“Who’s got the tea?” The waitress appeared at her elbow, startling Keira. The spoon skittered across the table. Walker caught it just before it landed in his lap.
“I’ve got the tea,” Keira grumbled. The waitress set down their cups and plates and plodded back to the kitchen.
Keira picked up her fork and frowned at her pie. “Well, I thought I was getting it,” she said.
“You were,” Walker said. “You picked that up really quickly. Wait—don’t do that!”
Keira froze, her fork an inch above her pie. “Don’t do what?” she asked, confused.
“Don’t you know you’re supposed to eat the point last? Then you make a wish on it.”
“Wow. So, I’m guessing you’re superstitious.” But even as she said it, she spun her plate around so that the crust was facing her.
Walker shrugged, stirring cream and sugar into his coffee. “I don’t think you should waste a chance to make a wish. You never know, right? But the spoon spinning—seriously, you have fast hands. I should teach you some card tricks some time.”
“I’d like that,” Keira said, breaking into the flaky pastry with her fork and watching the purple-black blueberry filling ooze across the plate. “Why’d you quit doing them, anyway?”
Walker lifted his mug and took a long drink.
He was stalling. The wall that had been crumbling between them came inching back up.
“There didn’t seem to be much future in sleight of hand,” he joked, setting the mug on the table.
Keira pointed her blueberry-tinted fork at him. “You’re always at your wittiest when you’re avoiding something.”
Walker froze. “Ouch.”
Keira speared another bite of pie. “Just sayin’.”
For a long moment, Walker stared at her. When he finally spoke, his voice was low. “All those years of trying to play music—and failing spectacularly, I might add—it wasn’t totally my idea.”
“Stage mom?” Keira guessed. She’d run into them at competitions before. Whenever she heard someone playing something with perfect technique and zero heart, there was almost always a grimly determined parent hovering somewhere in the background.
Walker shook his head. “No. The town where I come from—let’s just say that the people who ran things were really counting on me to be some sort of musical genius. When it turned out I wasn’t, they were disappointed. Hugely disappointed. The card tricks only highlighted the fact that my hands were gifted in all the wrong ways. My mother asked me to stop. It made her nervous.”
“Were you mad at her? For making you quit something you loved? I’d run away from home before I’d stop playing the piano.” As soon as she’d said them, Keira realized the words sounded unnecessarily harsh. He’d lost his mom, and here she was, practically accusing the poor woman of being a bad mother.
“I thought about running away, but I was ten. Where would I have gone?” He shook his head. “My mother was only trying to protect me. I knew it, and so I quit.” The wicked grin she loved streaked across his face. “Well, mostly. I kept a deck of cards under my mattress. After my parents left, when I couldn’t sleep, I would get them out and practice until my hands were numb. It was the only thing that helped.”
“What happened to them—your parents, I mean? Where did they go?” Keira’s voice was gentle, but she could see the question sink its claws into Walker.
“They were working for the government. I guess you could call it a scouting mission,” he said bitterly, knocking back the last of his coffee. “But everyone knew they wouldn’t find what they were looking for. It was a suicide mission. That’s why no one was surprised when they disappeared.”
Keira watched him struggle to restrain his fury—a cold, black rage that went bone deep.
“Do you have other family?”
“I have an aunt and a cousin,” Walker said grudgingly. She could almost hear his teeth gritting against one another. “But they don’t live in Sherwin. Smith, my cousin, visits once in a while. My aunt doesn’t like it when he comes to see me.”
“Why?” Keira was too curious to blunt the edge of her question before it shot out of her mouth.
Walker looked into his empty coffee cup. “Basically, my aunt thinks I’m a bad influence—that I take too many risks. She’s convinced I’ll follow in my parents’ footsteps, and that I’m going to put her ‘baby’ in harm’s way.” He sighed. “Smith thinks that I have all the fun, and he wants in on it, you know? My aunt doesn’t let him do anything.”
Keira nodded. “Susan’s parents are like that. Super overprotective.” The corner of her mouth quirked up. “That’s why they like me. They think I’m a good influence.”
“Is Susan their only kid?”
“Yep.”
“Smith, too. He’s all my aunt Holly has. It’s been hard for her. She was already a single mom, and then I came along. Who wants to be saddled with the orphaned black sheep?”
Keira turned the information over, shifting it around, fitting it into the Walker-shaped puzzle in her mind.