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Instead of asking him whether he’d eaten lunch, Izzy both spoke and signed back, “There’s strawberry cheesecake in the walk-in fridge. Help yourself.”
Eli’s eyes, hazel-green, like his mother’s, widened in surprise. “Cool.” She never offered him dessert before a healthful meal or, at the very least, a snack. Eli taught swim classes at the local parks and rec. She was always harping on him about healthful refueling. Now he trotted toward the kitchen, stopped and looked at her. I had a sub sandwich with lettuce, tomato, spinach and pickles, he signed. In case you were wondering. With a grin, Eli said hello to a waitress, dodged around her, then rounded the counter and disappeared into the kitchen calling, “Yo, O!” to Oliver, the lead cook, who had once bought Eli a set of child-sized saucepans and played “chef” with him for hours.
Oh, God, how she loved her little family. Nate’s presence here could threaten everything she’d defied the odds to build.
“I’m on duty tonight,” Derek said, keeping his voice low, “but I’ll see you tomorrow. I expect a full debriefing.”
He had never asked about Eli’s father. Derek had too many of his own ghosts to request that Izzy dredge up hers, but once, during a vulnerable moment, she had told him a little bit about the summer she was seventeen.
“Tomorrow?” Derek had been a good friend for years, but would she be ready to tell him—or anyone—the truth by tomorrow night? Not likely. She needed time, time to find out how long Nate was going to be in town...time to figure out how to protect her son, because this wasn’t just about her. “I’m...not sure I’m free tomorrow.”
“What’s the problem?” Derek asked. “You close at sundown on Friday nights.”
“Yes, but I’m... I’ve got to... There’s a very important—”
“Cut it out, Izz. You’re a crap liar.”
That’s what you think. She chewed the inside of her lip.
Derek crossed his arms. “You’re making me so curious I might stop by tonight on my shift.”
“No.” Eli would be home tonight. “Tomorrow,” she relented.
Reappearing, Eli carried a plate of the deli’s mile-high cheesecake. “This is the bomb,” he said, pointing to it with his fork. Setting the plate aside so he had both hands free, he asked, Mom, is it okay if I sleep at Trey’s tonight? His dad said he’d drive us to Portland in the morning.
Eli and his friend Trey were attending the same summer camp in Portland. After tonight, she wouldn’t see him for two whole weeks.
“I can drive you.” Glad to think of something other than Nate, she focused on the plans she’d already made. “I took the morning off. I thought we’d stop at Voodoo Doughnuts for maple-bacon bars.” She smiled, for the moment just another mom trying to tempt her teenager into spending a little more time with her.
A flash of guilt crossed her son’s features. Typically more comfortable with signing than oral speech when he had more than a few words to say, he used a combination of ASL and finger spelling to explain, Trey’s dad was a counselor for Inner City Project when he was our age. He’s going to introduce us around.
“Ah.” For the past several summers, Eli had attended a camp for deaf kids. This summer, he’d insisted on “regular camp.” The fourteen-year-old was the one thing in Izzy’s life that had turned out absolutely, perfectly right. Refraining, with difficulty, from telling him he was already way, way better than “regular,” Izzy had spent more money than she should have to register Eli for the camp with Trey.
“Traveling with Trey and Mr. Richards sounds like a great idea,” she said. “You have a good time. In fact, I’ll take off early and help you pack.”
I’m already packed. I can sleep at Trey’s so we can get an early start tomorrow. His mom invited me to dinner.
“Oh. Well...great. Great, because I wasn’t even sure what to make tonight.” His favorite monster burritos, actually. Have a fabulous time, First Mate, she signed without speaking.
Aye, aye, Skipper, he signed back, playing along with the endearments they’d been using since he was in third grade and they’d eaten their dinners at the coffee table, watching reruns of Gilligan’s Island. She probably ought to stop calling him cutesy names that would make a less patient kid gag.
I’ll see you in a couple of weeks, Mom. He looked at Derek. Take care of her for me, Uncle Derek.
Derek both signed and spoke back, “I’ll do that, buddy.”
Eli made a move toward his mother, then looked uncertain. I’m not sure how to hug you when you’re a pickle.
Solving the problem, she tossed her arms around her son, gave him a warm squeeze, then began to run through the list of safety precautions he needed to take at camp.
Eli nodded for a while before interrupting, Mom, I got the memo. Literally. He looked at Derek and splayed his fingers. “She wrote five pages.”
Izzy blushed. “It’s easy to forget things when you’re away.”
Mom, I’ll be safe, respectful and aware of my surroundings. I won’t lose my hearing aid, ’cause it’s really expensive, and I’ll be back in two weeks with all my body parts. And then, just so she would have a memory to reduce her to tears every day that he was away, Eli kissed her on the cheek and said with his most careful enunciation, “See you, Skipper.”
She refused to cry. Until he was out the door.
After exchanging a manly hug with Derek, Eli jogged out of the deli. Izzy didn’t start sniffling audibly until the glass door closed behind her only child, leaving her with her worries and a sense of loneliness that made her feel hollow as an empty tomb.
“Aw, come on, Pickle. He’ll be home soon.” Derek’s arm went round her in what turned out to be a kind of stranglehold. “Do you know pickles have no visible shoulders? Makes it hard to be friendly.” He adjusted his arm a bit more companionably. “If I wasn’t on duty tonight, I’d keep you company. I’ll bring pizza tomorrow. The works?”
“Sure.”
Willa walked by carrying a lox platter, and Derek’s attention instantly swerved to the petite redhead. “For pity’s sake, ask her out already,” Izzy whispered. “You stare at her every time you come in.”
“She doesn’t stare back.”
Izzy shook her head, content to focus on someone else’s fears instead of her own for a while. “Sheriff Neel, are you telling me a big, strapping lawman like you is afraid of a tiny, little woman who hasn’t uttered an unkind word since she’s been here?”
Derek grunted.
“When was the last time you went on a date?” she needled. “You can’t be a sheriff 24/7, buddy. You need a reason to wear street clothes once in a while.”
One of Derek’s brows arched. “Look who’s talking. You’re a pickle. How’s your date card these days, Isabelle? Do I need to find someone else to watch Shark Tank with?”
The last time Izzy had felt motivated to take a good hard look at her love life, she’d wound up alone in the back office, eating a quart of matzo ball soup and putting a sizable dent in a chocolate chip babka. “Fine. Never mind,” she muttered. “I was trying to be helpful.” She and Derek lapsed into grumpy silence for several seconds, disgusted far more with themselves than with each other.
Finally, Derek spoke. “If you need something before tomorrow, call me. I mean, with the kid leaving.”
She nodded. “Thanks. I better get back to work,”
“Me, too. Lives to protect and all that.”
“Yeah. Pickles to serve.”
With one last, not-very-subtle glance at Willa, he headed toward the coatrack at the front of the deli, where he’d hung his hat.
Izzy sighed. All right, so they were both terminally pathetic when it came to romance. At least Derek had a town to watch over, and she—
I have a restaurant and a family to save. Here in this dying deli were people she loved who loved her back. That was something. More, in fact, than she’d ever thought she would have. She intended to protect what was hers, no matter what.
First, though, she had to get out of this pickle suit, which felt like a personal sauna, and go somewhere alone so she could think clearly.
Waddling to the counter, she told Audra, who had worked at the deli longer than she had, “I’m leaving for a couple of hours. If you can hold down the fort, I’ll be back in plenty of time for the dinner shift.” Without Eli at home, she’d be better off working instead of worrying. Maybe if she took a break, she could figure out what to do about Nate Thayer and the child they’d made together.
* * *
“We can do this, no problem,” Izzy grunted, standing on the pedals of her bike. “Going uphill is good...for...us.” Her teeth ground together. Every downstroke was harder to come by than the one before as she pumped determinedly up Vista Road. “We’re going to start...doing this...every...day,” she panted to her beloved dog, Latke, a Shar-Pei rescue whose ambivalence toward physical activity gave credence to the distinction nonsporting breed.
Her heart and head both thudded painfully, but even that was better than the avalanche of questions that buzzed in her brain on the heels of Nate Thayer’s return. So far, she had not a single answer, not even a clue as to what was going to happen if and when her son discovered that his father was in Thunder Ridge...or vice versa.
Nausea and dizziness the likes of which she hadn’t experienced since she was pregnant overwhelmed her. Eli had questioned her about his father a few times, mostly during the tween years when his own identity was in minute-by-minute flux. The answers she’d provided hadn’t been satisfying, but at least they had cooled Eli’s incessant wondering about the man whose life goals had not included a pregnant teenage girlfriend.
“’Kay, I think I’m going to puke now.”
She had to stop pedaling, hop off the seat and close her eyes. Latke accepted the rest stop as an opportunity to prostrate herself in the bike lane.
Izzy leaned over the handlebars. “We’ll get going in a sec, baby, just as soon as Mama’s heart attack is done.”
“Would rehydrating help?”
On a fresh surge of adrenaline, Izzy’s eyes popped open. A clear plastic water bottle, icy cold with condensation dripping down the sides, dangled in front of her.
“Bike much?” Nate Thayer arched a brow, lips twisting sardonically.
Silently cursing fate, Izzy stared at him. She had deliberately ridden away from town and in the opposite direction from the dairy farm where Nate had grown up. “What are you doing out here?” The question sounded like an accusation.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk.” He shook his head. “We need to polish our welcome committee skills. This is the second time in one day that you haven’t greeted me on my return home.”
“Home?” Izzy felt as if a giant fist were squeezing her stomach. “You’re here to stay?” Her distaste for that possibility was clear as a bell and drew a deep frown from Nate.
Unscrewing the top of the water bottle, he held it out again. “Take it. You’re about to keel over.”
“No, I’m not.”
A smile tugged his lips. “Take it anyway.”
Willing her fingers to stop shaking, Izzy plucked the bottle from his hand, careful not to touch him. Lowering the kickstand, she stepped away from her bike with Nate observing her every move. Even when she stopped looking at him, she could feel his eyes on her, the way she used to sense him watching her in the deli fifteen years ago. Back then her skin would tingle with excitement, even as she’d pretended not to notice. Today, anxiety made her skin prickle like needle pokes.
She bent toward her dog. “Here, sweetie.” Tilting Nate’s offering, she let Latke drink. The Shar-Pei’s heavy jowls flapped as she slurped with the grace of a hippo sipping from a martini glass.
During the summer that she and Nate had been a couple, Izzy had never truly confronted him. How could she? She had been so besotted, so damn grateful that the high school heartthrob had chosen her, a girl with an embarrassing family and no prospects for a decent future. Now, when her dog was finished drinking, she stood and met Nate’s gaze with challenge in her own. “Latke says thanks.”
He addressed her dog. “You’re welcome.”
Wearing the same clothes he’d had on in the deli—J.Crew jeans and a sea-blue V-necked T-shirt that matched his eyes almost identically (yeah, she’d noticed), his hair still ridiculously thick and shiny—he shrugged. “I only brought the one bottle. Come back to my room. There’s more water in the minibar.”
Izzy glanced in the direction from which Nate had come. The heavily shingled roof of the Eagle’s Crest Inn peeked through a grove of pine trees. “How did you even see me from the inn? ” she asked.
“My room faces the street. And my desk faces the window. When I saw you crawl by, I thought, ‘Well, what do you know? Fate must want us to have a reunion, even if Izzy doesn’t.’” His gaze narrowed. “It’s been a long time. You must have a few minutes to spare for an old friend.”
There it was, the liquid velvet voice that used to make her feel as if she were wrapped in the most comfortable blanket ever created.
“I haven’t, actually. I’m due back at the deli.” Shoving the empty bottle into the saddlebag on her bike, she climbed back on and tried to tug sixty pounds of wrinkled canine to a standing position. “Let’s go, girl.” No movement.
“I think she needs a nap.”
What her pet needed was a couple thousand volts. “She’s fine. She loves to run. Let’s go, Latke.” Izzy put her right foot on the bike pedal, intending to pull the dog into a standing position if she had to. She jerked with surprise when Nate clamped his fingers around the handlebars.
He leaned forward, his shadow looming over her. Humor fled his expression, replaced by curiosity and displeasure. “If I didn’t know better, Isabelle, I’d say you plan to avoid me until I leave town. Why?”
“That’s not my intention at all. I’m just very busy right now. I’m sure we’ll find time before you go. When did you say you’re leaving?”
“I didn’t say.”
“Well, I’m sure we’ll run into each other again. And now I know where you’re staying, so...” She tried to back the bike up, but he was still holding her handlebars.
“So you’ll get in touch?” His voice grew quiet, penetrating. “I should expect a call? Like last time?”
“Last time.” Izzy’s stomach began to twist so hard she wanted to double over. “What do you mean?”
“When I went to Chicago, you and I agreed to talk once a week. Then suddenly you were gone, no forwarding address, no warning.”
Threads of anger wove through Izzy’s fear. “No warning? Yeah, I suppose you’re right. I should have told you all about my plans. Ten minutes once a week wasn’t a lot of time, though. I’d have to talk really fast.”
“I’m not following you.”
“You’re not? Every Sunday afternoon,” she reminded him, “from five to five ten Pacific Time? Nate Thayer’s obligatory check-in to the girl he’d knocked up back in Oregon. Very thoughtful, those calls, but you have to admit they didn’t leave a lot of time to talk about anything in depth.” Which, she had thought at the time, must have been the point.
Surprise hijacked Nate’s features, and Izzy took the opportunity to wrest the handlebars from his grip. He moved in front of the bike immediately. “That’s what you thought I was doing? Just fulfilling an obligation?”
“That is what you were doing. Look, Nate,” Izzy chided, “it’s ancient history, but let’s not rewrite it. When I got pregnant, you saw your college dreams flushing down the toilet. So, you and your parents came up with a solution—put the baby up for adoption and check in with the pregnant teenager once a week to make sure she’s still on board. Perfectly logical. Frankly, if I’d had a scholarship to a big university and parents who’d already picked out the frame for my diploma, I might have felt the same way.”
“You agreed that adoption seemed like the best solution.”
“I was seventeen, pregnant and dead broke. I wasn’t in a great position to argue.”
Nate’s brows swooped low. A muscle tensed in his jaw. “Are you saying you didn’t want to put the baby up for adoption?”
Her mind began to race like a machine that was out of control—couldn’t slow down, couldn’t stop.
“You agreed we were both too young to be good parents,” he said, glancing at a car that whizzed by. “I don’t want to discuss this on the street. Why don’t you come up—”
“I don’t want to discuss this at all.” She made a show of looking at her watch. “I have to go.” When she tried to push the bike forward, however, Nate held on.
A sharp burning sensation rose behind Izzy’s eyes. Don’t cry. Don’t you dare cry, not after all this time. But she remembered one occasion—just the one—when Nate had stopped being logical and reasonable about how they were too young and too uneducated and not financially able to raise a baby properly. On that single occasion, before he’d left for college, his brow had hitched in the middle like it was right now, worry muddying the usually clear and confident expression in his eyes, and he’d said, “Do you think it’ll be a boy or a girl?”
In that one moment, they had felt like parents, not two kids who had made a colossal mistake.
She swallowed hard.
“You know what I remember, Nate? I remember what your mother and father said—that our relationship was ‘a lapse in good judgment.’ And that we’d be crazy to throw our futures away.” They had meant their son’s future, of course. There hadn’t been many people around at that time who’d held out much hope for her future. “We shouldn’t blame each other for anything. It might have been different if we’d loved each other, right? But we were just kids.” Her sad smile was the genuine article. “You’re lucky you had parents who were looking out for you.”
“Izzy—”
“I really do have to go now.”
Using the heel of her running shoe to flip the kickstand, Izzy climbed aboard her bike and pushed forward toward Latke, urging her to fall into step. Nate watched her every move but didn’t try to stop her this time as she checked for traffic and made a U-turn on Vista Road.
