it had taken all the willpower she had not to get Ben’s number from his parents and call him. In the end, she hadn’t had to—he’d just shown up and made her laugh. He’d held her until she’d stopped shaking. When the laughter turned to tears, he mopped them up with a dish towel on her kitchen counter. Later, after he’d kissed her cheek and tugged at her ponytail before returning to Boston, she’d put the towel at the back of her underwear drawer. Sometimes, when she couldn’t convince herself she was only independent and not lonely, she’d take the towel out and hold it against her cheek.
Even at the weddings and funerals where they’d seen each other for the past thirteen years, they’d stood in corners and talked long beyond the point of good manners. Afterward, she would always tuck the memories of those conversations away behind her heart as carefully as she had stored the worn dish towel.
She started from the window seat to get the dish towel before she remembered that it had been lost in the fire. Grief, deeper and more scalding than she’d felt for her dishes and her quilts, made a shaking fist in her stomach. She hugged her knees and pressed her face against the soft cotton knit of her skirt.
A few minutes later, she was able to take a deep breath. A few deep breaths. And laugh a little at herself. She’d been so self-congratulatory that she’d felt scarcely any need to mourn over the possessions claimed by the fire, yet she was brought to her knees by the loss of one threadbare dish towel.
As though he could hear her thoughts, Ben looked up at the window where she sat. He waved, and she waved back. When he gestured—come on down—she didn’t hesitate, just slipped on the jeans and sweatshirt that had become her uniform and ran stocking footed down the back stairs of the B and B. She tiptoed past the closed door of Marce’s private quarters and stepped outside, stopping on the step to put on her shoes.
When he came to stand in front of her while she tied her shoelaces, she looked up. “I don’t know who I am anymore,” she blurted. “It was easy when I was the face and voice people knew at the law office and the woman who owned the duplex on Alcott Street.” She knew there were tears on her cheeks, and if she’d been talking to anyone besides Ben, she’d have been embarrassed by them. As it was, she just let them fall.
“I wouldn’t have thought my house and job and taste in household items made me into the person I was, but now that they’re gone, I don’t know who’s left. It used to tick me off so much that I was only Sarah Rafael’s little sister or one of the McGuffey boys’ girlfriends, but at least I was somebody. I wasn’t invisible even to myself.” She drew in a sobbing breath. “I’m not even somebody’s mom.”
Dirty Sally climbed into her lap and stood with her front paws on Kate’s chest to lick the salt from her face.
“She still knows who you are,” said Ben. He knelt, his gaze meeting hers in the dusky blue light from the moon and the solar lights beside the porch steps. “We’re back in the same place as we were thirteen years ago, aren’t we, Kate? We’ve both lost who we were and we’re both worried about who we’re going to become.”
She laughed, though it caught in her throat and sounded more like a sob. She supposed that was better than hysteria. “You want to go down to the tavern and break up? It was really horrible the first time, and I don’t understand even now why you did it, but it worked. We stayed broken up.”
“No.” He smiled at her. “We just made up in the tavern the other day. Not that we were ever mad at each other—at least, I don’t think we were. But it’s time we created a new relationship. Call it something new and life changing, like friendship. What do you think?” His expression sobered. “Maybe then we can talk to each other at weddings and funerals without feeling guilty about it.”
She frowned at him. She hadn’t felt guilty. Well, except while he was married. She’d still yearned for him, and coveting someone else’s husband wasn’t something she’d liked about herself. Later, when Ben’s younger brother Dylan told her the marriage was annulled, she hadn’t felt guilty anymore. Only sometimes, when the little flare of hope whooshed up under her breastbone and took her breath away. But she’d buried that quickly, stuffing it into a mental drawer that would have been labeled Denial if she’d been willing to give it that much thought.
Kate loved her friends. She and Penny knew things about each other no one else knew, even Joann and Kate’s sister, Sarah. But the link between Ben and herself had never come completely undone. Over the years since their breakup, she’d occasionally hated him, but she’d never stopped missing him. She’d never stopping wishing he was there to talk to. But he wasn’t her friend, was he? It was a whole lot more complicated than that.
Lucy, the inn’s resident golden retriever, slunk into the backyard from the alley behind and ambled toward the pet door. She raised a paw to push herself inside, then looked back over her shoulder at Kate and Ben. The struggle was written on the dog’s face: should she go inside and sprawl bonelessly on her bed or should she remain out here where it was cold and make sure she didn’t miss anything?
With a sigh and clicking toenails, she lay on the rug on the porch. Sally left Kate’s lap with a leap, landing in the middle of the C curve of Lucy’s body and snuggling into the burnished fur. The dog opened her eyes, sighed again, and closed them.
“Well,” said Kate, smiling at the animals, “I guess there might be stranger friendships than ours.” She got to her feet. “Come on, friend. I need to walk off some of these pastries Marce is forcing me to eat.”
“Forcing you, huh?” He chuckled and led the way out of the yard. “And here I was going to offer to buy you a bagel and a coffee—the Bagel Stop’s the only place in town that’s open this late. Guess I won’t ask you now. I’d hate to lead you astray.”
“Oh.” Kate walked beside him, stretching her stride as he shortened his so that by the time they reached the corner, she was gasping for air and he was taking baby steps. “You know,” she said, “if you’re hungry, I could probably get something down. Just a small coffee, you know, and maybe half a muffin. I could save the other half for breakfast.”
“You bet,” he said. “Come on, short woman. Move it.”
When he took her hand, it was a casual, friendly gesture, but it made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. She shook her head. It was probably just the frayed collar of her sweatshirt. She was going to have to get some clothes; that was all there was to it.
The Bagel Stop was half-full of people. Kate, a natural-born morning person, looked around in disbelief. She’d never been here later than nine in the morning and assumed that’s when everyone else came, too. There couldn’t possibly be this many people in Fionnegan who stayed awake until midnight. “I thought it would be empty.”
“This is a college town,” Ben reminded her, “and it’s time for finals.” He waved at the young woman behind the counter. “That’s Debby, who works nights and always looks tired. There’s a story there, but I don’t know what it is.”
The pretty waitress’s smile did much to erase the weariness from her face. She made recommendations and didn’t roll her eyes when Kate changed her mind. Twice.
“It’s a lot of calories,” said Kate, when Ben did roll his eyes. “I can only walk around the block so many times before I fall asleep.”
“That one’s not worth it.” Debby pointed at Kate’s second choice. “It looks nice and a lot of people like it, but it will sit in the middle of your stomach and weigh seven pounds. That one weighs seven pounds too—” she pointed at the first choice “—but it’s
