Page 4 of The Hampton Beach Café 6
She could see Malcolm watching her intently as she served him.
“Enjoy your meal,” she said flatly and turned to walk away coldly.
Catching her wrist as she turned away, he gently tried pulling her back towards him.
“Frances, please sit with me for a moment. I want to talk.”
Her immediate feeling was that she wanted to land an ear-cracking slap across his face…but that was probably a bit much. Maybe. Frances hesitated as she opened her mouth to respond with something cutting, but saw that the café was too busy for her to make a scene. She plastered a small, tight smile on her face.
“Only if you take your hand off of my wrist in the next three seconds,” she said, not letting the polite smile falter at all.
Malcolm's eyes widened a little at her tone, and he removed his hand in well under the time limit she had given him.
She took a deep breath, forced the small smile to stay where it was, and sat across from him.
“What, precisely, do you want?” she asked.
Malcolm sipped his coffee before setting it down on the table.
“I want to enjoy a good cup of coffee and a delicious slice of cake…” he said smoothly, “…with my wife.”
“Well unless you married that woman you were photographed courting, and you've had the audacity to bring her here, you're going to be wildly disappointed.”
The silence that fell was uncomfortable, unlike the pleasant quiet moments she had found with Alex, Lucinda, and Vincent over the last few months.
His face fell.
“I'm sorry to just show up like this, but I was in the area and wanted to stop in and say hello. You look great, by the way.”
Frances raised an eyebrow at the compliment, feeling a mix of anger and confusion. She took another deep breath and very calmly leaned forward to speak quietly.
“In the area? By that do you mean that by some cosmic accident, you just happened to find yourself on my street and in my café just a few days after crash landing in my life and having nothing go the way you thought it would, so instead threw a tantrum? Yelling at me and my friends? What do you want, Malcolm?”
Malcolm sighed, shaking his head before shifting his gaze to look at her earnestly.
“I just want to apologize for how I treated you during our marriage and for how I ended things. I should have been more upfront with you, and I regret not being honest with you sooner. When you know the whole story…I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me someday.”
Frances stared at him incredulously, wondering how he could expect her to forgive him so easily.
“Malcolm, it's been six months. I'm not going to forgive you just because you said you're sorry.”
Malcolm nodded, seeming to understand her perspective.
“I know, I know. I just wanted to try and open up this line of communication. Anyway, I won't keep you any longer. Thank you for the coffee and cake.”
She rose and headed back to the counter to serve a family who had just come in, seething that he had come here unannounced but also intrigued. He seemed to actually understand that he had hurt her.
But he had never admitted when he was wrong, and it made her suspicious.
THREE
Even as the day wound down and customers filed out, Frances couldn't stop thinking about Malcolm's unexpected visit to the café—his whole presence in Hampton Beach in general. As the busy line of customers dwindled and she had more moments to herself, she found herself alone with Lucinda behind the counter, both of them deep in thought.
“He's up to something,” Frances finally said, breaking the silence. “He's never apologized like that before, without prompting or a Catch-22. It's too suspicious.”
A raised eyebrow from Lucinda made Frances recoil slightly. Maybe she shouldn't have just come out and said it like that. Lucinda obviously had something else on her mind…With a pang of regret, she realized that she had simply assumed that Lucinda was just as obsessed with Malcolm's reappearance as she was herself.
Lucinda frowned as she leaned forward and chewed her lower lip in thought.
