Page 111 of 15 Summers Later

Madison

“Okay. What’s up? This is the first chance we’ve had to hang out together in weeks and you’ve hardly said two words all evening. If I didn’t know better, I would think I’m boring you. You haven’t even asked me about Austin.”

Madi looked up from the red-and-white container of Chinese takeout Nicole had brought home after her shift at the ER.

“I’m sorry.” She set down her chopsticks, her appetite gone. “You’re not boring me at all. I’m just...lousy company. It’s been a really strange day.”

“Why is that? Last I heard, you said you would be busy all day at the farmers market with an animal-adoption event. I can’t imagine that part was too unusual. You’ve done them before.”

“That part was fine. Good, actually. We found homes for all the puppies and kittens as well as a couple of our older animals.”

“Terrific. That means the shelter might be relatively quiet for all of five minutes.”

“Maybe.”

“So what made your day strange?”

She felt like a lousy friend, focusing only on herself. “Tell me about Austin first.”

Nicole made a face. “I broke up with him last night. Hence the need for Chinese food and girl talk.”

“What happened? I thought you liked him.”

“I did at first, but he was becoming way too clingy. He was talking about moving here and finding a job for the winter, finishing his master’s degree online. He even talked about us finding a condo together or something. After a month of dating!”

“Oh wow. That’s fast.”

“Right. And he suddenly became super possessive. Last night, I agreed to dance with a tourist from Virginia, a guy named Zach who is in the coast guard, and you would have thought I had made out with the guy right there on the dance floor. No thank you. Zach is in town for a week, so we’re going to a concert in Sun Valley on Tuesday. Some bluegrass band. I don’t know them but Zach says they’re good.”

“Sounds fun,” she said.

“He might have a friend, if you want to come along. Or I know Ryan is still interested in you. I’ve seen him a few times at the Burning Tree and he always asks about you.”

Her friend’s dating life suddenly seemed exhausting, moving from new guy to new guy.

How could Madi say anything, though, when her love life had mirrored Nicki’s exactly for the past few years?

Had she really been interested in any of those guys or had she only been going along with her friend?

Or had she only been waiting, biding her time until Luke was ready to move on after Johanna’s death? Hoping on some subconscious level that when he was ready, he would finally turn toher?

“Tell me about your day,” Nicki said. “What happened at the farmers market that left you so distracted?”

I was ambushed by a reporter pressing me to talk about things I would rather forget. I kissed your brother. Again. Your niece caught us and wasn’t happy about it. I yelled at my sister. Is that enough?

She said none of those things, of course. “A hundred different things. Nothing specific. It was only one of those days where everything seemed twice as hard as it needed to be.”

“I hate those kind of days. The other night in the ER, we got hit with one thing after another and absolutely anything that could go wrong did. In spades.”

“I’m sorry my schedule has been so frenetic the past few weeks that you haven’t even been able to come home and tell me all about it.”

“Don’t worry. I’m keeping a file of all the weirdest cases. Without any names or identifying factors, of course. I would never abuse my patients’ privacy. Still, I figured one winter night, I can spill them all and totally gross you out.”

She smiled, grateful beyond words for Nicole, who had been her dearest friend since they were fourteen years old.

“I spent seven years as a vet tech. My gross stories will beat your gross stories any day.”

“We should have a contest.”

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