The main dining room was empty except for a half dozen girls gathered in one corner wearing the uniform of Copper Lake High School cheerleaders, and a waitress, poring over a textbook while waiting for something to do.
“Is Ellie here?”
The waitress, a high school student herself, nodded before a burst of laughter drew her gaze, a bit longing, to the girls. It wasn’t fun, Tommy would bet, having to wait on the cool kids. Thanks to his friendship with Robbie, he’d been one of the cool kids in school, for all the difference it made. Some of them had gone on to achieve a lot; some of them were regular visitors at the Copper Lake Correctional Facility.
“She’s in her office,” the girl said. “I’ll get her—”
“That’s okay. I know the way.” He passed through the main dining room, past the bathrooms and the bar, dimly lit for now, until the evening bartender came on at five, then stopped at the next door. For more than four years, he’d been in the habit of walking right in, without a knock or warning. But such familiarity didn’t seem appropriate at the moment.
Then his jaw tightened. How had his life come to this, that familiarity with the one woman he knew better than himself wasn’t appropriate?
He rapped at the door, sharper than he’d intended to, and a quiet invitation followed. “Come in.”
He could do the polite thing: give the tea to the girl up front and let her deliver it. Or the smart thing: toss the cup in the nearest trash can and beat it out the back door. But he didn’t stand a chance trying to find out what he wanted to know by being polite, and he couldn’t spend even a moment with her if he slipped out the back door the way she had earlier. So he twisted the knob, let himself in and closed the door behind him.
Ellie was a hands-on manager, chatting with the guests, refilling drinks, clearing tables, delivering food and even, on a regular basis, rolling up her sleeves in the kitchen. She knew every job as well as her employees and was energetic enough that she could run the place sans two or three of them without showing the strain.
This afternoon, as she sat alone in her office, doing nothing, the strain showed.
He set the chai tea on the middle of the desk pad, nudged the visitor chair with one boot toe, then took a few steps back to lean instead against a narrow oak table that butted up to the wall. “Nina said you forgot that.”
She didn’t touch the cup. “She could have delivered it herself or just thrown it away.”
“She was too busy.” Joe’s was a popular place after school, with its wireless Internet connections and doctored drinks that tasted more like dessert than coffee. Besides, Tommy hadn’t given her much of a chance. She left without her tea, Nina had complained, and he’d been quick to respond. I’ll take it to her.
Martha Dempsey had given him a look, part slyness, part meanness and part curiosity. He’d ignored her. Though ignoring Martha Dempsey too often, he figured, was the express route to trouble.
Ellie looked at it a moment as if she might do what he hadn’t: throw it away. She even picked it up and started to turn to the side, but the wisps of steam drifting up from the small hole in the lid were rich with cinnamon and cloves. Instead of completing the move toward the wastebasket behind her desk, she lifted the cover, wrapped both hands around the still-warm cup and breathed deeply. After taking a tentative sip, then a long, savoring drink, she grudgingly said, “Thank you.”
He watched her, taking far too much pleasure in her pleasure, growing warm inside his jacket, remembering not long ago when he would have made some suggestive comment, when she would have responded with suggestiveness of her own. Back when they were together. When he’d thought they had a chance.
He waited until she lowered the cup again to remark, “You saw that I had coffee with Martha Dempsey.”
Darkness eased into Ellie’s features—nothing so obvious as a scowl, just a subtle displeasure, dislike, distrust. If he didn’t know her so well, he probably would have missed it. “Your idea or hers?”
“Mine. I’m a cop, Ellie. I get answers one way or another.”
“And what answers are you looking for about her?”
“She’s new in town. She looks like she doesn’t have a dime, but she’s staying at the Jasmine. And just the sight of her upsets you.” He shrugged. “All that makes me curious.”
“You could mind your own business.”
Though she was totally serious, he laughed. “I haven’t minded my own business since I was five years old. That’s why I became a cop in the first place.” He’d always wanted answers, and if he didn’t get them the usual way, he found them another.
“Martha said she hasn’t seen you since you were a teenager. That her coming to Copper Lake and finding you here is a happy coincidence.”
When neither comment drew a response from her, Tommy fired off a third one, embellished for effect. “She said she’s looking forward to living out her life here, close to you.”
Something flashed in Ellie’s eyes, and a muscle convulsed in her jaw with the effort to keep her mouth shut, but she succeeded. After a moment, with a faintly strangled quality to her voice, she replied, “It’s a free country. She can move wherever she wants.”
“Why wouldn’t you want her here?”
“Why would I? I hardly know the woman, and I have no desire to get to know her better.”
“Where do you know her from?”
A heavy silence developed as Ellie studied him. Her chin was lifted, the soft swing of her pale hair brushing the delicate skin there. Her heart rate had settled to its usual throb, visible at the base of her throat, and her features looked as if they had been carved from ice.
Finally she rose from the desk, circling to the front, mimicking his pose. Her hips rested against the worn oak, her ankles crossed, her fingers still cradling the tea. “She’s from my father’s past,” she said flatly. “Not mine.”
Maybe two yards of dull pine separated their feet. As relaxed as she looked, it should be an easy thing to push away from the table and reach her before she could think about retreating. But her ease was deceptive. If he so much as breathed deeply, she would be an instant from fleeing.
In five years she hadn’t talked a lot about her parents. Her upbringing had been boringly conventional. Mother, father and only child, blue house not far from the beach, across the Cooper River from Charleston. Mother had died in a car wreck eight or ten years ago, father soon after of a heart attack. Normal life. No unusual traumas, no major dramas.
And he’d had no reason to doubt her. For every person who found comfort in talking about times that were past and people who were gone, there was one who found it tough. Some memories were better kept to oneself.
She’s from my father’s past.
Some hurts, like a father’s betrayal of a mother, were better buried.
Silence settled, as if one confidence was all she had in her. He wished he could close that six-foot distance, earn another secret or even just a moment being silent together. Six months ago he could have held her, and she would have let him. Let him, but not opened to him. There had always been distance between them, that had pushed them apart time after time, that had caused him to finally give her an ultimatum: commit or end it. All or nothing.
Saying “I want everything” was a hell of a lot easier than living with nothing.
“Well…” They both spoke at once, both broke off at once.
Ellie moved away from the desk. “I’ve got things to do….”
“Yeah. Me, too.” Still, it took an effort for him to move. He wished she would walk past him and into the hall.