Page 19 of Through the Dark Night
As they finished up, Shannon said, “I can do the dishes, if you’d like to sit and plan a menu for the week. We have ten to twelve men who work here every day, and I said I would provide something warm andnutritious for them to eat midday. You and I can probably eat leftovers every evening, if you just cook enough, or whatever. But we need a grocery list, and I need to go get something, because we obviously don’t have enough to even provide a meal for tomorrow.”
“No. It was stretching it a little bit to get the meal for this evening. I probably could do it if I had to, but I would prefer to have groceries on hand. And staples as well. I take it there’s no flour or sugar?”
“No. And I don’t want to have extravagant five-star restaurant meals, but we could provide lunch and dessert every day, as well as tea and water to drink.”
Marina nodded her head and pulled her phone out of her purse.
As Shannon did the dishes, Marina worked on her phone.
Before Shannon was finished, her phone buzzed, and Shannon turned around in time to see a panicked expression cross Marina’s face.
She glanced up and immediately tried to smooth it over. “I need to get this,” she said softly. Then, she stood up from where she had been sitting at the bar and walked casually outside of the kitchen.
Perhaps she was trying to keep Shannon from hearing, but Shannon caught a little bit of the conversation. She didn’t really mean to eavesdrop, but when she heard Marina say, “No. I told you I won’t come back. Do not have me followed,” she felt like she had to say something.
As Marina stepped back in, Shannon was finished, and she leaned against the counter, her hands in her pockets, trying to appear nonthreatening. She wanted to help Marina if she could.
“Is everything okay?” she asked, hoping Marina would confide in her.
“Sure. Everything’s fine,” Marina said, obviously trying to make it so that if she said it was fine, it was actually fine.
“I thought I heard you say something about being followed?”
Marina’s eyes grew wide, and then she shook her head. “No. Not really. It’s just… It’s complicated. An ex, you know how they can be. But I’m fine here.”
“All right. But if you need anything or you need me to help, I’m here.” Shannon didn’t know what else to say. She couldn’t make Marina confide in her if she didn’t want to. And it mirrored her own situation. Although she wasn’t afraid for her life or afraid for anything, she wasstill running. Still trying to get away. And she had her own secrets. She felt very protective of Marina and her secrets.
“If you’ll give me your number, I can text you the groceries that I’ll need. If that’s too much, I can try to pare it down.” She waved a hand. “There’s a lot of staples that we need to stock up on, and I wanted to make sure I got them all, plus things like ketchup and mustard and that type of thing.”
“I get it. We’re basically stocking a kitchen for the first time. It’s bound to be a lot. Don’t worry about it.” She paused for a moment. “I was going to go this evening for the groceries. Would you like to come?”
Immediately Marina shook her head. “No thank you. I’ll just stay here if that’s okay.”
“Of course. That’s fine. Let me show you where you can stay. I thankfully have one more set of clean sheets and one room that is mostly put together. We might have to move you around a bit to completely finish it, but thankfully, it’s livable.” She had been tempted to use that room herself, and maybe she should have, because it wouldn’t hurt for Marina to be sleeping close to the kitchen if she was going to be working in it. But for now, it would work.
She showed Marina the room, and Marina seemed grateful for her own space, thanking Shannon multiple times.
Shannon felt like she and Marina were going to be really good friends, but she wished there was something she could do to help the woman with the problem she obviously had.
“If you’re okay, I’m going to leave.”
“I’ll be fine. I’ll probably be in bed when you get back, because it’s going to be an early morning. I assume you’re going to want breakfast?”
“I didn’t even think about that.”
“It’s okay. I just put ingredients for waffles and pancakes and eggs on the grocery list. Because I assumed you would want to eat a morning meal as well. Especially if you’re going to be working all day.”
“And you need to eat too,” Shannon said.
Marina smiled gratefully and nodded.
Shannon thought about it as she drove into town, but she put it out of her mind as she drove through Raspberry Ridge.
Her eyes caught on the sign for the gym along Main Street. Shecouldn’t imagine that the gym had many members in a town as small as Raspberry Ridge was. And then, on the spur of the moment, she stopped. She needed to stay in shape—after all, she couldn’t help anyone if she were sick and didn’t keep up with her own health. And since she had saved so much on the inn and the whole town was rallying around her, she could pass it on. She could buy a membership at the gym, and then after spending that kind of money, hopefully she would be inspired to make the trip a few times a week to work out.
She got out of her car, opened the door, and walked in. As she thought, the gym was almost deserted, with just two people on machines in the back.
Mateo, whom she had met at church, stood behind the counter. It was difficult to forget him, since he was so tall, with almost a military bearing.
