Page 10 of Clean Sweep
“Very exciting.”
Her perfectly sculpted brows lifted. Celeste clearly had a mother who knew her way around a fashion magazine. Not only were Celeste’s eyebrows expertly plucked all the time, but her manicures were usually on point. Someone had guided this girl into a natural state of flair.
“What about you?” she asked.
Her eager inquiry didn’t surprise me. For all her teenage-naive-to-the-world happiness, Celeste had always been drawn to me. Why? I couldn’t fathom, but she helped me stay connected to Blake’s world so I kept tabs on things from a different perspective.
The urge to ask more about her parents had always followed me, but held back. They’d never come up naturally in conversation, and I didn’t want to halt what we spoke about to pull it forward. I wasn’t sure why. Something told me she might spook, and I liked that she felt like we could talk.
“More work stuff.” I spared her the gory details of my son’s phone call. “But Landon will be here on Saturday, so that’s exciting.”
“You love having your kids back.”
I smiled. “I do.”
Celeste leaned back in the seat. “Dad’s picking me up soon. Said he was running a little late on a job and told me just to come here. Mind if I do some homework?”
I waved a hand toward the table. “Please, feel free.”
“Thanks.”
“Hey, boss lady,” Dahlia called from the other side of the room. “Take a look at the espresso machine. The error message is coming up again and I can’t get it reset.”
I pulled in a sharp breath. That stupid machine would, one day, be on the receiving end of a bat wielded by me.
“On it,” I called.
For the next ten minutes, Celeste poured over her homework while I fought with the machine. By the time I wrangled it back into submission, Celeste was gathering her books up.
A truck pulled up in front of the Frolicking Moose that I didn’t recognize with a T&C sticker on the passenger door. Inside, I could just make out the silhouette of a man with darker hair. He appeared to be on his phone.
“That your Dad’s truck?” I asked as I returned to my booth. Celeste collected all her paperwork and shoved it into her book.
“Yeah.”
Celeste stood up, looping her bag over her shoulder. Somehow, she still looked chic, even with her hair a bit flat from a long day at school and a glazed look in her eye.
“His employee ran off with her crappy boyfriend this morning. He texted me during lunch and said he had to go clean a house all by himself today.”
Something cold slipped through my veins.Clean a house all by himself?
Was it possible that . . .
No.
I barely managed to keep my voice this side of strangled. “A house?”
She motioned toward his truck with another flap of her hand. “T&C Cleaning. It’s supposed to be Tanner and Celeste, but I don’t want anything to do with the company after high school, to be honest. He’ll probably sell it.”
“Oh.”
She shrugged. “He doesn’t really care. He’s just doing it until I graduate college, then he plans to retire somewhere. I mean, he’s got the money so why hang around here?”
I swallowed hard. T&C Cleaners was a relatively new company to the Pineville area. While I didn’t know the particulars, Celeste talked about living in the deep mountains outside Jackson City. Her father drove them forty-five minutes down a mountain canyon every day to come to school in Pineville.
Another lingering question about Celeste.
Andher father.
