Chapter 6
Chapter Six
“I had a to-go order.”
Across the counter, Crystal Blue, proprietress of Crystal’s Diner and current pain in Denver’s ass, pursed her lips. “I’m not handing over those sandwiches until you confirm or deny the rumors.”
“Holding takeout hostage in the name of gossip is a low move, even for you, Crystal.”
“What is the big deal, Denver? Everybody knows you and Misty have been spending loads of time together this past month. And don’t even try to tell me it’s just for the sake of Kennedy and Xander’s wedding.
I want to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth.
Are you and Misty Pennebaker together?” She fisted her hands on ample hips and stared him down.
When Denver just stared back, Crystal stamped her foot. “Is she your girlfriend?”
“If I say yes, will you give me my sandwiches, while they’re still hot?”
“As long as it’s not a lie.”
“Then yes.” Not that they’d talked about it since he’d stumbled out of her house in the wee hours a couple days ago, but Misty didn’t strike him as someone who’d be casually knocking boots without some kind of commitment. They should probably discuss that.
“I knew it!” she crowed.
“Then why did you have to harass me about it?” Denver muttered.
“Oh, shut up and take some pie to your sweetheart.” Crystal boxed up a slice of cherry and added it to the bag before handing it across the counter.
“How do you know that’s where I’m going?”
“Because you ordered the grilled mac and cheese sandwich with curly fries, which is what she always orders.”
“So does half the town. It’s your best-selling sandwich.”
“Yeah, but the rest of the town doesn’t make you smile.”
Realizing he was grinning like the damned Cheshire Cat, Denver pokered up. Crystal just smirked at him. Time to go.
“Tell Misty I said hi!”
“You wanted to live here,” he reminded himself as he hit the sidewalk.
But this was the first time he’d been the center of attention since the year he’d moved to the Ridge.
He kept to himself, kept off their radar, and he liked it that way.
So did Misty. Well, they were in it now.
He’d probably best confirm the status of their relationship himself before it got back to her that he’d up and made a public announcement in the diner.
Denver was still pondering how to broach that subject as he opened the door to Moonbeams and Sweet Dreams. He knew instantly that something was off.
Pausing just in the threshold, he scanned the shop.
Nothing seemed out of place. Then he realized there was no music.
Maybe she was picking a new playlist. He headed for the back.
“Misty?”
“In the back.” Her voice lacked its usual cheerful enthusiasm.
Oh God. What if something had happened to Moxie?
Braced for the worst, Denver quickened his pace.
As soon as he rounded the counter, the little dog leapt up from her bed and rushed over, demanding attention.
He loosed a breath and scooped her up, giving her an automatic cuddle as he continued into Misty’s workroom.
She sat at a table. Beside her was an open wooden crate, spilling packing material onto the floor. On the table itself was an enormous glass…something or other. It was obviously art of some kind, but that was as much as he could tell.
She swiveled on her stool and mustered up a smile. But it was a weak facsimile of her norm. “Hi.” She seemed dimmer somehow, not at all herself.
Denver set the food on a shelf. “I brought lunch.”
“That was sweet. Thanks.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you saying that because you don’t want to tell me or because you’re trying to convince yourself you’re not upset about something?”
The pale smile flashed again. “Maybe a little of both.”
He set Moxie down and fished out the dog biscuit from his pocket. She snatched it from his grasp and went trotting back to her bed. Hands free, Denver framed Misty’s face, brushing a gentle kiss over her lips before combing her hair back with his fingers. “Talk to me.”
She turned to look at the glass thing on the table. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Hale’s work. He always sends me something truly exquisite on this day.”
“Why today?”
“Trying to cheer me up, I suppose.” She sighed. “You remember I told you that I ended up here because a friend had given me one of Hale’s pieces, and I tracked him down?”
“Yeah.”
“Judy wasn’t a typical friend. She was this woman I got to know through my job. I was the managed care specialist at her HMO.”
A sick feeling set up in Denver’s gut as he grabbed another stool and sat across from her.
“She first called in because of a denied claim. It was a common enough thing. The insurance industry is obnoxiously and needlessly complicated.”
He knew that from so much first-hand experience. The memory of all those phone calls and emails began to bubble and froth as Misty spoke, and he had to fight to keep his focus on her.
“People were usually pretty upset by the time they got to me. I can’t tell you how many times I got told off.
But Judy didn’t do any of that. She was the sweetest thing.
Said she was sure there was some kind of a mistake and that she had faith that I could fix it.
I told her I’d do my best and that she might want a snack because this kind of thing of thing took a while.
She said she was making cookies, and we got off on this tangent where she told me all about her recipe for snickerdoodles and how they were her grandchildren’s favorite.
I took down all of her information to look into the situation and promised to call her back.
She sent me snickerdoodles the next day. ”
Even as the memory made her smile, that sick feeling continued to grow in his belly.
“A lot of my job was sorting out the complicated legalese of contracts—I’d gone to law school, if you can imagine that.”
Law school? How had he not known this about her? “I have a really hard time seeing you in a courtroom.”
“So did I. That’s why I dropped out after my second year.
But I understood contracts, and I kind of fell into this job.
I certainly didn’t love it. Didn’t even like it most of the time.
But I was drowning under my parents’ disapproval and massive student debt for a degree I didn’t get.
Anyway, so I started digging into Judy’s case.
It took a while. I had lots of cases. Lots of details and minutiae to sort through.
Sometimes I’d call her. Sometimes she’d call me.
But we ended up talking a few times a week.
I’d update her on the great big nothing I was accomplishing, apologize for the system, and then we’d just talk about life stuff.
Those calls were the highlights of my week. ”
“Did you get her sorted out?”
“For that first claim, yeah. But while I was messing with all that, her condition got worse.”
Of course it did. Because that’s how it went. That’s how these companies worked.
“Her doctor said she needed a particular procedure. So she started all the pre-approval paperwork, but it got hung up. That part wasn’t even on me, but I knew the system better than the person assigned to it.
She needed that surgery.” Misty’s voice shook.
“I managed to parse out that the problem was a conflict between her primary policy and her Medicare supplement. The procedure her doctor wanted to perform was not the conventional treatment. He’d said the conventional wouldn’t work and he wanted to take a more aggressive approach.
The way the contracts were written, neither insurer was actually going to cover it without exhausting all the conventional—aka cheaper—options first. Because why on earth should insurance we pay for cover the things we actually need, right?
She couldn’t afford a three hundred thousand dollar surgery out of pocket. ”
Denver tasted the bitterness of her tone on his own tongue. Old fury boiled up inside him, making him want to howl.
“I couldn’t tell her that. I couldn’t tell her that there were no more options.
So I put her off, and I researched my ass off, trying to find something, anything that could help her.
By that time, we were talking every day.
And then one day, she didn’t call. And she didn’t answer when I called her house. ”
He knew how this would end before she said it and curled his fists against the futility of it.
“Another day passed, and another. And I finally found it. The damned loophole she needed to get her surgery paid for. When I still couldn’t get her by phone, I went to her house.
We had her address in the system. I was breaking all sorts of rules, but I had to tell her.
It was a young woman who answered the door.
A few years older than me. She’d been crying.
Somewhere deep down, I knew. But I went ahead and introduced myself and asked if I could speak to Judy.
” Misty sucked in a breath and blinked back tears. “She’d died two days before.”
Denver closed his eyes, fighting back the choking rage. “Too little, too late,” he bit out.