might have mentioned it to Mom.”
Of course she had. “I might stop in for a few minutes on my out tomorrow.”
As tempting as it was to accidentally run late and not have time, he’d do it.
It wasn’t that he didn’t love his parents. He did. Talked to them all the time on the phone, and his mom had even mastered Facebook so she could keep tabs on him. And he’d seen them during the past five years. Once, when he’d been working in Connecticut, he’d talked them into driving down for a weekend at the casino on his dime. And, two years ago, when Sandy had announced her engagement to Mike, he’d talked them all into joining him in Las Vegas for what was the wedding trip of a lifetime for a couple from Tucker’s Point.
He’d simply managed to avoid seeing them in their natural habitat, so to speak. Just thinking about his childhood home, with its ancient brown tweed couch and insulation-deep stench of cigarette smoke and the sea, made him feel claustrophobic.
But Brody had hurt his mom enough by taking off in the middle of the night five years before. He couldn’t hurt her again by avoiding seeing her when he was only a few minutes away.
He tried not to think about the other woman he’d hurt, maybe even more than he’d hurt his mother.
Delaney Westcott had been expecting a future with him. They were nearing the point of proposal, followed by a wedding, a cheap apartment over a fishermen’s bar and babies. Instead, she’d gotten a note telling her he was gone because he didn’t have the guts to face her.
“You need to spend more than a few minutes with them,” Sandy said in an admonishing tone that made her sound just like their mother.
“I’ll visit for a while. More than a few minutes. But I can’t stay too long because I have a plane to catch so I can get back to work.” And out of Tucker’s Point.
That was when the power went out.
* * *
CHAOS REIGNED IN the school’s gymnasium. Delaney wanted to pretend it was the controlled kind of chaos, but if somebody had control, it wasn’t her. All she had was the clipboard. And a growing stream of people who did not want to be there.
At least it was keeping her mind off the fact Brody Rollins was back in town. Mostly.
She’d gotten the phone call shortly after the storm took its unexpected turn for the worse. Homes were already losing power and there might be a lot of ice and wind yet to come, so it was time to open the town’s emergency shelter at the school.
There were several other volunteers helping the displaced get settled. At this point in the storm, they’d get mostly the elderly and families with small children, which made for an interesting mix. But if the storm didn’t ease up or change back to a more manageable snowfall, people would start risking the weather to get a warm bed and some food as the temperature dropped—both outside and in their houses.
She hadn’t even gotten around to opening her ice cream yet. If her power went out and it melted, she was going to be really bummed. She’d need it after this.
When she saw Mrs. Palmer approaching her, she almost groaned aloud. “What can I do for you?”
“Where are the jigsaw puzzles? We always do puzzles.”
“I’ll bring them out in a little while. Right now we’re trying to get the cots, blankets and food situation taken care of.”
“What am I supposed to do, then?”
Delaney smiled and did not suggest the woman help with the cots, blankets and food situation. Nobody would thank her for that. “Maybe you could see if Penny needs any help?”
Penny was so going to make her pay for that later. Probably tenfold, even. But Delaney needed to get the cots set up because she had the chart from the fire department and if everything wasn’t up to the safety code, they’d have to do it again. It was a lot harder once people started showing up.
At least Mike and Sandy had a generator, which meant even if Brody was there with her and the power went out, he wouldn’t be showing up at the school. It was hectic enough without throwing in a lost love. Not that he’d been lost. He’d deliberately left her behind without even telling her goodbye.
Hopefully she’d get through this storm and his surprise return to Tucker’s Point without telling him hello.
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