church, looking for—what? Comfort? Escape? Certainly not Dante Brown. If Eugenie hadn’t sat next to her, she could have slipped out of the service early.
The next hour passed with unbearable slowness. The moment the organist struck the first notes of the recessional, Camille was up and out of the pew, squeezing around Eugenie. She made a beeline for the door, leaving the bewildered librarian in her wake.
“Camille, wait,” a masculine voice called.
She descended the steps outside the sanctuary and pretended she hadn’t heard him. Her well-worn pumps clattered as she went. Quick as she was, though, she was no match for Dante, even with his bum knee.
“Camille!”
Other parishioners turned toward him, watching with great interest. It was too late to escape. She stopped and pivoted slowly, as if her interest in the person hailing her was so vague she couldn’t put much energy into the movement of her body.
“Camille.” He said her name again as he moved toward her, stopping less than two feet in front of her. She had to look up to meet his gaze and could only pray that her face was as expressionless as she could make it.
Oh, Dante. Hello. “I thought that was you.” Knew it was you. Felt it was you. She clutched the strap of her purse below where it rested on her shoulder. “It’s good to see you.”
“You too.” He looked around, as if assessing how many eager ears were in the immediate vicinity. Plenty, Camille could have told him, and every one anxiously awaiting their next words. “Can I walk you to your car?” he asked.
“I didn’t drive,” she said and then stopped. She knew at once she’d made a tactical error.
“Neither did I,” he said. “Why don’t I walk you home?”
Such a simple question on the surface, but the murky emotional waters below threatened to drag her down.
“Um—” How could she refuse? He was nothing more than a former classmate, an old friend who had come back to town. But they both knew that his request went far beyond a desire to catch up or reminisce. Every member of the Sweetgum Christian Church still congregated on the steps would watch them leave together. By midafternoon, their actions would be common knowledge.
“All right,” she finally said, if only as a means of escaping the scrutiny of her fellow church members. She cringed at how ungracious she sounded, but she couldn’t afford to encourage him. One inch equaled one mile to Dante Brown, and there were a lot of inches between the church and her house.
They headed north on Spring Street, away from the center of town. It’s only a ten-minute walk, Camille told herself. You can make meaningless conversation for that long. But forming words proved difficult with Dante beside her. The width of his shoulders seemed to take up more than his half of the sidewalk, and she would have sworn there was less oxygen in the air around him. He had to duck the low-hanging branches, and he motioned her ahead of him when the concrete roughened into jagged crumbles where tree roots had displaced the path.
“I’m surprised you’re still here,” he said after several long moments of silence. “You were so set on leaving.”
So he didn’t know. She shrugged her shoulders. “Things don’t always work out like you plan.” The understatement of the year. The decade.
He stumbled, his foot catching on a crack in the sidewalk, and when he straightened, she saw him wince in pain.
“Are you okay?”
He scowled, frustrated to be caught showing any sign of weakness, she knew Dante certainly hadn’t changed in that regard.
“I’m fine. My knee…” He didn’t finish the sentence.
“I saw it. The hit you took. I saw it on television.”
“The only people who didn’t live at the South Pole.” His scowl deepened. With his face looking like a thundercloud, he was more unsettling than ever.
“It still bothers you?”
He smiled then, that wide, infectious grin that had charmed Sweetgum women of all ages. “Only when I’m chasing after a beautiful girl.”
Camille flushed and hated herself for doing it. Dante’s charm was never subtle, but it was nonetheless effective.
“Dante—”
He raised a hand to interrupt her. “Sorry, Cammie. I didn’t mean any disrespect. To your mother, I mean.” He paused as if searching for the right words. “I guess I’m supposed to say that I’m sorry she’s gone, but sometimes it’s a blessing to let people go. Especially when they’ve been in pain for so long.”
Camille looked up at him, startled by his unexpected words.