Chapter 15
“When did you get your ears pierced?”
“What?” Zoe looked up from the receipts she’d been totaling, distracted by Sophie’s sudden question.
It was the day after the business association meeting, and she was still disgruntled and even depressed by the way Dan had basically blanked her.
Maybe not entirely, but she’d certainly felt it, which was probably her own fault for doing the same thing to him, when she’d picked up Sophie in the morning to make ice cream.
It was all so silly, Zoe thought on a sigh, as well as childish.
She wanted to be better than that, but she just didn’t know how.
“When,” Sophie repeated with the exaggerated patience of someone who wished you’d listened the first time, “did you get your ears pierced?”
Instinctively Zoe fingered her piercings, three in each ear.
“Firsts when I was twelve,” she said, and had to swallow past the lump in her throat as she remembered her mom taking her to the jewelry store.
She’d promised Zoe for years that she’d do it for her twelfth birthday, but then she’d gone through a patch of intense fatigue and muscle ache, and so Zoe had had to wait three months.
At twelve years old, she hadn’t been nearly as understanding as she wished she’d been.
“And seconds?” Sophie asked.
“Fifteen.” Her dad had taken her then, quietly miserable after she’d raged at him about how unfair life was. He hadn’t wanted her to get them done, but she’d insisted, acted like he and her mom owed her something. The memory still had the power to make her stomach churn with guilt.
“And thirds?” Sophie persisted.
“When I was eighteen, in college,” Zoe told her. Trying to be the cool girl at art school. She should have realized she’d never be cool enough. “Why,” she asked Sophie with a pointedness of her own, “are you asking me?”
“Because I want to get my seconds done and my dad won’t agree,” Sophie replied promptly. “But if you talk to him…”
Zoe was already shaking her head. “Sophie, I am not going to bat for you on this one,” she told her. “And I am certainly not getting between you and your dad on any issue.”
“I asked him if he liked you,” Sophie blurted, and Zoe stifled a groan.
Having Sophie as a devious and determined matchmaker was definitely not helpful. “Sophie…” She only just kept herself from asking what Dan’s response to that question had been. After last night’s brushoff, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
“He said it wasn’t any of my business,” Sophie informed her anyway, “but he thought you were a good neighbor.”
“A good neighbor,” Zoe repeated before she could help herself. Ouch. Was that all she was? And did she deserve to be anything more after the way she’d shut him down so succinctly?
“But I could tell,” Sophie insisted. “He likes you. And he respects your opinion.”
“Which you’re saying only because you want me to tell him you should get your ears pierced,” Zoe surmised with a smile and a shake of her head. “Sorry, Sophie, but no.”
Sophie pouted, but it was far more playful than the sullen sulk Zoe remembered from their first days and weeks together.
Sophie had definitely started to come out of herself; just that morning, Zoe had overheard her talking to Bella on her phone about helping with Tina Williams’ dance classes.
It was nice to see her get stuck into Starr’s Fall, but Zoe wasn’t about to argue with Dan for his daughter to get more ear piercings.
“When did you get your nose pierced?” Sophie pressed, clearly not wanting to let the matter drop.
“When I was twenty-two, far older than you,” Zoe replied.
“And the tattoos?”
Zoe glanced down at her arms, and the two tattoos she’d gotten to remind herself of how precious her parents were. “Twenty-three and twenty-five, if I remember correctly,” she told her. “Now are we done with the timeline of my body art, because the mint madness needs refilling.”
“Fine, fine,” Sophie grumbled good-naturedly, and reached for the container.
Zoe turned back to the receipts, but her mind was now elsewhere.
She was thinking about the follow-up appointment her dad needed after the blood transfusion, and the visit to the neurologist in Hartford she needed to take her mom to next week.
And yes, she was thinking about Dan Bryson.
Somehow, getting to know him had made her realize just how lonely she was, even with plenty of friends, living in a small town where everyone knew you, or thought they knew you. But maybe it was the thinking they knew her that made her feel so lonely, like she was hiding in plain sight.
Only Dan had, ever so briefly, truly seen her, and barely at that, but still.
It had felt like the start of something, and she’d shut it down.
Out of fear, or simple, hardheaded pragmatism that she didn’t have room in her life for a relationship?
Sometimes it was so hard to tell. Just like she’d told Dan, you could fool yourself into believing that you were doing something for one reason, when really it was another all along.
Well, whatever the case, she told herself, it had happened, it was over, and she needed to focus on other things now.
She had an ice cream shop to run at its busiest time of year, her parents’ health to manage, a life to live.
With determined concentration, Zoe finished totaling the receipts as Sophie came back upstairs with a gallon container of mint madness.
Life, Zoe told herself, was moving on.
And it was busy enough, with customers coming through the door nonstop from noon till four, keeping both her and Sophie on their feet all afternoon.
In a brief lull, as she swiftly wiped down the counters and restocked the cones, Zoe realized Sophie was still there when she should have clocked off ten minutes ago.
“Hold on a sec,” she said, frowning. “Aren’t you supposed to be at Tiny Stars Dancing School right now? I heard you arranging it with Bella.”
Sophie shrugged as she spritzed a table with cleaning spray. “Yeah… I don’t know.”
Zoe straightened, her hands on her hips. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”
Sophie bent her head as she concentrated on wiping the table. “Bella’s, like, way more experienced than I am,” she muttered. “She’s been taking ballet since she was three, and I only did it for a year, at my old school. I really liked it, but…”
“But?” Zoe prompted when Sophie didn’t seem like she was going to say anything more.
“But I don’t think I’m good enough,” Sophie half-mumbled. “I don’t care, anyway,” she added with a hint of her old defiance. “That dance school looks, like, seriously lame.”
“It’s seriously lame and yet you’re not good enough?” Zoe shot back wryly. “Try to keep your story straight, Sophie.”
Sophie looked up from the table to glare at her. “Why do you care, anyway?” she demanded. “It means I can work more for you, and you’re paying me, like, pennies. This is practically slave labor.”
She was paying Sophie ten dollars an hour, which was twice as much as Dan had suggested, not that Zoe was about to point that out now, although she was tempted to tell Sophie that if she didn’t like working for her, she knew where the door was.
Zoe took a deep breath, determined not to descend to that level. Sophie was hurting, and she didn’t want to add to her distress.
“You could at least go check it out,” she told her gently. “Just to see. If it’s not your thing, fine. Tell Tina you’re not interested, or that you don’t have time. But don’t bail without even trying it.”
“I don’t want to try it,” Sophie snapped. “And I don’t have to, because you can’t make me. It’s not like you’re my mom.”
Her eyes glittered with angry tears before she stomped back to the kitchen, to put the spray away.
Clearly more was going on here than the dance school, Zoe thought, although she suspected that had something to do with it, too.
Goodness, it was hard being fourteen at the best of times, never mind when life threw some serious stuff at you, like a mother who had chosen to be more or less completely absent from your life.
Zoe waited until Sophie had returned to the front of the store, her hands on her hips, her eyes still sparkling although she seemed a little more composed. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I didn’t mean to shout at you.”
Well, that was progress, Zoe reflected. “It’s okay,” she told her.
“Trust me, I understand being nervous about trying new things. Why do you think I’m still in Starr’s Fall?
” She gave her a ruefully sympathetic smile.
“But is something more going on here?” she asked, gentling her voice. “Maybe… with your mom?”
Sophie stuck her lip out, her gaze turning hooded.
“She was supposed to call me last night,” she admitted in a voice so low Zoe strained to hear it.
“And she didn’t. As usual. I haven’t talked to her since we moved to Starr’s Fall.
” She thrust her chin out, her eyes sparking with tearful defiance. “It’s not like I care, though.”
Zoe let that one pass. It was all too painfully obvious that Sophie cared very much indeed. “Well,” she said at last, knowing how little there was to say in a situation like this, “sometimes life sucks and I’m sorry.”
Sophie let out a huff of disbelieving laughter. “That’s all you’ve got?” she asked.
Zoe nodded. “Pretty much. Yep.”
“When has your life sucked?” Sophie asked, more curious than incredulous. Zoe’s lips twitched to think that from the outside her life might look so charmed Sophie couldn’t imagine it ever being hard.
“Well… when I was eight, my mom was diagnosed with something called multiple sclerosis, which is an illness you can never recover from,” she said slowly, choosing her words with care, because she didn’t want this to become some kind of misery competition.
“And later my dad was diagnosed with MDS, which is a kind of cancer, when I was eighteen. That was pretty hard.”
Sophie gaped at her. “I… I didn’t know.”
“I know,” Zoe replied with a smile, “why would you?”
“Are they…” She swallowed. “You know… dead?”
“No,” Zoe told her with another small smile, although the question alone was enough to make her stomach swirl with a far too familiar anxiety. “They live with me. Or really, I live with them.”
“But I haven’t seen them—”
“My mom is pretty much housebound, and my dad keeps her company.” She shrugged.
“Trust me, they’re right next door to you.
” She gave Sophie a smiling but direct look.
“Now, how about you head over to the church to check out Ms. Williams’ class?
You don’t have to commit to anything, but Bella is expecting you, and you don’t want to let her down, right?
” She kept Sophie’s gaze as she watched different emotions flicker through her eyes—irritation, guilt, fear, hope.
At least she hoped that was hope, and it seemed to be, because after a few seconds Sophie straightened and nodded.
“All right,” she said. “Fine.”
Some customers came in then, so they couldn’t talk anymore, but as Zoe went to serve them, Sophie got her stuff and slipped out the door. Hopefully she really would go to the dance class.
Two hours later, Zoe was locking up and heading back home, the early evening so muggy the air felt like soup, the sky the color of a bruise.
It looked like a summer storm was coming, the heavens opening and thunder cracking, hopefully bringing an end to the sultry, stifling heat.
Zoe had fond memories of watching lightning split the sky, her dad’s arm snugged around her, feeling safe and dry inside.
She missed that safe feeling, she reflected with a little twist of sorrow.
It had been a long time since she’d felt it.
As she always did, she glanced at Dan’s house as she walked past it, but she couldn’t see any sign of him or Sophie. Hopefully she really was at the dance class. And as for Dan… well, it didn’t matter where he was. Not to her.
Zoe stepped inside the house, stiffening at the sound of murmured voices from the living room, someone she didn’t recognize. Who was here?
“Mom?” she called, a quaver of uncertainty in her voice. “Dad?”
She stepped into the room, coming to a complete standstill at the sight of her parents in their usual seats, with Dan Bryson sitting right between them.