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Be satisfied, Natalie. Be satisfied.Cancel your trip and move on with your life.

“So, you didn’t like each other, and then?”

“Then we did,” Mom says, her eyes meeting Dad’s for a loaded pause.

“Who broke first?”

“Baby, you’re rather inquisitive tonight,” Mom says, her brows drawing as she breaks her stare off with Dad. “Why such an interest?”

“You were getting to the sex part, weren’t you?” I divert, palming my forehead.

“Well, you weren’t immaculately conceived,” Dad delivers bluntly.

“No shit,” I say as Mom narrows her eyes. She doesn’t like me cursing but allows it because my father has the foulest of mouths. Not that I didn’t taste my fair share of soap or get grounded for PMS-induced emotional lash-outs by both.

“When did you know, Daddy? That it was Mom?”

He tilts his head, studying my mother, who stares back at him unabashedly. The answer settled somewhere in her chest. She knows it, and I’m the only clueless one. Dad grips my mother’s left hand, her large diamond glittering due to the candle burning at the center of the table as he slides his thumb along the back of it.

“I can’t wait until you get to figure that out for yourself,” Dad replies softly before turning to me, his blue eyes glowing with sentiment, “because it’s one of the best parts of living.”

“You aren’t going to tell me?”

“No,” Mom answers in reply, getting lost in the moment with my father.

They love each other, still, and it’s clear. They’ve spent my entire existence loving each other, so why am I so determined to dig into my father’s past?

Be satisfied, Natalie!

But I can’t, especially after living the first year of Dad’s old relationship—line by line—until I was forced away from my desk by Mom’s summons to dinner. I spent the entire ride to my childhood home in stunned silence, the truth evident. My father might have been madly in love with Stella Emerson, but Stella Emerson reciprocated that love fully, in black and white.

Even so, I’ve already gone too far.

This has to stop here.

One day I’ll summon the courage to ask, but for now, I need to let it go. If I back out of my half-baked plan now, good karma might give me a break for warning Easton that his secret was coming out. At least now he can prepare himself for the media shitstorm the announcement is sure to toss his way. I’ll just shoot him a text and cancel, assuring him of my word to keep Reid out of it, which will buy his silence.

Just as I reach for my cell to shoot him a text and refund my ticket, my phone lights up with an incoming text . . . from Easton.

EC: 415 Cedar Street @3

Guilt batters me as my parents begin to clear the table, their eyes lingering a bit longer on the other, no doubt from the reminiscence I drew out of them both with my prompting. Hands full of plates, Dad pauses behind Mom as she opens the sliding door. He leans in and kisses her shoulder, the look in his eye when he withdraws clearly not meant for me to see. Feeling sick, I avert my attention back to the Texas sun just as it dips below the horizon, coloring the sky a violent red.

What the hell are you doing, Natalie?

Just as I bring the question up, my phone lights up with a gate change announcement for my flight leaving for Washington in a few hours, and I’m not sure I’ll be on it.

FOUR

“Bette Davis Eyes”

Kim Carnes

Easton

Sitting in the last booth—which runs adjacent to the bar—I dart my gaze out the windows between my truck parked a few spaces to the right of the entrance and those outside scurrying along the crosswalk. Others congregate at a small cluster of tables next to the front door, soaking up what little warmth they can get from the afternoon sun.

Flipping my cardboard coaster on the tabletop, I sink farther into the heavily worn seat, hating the fact that I’m early. I should have made her wait, questioning ifIwould show. One thing I do know is she’s not getting a single fucking quotable syllable from me until I feel her out.

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