Over protectiveness

“I’m doing fine, Chance.” There were words unspoken there. Chance had seen a lot transpire between me and Jack. He and Sam had witnessed the complete disintegration of my marriage, and they treated me with a mix of pity and over protectiveness. “What’s going on with the house, Maddie? The weatherman’s saying this winter’s going to be a real one.” Sam watched me over the rim of his mug. There’d been very little snow in California’s Sierra Nevada for the past four years. The odds of a real winter seemed slim. “For the sake of this drought, I sure hope so, Sam.” I evaded his question and topped off their coffee. “Food up in a sec, guys.” I tended my other tables, getting omelets and stacks of half-dollar pancakes out as quickly as I could while Adele hissed and tsked from her spot at the register. I probably wasn’t cut out for waitressing, but I did the best I could, and Frank helped me when I forgot to turn in an order or messed up someone’s request. He was the best part of the diner’s management team. The only good thing about Adele was that she disliked the other waitress, Miranda, almost as much as she hated me. Our shared despicability had forged an immediate bond between Miranda and me. Adele disliked us for different reasons: I was evidently just too fancy for her tastes, while Miranda had a nasty habit of spilling coffee, dropping plates, and finding things to trip over on completely smooth floors.

When the place was a steady hum of satisfied diners and empty tables, I poured a cup of coffee for Miranda and another for me. We stood behind the counter, savoring the calm, as we gazed past the yellow Formica tabletops to the quiet street. “What’s going on?” Miranda could read me like a book. I hated it. But I also kind of liked it. It wasn’t like I had lots of girlfriends to talk to. I sighed. “Jack stopped by this morning. He’s trying to sell the house. Some guy actually wandered around testing beams and tapping on things.” “What guy? Someone from up here?” “Like I would know.” I knew the nearest neighbors to my property, since my parents had been good friends of theirs when I was a kid. Otherwise, I kept a low profile and didn’t get too close to the folks who lingered around the village. I did make friends with some of the little kids who came running through my property now and then, fishing out snacks that I brought home whenever I went to the grocery store. Kids, I understood. Grown ups? Not as much. And the dust-smeared mountain kids who roamed in packs during the summer were my tribe. Or they had been once. My brother Cameron and I had roamed these hills with a band of grimy children of all ages, scrambling over rocks and laughing off scraped elbows. Now when the kids showed up with their jubilance and spared me a few minutes of laughter kicking dust around my lot, I relived the past for a little while. They let me snap photos of them and I let them climb on the unfinished structure of my stupid house.

I fished the card from that morning out of the pocket of my jeans. I’d pulled it out of my robe and stuck it there, planning to examine it later. I put it on the counter in front of Miranda. “Holy cow,” she said, bending over to read the card as she pushed her blond hair from her face. “This is the guy who wants to buy your house?” “Yeah, why? You know him?” “Everyone knows who he is. No one really knows him.” “What are you talking about?” “This is Connor Charles.” “Yeah, I got that from the card. Where it says right there? See?” I pointed to the name. “Connor Charles.” “Right. Well you know who that is.” She was nodding and giving me a look that said I should understand immediately whatever she was trying to convey. “Miranda, seriously? No. I have no idea who that is. Some guy with dark red hair and sunglasses.” The card didn’t offer any other information. Who had a card that only had a name and a phone number anyway, besides psychics and socialites? Weird. I shrugged and added, “Kinda hot, too.” I couldn’t help it. He totally was. “He’s that super creepy writer. The one who lives in the cabin around Deerwood Point off the meadow?” Her eyes were wide and the freckles across her nose seemed to stand out as if they were trying to help her make her point. “Oh him.” I made my voice reverent, but I was just doing it for effect. “No idea. I haven’t really had a lot of time to get to know the locals, and I’m not exactly a bookworm. If he doesn’t eat here, I don’t know him.”

“He definitely doesn’t eat here. Not anymore, anyway.” Miranda glanced around and then leaned in, her glasses slipping down her nose. “He writes those twisted books. About serial killers and stuff? He’s super famous and super hot. And super scary.” “Because he writes horror novels?” She shook her head, a smile on her face that told me she was enjoying sharing the gossip. “No, because when he moved up here, he had a wife. Or a girlfriend. But no one has seen her for like a year. They used to go out together, eat here, go to the village potlucks. But then we didn’t see her again. Like literally, she disappeared. Rumor has it he’s keeping her prisoner up there in his fancy house.” She looked around, as if Connor Charles might appear at the counter. “Stay away from him, Maddie.” “Well, I’m not planning to sell the house anyway. Not yet.” “Right.” Miranda nodded as if that made perfect sense, and then spun around to answer a wave from one of her tables. Her coffee cup toppled off the saucer on the counter as she swung her arm, and I caught it and wiped up the mess as Adele watched from the podium. I wondered how much of what Miranda thought she knew about Connor Charles was true. She had a vivid imagination and an appetite for gossip. Since I’d never seen Connor up here before, I wasn’t too worried about crossing his path again.

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