CHAPTER 2 #3
We walked back across the yard, and this time I caught the edge of a curtain moving in the house two lots over. Mrs. Delaney. She'd lived on this street since before I was born, and she had a better intelligence network than most government agencies.
Beckett noticed too. He didn't say anything. Just lifted his hand in a wave — casual, unhurried, like a man who had nothing to hide and a woman walking out of his house at eight-thirty in the morning was the most normal thing in the world.
Mrs. Delaney waved back.
By ten-fifteen we were in Beckett's truck, pulling into the driveway of a yellow clapboard house on Maple Street with window boxes and a porch swing and the general aura of a place where a mother fed people and then extracted information from them while they were too full to resist.
"Any last-minute rules?" I asked, not moving to unbuckle.
"Don't let Mae corner you alone. She'll start with casual questions and end with your blood type."
"Noted. What do I call your mom?"
"Donna." He paused. "She'll hug you. That's not optional."
The hug happened before we made it through the screen door. Donna Lane was warm and compact and had Beckett's exact eyes, and she pulled me in like she'd been waiting for this specific moment since his last relationship ended.
"Nora Hart," she said, holding my shoulders. "Look at you. I always said you were the prettiest girl on that street."
"Mom," Beckett said from behind me. Just the one word. Flat. But there was a thread of something underneath it — not embarrassment exactly, more like the sound of a man who knew what was coming and had decided in advance that resistance was futile.
The house smelled like bacon and coffee and something baking. Mae was already at the kitchen table with a mimosa, and her face when we walked in was the face of a person who had been given a present and was trying to decide which corner to unwrap first.
"Well," she said. "Good morning."
"Don't," Beckett said.
"I didn't say anything."
"You were about to."
"I was going to say good morning to your girlfriend, Beckett. Is that allowed?"
I sat down at the table. Mae pushed a mimosa toward me without asking. Donna was already piling plates. Beckett dropped into the chair beside me with the specific energy of a man who had survived this dynamic before and had learned that the best strategy was stillness.
His knee bumped mine under the table. He didn't move it.
I didn't either.
"So," Donna said, setting a plate of scrambled eggs in front of me with surgical precision. "How long has this been going on? Because Beckett tells me nothing, as you probably already know."
"It's new," I said. The practiced line. Simple, casual, the version we'd agreed on. "Really new."
"How new?"
"Mom," Beckett said again.
"I'm making conversation."
"You're running an investigation."
Donna waved her spatula at him. "I'm feeding your girlfriend breakfast and asking a question. That's called being a good host."
Mae was watching us over her mimosa with the expression of someone who was not even slightly fooled but was enjoying herself far too much to interfere. I could feel her cataloguing: how close we were sitting, whether we looked at each other, whether anything between us seemed rehearsed.
I needed to give the room something real. Something that matched the story.
I looked at Beckett, and he was already looking at me — just briefly, just a glance, but his eyes caught mine and held for a half-second longer than the scene required, and my stomach did a thing that was not part of the plan.
"We're figuring it out," I said, turning back to Donna. "But he's been —" I paused, because the honest thing to say felt too real in a room full of his family. "He's been really great."
Beckett's knee pressed against mine a fraction harder. Barely enough to feel. Enough.
Donna's face softened into something that was going to make this week very, very complicated. "He is great," she said. "Even when he doesn't call."
Brunch lasted an hour and twelve minutes. I know because I tracked it the way I used to track difficult client meetings — watching the clock, managing the conversation, making sure nothing slipped that couldn't be explained by new and casual and still figuring it out.
Mae asked what I did for work. I said brand strategy and managed not to mention that my position was dissolving in two weeks.
Donna asked about my mother and I gave her enough warmth to be polite without opening a channel for cross-family intelligence sharing.
Beckett ate steadily, spoke when spoken to, and kept his knee against mine for the entire meal like it was a fixed point he'd decided on and didn't plan to revisit.
When we left, Donna hugged me again. Longer this time.
In the truck, I let out a breath that had been building since the screen door.
"That was —"
"Yeah," he said.
"Your mom thinks this is real."
"My mom thought it was real before we walked in." He started the engine. "She had a forty-minute head start and a group chat."
I leaned my head back against the seat. Watched Laurel Creek slide past the window — the hardware store, the florist already assembling wedding arrangements in the window, a cluster of people outside the café who I was almost certain looked at the truck as we passed.
The town was watching. The family was invested. The cottage was unlivable. And Beckett Lane's knee against mine had felt like the most natural thing that had happened to me in months, and that was the most dangerous part of all of it.
My phone buzzed. Willa.
Heard you guys went to brunch at Donna's!!! ?? Mom is going to lose her mind.
I stared at the text. We'd left the house four minutes ago.
"Willa already knows about brunch," I said.
Beckett didn't look surprised. "Mae texted before we left the driveway."
The story was running faster than we were. And every hour that passed, the cost of stopping it got higher.