Chapter 12
Zoe reminded Dan of a reed swaying in the wind—tense and fragile, easily broken and yet also surprisingly strong.
He could tell she was barely holding herself together, and yet she was, and that clearly was very hard.
She’d just unloaded a lot on him, and he wanted to make sure he responded in the right way.
Impulsively he reached over and touched her hand, a feather-light brush of her fingers, no more. She gulped in response, and carefully he drew back. “I can’t imagine how hard that’s been for you,” he said quietly.
“I’m glad to do it,” Zoe said in a thick voice, brushing at her eyes with quick, impatient movements. “That’s the thing. I don’t begrudge my parents anything.”
“That doesn’t make it easy, though,” Dan pointed out.
Zoe nodded jerkily as she brushed at her eyes again. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I don’t usually get emotional like this. Ever.”
“Maybe that’s why you are now,” he suggested gently.
He paused, waiting for her to compose herself, because he could tell she wanted to so much.
“Why does hardly anyone know about all this, Zoe? In a town as small and cozy as this? I feel like it’s the sort of place where everyone would know, and people would be dropping over casseroles and audiobooks and, I don’t know, loaves of banana bread to help out.
” He waited for her response, but she remained silent, staring straight ahead. “Wouldn’t they?” he pressed.
“Maybe,” she allowed after a moment. “For a while, back at the beginning, it was like that. My parents’ generation…
the Millers, and Annie’s mom Barbara, and Betty Stein—the town’s old guard—they all helped out for a while.
But then some of them got older and others moved away or even died, and you know, when you’re sick, you can only hold someone’s interest for so long.
” She offered him a heartbreakingly wobbly smile.
“My mom has been sick for twenty years, my dad for ten. It’s old news.
To a lot of people, it’s probably boring. ”
“Have you tested that theory?” Dan asked, and Zoe sighed, seeming impatient now, almost a little angry.
“I don’t need to,” she replied fiercely.
“I see the proof in all the questions people don’t ask.
Hardly anyone ever asks me how my parents are, or even where they are, and if they do, they don’t really care about the answer.
Or if they care, they’ve done their duty by asking, and they leave it at that.
” She breathed out noisily, blinking back more tears, making Dan ache with sadness for her and all she’d had to endure by herself.
“The pastor of the church in Starr’s Fall sometimes does ask, to be fair,” she acknowledged, “but my parents never went there, so it’s not like they were his flock or anything.
And the church they did go to folded a couple of years ago, so they lost all that community. ”
Curious, Dan asked, “What church was that?”
She let out a little laugh. “A real swaying-in-the-aisles, happy-clappy kind of place, out in Torrington. My mom and dad were very involved there. I wasn’t, really, not since I was a kid, anyway…
but they both have faith, even if I don’t always get why or how.
Maybe that’s just how faith is. They never questioned why they got sick, or how unfair it was.
They never even got upset or down about it. ”
“Maybe that is how faith is,” Dan agreed.
Her parents sounded like pretty amazing people to him, and he wondered if the people of Starr’s Fall would have been more interested in helping out…
if Zoe would just have let them. Judging by how prickly she was being now, Dan suspected she wasn’t all that willing in giving people that chance.
“Anyway.” Zoe leaned back against the sofa, seeming spent. “I don’t know how much more I can say about all that.”
Dan felt like he had a million more questions, but he knew better than to ask them now.
He was glad Zoe had confided in him. Hearing her story gave him an even greater appreciation for how strong she was, and it made him want to know her even more.
“We could talk about the logo,” he suggested, and she let out a shaky laugh as she tossed back the rest of her wine.
“Sure, let’s talk about the logo.”
He nodded toward her now-empty glass. “Refill first?”
She hesitated, and for a second it felt as if the world was standing still, as if everything turned on what had meant to be a simple question.
Slowly she lifted her gaze to his, her hazel eyes luminous with the tears she’d refused to shed.
“Yes, thanks,” she said, her voice husky from those unshed tears. She held out her glass. “Thanks.”
Was he imagining the shift in atmosphere, Dan wondered as he went to refresh their glasses.
Even if he was, he knew he wasn’t going to do anything about it right now.
Zoe was vulnerable, and he was not going to take advantage by hitting on or even flirting with her tonight.
Besides, he wasn’t sure he’d even know how.
It had been twenty years since he’d tried to do anything like that.
“Okay,” he said briskly as he handed her her refilled glass and then reached for his laptop. “I worked up a few designs, but if it’s not what you’re going for, just tell me. I won’t be offended, I promise.”
“I’m not sure why you think I have all this power,” Zoe told him with a laugh. “You do know this whole logo thing is just Maggie trying to matchmake us, don’t you?” She flushed, biting her lip. “Sorry, maybe I shouldn’t have said that.”
He shrugged, smiling, glad she’d gone there. “Even if it’s the truth…? Besides, I kind of already suspected. She wasn’t exactly subtle about it, was she?”
Zoe laughed, looking relieved. “Yeah, tell me about it. That’s how everyone in Starr’s Fall is, more or less. Most people being more.”
“I was getting that vibe, to be fair,” Dan murmured as he flipped open his laptop. “I’m sure they mean well.”
“Of course they do.” She sounded so deliberately jaded that he had to laugh.
“Okay, here’s the first one,” he told her, clicking onto the design and then passing over the laptop so she could view the screen. “Give me your honest thoughts.” He meant what he said, but he found he was still nervous as Zoe studied the design, her brow furrowed. He wanted her to like it.
He let his gaze linger on her for a few seconds, since she wasn’t looking at him.
She was so not his usual type, if his usual type was Lindsay, anyway.
Zoe was his ex-wife’s complete opposite, with her pink, spiky hair, the multiple piercings, the tattoos peeking from beneath the sleeves of her t-shirt, one on her bicep, another on her forearm.
Lindsay had been preppy, polished, with no ragged edges.
Zoe, Dan reflected, seemed like she was all ragged edges.
Maybe that was what appealed to him, because heaven knew, he was feeling pretty ragged himself.
What had attracted him to Lindsay when he was all of nineteen—her ambition and purpose, her sense of calm and determination—had turned out to bite him in the butt, when she’d decided to leave him behind.
When everything else had been more important than their marriage, and he’d worked as hard as he could to keep up.
He definitely didn’t want that dynamic again, if he ever did decide to try for a relationship again.
He wanted someone who saw him as her equal, who didn’t have it all together and was okay with him not having it either, but wanted to figure life out together.
But he was clearly getting way ahead of himself, to be thinking like this now.
“I like it,” Zoe said at last, lifting her gaze from the logo he’d sketched in green—a whimsical view of the Main Street, sketched in just a couple of lines, with fireworks arcing above. “But maybe it’s a little too…” She hesitated, and Dan filled in, knowing it was true.
“Cutesy?”
A look of guilty relief passed over her face as she hung her head. “Sorry…”
“No, no, you’re right.” He took back the laptop. “It’s the illustrative equivalent of Comic Sans font.”
She laughed. “That’s exactly what it is.” He gave her a mock glare, and she bit her lip. “Sorry…”
“No, no, I can take it,” he assured her. “I’ve got a few more up my sleeve, anyway.” He clicked onto the next design and handed her the laptop once again, holding his breath, hoping she liked this one a little more.
Once again, Zoe studied the design with critical thoroughness, her eyes narrowed, lips pursed, in a way Dan found cute, not that he would say as much to her. “I like this one better,” she said at last, and Dan couldn’t help but wince.
“Still not getting it right, though?” he surmised.
“It’s a little… bleak,” she admitted.
“Okay.” He was determined to be unfazed.
To be fair, the second design had been simpler, just a few stark lines that gave the sense of the town rather than an actual depiction.
“Last one,” he told her, and leaned across, his arm brushing her shoulder, her hair tickling his cheek, to click on the final design.
As he eased back, he heard Zoe release her breath and again he felt that ratcheting up of the atmosphere, relaxed camaraderie turning to taut expectation. He did his best to ignore it.
Zoe nodded at the last design, smiling. “I like this one,” she said. It was a quick sketch, in purple, of the church spire with a firework bursting above it. It wasn’t as cutesy as the first one, but it still possessed a certain whimsy that Dan had liked. It seemed Zoe did, too.
“But I don’t know why I’m the judge,” she told him as she handed back his computer. “Lizzy Harper, who’s this year’s chair, really should have the say. She’s in charge of the event.”
“If you want this on a banner design before the fourth,” Dan told her, a note of warning in his voice, “she needs to have approved it yesterday.”
“Yeah, we have a haphazard way of doing things in Starr’s Fall,” Zoe told him wryly. “The Winter Wonderland Festival at Christmas came together very last minute. I guess that’s just the way we do things.”
“Understood, but—”
She held up a hand. “I’ll tell Lizzy. Or you can. If we’re really doing this.” There was no innuendo in her voice, yet Dan felt his stomach tighten anyway, as if she’d intimated something far more personal. Something far more physical.
“Okay,” he said slowly, his voice a low thrum. “We’re doing this.” And then he held her gaze as his stomach fluttered, and he had a feeling hers was, as well.
“Okay,” she repeated softly, and for a second, the whole world felt suspended, as if they were hovering in mid-air, in an aerial ballet of silent acknowledgment and yearning. Neither of them moved. Neither of them blinked. After a single, endless second, Dan leaned forward, just an inch.
Zoe’s breath hitched. Her eyes widened. She swayed, just a fraction, and the moment stretched on, lengthened with possibility.
We’re doing this. The words seemed to pulse between them. We’re doing this, we’re doing this…
They were still sitting there, utterly unmoving, every atom Dan possessed straining, when the front door was suddenly thrown open, the overhead lights flicked on.
Sophie let out a shriek, her voice like a razor blade, shredding the moment. “What,” she exclaimed, her hands on her hips, “are you guys doing?”