Based on my sweaty palms and racing pulse, I hadn’t gotten over him. But I was determined to avoid him as much as possible, which shouldn’t be hard considering the way he’d been acting thus far.
When the interview was finished, Mac led us back down the hall to the front. As we passed a large window into the workroom, I saw the reflection of Mac and me walking together. He brought his hand up as if to put it on my shoulder, then quickly regained his senses and pulled it away before touching me. What was he thinking? He left me. What would I have done if he had put his arm around me?
“Thanks for taking care of the permission part of things,” he said when Seth had walked ahead of us.
I waved his thanks away. “No problem.”
“I thought you’d want to be the one to tell her about it, and it saved me a catching-up phone call.”
I knew Mac was not good on the phone. He saw the phone as a necessary evil and used it to convey straightforward information. I had been shocked when I’d received his first letter to me. There was a whole other side to Mac that most people never knew existed.
I turned to say something—anything—that would keep him talking, but he had already turned back down the hall. He made pretty good time for a guy with a cane.
“Clyde, are we going or what?” Seth called from the station entrance.
“Yeah, we’re going. Here, take the keys and I’ll be right out.”
I turned to Lisa, who was pretending to read Guns & Ammo. She’d clearly not missed one instant of my conversation with Mac and was already firing up her cell phone for distribution of the gossip.
“Hey, Lisa, where’s Andrews?”
“Oh, we got another call about vandalism in Greer’s Woods.” She flipped a page in her magazine, and clicked her phone off. “He went to check it out.”
“What vandalism?”
“It’s just kids. They’ve been digging out there for the past couple months. Some of it’s in Greer’s Woods, some on private property, some in the public park but all in the same general area. They dig holes and then fill them in.”
“What’s the point in that?”
“Dunno. It’s kids.”
*
Seth was starving after his “grueling” session with Mac, so we drove over to Stark’s place. I knew I was taking a chance with Alex still sensitive about yesterday, but he would be more upset if he’d heard we’d gone somewhere else. And he would definitely hear. Crystal Haven has its own information superhighway, and it isn’t on the Internet. Often the gossiper would be asked if he had gotten his information from a live person or from Spirit. I was still not sure which held the higher status.
We were just in time for the lunch rush, but I managed to get a parking spot close by. We got out and let the dogs have a quick walk along the sidewalk. Baxter was a minor celebrity in town; he knew more people than I did. Therefore, it wasn’t completely shocking when a man came out of Stark’s to pet him. He called him by name, and Baxter slobbered appreciatively.
The man was about my height, with a shaved head to either hide or embrace his receding hairline. He wore mirrored sunglasses, so I couldn’t see his eyes. I don’t trust people who hide their eyes. He nodded hello to Seth and me, and walked up the street. The whole encounter left me feeling weird.
“Do you know him?” I asked Seth.
“No, but Baxter does,” he said.
“I feel like I’ve seen him before,” I said as we encouraged the dogs back into the car. Fortunately, Baxter was sticking with Tuffy and didn’t force us into our usual wrestling match right there in front of the lunch line.
“You’ve probably seen everyone in town before,” Seth said.
It was cooler after yesterday’s storm. But the line was long and I didn’t want to leave the dogs in the hot car for more than a few minutes. I told Seth to stand in line while I ran the dogs back to the house. He nodded, stuffed in his earbuds, and stood behind the other hungry patrons.
I returned ten minutes later to find a bored, famished teen. After twenty minutes of listening to Seth describe the many stages of starvation he was enduring, we finally made it inside the restaurant.
We sat close to the kitchen and ordered two burgers.
Seth claimed he was breaking down his own muscle mass while we waited for our food. When the server brought the small bread basket, I feared for her fingers. Moments later she returned with an appetizer, compliments of the chef.
This was an underhanded trick, even for Alex. He could never get Seth to try any of his creations. But the thing she brought appeared to be a pizza. Seth adored pizza above all other food groups. He picked up a piece, sniffed it, and put it back down.
“I’m pretty sure there’s fish in there,” he said.
“Do you think it’s anchovies?” I asked, suppressing a shudder in an attempt to be the adult.
“No, I think it’s tuna,” he said, and lifted some of the cheese with his fork.
“I like tuna,” I said. “We could try it. It would make Alex happy.”