Tate glared at her mother. “Babe, your mother is making the claim that you’re a thief, and I was just about to tell her that she better get in her car and head out of town.”
“A thief?” Lainey echoed.
Her mother smiled, a pitying smile that clashed jarringly with the gleam of triumph flashing in her eyes. “I was just informing this man that he’ll need to watch the books very closely if you’re going to be working for his family business. After all, if you’d embezzle from your own family…” She shook her head. “I do wish you’d sought help like we asked you to, dear.”
Lainey froze where she stood. Her mother hadn’t. She couldn’t have. And yet, she had. When Lainey thought that her mother couldn’t stoop any lower, she found a way.
Tate turned to her, looking puzzled. “Lainey, this isn’t true. I know it can’t be. You don’t have a criminal record.”
Her mother pulled a manila file folder out of her purse. “We do have some influence in our town. We worked out a deal with the district attorney’s office. We agreed to drop all charges and have her file sealed, in exchange for her doing community service. She chose to do it at some dreadful facility full of juvenile delinquents. She’d been planning to work as an art teacher, but we had to tell her we’d put a stop to that if she tried. Once we knew she was a thief, we couldn’t trust her around children.”
Every word from her mother’s mouth, every poisonous lie, was like a dagger blow to Lainey’s heart. She slid out of Tate’s embrace and took a step back; she could feel the blood draining from her face.
“Tell me this isn’t true,” Tate pleaded.
She couldn’t. She couldn’t talk about what had happened, and she couldn’t tell him why.
“I can’t talk about this, Tate,” she said. “I wish I could explain, but I just can’t. Please tell your brothers and sisters I got called away on an emergency, and I’ll always be thinking of them.”
The diner had fallen silent now, and customers were openly staring at them. Word would be all over town. Her mother was quite clever. Every word that she’d said was a lie, but it was the one lie Lainey couldn’t fight.
Her mother reached out to pat Lainey’s arm. Lainey angrily shook her off.
“You’ll see this is all for the best, dear,” her mother said in a soothing voice. “You’ll come back home and marry Miles, and live in a beautiful house right down the street from your father and me. These aren’t your kind of people. You don’t fit in here.”
But that was just it. For the first time, ever, Lainey had started to feel like she fit in, and now her mother had made sure that she’d be about as welcome as a leper at a hot tub party.
Tears burned in her eyes, and she rushed from the restaurant, with her mother following behind her, calling her name.
Crying so hard she could barely see straight, Lainey scrambled into her rental car and slammed the door shut. Her hands shook, but she managed to drive back to the boarding house, where she rushed up the stairs without saying a word to anybody and locked herself in her room.
Tate hadn’t tried to call out to her as she’d run from the restaurant. She didn’t expect him to. He couldn’t let a criminal be part of his life. He’d made it clear from the beginning that his duty to his brothers and sisters came before all else, and she would expect no less of him.
Misery coiled inside her, and she crawled into her bed and pulled her blanket over her head. She felt as if the brightness of the day had vanished, and a black cloud clung to her.
She couldn’t sleep, and she didn’t want to wake up. Finally, tired of lying there with the covers pulled over her head, she got up and took a shower. She pulled all of her clothing out of the wooden chest of drawers and put them back in her suitcase. She stared at the suitcase.
Then she heaved a great sigh and stood up.
The past week she’d spent here in Blue Moon Junction had changed her. She’d been treated like a friend, a lover, a person who didn’t need to be hidden away in some back office like an embarrassment. She’d been included, made to feel worthwhile and desirable and worthy of being loved.
Even if she couldn’t stay here, she’d take a bit of Blue Moon Junction with her, wherever she went.
Her parents had knocked her down, but she would get back up again. This was not the end. She’d find a way to start over again, somewhere, anywhere but Philly. She would never go back there.
She was startled by a pounding on the door. A tiny bloom of hope flared inside her. Could it possibly be Tate?
“Open up,” Marigold called out. “I brought lunch.”
Lainey tried not to feel let down. Tate had let her walk away, and he’d been right to do so.
“I’m not hungry,” she called back. It wasn’t true, but she didn’t feel up to facing anybody.
“Now, see, when you say you’re not hungry I start to worry. Open up, or I’ll think you’re about to jump out the window.”
Exasperated, Lainey walked over to the door and opened it.