off in the gaming area, she turned in the small booth to see a short, curvy blonde woman heading in her direction.
“Cherrie... Been a long time, hasn’t it?”
“Ten years!” the other woman agreed.
And yet not nearly long enough, Lindsay thought as she kept her smile firmly locked in place. Along with Brittany Baines, Cherrie Macintosh and a handful of other girls had ruled the school back in the day. The popular kids who could make life hell for anyone not in their small circle. As a shy bookworm, Lindsay had mostly escaped their noticed.
Mostly.
“Did you hear Lindsay Brookes got herself knocked up?”
“I’d have thought that girl would die a virgin!”
“They always say it’s the quiet ones who surprise you.”
“She must have done it on purpose to trap Tony Pirelli.”
“Well, it’s not like a guy that hot is hanging out with her for her brain!”
“Goodness,” Cherrie remarked, “if I hadn’t heard you were coming to town, I don’t think I would have even recognized you. I mean, you were such a mousy little thing back then, weren’t you?”
Yes, she had been. But that was a long time ago, and she wasn’t that girl anymore. She had five years under her belt working for a high-profile PR firm in Phoenix. She could put on a smile and spin the truth with the best of them. Reminding herself of that, she slid from the booth.
In high school, she’d hated her above-average height. Hated anything that might make her stand out in a crowd, and she’d spent most of those years hunched over—even when her nose wasn’t buried in a book. But she’d learned—heck, studies proved—that tall people were often seen as smarter and more successful than people of a lesser stature. And even in low-heeled sandals she’d chosen to wear to run for pizza, she towered over Cherrie. “You’re right. I was. Thank goodness we aren’t all still the people we were back in high school.”
Cherrie blinked as if trying to figure out the subtle dig behind Lindsay’s words. “Oh, sure. I mean, that was, like, forever ago, right?”
Was it Lindsay’s imagination or had a hopeful note entered the other woman’s voice? As if Lindsay might have forgotten the cruel gossip that had shadowed her those last weeks before she and her parents left town.
Without Brittany and the rest of the squad around her, Cherrie didn’t look all that intimidating. If anything, she appeared a bit needy and eager to please. Someone who would have gone along with the other kids as a way to fit in.
Lindsay wouldn’t have expected to feel sorry for anyone in that old group from high school, but maybe that also proved how much she had changed. “You’re right. All water under the bridge now.”
“Yeah, sure. It is. And it will be great to catch up with everyone at the reunion next month. You’ll still be here then, won’t you?”
Lindsay could think of few things she wanted to do less than attending her ten-year reunion. Reminiscing over four years of pure hell? Yeah, that sounded fun. “I’m not sure if I’ll make it or not,” she said to Cherrie.
“Oh, well...” The other woman gave a small laugh. “It’s funny, though, if you’d been here a few seconds earlier, we could have had our own minireunion. You just missed seeing Ryder Kincaid. You know he’s moved back, right?”
“I’d heard something about that.” Under the bridge or not, Lindsay wasn’t about to churn up that water by admitting to Cherrie—who still seemed to enjoy spreading a bit of gossip—that Ryder’s presence had prompted her own return to their hometown.
Leaning forward, Cherrie said, “He left Brittany, you know. Out of the blue. Total surprise. Brittany and I, we’re still, like, best friends, though we don’t see each other much. I had hoped she’d come back for the reunion, but she said it would be too hard. All those memories of her and Ryder together, you know? She’s trying to be strong, but you can tell she’s devastated.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” Lindsay said, the words not entirely untrue even if her concern wasn’t so much for Brittany.
“I mean, they were together forever,” Cherrie stressed, “the perfect couple and the marriage everyone thought would last!” Lowering her voice a bit more, she added, “Ryder’s not talking, but what can he say? To just walk away like he did...”
The buzz of her words blended in with the laugher and sirens from the play area. What did Lindsay really know about Ryder? In all truthfulness—despite what her teenage heart had believed back then—she’d hardly known him as a boy. She didn’t have any idea what kind of man he was now. What kind of father he might be...
When she heard about his divorce and that he’d moved back to Clearville, Lindsay had taken it as a sign—after a decade of secrets, half-truths and out-and-out lies—it was time to come clean. But this couldn’t be simply about doing the right thing. Telling the truth had to be about doing the best thing for Robbie. Her son mattered most, more than the guilt she’d carried for so long, more than Ryder’s rights as a father. Robbie came first.
Every story had two sides, and while Brittany’s still-best friend, Cherrie, would know Brittany’s side, Lindsay needed to hear Ryder’s. She needed to know the kind of man she was letting into her son’s life. Needed to know that he wouldn’t turn his back on her son the way he apparently had done on his wife and marriage.
Lindsay swallowed hard even as nerves swirled through her stomach. After more than a decade of loving and at times hating Ryder Kincaid from afar, it was time to get up close and personal.
* * *
“Now, there’s the granddaughter I know and love! I was wondering when she might show up.”
Lindsay rolled her eyes at her grandmother Ellie’s teasing as she stepped into the kitchen and self-consciously ducked her head. She pushed her heavy glasses farther up her nose, wishing she’d had time to shower and do her hair and makeup, not to mention put in her contacts before coming down for breakfast.
Back home, Robbie would fix himself a bowl of cereal and some fruit during the week and was content to play video games or watch television on the weekends, giving Lindsay the time she needed to get ready in the morning. But as she’d learned on her first day, Ellie didn’t believe cold cereal and a banana was an adequate meal for a growing boy.
By the time Lindsay came down, her grandmother had fixed a spread worthy of an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet. And while Ellie insisted she loved to cook, Lindsay was there to help take care of her grandmother, not to be taken care of.
So on this morning, as soon as she heard sounds coming from the kitchen, she’d hurried from the bedroom after doing no more than brushing her teeth and putting on the glasses she needed to keep from killing herself on the way down the stairs. She smiled wryly as she saw the vast ingredients her grandmother had already compiled in that short amount of time.
Flour, eggs, sugar and blueberries for homemade pancakes, potatoes for hash browns, a thick slab of presliced bacon, a kettle of fragrant chamomile tea already brewing on the stove and in the middle of it
