Page 52 of Rest In Pink

“Depends on where you’re going.”

I turned off the phone feeling confused and sad. I went inside the Big Chef where it was blessedly peaceful and empty of people.

Except it was Sunday, so Liz would be out to join me later. Nobody messed with our Sundays. A double Liz weekend. I checked my email and Patsy had sent me a quote on the solution to the cramped Big Chef. I checked the invoice and was amazed at what she’d been able to do. I replied with an affirmative to place the order.

I thought about cleaning up the place and then decided I needed sleep first. I hadn’t gotten much last night, and it wasn’t looking like I’d get much tonight, either. Liz and I needed to talk. And do some other things.

It took a while, though, before I was able to fall asleep.

Chapter Twenty-Four

I ran my five and then spent all day Sunday coping with Anemone and trying to keep Peri entertained since there were no lessons on the weekends. At one point, I took the kid out for ice cream, and she said, “Why are there garbage bags in your back seat?” and I said, “Those are some of my mom’s bears,” and then I had a brilliant idea. When we got back, I told her the bears needed to be sorted, and we took them inside and she spread them all out on the marble floor of the living room—they were mostly Beanie Baby size and there were easily over two hundred of those, maybe two hundred and fifty altogether—and thought up categories. When she said, “I need boxes,” I took her to the next town over where we picked up packing boxes at an office supply store along with some colored markers and sticky labels and a pad of paper that had a mermaid on it which Peri announced was integral to her Bear Sorting Project. She was thrilled with her haul, and immediately spread it out over the coffee table. When I left, she’d spread the bears, too: one of the couches, both chairs, and a lot of the floor were full of teddies with the Big Red Bear looming over them, which was confusing the hell out of Veronica who probably thought they were slow moving badgers (in theory, Veronica as a dachshund had been bred to hunt badgers, but anybody looking at Veronica could tell that she’d spit on a badger before she’d hunt one). Peri began making meticulous labels that would color code the boxes, enrapt with her work.

That took care of the kid for a while.

Anemone was much tougher. She didn’t want to talk about the senator, possibly because she hadn’t gotten a house that time; the senator had a condo in DC and an old family home that was untouchable. I think that would have been enough to kill that marriage, but he also took over her low-income housing group and made it his own—he needed all the PR help he could get because out of touch does not begin to describe him—but she stuck with him for eight years, made sure he was re-elected twice and then beat feet out of Dodge. He lost his next election, which he deserved for never giving her a house of her own. I was annoyed about that because it didn’t give me a way into her emotions, but I’d done enough rewriting during the week on those six chapters that I could give them to her and tell her to mark in red pen what she didn’t like. She was pleased there were pages, so she reclined on one of the couches that Peri had kept mostly bear-free for her, happily making red marks with a pen all over my nice clean typescript. I was just happy she was happy.

So, nobody protested when I got ready to go down to the Big Chef that night. I wasn’t sure Vince would be up for our usual Sunday night since he’d spent the night before with me. That might be too much Liz. But I put on my black stretchy dress and the black lace under-stuff and the stockings with the red bows again anyway because I am a positive person with a hopeful heart and drove down to his place. I pulled around to the front of the diner, looking on the river, the partial moon illuminating it, and parked beside the Gladiator.

When I went in, Vince was sitting at the counter, looking rested and . . . thoughtful.

“What’s wrong?” I said and he pointed to the next stool and said, “Sit.”

I sat.

“Last night, before I got to your place, I found out that people are coming into JB’s because of Thacker’s posts.”

I perked up. “That’s great, she needs the business.”

“They’re asking about you and me.”

I nodded. “Not so great, but still, JB’s needs the—”

“One of them was this redhead.”

And my heart stopped. Then I realized I was being an idiot. Vince didn’t owe me anything, and we were not exclusive, and he was also not a cheat, and he wouldn’t be sitting there like that if he was planning on dating a redhead and . . .

Vince went on. “She brought up this napkin and asked me to sign it and I did and then she went back to the table with her friends and I talked with Jill and came home.”

I let out my breath.

“I didn’t look at her at all,” he said. “I’m a guy and I didn’t look at her.”

I frowned. “I’m not following.”

“You and I are not a bunch of one-night stands,” he said. “I didn’t look at her because she wasn’t you.”

I froze, caught between two instantaneous conflicting emotions:NO, I don’t want anything seriousandThank GOD, this is real.

“Say something,” he said, and I said, “I don’t want anybody else, either.”

And then we sat there for a minute, two commitment-phobes who’d only known each other for six weeks, looking into the abyss.

“We don’t have to change anything,” he said finally, and I said, “No, no, we don’t.”

And then we looked at each other again because everything had changed.

Well, not everything.

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