Page 19 of Almost Home
“Getting your popcorn and Coke?”
Lips pressed together, she still managed a smile that sent electricity through me. “Some things haven’t changed.”
Her gaze met mine, and we hung there a moment, just the two of us connected in the intersection of present meeting past. We’d come to the movies constantly. She always had to have popcorn and Coke, even at a morning showing. That this small detail remained consistent made a deep hunger jab at me and plead for more. More things that were still the same, and the pleasure of discovering what had changed.
“So it seems,” I said, knocking those gasping, desperate thoughts away.
“You’re off to family dinner now?”
“Yes.”
She must’ve seen the surprise flicker across my face. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to be a creeper. Sadie and Calla mentioned it yesterday when we had lunch.”
I made a show of checking my watch to gain a moment. “Yes. My first time seeing everyone at once since December, and that time, I only briefly talked with Calla.”
She nodded, evidently aware. They must’ve discussed it.
“She’s great. You’re lucky to have her as a sister-in-law.”
Something had to be wrong with me. Those words struck at a bruise in me I hadn’t realized was there. Like two days after a mission finding a foot-sized bruise on your quad you never even felt.
But this was a twenty-year bruise, and coming back here was the discovery of yet another tender place in me.
Her sister, Eddie, would’ve been mine, too. Her sweet, golden-pig-tailed little sister who’d practically worshipped Sarah the same way Warrick had me would’ve been my sister-in-law.
I wouldn’t say any of that, but irritation and the burn of other feelings I didn’t want to be so well-acquainted with jarred me into speech. “Yeah.”
Her turn in line came.
“I better…” She tipped her head toward the gangly teen waiting for her order.
I nodded. “See you at work.”
“See you then.”
Then I left out the front doors, shoving away a rapid assault of memories—the first time we’d held hands at this theater, the many summer days we’d spent the heat of the afternoon watching whatever they had on offer just to escape into the air-conditioned building.
Silverton was full of ghosts for me, and somehow, I hadn’t expected so many.
* * *
“So, Wilder, can we talk about your business?” Mom asked from the head of the very full table at Wyatt’s ranch house.
I’d grown up here, too, but it was unmistakably his, and twenty years away had given me plenty of time to move on from the memories I’d had here, even if they attacked me on and off anytime I visited.
She was likely so used to not being able to ask that she’d hedged with the general question. But for once, yes. I could tell them. At least the basics.
“It’s close to Grit. In the old log cabin where the park service office used to be.” It’d been a defunct building for years, and I’d purchased it a few years back when I visited and saw it still stood empty. I’d hired out basic refurbishing, and Grenier’s assistant had made the last of the changes to my specifications.
“Nice that you’re so close. We should catch lunch together sometime,” Warrick said.
He’d covered the flicker of upset with that comment, and I wouldn’t drill into it now. He’d known about the business only vaguely—that I had a plan for coming back, and I wouldn’t be lounging around in retirement. But he hadn’t known I owned that building or what I had planned, and as someone so connected in the community, and someone who generally seemed to dislike Julian Grenier, I could tell he was hurt.
Yet another sin to atone for.
“Sure. Sounds good.”
“Do you have employees? Partners? What’s the setup?” Wyatt asked, dipping his fork into the chocolate mousse Sadie had brought.
