Chapter 35
CHAPTER 35
NATALIE
“There you go.” Polly, the owner of the produce store, slides a large brown bag stuffed with organic goodies across the counter. “Say hi to Lou for me.”
In the three days since I read Gabe’s letter on Saturday, I’ve been trying to pack every waking moment with activities to take my mind off the churning void in my stomach and chest that’s like the bingo tumbler at the retirement village.
In fact, overhauling bingo night has been one of the things I’ve busied myself with. It now has new signage, redesigned game cards, a playlist for when everyone’s gathering, and I even managed to fix the crackle in the caller’s microphone with the help of countless YouTube videos.
I also completely reorganized the movie night concession stand and baked and froze enough chocolate chip cookies for the next five Sundays.
I’ve run every errand that I, Aunt Lou, and most of the residents needed—including stocking up on things the seniors hadn’t asked for but I thought they’d find useful. And I’ve almost finished packing up everything I need to take to New Orleans with me.
The worst time is when I’m in bed and trying to sleep. There’s no escape from myself there. I’ve now lain awake for most of the last three nights telling myself how stupid I was to get involved with Gabe. Wondering how I could be such a fool as to let myself fall for a man I knew all along I would never be able to have. It was always obviously a terrible idea with no future.
But then there’s also the heart-melting image of him giving Grayson his gloves, the sexy thoughtfulness of laying out his coat on the theater seat for me, the care of wrapping me in a blanket by the fire, and the way he remembered my story about the ice cream and went to all the time, effort, and expense to get it shipped from Italy in little more than a day.
So why have I cried more tears over a man I’ve known for a week than I did over the end of my seven-year relationship with Todd?
All my tossing and turning has come to only one conclusion. I fell for Gabe. I fell hard and I fell fast. I knew better. But I did it anyway.
It’s less than two weeks till I move to New Orleans. I might have previously wondered whether it was the right decision, but now I’m thanking all the gods and goddesses that I have a fresh start on the horizon. A chance to put all this nonsense behind me. A chance to not have to look at that seat in the front row of the theater. A chance to not have to walk past the pond where Gabe broke up the kids’ fight. And a chance to not have to see Fool’s Hill in the background of every fucking thing I look at when I’m out and about in town.
And right now, I’m here picking up Aunt Lou’s fruit and veggie supply for the week. She’s cooking us a vegetable curry tonight and baking a clementine and lemon tart for the Christmas Day dinner for the residents who aren’t away with family.
This year it looks like just Cecil, Mrs. B., Aunt Lou and me.
“Thanks.” I wrap my arms around the bag.
“Are you okay?” Carly, Polly’s assistant, leans on the counter next to me.
“Yeah, I’m fine, thanks.” Do I really look that bad that people are commenting on it? “There’s a lot going on at Senior Central, and what with me moving and everything. So I’m a bit worn out, I guess. But totally fine.”
“Worn out, yeah. Must be that,” Carly says.
“Stop it,” Polly tells her.
“What?” Carly holds up her palms with the exaggerated shock of the guilty.
“You don’t have to tolerate this,” Polly tells me.
“All I’m saying”—Carly scratches her nose right next to the sparkly stud in it—“is that Nat is usually the perkiest of the perky. And today she looks really…” She tips her head to the side as if to get a better angle on me. It causes her bun to flop over. “Un-perky. In fact, I’d go so far as to say sad.”
“You can just leave, you know,” Polly says to me. “And ignore her.”
“You mean before I ask where the hunky hockey player is?” Carly folds her arms across the bib of her Polly’s Produce apron.
I could quite happily crawl into the giant display of brussels sprouts and never come out. Are people really talking? Gossiping? I guess we must have looked kind of flirty playing the pig tail game at the festival. And cozy in the sleigh afterward.
Hell, we were flirting. And it was cozy in the sleigh.
“Carly.” Polly uses a warning tone similar to the one I adopt with the most unruly kids, then turns to me. “Don’t listen to her. I know what it’s like when she meddles.”
“And where did my meddling get you, Polly?” Carly asks, wide-eyed.
Polly shakes her head and says nothing.
“It got you married, didn’t it?” Carly says proudly. “To a billionaire.”
Aaaand, it’s time to get out of here.
“I’m not sure you had that much to do with it,” Polly murmurs, looking around the shop like she’s worried we’re drawing attention.
Carly is always fun, but I am absolutely not being drawn into this thing where the fun seems to be me. Especially since I have rarely felt as un-fun as I have these last few days.
“Gotta run,” I tell them. “See you at the play the day after tomorrow.”
“Happy holidays,” Polly says with a kind smile.
“Say hi to the hockey hottie,” Carly calls after me.
Her comment is followed by Polly’s shushing noise.
This is one of the rare moments where I see the downside of living somewhere with a sense of community—the moment when the community starts to meddle.
Anyway, I just need to make it down the street to where I parked and I’ll be fi?—
I crash straight into a small person.
“Shit, sorry. ”
The kid looks up at me from under her too-big hat and turns out to be Abigail.
“I mean, sugar, bother, darn it. Sorry.”
My profanity replacement game is not on point when I’m in a hurry to get away from people trying to find out if I’ve been more than friendly with a big-league hockey star.
“It’s all right, Miss Natalie,” Abigail says. “Dad says it all the time.”
“Ah, okay.” Is it okay?
“He says I can’t say it though.”
“Good. That’s good.” I look down the street behind Abigail, then turn to check behind me. “Are you on your own?”
“No. Dad went into the hardware store.” She jerks her thumb over her shoulder. “I was bored looking at screws, so he said I could go get some parsley from Polly.”
“Okay. That’s fine then. Happy parsley shopping.”
I step around her, but Abigail turns to follow me. “She’s bad,” she says.
I stop in my tracks. She can’t possibly mean Polly.
“Who’s bad? Is someone bullying you?” Being small and smart, she’s the ultimate bully target. “Because that’s not okay. People shouldn’t treat you badly beca?—”
“Miss Divina,” Abigail says. “Bad. Horrible. She’s absolutely horrible.”
Her little face is pained. Eyebrows pinched, mouth tight.
“Um.” I’m really not in the mood to deal with this, but I can’t exactly leave her worrying, and she obviously is. “Well, people can seem not that…nice…when you first meet them. But a lot of the time it’s just because they’re n ew.”
“It isn’t.”
“Okay, but it might be.”
“It’s not.” She folds her arms in defiance, but her coat’s so bulky and she’s so small that she can’t quite manage it, and they end up more resting on each other than folded.
“What I mean is,” I continue, grabbing for straws to clutch, “it could be that you’re just not used to her. Because you’re all so used to me. And once you get used to her, like you did with me, then you’ll like her too.”
She fixes me with her clear blue eyes and shakes her head, the glitter on the penguins on her hat sparkling in the sun.
Knowing Abigail as I’d like to think I do, there has to be a reason for her being so adamant about something. I shift the heavy bag of produce to rest on my other arm. “Has something happened?”
“Everything’s happened,” she says.
That’s a pretty scary statement. “Like what? Tell me one thing that’s made you not like her.”
“I could tell you twenty,” she says.
“Let’s start with one.” I urge her out of the way to allow a woman and her dachshund to pass.
“She’s changed the play.”
Now I’m all ears. It’s too late to expect them to learn new lines or stage directions. The play is in two days, for fuck’s sake. Also the script I left her was great.
“Changed it how?”
“She’s the narrator now.”
“Narrator? We don’t even have a narrator this year.”
“We do now,” Abigail says in that fifty-seven-year-old way of hers.
“Well, maybe that makes it better.” I’m scrambling here. “Maybe with it not being as easy to hear outdoors, it’s good to have one clear voice explaining the story. ”
“It’s not. She’s so cringe.” Abigail clearly has an entrenched view on this subject. “And she’s singing.”
“Singing?” Dear God.
“Yes.”
“In the play? Like it’s a musical?”
“Sort of. She’s singing at the end.”
I’m getting a bit hot now. While I might not like the idea of Divina taking over and turning herself into the narrator, I could at least find an excuse for it. Singing is another matter entirely.
“Does she maybe want to get the audience to join in with singing a Christmas song? You know, so everyone feels involved?” It’s the best I’ve got standing on the sidewalk outside the produce store, holding a heavy bag and wanting to slice out the chunk of my brain that can’t stop thinking about Gabe.
“It’s not a Christmas song,” Abigail says.
“Do you know what it is?”
“It’s the song from the spaghetti ad.”
“The spaghetti ad?” What in all holy hell is going on? Then the penny drops. “Oh, you mean the one where the couple eat the spaghetti on the gondola in Venice?” Does Abigail know what a gondola is? Probably. “One plate has cheese on it, the other has mushrooms?”
“Yes. The cheese one is the best.”
The song in that commercial is Mozart’s “Queen of the Night.” It’s a fucking opera song. And it has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas or children. It’s clearly all about Divina.
My hands slip a little on the bag and my heart is pounding in time with the furious throbbing that’s kicked off inside my head. Obviously this dreadful woman is just using the whole thing as a way to show off what she can do. She doesn’t give a shit about the kids.
“Unusual choice,” is the only polite thing I can manage.
“She asked about bringing a piano onto the ice and?—”
“She did what ?” Okay, that shot out before I had a chance to control it.
A piano. On a frozen pond. That a bunch of kids are standing on. What kind of total idiot would think that might be a good idea?
“Sorry, I mean, has someone told her a piano might be a bit heavy for the ice?”
“Yes, Katie’s mom. When she came by to drop off Miss Divina’s ice queen costume.”
“She had Katie’s mom make her a costume?” For fuck’s sake. The nerve of this woman.
The rage bubbling up inside me would give Vesuvius a run for its money. I am so utterly furious that I can barely breathe. How dare that woman waltz into this town, blackmail the council into letting her take the play from me, then turn the kids into a chorus line so she can showcase her own talents.
And clearly it’s written all over my face because Abigail now looks a bit stressed. “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you?”
“No, no. You’ve done exactly the right thing. Exactly right.” I pat her on the shoulder. “Are you okay to go get the parsley?”
“Yes. Dad says cod isn’t the same without it.”
“He’s right. You have a great dad. And he’s very lucky to have you. So you go get the parsley. And I’ll go…” I don’t really know exactly what I’m going to do. “I’ll just go. ”
“Okay.” And she turns and skips off toward Polly’s Produce.
If anything good is going to come from this whole heartbreaking Gabe fiasco, I need to learn something from it, from him—from his competitive nature. That you have to fight for what you want, particularly when you know you’re the best person for the job. You have to believe in yourself and stand up to those who are wrong.
“Mozart, for fuck’s sake,” I mutter to myself.
“Dad says that too,” Abigail calls out, just before she disappears inside the store.
Thank the Lord for that girl.
Channeling my inner Gabe, I charge toward my Jeep like a bull with steam coming from its nostrils.
I love those kids. And meddling locals or not, I love this fucking town and I’m going to stand up for it.