22. Sophie
SOPHIE
Lola drove us back to the Hartwell Inn with Dottie in the front seat and me in the back.
I sat behind them with my forehead resting against the cool glass, watching Maplewood Falls drift by in a blur of flower boxes, front porches, and perfectly respectable citizens who’d somehow managed to avoid committing livestock-related crimes before noon.
Lola had told Sarah about our situation and had dropped her off first to get her Jetta. Good thing I’d left the keys in the car. Bad thing that after this, Sarah might evict me from my room at the inn.
No one spoke for the first five minutes, not because we didn’t have anything to say but because there was simply too much.
Between the kissing, the stealing, the handcuffs, the jail cell, and my blossoming criminal record, we’d somehow accumulated enough conversation for an entire weekend.
My brain voted unanimously to postpone all discussions.
Eventually Lola glanced at me in the rearview mirror. I caught her eyes for half a second before pretending to become deeply fascinated by a mailbox as we drove past it. Excellent mailbox. Very… mailboxy.
“So…” Lola began.
“No.” I kept my focus out the window. A squirrel darted across somebody’s lawn, carrying what looked suspiciously like an entire hamburger bun.
“I haven’t even asked anything.”
“I know.” Which was exactly the problem. I knew Lola. Her opening questions were never actually questions. They were tiny conversational fishing lures designed to hook embarrassing confessions.
“Then how do you know your answer is no?”
“Because I know you.” I’d grown up with her. I’d seen her interrogate people at family dinners with nothing but one raised eyebrow and a strategically timed sip of wine. Resistance was largely theoretical.
She smiled. “Fair.” She accepted that answer with suspicious ease, which made me nervous. Lola agreeing too quickly was usually the conversational equivalent of watching someone light a fuse.
Another minute passed. Long enough that I briefly convinced myself I’d survived the interrogation.
“I will say one thing,” added Lola after a moment.
I groaned. Right on schedule. Hope really was a remarkably fragile little thing.
“I knew this romance was going to be exciting.”
“It isn’t a romance.” It barely qualified as emotional stability. At this point it was more of a public service announcement about making impulsive decisions.
“No?”
“No,” I repeated.
“Well, I’ll just say, that I’ve had less eventful first dates.” She said it with genuine admiration, which somehow made everything worse.
I dropped my forehead lightly against the cool window. “That wasn’t a date.” Although, admittedly, it did involve dancing, kissing, and emotional devastation. Which, now that I thought about it, covered a surprising number of first-date categories. “I would like to get out of this car now.”
“We’re still three blocks away,” said Dottie, turning around in the front passenger seat.
“I’ll walk.” I’d crawl if necessary. My dignity was already gone. Exercise couldn’t make things much worse.
“No.” Lola locked the doors, and they clicked with cheerful finality.
Wonderful. I’d survived jail only to become a hostage in Lola’s luxury sedan. Which, admittedly, was considerably more comfortable than the holding cell. Leather seats. Air conditioning. Subtle perfume that probably cost more than my monthly grocery bill. Still technically captivity.
By the time we pulled into the inn’s parking lot, I was emotionally exhausted in that peculiar way where your body wanted a nap, your brain wanted answers, and your heart wanted to file a formal complaint with management.
I’d kissed the sheriff… voluntarily, enthusiastically, and with very questionable timing.
I’d been arrested by the sheriff… less enthusiastically and considerably more publicly.
I was then ignored by the sheriff, which somehow had managed to sting the most. Funny how silence could outperform handcuffs.
I was finally released by the sheriff. Or at least by his office. I still wasn’t entirely sure who deserved credit for that one anymore.
I climbed out before Lola could say anything else. If she opened her mouth again, there was at least a seventy-five percent chance the words Sheriff Sexy would appear somewhere in the sentence, and I simply didn’t have the emotional bandwidth.
I made a beeline for the inn’s front door and stepped inside. The lunchtime crowd had thinned. The cheerful clink of dishes drifted from the dining room, mixed with the smell of fresh bread and soup.
Sarah smiled the second she spotted us. “There you are.” She hurried over, wiping her hands on a dish towel.
“I heard there was some kind of misunderstanding at the sheriff’s office?
” Her expression stayed reassuringly casual, the kind people used when they suspected something embarrassing had happened but hadn’t yet learned the details.
Misunderstanding.
I liked that word. It sounded soft around the edges. Forgiving. The sort of word that didn’t suggest fingerprints and holding cells.
It sounded considerably better than grand theft livestock. Which, admittedly, sounded less like a misunderstanding and more like the title of a low-budget action movie starring goats.
“Something like that,” I mumbled. Possibly the most accurate understatement I’d ever produced. I’d also once described food poisoning as “a long evening.”
Sarah looked from me to Dottie. Her eyes lingered just long enough to make sure neither of us appeared physically damaged. Emotionally was a separate inspection. “You two okay?”
“We’re fine,” Dottie said brightly. That sort of brightness was normally associated with people who were absolutely not fine but had recently decided optimism was easier than paperwork. “We’ve had quite the morning.”
“I’ll bet.” Sarah nodded slowly, wisely choosing not to ask follow-up questions. She studied my face for another second. “You look tired.”
“I’ve aged approximately twelve years since breakfast.” Possibly fifteen. I briefly wondered whether stress wrinkles qualified as tax deductions.
Sarah laughed. “I’ll make coffee.” She said it with complete confidence, like she’d just prescribed the only medically appropriate treatment.
Bless that woman. If kindness had a patron saint, Sarah Hartwell was making a compelling application.
Coffee couldn’t fix everything. It couldn’t undo a kiss, erase an arrest, rescue some animals, or explain the emotional operating system of one stubborn sheriff.
But it had an admirable attendance record.
Whenever life fell apart, coffee consistently showed up on time, didn’t ask difficult questions, and never once suggested I examine my feelings.
Frankly, that made it the healthiest relationship I’d had all week.
Five minutes later I found myself sitting at one of the dining room tables with an enormous mug cupped between my hands.
The ceramic was almost too hot to hold, which suited me perfectly.
Physical discomfort was refreshingly straightforward compared to emotional confusion.
Coffee simply burned you. Sheriffs, required interpretation.
Lola had somehow located fresh lemon squares.
I had absolutely no idea where she’d found them.
She possessed an almost supernatural ability to sniff out desserts within a five-mile radius.
If civilization ever collapsed, I was reasonably confident she’d still emerge from the rubble carrying pastries and excellent lipstick.
Dottie was absentmindedly folding paper napkins into tiny rabbits with little ears and itty bitty folded noses.
One even had what looked suspiciously like a fluffy tail.
She smiled to herself every time she finished one before starting another, as though an invisible colony of paper woodland creatures urgently depended on her.
Twenty-four hours ago, I might’ve questioned it. Today it barely cracked the top ten strangest things I’d witnessed. After stealing a truck full of livestock, paper origami wildlife felt almost aggressively normal.
“You know…” Lola said carefully. Which was unusual. Lola generally approached conversations the way toddlers approached puddles, with enthusiasm and absolutely no concern for the consequences.
“No.” I took another sip of coffee without looking up. Preventative answers. I was evolving.
Lola made a pout. “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
“I have a strong working theory.” Years of experience had taught me that approximately ninety percent of Lola’s advice involved men, flirting, or combinations of the two. The remaining ten percent involved shoes.
“You should talk to him.”
I looked at her. “No.” Immediate. Firm. Practically reflexive. My brain had installed an automatic emergency brake whenever the subject of the sheriff appeared.
“He likes you,” Lola pressed.
“No.” Because if I repeated it often enough, perhaps it’d eventually become emotionally true.
“He literally told you he wanted to kiss you,” continued Lola.
I glared at her. “How do you know that?”
She flashed me her teeth. “I heard everything. Saw everything.”
I sagged in my chair. “Yeah, well. Then he arrested me.”
Dottie looked up from rabbit number three. She held it at eye level for a second, gently straightened one paper ear, and then looked at me with complete sincerity. “I think he looked sad.”
“He looked like a sheriff.” Which was considerably less comforting than it sounded. Sheriffs specialized in expressions that gave away absolutely nothing. It was practically part of the uniform.
I stared into my coffee. The dark surface reflected a very tired-looking woman who really needed to stop falling for emotionally unavailable public servants. Unfortunately, coffee had yet to develop the ability to answer life’s important questions.
I’d read this chapter before. Different man. Same ending. My imagination always sprinted three miles ahead while reality casually tied its shoelaces.