Page 9 of Through the Dark Night
Why did it matter to her whether he wore a ring or not? She wasn’t interested in a relationship. None. After all, she thought James was going to be true to her, and he wasn’t. She wasn’t going to go down that road again. She wasn’t going to give some man the power over her to hurt her in any way. That was just not in the cards for her, just like moving out of this town was not in the cards for her. She was back to stay.
“I’m happy to hear that.”
They didn’t say anything else, because she didn’t know what to say. Finally, she took a breath and looked around the store. “Well, I have a few things I need to get.”
He jerked his head and said, “I can help you. Just let me know.”
The words made her feel like he was talking about more than just shopping in the store today, but he didn’t say anything more, and she wandered away from him. She could hear voices murmuring, and his deep voice saying something, as she picked up a few things that she knew she was going to need that day. She was going to have to take stock of her money, figuring out how much she was going to be able to spend for repairs and trying to figure out whether she would be able to open a part of the inn to house guests to maybe start earning some money so she would be able to afford to fix the rest of it up.
So much she didn’t know. Why had she done this on the spur of the moment?
But she knew the answer. She was desperate to return to the town of her youth. And this was the only way.
She finally had gathered up what she needed, managing to avoid Lance in the process, and took the things to the cash register.
He rang them up and set them in a bag. She paid with a card, and as he handed her receipt back along with her card, their fingers brushed.
She tried to ignore the surge of electricity that ran through the tips of her fingers, tingling down her arm.
“It’s good to see you, Shannon. Really good.”
Her heart beat hard as she mumbled something—she wasn’t even sure what—and turned and fled out the door.
Four
Shannon sat in the small room off the kitchen that she assumed had once been a caretaker’s room. It had a small bed and a dresser. The bathroom that was just off to the side was the nicest bathroom in the hotel. It was still run down and needed a facelift, but it was the one that she was going to use, and it would work for now. Nothing leaked, and she had used some of the cleaner she had bought at the hardware store to get some of the grime off. It didn’t feel too bad.
But now, she had to make some hard phone calls.
Pressing the button on her phone, she waited for it to ring and the camera to show the picture of her oldest child, Alex. He was twenty-six years old and pragmatic like his father.
“Mom!” He answered the phone, obviously in the middle of a run, since he was sweaty and standing on some kind of bike path.
“Alex. How are you?”
“I’m doing good. I expected to hear from you before this, though.”
“You can call me,” she said, and she tried to keep any kind of motherly discipline out of her voice. But it was true. Alex never called her. Although he always answered when she called.
“You’re right. Still, you got into town what? Two days ago? How are you?”
“I’m doing just fine. I’ve been busy. And I just got in yesterday.”
“Okay. What is that in the background? You’re staying there?” He lifted the phone to his face and scrunched his eyes as though trying to make out exactly what was going on behind her. If she had been thinking, she would have made the call from the kitchen. It was the nicest room in the inn.
“This is the inn I bought.”
The phone moved back away from his face as he digested her words.
“You bought an inn?” he asked, and it was obvious from his tone that he was trying to reconcile his mother with the sentence that she had uttered, and was finding it difficult.
“Yes. In Raspberry Ridge, the town you were born in.”
“The one you never talk about.”
She lifted her head in a regal nod. She still didn’t want to talk about it. Not really. Especially not the reason she left. Not with Alex. He was old enough to remember his sister and the pain the tragedy had caused.
“Because that’s where Yolanda died. You moved back there?”
