have been severed from me.
Could not say, I’ll try to keep loving you as much as I always have, even though I think you just manipulated me and guilted me and never really tried to understand how I feel.
“I need to go home.” She started for the door, only then remembering she’d set down her purse in the kitchen and diverted that way. “I’m sorry.”
“I wish you’d stay for dinner.” Sounding unhappy, Mom followed her. “I know you’re not eating enough. And I can tell you don’t understand.”
“I think you’re wrong.” Thank God, there was her purse. Allie grabbed it and kept going. “But I do understand why you’re scared, Mom, and I guess I have to respect that. And I really, really don’t want to talk any more about it tonight, okay?” She fumbled to get the front door open.
“All right. But...could we have lunch one day this week?”
Allie risked a look back and saw only her mother. Her best friend.
“Of course we can,” she said, gently even though she felt...not much at all.
Their good-nights weren’t all that different from usual. Driving home, Allie tried to convince herself that nothing really had changed, and that her mother was right. Nolan could love her without ever knowing her secrets.
* * *
SOMEHOW SHE WASN’T at all surprised when the bell above the door tinkled at precisely 1:15 the next afternoon and, when she turned from where she’d been replacing a bolt of fabric on the rack, she saw that it was Nolan who had walked into her otherwise empty store, a couple of bags of food in his hands.
“You finished your job?” she asked.
“Yeah. I missed you yesterday.”
“I missed you, too.” Her voice sounded weird. A little scratchy.
He didn’t say anything for a minute, but he looked into her eyes with unnerving intensity. “Did you?” he said finally.
She willed herself not to overreact. She might be imagining the undertones here. “I got a lot of work done on Sean’s quilt. I might have it ready for him in as soon as a couple of weeks.”
“Seriously?”
“You doubt me?” Allie was proud of her mock offended stance.
He should have smiled and said of course I don’t. Instead, there was an odd little silence, during which his very blue eyes contemplated her. “I brought lunch,” he said at last, abruptly.
Okay, she wasn’t imagining anything. There was definitely something wrong. Would he tell her what it was? Allie couldn’t even guess.
“I especially appreciate it today,” she told him lightly. “I forgot to bring anything.”
He followed when she went to the back. “You’re losing weight, aren’t you?”
“Maybe a little. I always tend to be skinny.”
“Not skinny.” He frowned. “Delicate.”
“That’s a more flattering word.” She took a chance, rose on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Yeah.” He set down the bags and tugged her against him for a more thorough kiss. “I’m glad I am, too.”
He distributed today’s lunch, take-out bowls of split pea soup and sourdough rolls that smelled as if they were right out of the oven, then asked if she’d done anything special yesterday.
Confronted my mother. “Nope. Like I said, mostly quilted.”
He pried the top off his bowl. “You may have gotten your coloring from your dad, but I could see your mom in you.”
“Yes. I got my size from her for sure.”
“More than that.”
“I suppose so.” She hesitated. “Do you look like your mother?”
“No.” He cleared his throat. “Not at all.”
“I’m sorry.”
Nolan frowned and didn’t respond. He appeared to be concentrating on buttering his roll.
“Sean told me something,” he said finally.
Allie slowly lifted her gaze to his. “What?” she croaked.
“That you said you moved here from Oklahoma.” Pause. “Not Montana.”
She was nearly paralyzed, unable to think. She was already tangled in this lie. How did she get out? “That’s true,” she said. “Mom was... She always says that. We, um, did live in Montana. Before. But, well, Dad and Jason are still in Oklahoma, and she doesn’t like to think about it, and so...she leaves out the time we spent in Oklahoma.” Oh, God, that was weak. Would he buy it?
The relentlessness she saw in his eyes said plainly that he didn’t. “Where in Oklahoma?” he asked. “My sister dated a guy from somewhere near Oklahoma City. Choctaw, I think.”
“We were just outside Tulsa. A suburb.”
“Oh? Which one?”
Of course he wasn’t letting up at all. The steel in his voice told her any more evasions would be the end.
Neither Dad nor Jason were in the same town where she’d graduated