Page 77 of Lovewell Lane

We rounded the corner to find Margo pulling on her shoes. She froze. We were caught red-handed.

“Oh, I uh, forgot my shoes here last night,” Margo stammered. “I should get going, though. I’m late to open the diner. See you both later.”

Tessa brought up Margo no fewer than seven times during breakfast. I did my best to avoid her questions, distracting her with smiley-face pancakes made of syrup and fruit.

A few hours later, she still hadn’t let it go.

“We should go to the diner and see her,” Tessa announced, already pulling her shoes out.

I hesitated. “Maybe we should let her work–”

“But she saidsee you later.” Her voice was matter-of-fact. Unquestionable.

Ten minutes later, we were walking into the diner.

It was already half-full, buzzing with the quiet hum of a Saturday crowd. Locals filled the tables, while a few older men sat at the counter.

Margo was behind the counter, her hair pulled back, pen tucked behind her ear. Her eyes lit up when she saw us, only for a second. Then the smile faltered and her cheeks pinkened when she registered the room.

“Hi, Margo!” Tessa called. “We came to visit!” She walked over to the bar, climbing up on a tall chair, with help from me, and leaned her arms dramatically across the counter. “Daddy said we had to wait to see you, but I wanted to visit because you said you would see us later when you were putting your shoes on this morning.”

The room went still.

Margo froze, halfway through pouring coffee into old man Beckett’s mug. Her back straightened. Her eyes snapped to mine.

I gave her a helpless, grimace-smile that screamed,I tried.

Around us, the glances started. Then the whispers.

Two older women at the corner table didn’t even bother to whisper as they asked each other about what they’d just heard. Mike, the chef, leaned into the doorway that separated the kitchen and dining area.

The town didn’t need an invitation to speculate. They would cling to anything, whether it was newsworthy or not. Nowadays, just about anything was deemed newsworthy.And, thanks to Tessa’s enthusiasm, the town had enough gossip to speculate about me and Margo for the rest of the summer.

My brows furrowed just thinking about what my family would say when it got back to them. Which, judging by the urgency of those whispers, could be in less than fifteen minutes.

I’d been the center of town gossip for most of my life. Dead mom. Mentally checked-out father. Being the oldest of a prominent family in town. Runaway wife. There were a lot of ‘Poor Derek’ sentiments over the years. It never bothered me before. In my mind, it was just part of growing up in a small town. But bringing Margo into it struck a nerve, and I wanted to smooth this over immediately.

I opened my mouth to say something to make Tessa’s sentence sound less damning, but before I could, the bell above the door jingled.

I glanced toward the noise, only to find a strangely familiar woman. My memory wasn’t great, but I could have sworn I’d seen that face before. Her bleached blonde hair held frizzy curls, and her makeup was heavy. She was older, but still pretty, and looked like she knew it.

I lost interest and turned back to Margo. Instead of her pink cheeks that I was expecting to find, she’d gone completely pale. She stood, staring at the woman who walked through the door like a ghost had graced her diner.

“Margo,” the woman said with familiarity and a hefty amount of disapproval.

“I’ll be right with you,” Margo said coldly. Then she leaned over the counter toward us, eyes locked on me.

“Be right back,” she whispered.

I nodded.

Margo rounded the counter and met the woman halfway across the floor, speaking in low, hurried tones that I couldn’t hear. But I didn’t need to. Her body language said it all. Her tense shoulders and clenched fists were all I needed to see.

Whoever this was, Margo didn’t like her. Which meant I didn’t like her either.

I turned to Tessa and pushed her straw into her apple juice cup, hoping she would stop staring like I was. We were both staring, but I was at least pretending like I wasn’t trying to tune into every word from across the room.

But I couldn’t ignore the way Margo’s voice got sharper. How she gestured toward the door. How the woman turned without another word and left with a huff of air, her heels clicking behind her.

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