Page 13 of Suddenly Single
“I canna imagine anyone has so much time to travel about andabsorb,” he said.
“Well, sure, most people don’t have the time or money to do it.Honestly, it takes a certain amount of privilege to get away with it.I did it once. I went to Thailand one summer between semesters to study with a yogi there, and I totally absorbed the country. It’s in my blood now.Although counter argument—maybe I was there too long.I mean, in the beginning, it was magical.Then I started to notice how hot it was.And the food, forget it—just too spicy.I was actually glad to come home to a good old-fashioned cheeseburger, and I don’t even eat red meat.But you know how it is, sometimes, you just gotta get a burger under your belt, right?”
Edan looked at her with the dazed expression she’d seen a few times on him. Sort of like she imagined someone might look at an unidentifiable stain on the countertop as they tried to work out what it was.
They sailed into a small development of businesses and houses, and Edan screeched to a sharp halt in a parking spot.
“Just out of curiosity, how fast were we going?” Jenny asked breathlessly.
He opened the driver’s door.“I might have reached seventy on the main road, aye? Here we are, then. I’ll fetch you in a half hour from the coffee shop.” He pointed to a storefront with the words,Lakeshore Coffeepainted artfully on the window. He got out, shut the door, and began striding down the road.
“Okay,” Jenny said to the empty car, unhooked her seat belt and got out, too.
They were on the main street of the village of East Beach, where storefronts faced the cobbled street.Bright summer flags and flowers hung from street poles, and merchants had pulled their sale items out onto the sidewalk.It was a lovely, charmingly quaint little lakeside village, the sort you’d expect to see in a brochure advertising summer tours.
Cranston’s, a small market, was situated next to the coffee shop.Jenny went inside and picked up a basket.For such a small market, it was surprisingly well stocked with whole foods.Fresh produce beneath signs proclaiming it from a local farm was placed near the entrance.Jenny was generally very conscious of her diet, but these days, she was doing more stress eating than worrying about nutrition, and she headed for the aisles in the back.After she’d collected enough snacks to keep her through the Apocalypse—she did not like to leave things to chance—she made her way to the register. “Good morning!” sang the round little woman behind the counter.She had a mop of gray hair and oval glasses perched on her nose that made her brown eyes seem twice their size.“Is this all you’ll be needing? We’ve got a sale on blackberries.They’re local, of course.”
“Thanks, but this ought to do it,” Jenny said.
“Are you with one of the bus tours?” the woman asked as she began to ring up her items. “We usually don’t see them for another hour or so.”
“Oh, no. I came from the Cassian Inn.”
“The Cassian!” the woman said as she scanned a bottle of bubble bath.She turned her magnified brown eyes to Jenny. “I thought the Cassian closed.”
“I think it is,” Jenny said.“Or closing.Not quite closed, but close enough to closed.” She grinned.
“Well, it’s no wonder. That place has been limping along since Clara died, and I told my husband when that poor man lost his fiancée that he’d be out of there but quick.”
What?Jenny stared at her. Edan’s fiancée haddied?No wonder he was so...churlish.
The woman began to punch numbers into her old cash register. “Yeah, I didn’t actually see the closed sign when I arrived last night,” Jenny said, which was obviously not true, but she felt compelled to offer an explanation for being there. “The manager was kind enough to let me stay.”
The woman stopped punching numbers into the cash register and looked up at Jenny. “Mackenzie?”
“Yep. Edan Mackenzie,” Jenny said.“He let me stay because I didn’t have anywhere else to go. Other than the bench outside his inn.” She smiled sheepishly.“I had an unplanned stop without a back-up plan.But he gave me a room and made me a sandwich.”
“Edan Mackenzie made you a sandwich!” The woman gave a bark of disbelief. “Well, maybe he’s finally getting over it.” She resumed her punching of numbers. “I heard he took it pretty hard.The wedding was planned and everything, and since then, I never see him out and about.He used to come around for coffee, but I don’t think he does that anymore. If it weren’t for Rosalyn and Hugh, he’d probably rot away up there.”
Edan didn’t strike Jenny as a man who was going to rot away.He was far more likely to die in a fiery car crash.Seventy my ass.
The woman must have realized she was gossiping, because she suddenly said, “Goodness gracious, don’t listen to me.My husband says I’m a busybody and he’s right. But I did wonder if he was going to close before the Italians came.”
“The Italians?”
“There’s a few of them that come every year to the Cassian.Brothers, I think. If you ask me, I think they want to marry one of their girls off to someone here and get an anchor in the US. You know how the Italians are.”
“No,” said Jenny, mystified.“How are the Italians?” Her maternal grandmother was Italian, and Jenny had spent summers at her villa in Italy as a child.She found most Italians quite charming.
“There I go again,” the woman said with a laugh and waved a chubby hand before she began to stuff paper bags with Jenny’s purchases. “I’m just saying that they are always looking for a place they can turn into an Italian restaurant.That’s what they want from Mackenzie, I think.They want to put an Italian restaurant in over there.”
That seemed absurdly unlikely and a bit racist. “I love Italian food,” Jenny said absently.
“That will be thirty-seven eighty, please.”
Jenny fished in her wallet for money and handed it over to the lady.She hoisted two paper bags into her arms and smiled at the woman.“Have a great day,” she wished her.
“Oh, I’ll have a fine day. You do the same over at the Cassian.” The woman punctuated that with a cackle.
