Page 100 of Happy Harbor
With her other hand, she opened her laptop so she could check her email. After that, she checked her social media, curious to see if anyone she knew was doing anything interesting. Usually, the answer was no.
Just as she was about to close her computer, she noticed something strange. One tab that was open didn’t belong to her. It was a Google search for Dan. The same Dan that had been the bane of her existence while she was growing up. The same Dan that had extorted money from her grandmother.
For a moment, she sat there trying to figure out how she could’ve done a search and not remembered it. Had she just completely blacked out? Nobody else had access to her computer other than Kendra, and she would never do such a thing. She didn’t even know Dan’s last name.
In fact, there were only three people who knew his last name—Josie, Adeline, and Diane.
She sat there, frozen to her seat, another pickle falling from her hamburger and making a slapping sound against the plate. Her mother? Why would she have been looking for Dan?
After all, Diane had said that she wanted nothing to do with him. She had spent so many years trying to stay away from that man, and she was well aware that he would be a trigger if he ever came back to town.
After a few moments of letting it sink in, she realized it had to have been her mother searching for him. It made her stomach twist into a knot. How could she do that?Whywould she do that?
Josie decided not to mention it until she got back home. She needed her mother to be in her right mind while she ran the restaurant and looked after Kendra. Getting into an argument with her would only make Josie feel more anxious, and she didn’t need that right now.
She had important decisions to make. If her mother had started the process of getting Dan back into her life, Josie would not stay in Happy Harbor. She would not put herself through that again. And the likelihood of Diane leaving town just because Josie asked her to would be pretty slim.
She closed her laptop and drew in a deep breath before blowing it out. Maybe there was some logical explanation. Maybe she was getting ahead of herself and letting the past wrongs her mother had done affect her thinking now.
She took the last couple of bites of her hamburger and slid it across the table. Grabbing the bag of chips and kicking off her shoes, she climbed up into the bed and leaned against the pillow, the back of her head pressed against the wooden headboard.
Her phone rang beside her, and she looked down to see Walker’s name.
“Hello?”
“Hey there, beautiful.”
That made her smile, even if just for a moment. “How are you?”
“Not as good as I’d be if you were still here. Coming home tomorrow?”
Josie paused, unsure of how to break the news that she wasn’t. “I’m actually staying for another day or so.”
There was silence from the other end. “Staying? I thought you wanted to get back as quickly as possible?”
“I do. I did. It’s just that something has come up that I need to deal with while I’m here. Do you mind helping my mother watch Kendra while I’m gone?”
“Kendra has a better head on her shoulders than all of us,” he said, forcing a laugh.
“Are you mad?”
“No, just disappointed. I was hoping to cook dinner for you tomorrow night.”
“Well, just give me a rain check, okay?”
“Okay. As punishment, you have to make the dessert.”
“Trust me, that’ll be more punishment for you.”
* * *
As Josie approached the door to her old office building, she felt butterflies in her stomach, but not in a good way. She had a lot of bad memories from her last day on the job, and they were all flooding back into her mind and body.
She walked through the lobby and rode the elevator to the third floor. When the door opened, she was right back in the last place she’d felt like a failure.
“Josie! I’m so glad you agreed to come,” Sandra said, a big smile on her face. Josie knew it was fake. Sandra didn’t want to work with her any more than she wanted to work with an angry wolverine. But she liked money and keeping her company open, so Josie was her only option, apparently.
“I told you I would.”
