was saying that all his officers have been singing your praises on the naloxone question.”
Aww. Nora was a little embarrassed by the praise but also by how happy it made her. She’d had her head down, working so much and so methodically that she’d never really stopped to consider her impact on the town.
A guest approached Eve. “Excuse me. I’ve been admiring that print.” She pointed at a reproduction of a painting of a mermaid lurking in the water as she stared at a bunch of humans on a boat. “May I ask where you got it?”
Eve turned to Nora, murmured, “Excuse me,” and led the guest to the painting. “It was my great-aunt’s, but I have a similar one in the dining room that’s by an artist in Bayshore—she has a studio there that’s open to the public on weekends.”
Nora had been listening to Eve, so she was surprised by Jake’s stealthy arrival on her other side. Jake had never, to her knowledge, attended cocktail hour at the Mermaid before. She was happy to see him, even though seeing him made her remember the ESP conversation she’d tried to have with him earlier. Which made her remember her receptionist problem. Which took the shine right off the I’m-a-public-health-genius feeling she’d been enjoying.
“How did the clinic go?”
“Wynd and her husband are moving to the countryside and she just gave her two weeks’ notice and I’m freaking out.”
He blinked a few times—she had kind of ambushed him there. “Let’s go see Mick, shall we? He’s in the kitchen.”
“What are you doing here, anyway?”
He paused, in both walking and speaking. “I thought you might want to see Mick.”
Right. She did want to see Mick. “Should we take him for a walk?”
Winter had been late coming to Moonflower Bay. They hadn’t had any snow, but the cold temperatures had arrived. Everybody said the lake moderated the winter here, made it less cold than it would be inland, but the dampness got into Nora’s bones. She combatted it by wearing a ridiculous amount of winter outerwear—an ankle-length down parka, a wool hat, and mittens so big she had trouble with the leash.
Which Jake took from her with a laugh. “Maybe you should have done your life reset in Florida.”
“Nah. I love it here.” She started booking it down the sidewalk. “But we gotta walk fast, or we’ll die.”
“You love it here?”
He sounded surprised. She’d surprised herself. It had just popped out of her mouth. But it was true in that way that things said before you could think too hard about them often were. The lake, the quirky locals who had become her friends—even the meddling, blue-haired, septuagenarian gaming champs. The sense that she was making a difference. All that stuff had sneaked up on her.
They’d turned toward the lake when they left the Mermaid. “I mean, what’s not to love about this?” She gestured ahead of them, at the little beach in the distance, as she picked up the pace even more. He followed her across the sand and onto the pier. When she reached the end of it, she rested her elbows on the railing and heaved a huge sigh.
“Okay, so Wynd quit,” he said.
“Yeah, her husband got laid off, so they’re moving to the country and starting their hippie commune.”
“I thought it was an alpaca farm.” Nora had told Jake about Wynd and her quirks.
“Potato-potahto.” She sighed again. She sure was doing a lot of that today. Someone should give her a medal. “I mean, I get it. This is her dream. But…her dream wasn’t supposed to arrive so soon.”
He chuckled. “I don’t think that’s how it works.”
“That’s what she said.” She tilted her head back and looked at the sky and ordered herself not to sigh again. To her utter mortification, hot tears started spilling out of her eyes. She was overreacting. But she couldn’t seem to stop. “I was just starting to hit my stride with the clinic,” she said, feeling the need to explain the uncharacteristic outburst. Also, my grandma is dying. She didn’t need a psych consult to figure out that the tears were probably as much about that as about anything.
“Hey, now. Hey.” Jake hunched down and leaned over the railing so he was in her line of vision.
She looked away from him. If he said, “Don’t cry,” she was going to punch him.
He maneuvered himself some more so he was back in her line of sight. “It’s a setback, but we’ll figure it out.”