With some force in her voice, Amelia growled, “Let me go, Caleb.” She ripped her hand away, frightened by his intensity. “And don’t call me M anymore. It’s been fifteen years. Steve calls me M. Dad calls me M. Ellie calls me M. You call me Amelia.”
If she’d hurt Caleb’s feelings, there wasn’t a flicker of it registering on his face. Instead, he let out a deep sigh and placed his hands on the worn thighs of his jeans, his eyes growing cloudy for just a brief moment. A stab of regret hit Amelia between her shoulder blades. She was doing that thing where she took out her frustrations about something else in her life on the closest victim. Steve was well versed in this weakness, but Caleb . . . poor Caleb had no idea. She used to be more easygoing, slower to be on the defensive, with a soft place for the people she loved; but right now she felt like every time she turned around, she was doing something else wrong, and it was easier to push people away than risk letting them see how messed up she really was.
“I’m sorry, Caleb. I didn’t mean to . . . ,” she started to say, but Caleb stood, stopping her midsentence.
“It’s fine, Amelia.” She swore he put a little extra emphasis on her full name before continuing. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.” He stood up and put his hands in his coat pockets like he was trying to punch a hole through them. “I’ll talk to you later, okay? You have a good day.” With that, he turned on the soles of his work boots and walked back down the gravel path. With his head down and shoulders slumped, it looked like he was carrying an invisible load on his back.
Damn it. Amelia cursed herself. There must’ve been a better way to handle that situation. She bit her lip, finally taking the time to wonder what exactly he had been trying to tell her.
Just as she was about to grab her purse off the bench and rush after him, she heard her name off in the distance. When she turned to face the call, Amelia saw Steve crossing the park with the mystery woman by his side. The sight was so unexpected, it drew her attention away from Caleb’s hunched-over receding form, leaping across a thin strip of grass between two parallel paths, to the pair growing bigger in front of her every second.
She readjusted her shoulders until they were held in a high, straight line and, using every ounce of self-control she could muster, Amelia forced a smile onto her face as she rushed through her mind for something other than, “Who is this?” to say to Steve.
“Amelia! What are you doing here? I thought you had a PTO meeting today. Was that Caleb?” His voice was friendly with a touch of concern that made her want to shout. Damn it. She’d forgotten about the meeting—again. This was the third month in a row her seat had sat empty while Terri Wilhouse, with her hot-pink acrylics and obnoxious gavel, banged on a desk to bring the meeting to order. She’d received a warning last month: Miss another meeting and your position as field day chairperson will be revoked. Well—Amelia grabbed her purse, annoyed at Steve’s stellar memory—she never really liked sports all that much anyway.
“Terri rescheduled,” she lied, far more willing to tell a little fib than give Steve another item on his growing list of reasons they should put her dad into a home. “So I thought I’d take a little walk. Caleb was on his lunch break and stopped to say hi.”
At this point, Steve and the Suze woman were standing right in front of Amelia. Steve’s brown work shoes were dusty from shuffling down the gravel path, but Suze’s beige stilettos with a three-inch heel looked pristine as if she’d floated there.
Up close she looked a little older, some lines around her eyes and mouth giving an approximate age of at least thirty. There was some relief to Amelia in those lines but some concern too because they only made the woman look more dignified, beautiful rather than pretty. Deep down, Amelia had been questioning the possibility that Steve could even relate to someone under the age of thirty, but now . . .
Perhaps noticing Amelia’s scrutiny or the worry in her eyes, the woman smiled and put out her hand. “Susan Walters, so nice to meet you.”
Amelia stared at her hand briefly. The fingers were white, the skin nearly translucent, and she didn’t even need to touch her to know that it was soft. Perhaps she should demand answers before taking that hand, but the longer she looked at it, the more foolish she felt. With a loud clap, Amelia took her hand and gave a strong, hearty shake that made petite Susan rock on her heels.
“You too.” The shake was brief, and Susan withdrew her hand in a skilled swoop. “Steve has told me a lot about you. How is your dad?”
The question smacked Amelia upside the head and made her ears ring. Whoever she was, Steve had been confiding in her. Just how much had he told this woman? How much comfort had he received from her soft hands and gently lined eyes? Instead of asking about late-night texts and secret meetings in the park, Amelia pushed the corners of her mouth up farther, her exposed teeth growing cold in the chill.
“He’s doing as well as can be expected,” Amelia said, falling back onto the answer she always used with the former firefighters who would call or stop by to check on their old chief.
“I wouldn’t exactly say he is doing ‘well,’” Steve interjected, making Amelia’s blood pressure skyrocket.
“Susan, I haven’t seen you around town before. Are you from Broadlands?” Amelia put on her friendly mom face. With an ever-so-subtle step toward Susan, Amelia waited for a reply, ignoring Steve’s staring eyes. In her mom jeans with a yogurt stain on the thigh and ten-year-old running shoes with the blue metallic Nike emblem peeling away, Amelia was a stark contrast to the lovely, classy Susan.
“Oh no, I’m from Jaspertown.” That was nearly twenty miles away. How did Steve even meet this woman? Perhaps picking up on Amelia’s growing confusion, Susan laughed in a tripping, pretty way and smacked Steve’s biceps. “Steve, how have you never told your wife about me, you silly lug?”
The tone was playful and light, like they’d been friends forever. That wasn’t right. Amelia and Caleb had been friends forever, and the playfulness from their friendship had slowly drained to the train wreck she’d just participated in. This wasn’t an old friend. This was . . . something else Amelia couldn’t put her finger on.
Steve tried to chuckle, but even with the attempt at levity, there was something heavy in his countenance.
“Amelia’s been busy. She’s got a lot on her plate. I was going to tell her tonight, I swear.” He put a gentle hand on his wife’s shoulder, and his touch relaxed Amelia in a way she hated and wished she could have more control over.