Chapter 21
Grant could hardly comprehend what he’d heard, and he gaped at Madeline.
She’d really played him for a sucker, hadn’t she?
His stories about how Holly had managed to keep the wool pulled over his eyes must’ve been hilarious to her.
And he hadn’t meant to eavesdrop. He’d only come to find her, having changed his mind about dinner.
If he hadn’t—or if he hadn’t been driving by and had texted his change of heart instead, would he ever have found out about her, what she was, what she’d done?
Or would she have kept him in the dark forever?
Her back was toward him when he found her in the dining room after following the sound of her voice, which rose and fell in audible stress.
He stayed quiet out of politeness, not wanting to interrupt.
But then, fully taking in her side of the conversation, he thought his legs would buckle.
He couldn’t interrupt at that point. Shock struck him mute, and he sagged against the door jamb for support.
Madeline, still unaware of his presence, had started sobbing with her final apology, but Grant was unmoved. She should feel bad. She told people she was a widow.
He shuffled, catching his balance, and the sound alerted her.
When she turned and saw him, her tears stopped.
For a split second, a ghost of emotion he didn’t understand one whit given the circumstance blazed on her face, confusing him even more than he already was.
But just as quickly, the look fell away.
Her features went blank, impossible to read.
“Do you need to end the call, or are you just going to leave him hanging again?” he snarled.
Madeline looked baffled, and Grant grew even more furious. She was an even better liar than Holly. He didn’t think that was possible. “The game’s up, Madeline. I heard you.”
She blinked.
He exploded. “Talking handsfree to Lyle, your supposedly-dead husband. Remember him? Does he know that in addition to leaving him after your child died—after your child died, how cruel is that!—that you tell people he’s deceased? That you’re a widow?”
Madeline’s mouth fell open. Her eyes darted to her phone.
That’s right, Grant thought smugly. Wiggle your way out of this one.
Comprehension dawned on her face, but it was a bleak expression.
She slowly lifted her hands to her ears, tucked her hair behind them, then pivoted her head side to side so he could get a good look.
No earbuds. He glanced at the table, knowing even as he did that he’d find nothing there.
His eyes hadn’t left her once. If she’d been wearing headphones and removed them or pulled Bluetooth earbuds out and put them on the table, he would’ve seen it.
As he suspected, the heavy oak table was empty, save for a few dishes and her phone.
He was momentarily stumped. “So, what does that mean?” he asked aloud, though he was talking to himself.
Madeline just looked at him.
“You weren’t on speakerphone. I would’ve heard Lyle’s side.”
To his shock—and triggering a queasy feeling—Madeline laughed. Then she spoke in the coldest voice Grant had ever heard.
“What do you mean you would’ve heard Lyle’s side?” Her tone said he was worse than an idiot. “How could you, when, as I told you, he’s dead.”
“But then . . . who?”
Madeline’s face was closed—against him.
A series of memories, details Grant hadn’t even realized he’d locked away, flitted through his mind.
The long hours Madeline spent wandering the store in the half-light before it opened.
The way she often seemed to be conversing with someone he couldn’t see—on the phone or with the cat, he’d thought.
“So you were, what? Talking to your dead husband?” The words came out sounding derisive and appalled, but he didn’t mean his comment that way.
He was just . . . he didn’t know exactly.
Shell-shocked, maybe, was closest. He joked about Madeline being crazy, but he meant it in a good way.
He’d actually thought she was the sanest person he knew.
“Isn’t that a little . . . nuts?” he asked, striving for a lighter tone, hoping to salvage the damage he now realized he’d done. Madeline didn’t answer, just picked up her phone and trudged toward the front of the store, where she flipped the sign to Closed and flicked off all the lights.
When she finally looked at him, her face was hard and expressionless, as if set in stone. It was so different from her usual open frankness or twinkling good humor that Grant was thrown.
“No, Grant.” She said his name, intentionally he feared, with the same bitterness that he’d uttered Lyle’s.
“It’s not ‘nuts.’ I’m not ‘nuts.’ I realize that my sister is dead.
I realize that my daughter is dead. That my husband is dead.
I am just really, really sad. Sometimes that happens when you lose everyone you’ve ever loved .
. .” She sucked in a ragged breath. “If I choose to suspend a little disbelief and get myself through some of the agony by talking to them and listening to my heart for what I know they’d say back, what’s it to you?
I don’t need to explain myself. Not to you. Not to anyone.”
“I’m sorry, but—”
She shook her head. “No sorrys. No buts. Just after we first met, I told you that you don’t get to shit on me, remember?
I had a long marriage, good, even great, in some ways, terrible in others.
I know how patterns get set. I feel for you.
I really do. I even suspect your little episode back there”—she motioned toward the dining room—“was more about something new you’re going through than about me, but that doesn’t matter.
I can’t—I won’t—make allowances for you treating me badly. ”
“I’m sorry. So sorry,” he mumbled. “I thought—I mean, I didn’t—”
Madeline’s face crumpled. She looked exhausted. “You thought . . . you thought I would lie about something like . . . my family dying?” She broke eye contact. “I thought we were friends. That you knew me. But you don’t. Not at all.”
He suddenly remembered her facial expression in the dining room when he’d surprised her—the flash of something that had confused him. He recognized it now. Relief. She had been relieved to see him, had thought he would help her . . . and he had done the opposite.
She’d trusted in their friendship, and he was the betrayer he’d accused her of being.
He also remembered how all he’d wanted to do was help her the way she had so generously helped him for absolutely no reason except that she saw he needed it.
This was how he repaid her? He layered hurt upon hurt upon hurt—and accused her of lying about the roots of her deepest pain. What was wrong with him?
“Madeline, I—”
She held up a hand to stave off his words. “You don’t need to apologize. It was a misunderstanding. I see how you could make it.”
Her gently worded comment was worse than any curses she could’ve screamed at him because of the distance it revealed.
The old wall he’d sensed in Madeline that had fallen away as they got to know each other was back in full force.
He could feel it as surely as if it were made of bricks and mortar.
Madeline didn’t trust him the way she had before—and no wonder.
He had let his old fears, insecurities, and harbored hurts blind him. He’d been a monster.
Madeline opened the shop’s door and motioned Grant toward it. “I’m locking up.”
What could he do but comply? Just as he was about to step over the threshold, Madeline reached into the pocket of her apple-print shop apron and handed him an envelope.
“What’s this?”
“A check. That’s why I wanted to go for dinner. I was going to surprise you. I sold your hutch and buffet today.”
Grant’s heart stuttered. Grief and remorse filled his sinuses. He had to try to explain one more time. “Madeline—”
“Have a good week, Grant. I’ll see you later.”
She didn’t mean it, though. It was just a thing people say instead of the F-you that they’re thinking.
The sound of the lock clicking behind him was as loud as a bomb. He turned back, but Madeline had already disappeared.
Grant waited in his truck for a good hour, wanting to see her leave with Boots at her heels, to know she was all right, but not a shadow moved inside The Second Chance Shop. The door stayed locked up tight.