When We Let Go, Delancey Stewart [early reader books .txt] 📗

track at Buttonwillow.” I flashed her a grin.

“Buttonwillow?”

“The racetrack. Jack enrolled me in some driving courses when he bought me this car.”

“Like defensive driving?”

“Not exactly. It was a ‘performance driving clinic.’ I learned how to control a skid, brake correctly, and how to ride a corner. Stuff like that.”

“You’re a race car driver?”

“No, I’m a woman who can handle a V8 with five hundred and fifty horses.” I downshifted around a curve, neatly making my point.

“Why’d Jack care if you could drive?” Miranda asked.

“It was part of Jack’s effort to mold me into the perfect woman.” I glanced at Miranda. Jack was generally an off-limits topic, even for Miranda.

“I see. What exactly did that involve?”

I sighed. “Lots of little things, but in the end, he must have missed some crucial element.” The valley rolled out before us, dusty brown hilltops with waves of dark green orchards curled between them.

“What do you mean?”

“If I’d been a success, he wouldn’t have had to bring in a newer model.”

“He cheated?”

“Spectacularly.”

Miranda didn’t press, but I could feel her buzzing with the effort of holding the question back.

“We moved up here to build our dream house. He parked me up here full time and went back and forth to San Diego to manage his business down there. He was supposedly moving his office to Fresno. He was going to specialize in vacation properties, cut down his hours. We were supposed to live up here and raise a family in the clean air.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Miranda said.

“I was to stay here and supervise the building. Because I’m such an expert at that.”

“Right.”

“And I did. Despite how bored I was. No lunches with friends, no shopping on Coronado and no general San Diego wonderfulness. Instead I had an exciting daily routine of staring at trees and missing my old life. I got sick of Kings Grove.”

“How could you get sick of watching Chance Palmer build something?” Her voice took on a dreamy quality. Miranda had a not-so-secret crush on the overeducated contractor, though I’d never seen him look twice at her.

“Well, that was a good way to pass the days,” I agreed. “But you can only get so far staring at sweaty men out the window of a trailer. It’s not really a full life. And it’s not like there’s much else to do up here.”

“I think it’s nice,” Miranda sniffed. “There’s nothing phony in Kings Grove.”

“Look, it is nice. I know you grew up in Kings Grove.”

“I thought you kind of did too.” She tilted her head, confused.

“Not really. We spent some summers up here. My family owned the land we camped on. Where my house is.”

“Got it. Go on.”

“So when Jack stuck me up here, it was a big adjustment for me, that’s all. And I got the wise idea to fly back to San Diego to surprise him one weekend.”

“Uh oh.”

“Yeah. He’d moved his affair into our house.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Nope. When I got there, he was out somewhere and she was lying out by my pool, wearing my bathing suit.” The words tasted bitter as I said them out loud.

“Holy.”

“My Manolo sandals were next to her chair, too. I thought there was some kind of weird misunderstanding on my part. But when I woke her up, the way she reacted made it pretty obvious that she was guilty of something. She was all self-righteous and defensive, talking about how I’d invaded her home. I nearly drowned her in my pool.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t.”

“We called Jack instead and waited for him to get back, but she confessed everything in the meantime. He’d told her we were divorced and that I’d left everything I owned behind. She thought it’d be fine to adopt all of my abandoned stuff.” I rolled my eyes. Like anyone would abandon that wardrobe.

I slowed the car as we merged onto the highway that connected the two-lane mountain road to civilization.

“So. What are we in the mood for?” I asked.

Miranda was still shaking her head at my confession. “Shopping. Food. Some civilization for the city girl and something for me to wear to work that might actually get Chance’s attention.”

My head swiveled. “Oh yeah?”

She smiled and nodded, blushing.

“I had a hunch about that.” I was quiet for a moment as I thought. “Miranda . . . he has no idea.”

“I’m super nice to him. I’m sure he knows.”

I thought back over all the times Chance and Sam had eaten in the diner. Miranda had never stopped by to chat, or even smiled in their direction that I could tell. “I think it might take more than a cute skirt. We might need to coach you on some flirting skills.”

She eyed me sideways, her chin slowly turning to face me. “Really?” The enthusiasm on her face said it all.

“We’ll see if I remember anything,” I said.

The sun beat down on the car as we headed through the busy streets; the temperature in the valley was at least twenty degrees hotter than it had been in the mountains. As we parked and walked toward the outdoor mall, I tilted my face toward the sun. Talking had been balm for my soul, and walking in the sun, in an actual city, was even better. Even if it was just for an afternoon.

We wandered into a patio restaurant for some Italian food, the scent of basil and garlic wafting around us, and enjoyed the movement of shoppers on the sidewalks as we talked about what to order. Once the menus were collected, Miranda gave me a questioning look. “Have you thought any more about the offer on your house?”

I tilted my head at her. “I thought you were warning me off from that guy?”

“I don’t mean him. I mean in general. I really didn’t know you were looking to sell it.”

I shrugged. “I didn’t either. Jack told me he’d decided to sell it for me.”

“Is that his call to make?”

“Not at all. The house and the land is mine. For whatever that’s worth.”

Miranda sipped her iced tea, her eyes squinting behind the lenses of her glasses as she thought. “What are you going to do? You can’t live in that trailer forever. You’ll freeze up there this winter.”

“It has a heater.” I was being difficult. She had a good point. The trailer wasn’t awful, but it probably wouldn’t be ideal in the winter. “I don’t know. Maybe I should sell it, but it’s hard. That land has belonged to my family for a century. I camped up there as a kid, and so did my mom, and her dad before her.”

“You don’t have a long time to decide.”

“Thanks, Madam Obvious.”

She gently buttered a piece of crusty bread, lost in thought. After a moment she said, “You should totally call Connor Charles.”

“You told me he was creepy.”

“I don’t really know him. He’s just … a stranger.”

“Everyone’s a stranger until you know them.”

“Some are stranger than others.”

I thought about the polite and handsome man I’d just spoken to at the post office. There was nothing about him that matched her description. Confident and successful? Sure, I could see that. Creepy and suspicious? I wasn’t getting that at all.

I leaned back and fixed her with a look. “Okay, you’re dancing around something. What do you know about this guy?” I tried not to let thoughts of his dark auburn hair or movie-star stubble enter my mind. Maybe I should sell the house to him. It wasn’t like anyone else was offering. Was I really going to finish building it anyway?

“You know how town is,” she said. “People talk.”

“And what do they say about Connor Charles?”

“Well, you’ve read the tabloid stuff about him, obviously.”

“Miranda, I’d never heard of the guy before this week.” I thought about what she’d said. “He’s famous enough to be covered in the tabloids?”

She nodded, her eyes widening. “Maybe he wasn’t that famous before, but then he beat his girlfriend up. They got pictures of her with a black eye, but she wouldn’t press charges and neither of them would talk about it.”

I took a bite of my pasta and let that roll around in my mind for a minute. “Sounds like he probably didn’t do it and didn’t feel like he needed to explain himself to a bunch of nosey reporters. What else?”

“I already told you about the woman he’s keeping captive up there.”

“You seriously believe that?”

She looked down at her plate and shrugged. “Probably not.” She raised her eyes to mine. “But then, where’d she go?”

“They broke up and she left at night when no one was around to see. Or she’s his cousin and was just in town for a visit. Or she’s just a friend and she drove out the back way. Why do you think she just disappeared?”

“She looked terrible, too. Like a starving animal, all shaggy and bruised.”

“She was bruised?”