“No, I don’t want to interrupt your lunch.”
“I’m just reading. It’s a great book, but sometimes it’s actually good to interact with another human being. I normally spend all my time with books anyway.”
Lance laughed, liking her smile more each time he saw it. “If you insist,” he said, sliding into the Formica seat across from her, mentally noting he was doing just what he had envisioned minutes before. He looked down at her left hand, which sat splayed on the table next to her soup. Her fingers were long and thin, and best of all, no ring adorned any of them.
“So, rumor has it that you’ve moved into the big place up north.”
Lance nodded. “Yeah, just got unloaded yesterday. I forgot how much work moving is; probably wouldn’t have done it if I remembered.”
“Well, it’s good someone’s using the place. It’s too nice of a location to sit empty year round.”
Lance leaned forward. “Do you know anything about the place? Like how long it’s been there, or why it’s been empty for so long?”
Mary smiled as she sat back in her seat, her eyes looking off in thought. “Well, my dad and I moved here when I was seven, after my mom died. He was a department-store manager in St. Paul, but his true love was books. His lifelong dream was to open a bookstore in a small town, and I think when he lost my mom he decided he shouldn’t wait any longer.
“Your place was always a topic among the kids in town. Sometimes I would hear about groups of older kids going up there to poke around or break into the old place—I’m guessing just to scare themselves silly. You know how there’s always a place that everyone knows about, that’s dubbed the haunted house? Well, your place was it for this town. Not that anything ever really happened there; the kids who went there for thrills or to make out never disappeared, nothing that exciting. It was just the local spook house.” Mary shrugged and laughed, as though the memory perhaps hadn’t only involved other kids her age. Lance realized that she had given him a small window to look through into her life, and at the moment she was infinitely more interesting than his curiosity about the estate.
“I’m sorry you lost your mom so young, that’s tough for anyone, and it’s worse when you’re a kid.” He smiled halfheartedly, pushing back dark thoughts that had begun to surface. When he looked at Mary, he saw her posture stiffen a little, but her voice remained steady when she spoke again.
“You lost one of your parents too, didn’t you?” Her question threw him off guard and she must have seen it, because she leaned forward with concern in her eyes. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to overstep my bounds. I can just tell sometimes.”
Lance shook his head in dismissal and smiled weakly. “My mom disappeared when I was young and my father wasn’t that nice to me. It’s not one of the things I put in my interviews or on my jacket covers.”
They sat silently for a few minutes, each wading through thoughts and absorbing what had been said. Finally, Mary broke the silence as she checked her watch and began to gather her things.
“I’ve got to get back to the store. The owner’s a real pain in the ass.” Lance considered asking if her father was still alive but thought better of it, considering that she had already mentioned the death of her mother. “Thanks for sitting with me, it was nice.”
“Yeah, thanks for letting me invade your lunch,” he said.
She smiled and turned to throw her empty soup container away, and before Lance could stop himself, the words that were echoing in his mind slid off his tongue and into open air.