He’d always been a charmer, but at sixty-five she thought she’d have built up an immunity. She was wrong. “Thank you, Russell. How have you been?”
He shrugged, waving a hand at the nearly empty shelves bearing red going-out-of-business discount signs. “I still have my health.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Bound to happen. Can’t compete with the big-box stores. People tried, of course. If they just needed a roll of tape or a fuse or a pair of garden shears, they’d come here. But times are tough and I can’t begrudge them wanting to save what money they have. Glad now I didn’t fight too hard when my daughter wanted to go off and be a vet instead of taking over the place.”
“What will you do?”
“The building’s for sale to help pay off some debt, so I’m on the waiting list for an apartment in senior housing.” He paused, sorrow shadowing his features. “A hundred and thirty-some odd years my family’s kept this place going and a couple months from now, I won’t have a pot to piss in.”
She didn’t know what to say. There really wasn’t much she could say. “Let me take you out to lunch. We’ll have something full of fat and cholesterol and sodium because why the hell not?”
The invitation took him by surprise, but he recovered quickly enough. “I had to let my part-timer go last year. I can’t leave.”
“What are they going to do if you take an hour for lunch? Take their business elsewhere?”
His laugh was rich and echoed through the barren store. “I guess you’re right about that. And I sure could use a smiling face right now.”
“Then stick a sign in the door, lock up and let’s go.”
They walked down to a café at the end of the street, which happened to be the only one in town, and snagged a table in a relatively quiet corner. They both ordered coffee and Russell got the fried-chicken special while Cat ordered a hash-and-cheese omelet.
“How’s Emma doing? I haven’t seen her in a few weeks, but you must be happy she’s finally heading toward the altar.”
“She’s doing great. And Sean’s a very nice young man.” She took a sip of her coffee, considering. “Have you met him?”
Russell frowned for a few seconds, then shook his head. “No, I don’t think I have. I guess she keeps him pretty busy and when she shops, he usually heads down to the city so he can visit his family at the same time.”
“Have you heard of anybody meeting him?”
“That’s an odd question. You just said yourself he’s a nice young man, so he must exist.”
It did sound crazy, but she couldn’t let go of it. “Oh, he exists. But I don’t think he’s been dating my granddaughter for a year and a half, or living under the same roof for a year.”
He looked confused. “Why would they lie?”
“That’s the question I can’t answer.” She took another sip of her coffee. “But you can tell when two people are in love. And when they’ve…well, you know.”
His slow smile warmed his eyes, which were the same blue as his shirt. Funny how you could know a man sixty-odd years and never know what color his eyes were. “It’s been a while but, yes, I know.”
When Russell looked at her like that, she could remember so clearly how she’d felt during that headlong rush into love with her husband and how much she missed him. But sometimes she wondered if she was missing him so much as just missing having somebody, and she wondered if Russell ever felt the same way.
She smiled back at him, trying to think of something to say, but coming up empty. It had been a long time since she’d had a flirtatious conversation with a man.
That thought brought her up short. Was that what was going on? Was he flirting? Or was he simply being kind and she was latching on to it like it was the last lifeboat off her AARP-eligible sinking ship?
Thankfully, the waitress—who was a young woman Cat didn’t recognize—brought their meals and she was saved by digging into her forbidden feast.
“I don’t think I’ve had real fried chicken since I turned fifty and Flo dragged me in to have my cholesterol numbers checked,” Russell said.
“We’ve only got so many years left, so I intend to enjoy them. If I can’t have eggs and hash and cheese once in a while, I might as well lay down and start decomposing.”
“I like that about you.”
“But only once in a while,” she said again. “If you eat like this all the time, you won’t have enough life left to worry about it.”