Page 143 of Mr. Flirt

I carried Grace up the steps and followed Millie into her house as she motioned for me to follow her down the hall through the kitchen and into the three seasons room where a floral couch was draped with a pink and grey crocheted throw.

I set Grace down gently and waited for Tim to come bounding out of a nook, ready to knock me out.

“Would you like some lemonade for your trouble?” Millie asked. “You know I owe it to you whenever you want.”

I smiled and nodded. “I wouldn’t turn it down.”

She clapped her hands and nodded. “Splendid. I just made a jug. You can take it back to share with Carter.”

I looked at Grace while answering Millie. “Thank you. I know he would appreciate it too.”

Grace feigned a dirty look in my direction, which only made me grin wider. “Need some ice for your ankle?”

“It’s just a sprain,” she assured me. “It’s not my first bike accident.”

“Okay. Fine. But do you need some ice?” I repeated.

Millie chuckled. “Of course, she does. She’s just too stubborn to admit it.”

“I’m not stubborn,” Grace grumbled. “I just have a lot on my plate.”

Millie stopped and turned to look at her granddaughter, and she smiled slowly. “You’re absolutely right about that, my dear Grace. But I’m going to do my absolute best to make things right again.”

I didn’t know what all had transpired between the two women, but I did feel the love between them. I wondered if maybe things had changed since the last time I’d heard about Grace Henry, formerly Grace Bailey.

And maybe there was more behind Grace’s trip to Buttercup Lake than I fully understood.

“Hey, Jackson.” Millie motioned for me to follow her into the kitchen, which I quickly obliged. “You look great without a shirt on, by the way. The Locke men certainly muscle out well.” I didn’t allow myself to think about my older uncle without his shirt, but I took the compliment.

I snickered as I filled a plastic bag of ice for Grace and wondered if I was the only man in Millie Bailey’s home, and if so, where was Tim?

As if on cue, Millie cocked her head and brought her mouth closer to my ear, even though she was a good foot shorter than me.

“Tim’s not here, you know.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know much of anything, really.”

“Tim passed about sixteen months ago.” Millie traded me the jug of lemonade for the bag of ice as the shock spread through me.

I looked at Millie and shook my head. “I had no idea. I’m so sorry. Please... please tell Grace how sorry I am. I have to go.”

Millie nodded as I bolted out of the house and to my truck. I set the jug next to me and glimpsed the young girl still in the garden, and my heart ached for my best friend of so many years ago. The family he’d left behind. His daughter.

The pettiness that caused us never to speak again.

I gripped the steering wheel so hard my knuckles ached as I reversed out of the driveway, and I knew coming back to Buttercup Lake had been a mistake. The thought of someone my age... gone...poof... leaving a beautiful wife and daughter. Two things I’d never had, and here he was, gone.

Life was so unfair. He shouldn’t have been the one to go.

As I drove back down the country road, I spotted something on the road. Realizing it was Grace’s other flip flop, I pulled over, hopped out of the car, and grabbed it for safekeeping.

I could deliver it another day, but today wasn’t that day.

Today, I needed to get back to Uncle Carter, and get back to pulling weeds and the life I thought I knew before I saw Grace again.

The life I understood, where my trip to Buttercup Lake was nothing more than a sabbatical away from life to take care of my ailing uncle, not a reunion with the only woman who’d stolen and crushed my heart.

Mr. Mistake Excerpt

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