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Casey didn’t swim the next morning. Her muscles still ached from rowing yesterday and her mouth felt like cotton. She downed three glasses of water and took a long shower. Then she poured her coffee into a travel mug and took off to see Lee. Lee was always up with the dawn and had a knack for knowing what to say.
Anyway, Casey was afraid of what she might find if she hung around her cabin in the morning.
Of what she might find, or, more likely, of who she might see.
Lee was Casey’s closest friend in Bonnet, which probably made her Casey’s closest friend, period. She ran an odds-and-ends store on the main drag in town, sandwiched between a gas station on one end and Pam’s diner on the other. Old books, records, used clothes, household goods, part farmers market during the growing season—Lee’s store had it all. She lived in a spacious apartment on the floor above, as cluttered as the store but warm and cozy and flooded with light.
Casey pulled behind the store and parked beside Lee’s pickup truck. The kitchen light was on and she hoped Lee was making something good for breakfast.
The thought of breakfast took her straight to muffins, though, which made her groan. She walked up the stairs to the familiar plaque reading Eleanor French in curlicues underneath another sign proclaiming Bless This Mess and knocked on the door.
“Lee?” she called. “You in?”
The door burst open to reveal a short, round woman with thick gray hair and bright green eyes that jumped from Casey’s unlaced sneakers to her wet hair and then crushed her in a hug.
Lee’s real name was Eleanor, but she said Eleanor French sounded like somebody’s stuffy aunt, a gray-haired widow of twenty years who puttered around with meaningless trinkets and surrounded herself with dozens of cats. Of course, Lee was a gray-haired widow of twenty years who puttered around with trinkets and surrounded herself with cats. Two of them, to be precise—Chester, an orange tabby who purred around Casey’s ankles, and Felix, a shy Russian Blue always begging for food. But that didn’t mean she had to act like it. Casey had never met anyone more full of life or committed to enjoying every minute of it. It was as though Lee knew from losing her husband to a snowmobile accident when neither of them was yet forty that there was something special worth hanging on to in this world, and she was going to make the most of it every day. She was always the person Casey wanted to talk to, and she loved it whenever Casey came around.
“Look what the cats dragged in,” Lee clucked as Chester went about vigorously affirming that Casey was his. “Haven’t seen you in nearly a week. They treating you okay at Geller’s place?”
“It’s fine, Lee. I’ve been busy.” Casey sighed, sinking into one of the high-backed metal kitchen chairs in the middle of the room. Lee’s apartment looked like it hadn’t been touched since the 1970s, with peeling avocado wallpaper and a yellow Formica table straight out of a movie set. The cabinets were always overflowing, stuffed with cereal and bread and orange ceramic containers labeled for flour and sugar and rice. But Lee would inevitably mix up what went where, so the sugar jar might contain barley and the rice container some kind of oats. Lee would shrug and say, “Check to see if it’s fresh.”
“Make you something to eat?” Lee proposed.
Casey grinned. “You know I never say no to a friendly offer.”
Lee whisked up some eggs while Casey put toast in the oven, refilling her coffee mug from Lee’s pot.
“How you been?” Casey asked, rooting around in the fridge for milk and smelling to make sure it hadn’t expired. She spent so much time at Lee’s place, cooking and laughing and drinking tea and, yes, playing Scrabble—Lee was excellent—that it felt like a second home. In New York she never would have popped over to a friend’s place unannounced, especially not at six in the morning. But a lot of things were different in Bonnet. That had been the whole point.
Lee described some furniture she’d bought at a flea market out west toward Anderson and her plans to fix it up to sell. “Garret says he’ll come help me glue the bed frame back on. You should see this thing, Case, it’s a beauty.” Her eyes twinkled over the stove.
“Come on, you know I’ll help you do that anytime,” Casey said, grabbing the toast with her fingers and dropping two pieces on each plate. “You got any jam?”
“Bottom shelf, fresh from Barb.” Everyone in Bonnet knew Mrs. Geller made the best jam. “You do too much work for Cappy, I’m not dragging you into town and—good heavens.” Lee had just seen Casey’s hands, which Casey had forgotten to rewrap this morning. “What on earth have you done to yourself?”
“It’s nothing,” Casey said. “I forgot to wear gloves when I was rowing.”
Lee banged the spatula down and put her hands on her hips.
“I know, I know,” Casey said before her friend went on a tirade. “Geller got me gloves, I’ll wear them next time.”
“Hrmph.” Lee narrowed her eyes. “You’d better. Cappy’s always looking out for you, so you make sure his good deeds don’t go in vain.” She brandished the spatula at her like an extra-long finger for emphasis.
“Yes ma’am,” Casey nodded, smiling at this family that had taken her in as a stray and now expected her to behave.
“Honestly, sometimes you forget you’re a grown-ass woman, acting like you can run around doing whatever you like.” Lee spooned the fluffy scrambled eggs from the pan. But when she turned to give Casey her plate, she froze.
Casey couldn’t pretend she didn’t know why. She could feel how red she’d just gotten, from the tip of the nose all the way to her ears.
“My earthly,” Lee exclaimed, pulling the plate away like she shouldn’t give it to Casey yet. “What have you gone and done with yourself?”
“Nothing,” Casey said quickly.
“Your face doesn’t look like nothing. You look like the fox in the henhouse. Out with it.”
“It’s nothing!” Casey said again.
“Yeah, it’s nothing and I’m your fairy godmother.”
“That you certainly are.” Casey grinned.
When Lee plunked the plates on the table and sat down, Casey took a forkful of eggs so she wouldn’t have to say any more. She wasn’t about to reveal the mistake she’d made last night kissing Ben, but she felt better just being around her friend. The older woman always made sure she kept her head screwed on straight.
Lee gave her a sideways look. But this was one secret Casey wasn’t going to spill. They finished mopping up their eggs and toast, talking about other things around Bonnet while the coffee flowed. Still Casey refused to crack.
“Listen,” Lee finally said after Casey had cleared the plates and was settling back onto her stool, resting her forearms on the yellow table flecked with crumbs and coffee stains. “I don’t know exactly what you’ve got up your sleeve, but I know what a cat looks like when it’s caught the canary and you, my dear, have feathers sticking to your face every time you open your mouth. Now I’m not going to tell you to spit it out—” She held up a hand heavy with rings as Casey started to protest. “But I am going to say that you’re a smart girl and you know what you want, so if this is something that brings you more of what you want, then you take it and grab hold and don’t let go. And if it isn’t going to bring you more joy, less sorrow, then you say no thank you, not today, and you walk away. At the end of the day, it’s that simple. You hear me?”
“And what if I don’t know?” Casey said weakly.
Lee reached over the table and grabbed Casey’s hands in hers. Her fingers were soft and warm with the heart she brought to everything she did.
“You’ll know. You keep an open heart and you’ll know.”
“Thanks,” Casey whispered.
“Keep your heart open,” Lee repeated. “You don’t want to be finished before you’ve even begun.”
“And you?” Casey asked, gripping Lee’s hand before she pulled away. “Did you always keep your heart open?”
“My heart did its thing. And since then, it’s found plenty of other ways to bring in more happiness than this one body ever deserved. The store, the people of this town, the mountains, my friends, you.” She gave a tight squeeze. “I’m so full it’s a wonder I don’t float away.”
“Well, that’s how I feel,” Casey said, sinking back in the chair. “I’ve got so much here, why should I need anything—or anyone—else? Why can’t I live like you?”
“You mean get a few cats and putter around Bonnet by yourself for the rest of your years?”
“Exactly!”
Lee smiled, but it was only half a smile. The other half was sad.
“Because I’ve lived a lot more life than you have. I can say these things. You—you still don’t know what you might be missing. Now, don’t get me wrong. Don’t go after it because you think it’s what you might want, or what you should. You know the contents of your own mind. You know what beats in your heart. But I’m old, Casey.”
“You are not!” Casey objected, dimly recalling herself saying similar words to Ben’s friends last night about her own age.
“Ah, but I’m older than you. You, my dear, still have to earn this throne of wisdom.”
She leaned forward on her stool, flapping her arms around as if she were draping herself in a gown. Casey snorted, laughing at Lee’s antics as she leapt up to keep Felix from gnawing the edge of an ivy plant trailing down from a hook. Lee’s kitchen throne clattered to the floor with a crash that made both cats run screeching into the other room.
“Damn fools,” Lee muttered, righting the metal chair and shaking her fist at the cats.
“Aren’t we all?” Casey said, and both women smiled, forced to agree.
* * * * *
CASEY WAS DRIVING BACK on Main Street, full of coffee and food and cat snuggles and Lee’s infectious laughter, when she spotted a group walking along the side of the road. Six boisterous North Face-clad bodies were talking animatedly up ahead as two more serious forms took up the rear. Ben’s lanky gait she would recognize anywhere, high on the balls of his toes with that telltale lean as he bent over to hear Janelle. The memory of his lips on hers flooded her in a rush that nearly took her breath away.
She pressed on the accelerator and roared by. Before she turned off for the campsite, she allowed herself one peek in the rearview mirror. But they were dark dots now, heading up the hill into town.
She parked next to Geller’s truck and met with him in the office. “Saw that Vassar group walking toward Bonnet,” she said casually, rearranging the brochures.
“Sent ’em up to Pam’s place. Sounded like they wanted a walk,” Geller said. “Good kids, that bunch. Nicer than the boys we sometimes get.” Casey had to agree with that, but she wasn’t going to say anything else about it.
“Do we have other groups checking in?” She went over to look at the list. Only two checkouts today.
“Easy few days,” Geller said. “Two more nights of that big group and then we’ll be quiet for a spell.”
He glanced from her face to the raw circles in her thumbs.
“Everything going okay there, hotshot?” he asked.
What was up with everyone immediately sensing that something was going on? It was like Lee had X-ray vision that could tell everything Casey had been thinking. And now Geller was asking after her, too. Of course, his way was a little less colorful than Lee’s, but the point was the same.
“I’m fine,” Casey assured him. “Enjoying the nice weather we’re finally getting up here.”
“Lord knows we’re overdue,” Geller agreed.
She left him to putter around the office while she did her rounds. It was quiet with the party of eight gone for the morning, and she was relieved that she didn’t have to worry about running into them. That kiss was probably just some drunken late night thing that Ben had already forgotten. She should try to forget about it, too.
But the rush, again, as she remembered him in the doorway, the way he looked at her, the way she’d felt when he pressed his palm against the small of her back and searched her lips with his...
She stopped in the middle of the trail. This was getting ridiculous. She was completely out of her mind. She kept her hands busy and her mind off Ben—and his hands—for the rest of the morning. Which really meant that she kept her mind blank.