style="font-size:15px;"> “So you’ve said.” Becky’s smile was the moon. “But, hey, once you win a game, the town’ll be so happy to have you.”
Skip chuckled. “We can only hope. Want a hot dog?”
They headed for the side doors. Over Becky’s dark head, Skip searched the room for Addie, for that pretty yellow dress, but she was nowhere to be seen. Had he imagined her in the rear crowd? Probably. She’d been on his mind for months.
Since he’d found Becky.
Admit it, Addie’s been in your head since you left thirteen years ago.
For half his life, she had been in his nightmares, and his dreams. Well, it was time. Time to come full circle.
Determined, he touched his daughter’s elbow. “Let’s go scrounge up some food.”
They walked into the island’s sea-scented sunshine.
Sometimes, it amazed Addie that five people had once slept, ate, laughed, opened birthday and Christmas presents, fought over bathroom privileges and closets and clothes…and survived in the cramped six-room structure in which her mother still lived.
Pulling the truck into the dirt lane of her childhood home on the outskirts of town, she thought of her sisters Lee and Kat living elsewhere on the island. Of the three, Addie visited their mother almost daily; Lee was frequently off island in her plane and Kat was tied up with the Country Cabin, her bed-and-breakfast.
As to their fathers, well, they were another story.
Addie’s died two years ago and Lee’s had left when she was a child. And Kat’s…No one knew who or where Kat’s daddy was, or if he even lived.
Mom’s closet secret. That’s what Kat called Charmaine’s unwillingness to reveal the past.
“What’s the point? It’s done and gone.” Their mother’s favorite battle cry whenever one of them pressed for the name.
Done and gone. Well, Mom, Addie thought, here’s a news flash. Sometimes done and gone comes back to bite you in the butt.
Skip Dalton was a living example.
Standing at the back of the gym, seeing him for the first time in more than a decade, hearing that smooth, deep voice…God, she’d been a teenager again and he the school jock, the team quarterback, the college student come home for Christmas. The boy kissing her under the school bleachers, touching her in places no one had touched, taking her virginity in his pickup truck on the shore of the island’s Silver Lake, and finally…making a baby with her. In this house, in her old bedroom, thirty feet from where she sat this minute in her aged truck.
Pushing off the memories, she opened the door and jumped down. Time to get her child and go home and let Skip Dalton go to whomever wanted him. Which likely would be half the women on the island.
Addie released a soft snort. He’d best take care because those women now had husbands.
And that stopped him before?
Climbing the steps to her mother’s door, she shook her head. Not according to the sports commentators. Wasn’t it four years ago that Skip dated a woman recently separated from her husband—not divorced, separated—and the man had come after him with a shotgun?
Yes, Addie remembered Dempsey talking about it while he watched a game, and laughing about Skip Dalton looking a “little green around the gills” when he was interviewed about the incident. Addie hadn’t watched the interview; instead she’d walked into the kitchen to clean out the dishwasher. The last thing she needed was Skip Dalton’s face filling the TV screen and Dempsey giggling over the whole tasteless affair.
So goes the life of the rich and fabulous, she thought, knocking on her mother’s door.
A moment later, it opened. Charmaine stood on the threshold and Addie blinked back Skip Dalton’s image.
“Hey, Mom.” She stepped into the familiar entranceway with its cabbage-rose mat and wooden bar of coat hooks on the wall. The scent of chocolate-chip cookies permeated the air; grandma and granddaughter had been busy the past hour. “How’s my baby?”
“Fine.” Closing the door, Charmaine scrutinized Addie’s face.
“You look as if you’ve seen your father’s ghost.”
“I wish.” She moved down the tiny hallway and into the living quarters where Michaela crawled under a blue blanket held in place by several books between the sofa and coffee table. Three Barbies and a Ken lay on the carpet near the “house” entrance. Addie tugged gently on her daughter’s leg. “Hey, button. Ready for home?”
Michaela peeked from under the coverlet. “C-c-can I s-s-stay?” Brown eyes pleading, she crouched farther under the blanket tent. Addie understood. Her child had built the house and now wanted playtime.
Kneeling on the floor, she took her daughter’s hands. “Speak slowly, honey.”
“Can…I…stay?”
“Gram has some stuff to do this afternoon, Michaela.” Addie wasn’t sure of her mother’s commitments, but she needed to feel the security of her own house. She needed to know that her world wasn’t about to turn upside down now that Skip Dalton was back.
Michaela pouted. “But…I want…to…play.”
“I know, button. Maybe we’ll come back tomorrow, okay?” Addie held out a hand, signaling the matter was done.
The child gathered the dolls into her pink knapsack and climbed to her feet. “’B-bye, Gram.”
Charmaine tucked a packet of cookies into her granddaughter’s small hand. “These are for you, but Mom will give you permission when you can have one.”
“’Kay.”
She kissed Michaela’s hair. “See you later, darlin’.”
As Addie ushered her daughter out of the house, Charmaine whispered, “What happened at Harry’s retirement party that’s got you in a dither?”
“Nothing. The new coach was introduced and Harry got the token plaque and gold watch. End of story.”
“Was Skip Dalton there?”
Addie turned to Charmaine as Michaela scrambled into the truck. “Don’t act as if you didn’t know, Mom. The paper carried the announcement twice.”
Charmaine’s eyes narrowed. “Did you talk to him?”
“No.”
“But you saw him.”
“I saw him.”
Questions burned in Charmaine’s eyes. What did he look like? Is he still handsome? Were people impressed? Has he changed? Ten thousand questions that meant nothing—and everything.
“I have to go.” Addie moved down the steps.
“Addie…Your
