productive, I’ll give you that.” She took three balls of fuzzy coppery yarn and thick metal knitting needles from a jacket pocket. “Try this.” She turned to go.
“Did I do something wrong?” Laurel held up her teal scarf like a sacrificial offering. “You want me to abandon this? What about quilting?”
“You didn’t stitch with patience.” Odette slipped out the door.
Laurel followed her into the hall. “So there’s nothing wrong with my scarf? It just missed patience?” Sadly, there was no hiding Laurel’s impatient disappointment with her would-be mentor. She hadn’t realized how important Odette’s approval was to her.
Odette scurried off around the corner and down the stairs.
“Come back and see us sometime,” Zeke said from below. “Maybe stay a little longer.”
The front door slammed.
“We don’t bite!” Zeke called after her.
Laurel came slowly down the stairs still carrying her eight-foot-long teal scarf.
“What was all the hubbub about?” The ginger-haired cowboy adjusted the wheelchair so that he could face her squarely, the leg in the brace propped straight out in front of him. “Odette was like the wind, blowing in and blowing back out.” He rolled toward her. “Hey, are you okay?”
“I was hoping she’d give me quilting lessons.” Laurel sank onto the couch. She wrapped the scarf around her hand like a thick blue bandage.
“You don’t seem okay.”
“Odette didn’t like my stitches.” Laurel fell back on the cushions and stared into the large fireplace across from her. It was full of cold ashes. “And I don’t know how to do them any better.”
Zeke positioned his elbows on the wheelchair’s armrests. “Can I tell you a story?”
“Why not? I seem to have time on my hands.”
The cowboy wiggled his bare toes. “Like Odette, my dad was a bit of a perfectionist. Which would have been fine if he was also a people person. But he wasn’t much for people or talking, and he tended to find imperfection in me or what I’d done when I thought things were good enough.” He put these last two words in air quotes.
She had a feeling she knew where his story was going.
“Now, I’m thinking you may be from Hollywood and unfamiliar with the way things work in a small town.” Zeke’s voice was kind, stitched with a thread of cheerfulness that invited Laurel to lighten up. “Most of us are social, especially in the winter months.” He glanced toward the door. “Now Odette and her ilk, she’s different. She’s more like my dad, if you get my meaning.”
“I do.” Laurel dug her fingers into the soft yarn. “You’re saying no matter what I do I won’t be good enough for her.” Laurel’s heart sank. It was like her situation with the pink dress and her family. It was like the situation with Mitch and Gabby. “What do you do when you can’t win?”
Zeke stared across the room as if he was looking at something more interesting than the check-in desk. “Well, I created a new set of rules for myself.”