CHAPTER FOUR

Outside of the office, Corinne didn’t like to judge people. As a prosecutor, she spent her days proving to juries and judges that people had done wrong and should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. Which was why tried extra hard to make certain that she didn’t treat her loved ones that way. But she was pretty close to pinning a guilty verdict on her best friend as she stood alone in her kitchen, cutting up celery, grapes, bananas and apples for a salad she wasn’t sure she’d able to swallow.

Unless she got lucky and found the joy in spending Thanksgiving day alone with the man who’d once made her feel as though he couldn’t live without her and now hardly even seemed to know who she was. The only thing that kept the guilty verdict at bay was the mitigating factor of Janie’s motive. Her friend loved her and Joe. Wanted only the best for them.

It wasn’t her fault she didn’t understand that them living apart was best.

In truth, spending the day completely alone would have been preferable to spending it alone with Joe. She could have driven to the ocean, spent the day in an entirely new and freeing way.

So maybe, as she sliced, the thought of being at the ocean didn’t fill her with joy, but that was because Joe was there.

And the loss of their love still hurt.

He could have made some excuse and left right after Janie did. She could have made it easy on him, asking him if he wanted to go, but, remembering the speed with which her suggestion of divorce had been met, she’d kept silent.

Joe’s friendship really did mean the world to her and she wanted him to feel as though he was welcome in her home anytime. Particularly on holidays.

Because while he might have forgotten her, she still remembered the few glimpses Joe had given her of the man who lived inside him. The most intimate peeks into who he was. A loner. A foster child whose parents had been killed in a boating accident when was twelve. It had been just the three of them, on vacation and…

He was back. “I’ve got the television tuned to the channel Family Secrets will air on,” he said, reaching for plates.

So that’s where he’d gone. And he was going to set the table after all. Funny how quickly her joy returned.