Page 47 of Through the Dark Night
Shannon followed her to the counter where Fran poured a cup of coffee into a to-go container and doctored it up just the way Shannon liked it.
Shannon pulled her wallet out, but Fran shook her head. “It’s on the house. I’ve already gotten more business in the store because of the inn going up. I should be paying you every time you set foot in here.”
Shannon smiled and murmured her thanks before she took a sip of the warm, rich brew.
“I’ve clutched my guilt close to me all of these years. I wonder, sometimes, if I had said no, if I had gone with them, if I had found someone to watch the kids—all the things that you question yourself about, I think, naturally after a tragedy like this. But I just couldn’t let the stuff go. Like it was my fault. I was able to talk to Marina about it yesterday, and I just feel so much better. I don’t know where this guy’s investigation is going to go, but I do know that he made me face some things that I didn’t want to face and open up about things that I hadn’t been able to talk about before. So I suppose I have to thank him in a way.”
“Maybe you should,” Fran said with a little laugh. “But I’m not going to. And I don’t think anyone else in town is going to either. We’reall kind of circling the wagons around you, and if he wants information, he can just go find it at the police station like everybody else does. We don’t need our lives uprooted or probed or disturbed just because he’s got a bug in his bonnet somehow.”
Shannon smiled and enjoyed the feeling that came over her as she realized that the entire town was on her side. “I think I’ll go see Lance. I don’t really need anything at the hardware store, but I think I’d like to talk to him.”
“I know he’d like to talk to you,” Fran said with a wink. “You’ve led that poor boy on a merry chase, but that’s another thing you’ll want to get settled from your past. In my opinion, you never should have left without settling things with him in the first place, and just between you and me, that loser you married didn’t deserve you.”
“I know you’re right. I never should have taken his promise ring off. I’ve regretted that decision all of my life. And you’re also right that James doesn’t hold a candle to Lance. He’s a good man. In fact, he might be a little too good for me.”
“Now don’t you go telling yourself that. You two are the perfect match.”
She said goodbye to Fran and walked out the door, wanting to whistle she felt so good.
Her mood was dampened a bit as she saw Morison walk out of the hardware store.
But she knew that Lance, of all the people in the town, would protect her and defend her to his dying breath, so she didn’t worry too much. Not that she had anything else to hide. Not really. Nothing except her feelings for Lance. And maybe that was the reason she wanted to go to the hardware store all of a sudden. She needed to get those out in the open as well. So what if she admitted that she was madly, crazily in love with him and wanted to spend the rest of her life with him, and he wasn’t sure he was ready for that yet? So what? At least he would know where she stood.
The atmosphere as she walked into the hardware store was not what she had anticipated, though. And after taking one look at Lance’s face, she knew that she wouldn’t be confessing her feelings anytime soon.
“Lance?”
“Shannon. That dude was here asking about you.”
“I figured. I saw him leave. Are you okay?”
Lance pushed out a sigh and then ran both hands through his hair, turning away from her. It was the turning away that made her heart freeze.
“Lance?” she asked, wanting to step forward and touch him, but something held her back.
He ripped his hands from the sides of his head and threw them down beside him as he turned around. For the first time since she’d known him, it looked like he was angry.
“Shannon, I feel like I’ve been patient. More patient than a man ever would be expected to be. Probably more patient than anyone could be. And yet I get blindsided by this dude who’s asking questions about you, and I feel like I don’t know you at all. I feel like I’m standing here by myself, and every time I try to get close to you, you pull away. You move back, you shut me out. How much do I have to take before you let me in?”
She wasn’t quite sure what the conversation could have been about, but maybe it wasn’t about anything different than anyone else had talked about. It just brought to the surface all the feelings that he had. And maybe this had to do with her leaving him before.
“You just need to talk to me,” he said.
She wasn’t quite sure what it was, whether it was his anger, or the unfair accusations, or the worry that the one person in her life who had been a constant, who had always seen her for what she was and loved her anyway, was slipping away from her, but she reacted with anger.
“Maybe this is why I left this town in the first place. Small towns where everyone thinks they’re entitled to know your business. Maybe we’re both fooling ourselves about the idea of you and me ever working.” Maybe it was her fear that she would actually be alone after all. Or maybe it was the idea that if she was going to destroy something, she wanted to do it in the best way possible, but words that she never intended to say, and really didn’t mean, left her mouth. “You never left this place, never grew beyond taking care of other people. Maybe I need someone who understands the real world.”
She could see the hurt on his face. See that the half-truth she spokehad hit the mark. That he really hadn’t ever left the town, and maybe that was something that he regretted or at least wished had been different.
Shannon knew before she turned on her heel and stomped out of the hardware store that she had made a terrible mistake, but she didn’t want to admit it. It was her pride more than her fear that kept her from running back in and apologizing. She wished she could get herself to turn around, but she stormed all the way home to the inn and into her bedroom, closing the door with a quiet click before she threw herself on the bed and sobbed into her pillow. It was a teenage thing to do, and it didn’t really make her feel better, and she knew that it wasn’t going to solve anything, but it was all she could do.
Twenty
Shannon hadn’t figured out how she was going to apologize by the time evening came.
Marina had popped her head into her room, asked if she needed anything, and then said she was going for a drive.
She didn’t even have a friend to talk to.
