“So what are you doing in Clymer?” Todd asked, interrupting her thoughts. He wasn’t sweating now, and he looked so relaxed his eyelids drooped, as if he were about to fall asleep.
Casey ran a finger down the side of her glass, drawing a path in the condensation. “Just traveling through.”
“By yourself?”
“It works.”
He shook his head slowly, as if not sure what to think of her. “You on vacation? Took time off?”
Casey looked away. “I don’t have a job right now.”
“So how do you afford traveling? Family money?”
Casey’s breath caught. Family money. She pressed her fingers to her mouth. He didn’t know how right he was.
“Sorry,” he said. “I get nosy about money. Goes with the job.”
Casey didn’t say anything, keeping her hand up, staring out of the window until her breath came back and she could talk without her voice shaking. “So,” she said. “Tell me about the play.”
“Twelfth Night?” Todd’s eyes opened wider. “We just read through it last night.”
“I don’t mean the play itself. I mean the people involved. Why you’re in it.”
“Oh.” He shrugged. “What I told you last night. They needed a guy my age, so they called.”
“It’s basically the same group each time?”
He sniffed, flicking a hand over the tip of his nose. “I don’t know. It depends who’s in town, I guess. Before Eric and Thomas came back we were a little hard-pressed for good people, but we got by. Holly’s in everything—well, as long as there’s a role for someone she thinks is attractive enough—and Becca likes to be involved. Leila…well, if Eric’s in it, she’s somewhere close by.”
“Aaron and Jack?”
He grinned again, a slow smile. “They like the plays. Keeps them out of trouble.”
Casey picked up her fork and twisted it in her fingers. “How about Ellen?”
“Ellen?” His face went white, then red, before returning to its usual color. “She was good. She enjoyed the plays.”
“I’m sorry,” Casey said. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“No, no, it’s all right. She was—” He stopped and leaned back as Kristi arrived with the lunches.
She set Casey’s hamburger platter down, then slapped an enormous salad in front of her dad, followed by a bottle of dressing. “There. Put on your own dressing if you’re going to complain.” With another narrowed-eye look at Casey, she stalked away.
Todd winced.
“Should I sit at another table?” Casey asked.
“No.” He held up his hands. “No, if anybody moves, it should be me. But there’s no reason for it. It’s fine.”
They looked over at the counter, where Kristi was scrubbing furiously with a dishrag, her eyes shooting darts toward their table.
“You sure?” Casey wasn’t.
“I’m sure.” He tipped the bottle to drip dressing onto his salad.
Casey slid the pickles off of her hamburger and placed them on the side of her plate. She didn’t think she should ask him to resume where he’d left off talking, as it obviously disturbed him.
“Tell me about Eric,” she said instead.
A glob of salad dressing landed on his salad, and he tried to scoop it back up with a spoon. “I’m not sure what was going on with them.”
“Who?”
The tips of his ears went red. “Eric and Ellen. Isn’t that who we were talking about?”
She blinked, then filled a few seconds putting ketchup on her plate. She dipped a fry and held it. “I guess so. But I was just wondering about Eric—why he left, and why he came back.”
“Oh.” He let out a breath, a smile flickering across his mouth. “That’s easy. He left, going down to Louisville, to get away from his family. And he came back to deal with them.”
Casey held the fry halfway to her mouth. “To deal with them? What do you mean?”
“Well, his dad’s not exactly the most popular guy in town, so Eric had some major fences to mend.”
“People don’t like his father? Why?”
“Why do you think?” Todd gave a half-hearted laugh. “Because he’s getting ready to put this entire town out of work.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Eric’s father was Karl Willems? The CEO of HomeMaker? The man who saw Becca’s pretty face and didn’t remember it?
Casey sat astride her bike outside the diner, a bag of leftovers dangling from the handlebars. Once Todd had hit her with that bombshell, she’d lost her appetite again. He’d finished up his salad, his natural lethargy kicking in so they didn’t have to talk, and left his daughter a huge tip, paying also for Casey’s lunch.
It made sense, Karl being Eric’s dad. It explained Eric’s feeling of protectiveness of the townspeople, his disdain for Karl Willems, and even his presence at HomeMaker, when Casey had ridden over the day before. It didn’t explain why he hadn’t told her. But then, she could make a guess at that.
Sliding her doggie bag to the middle of the handlebars for better balance, Casey thoughtfully rode toward the B & B. Poor Eric. He comes home, most likely to try to ease some of the pain his father has caused, only to fall in love with a HomeMaker employee who subsequently is fired, and then dies. Whether she committed suicide or not wasn’t irrelevant, of course, but whether it was by her own hand or someone else’s, the end result was the same. The tricky part was that if she did kill herself, not only was that hugely horrible, but it meant that Eric’s father had essentially killed her.
Casey shook her head, but stopped quickly, as it made her wobble, and she hit a pothole, sending her almost into the path of a car traveling toward her. A Bug. She stopped before she crashed into the curb.
Leila screeched to a halt and glared at her through the windshield. She rolled down her window. “Why don’t you watch where you’re going?”
“Sorry.” Casey held up a hand. “Lost control for a second.”
Leila looked in her rearview mirror, but no one was coming. “What are you doing here, anyway?”
Everyone was so concerned about that.
“Just had lunch at the diner.”
“I don’t mean that. I mean here in Clymer. We don’t need you.”
Casey sighed. “I’m just traveling through.”
“Well, then, why don’t you keep on going? We’ll find someone else for the play. That lady that was there last night.”
Casey nodded. “I appreciate the thought you’ve put into it.”
The girl frowned, obviously not sure whether Casey was being sincere or not. “Eric just lost his girlfriend, you know.”
“Yes.”
“So it’s not fair, what you’re doing.”
“What am I doing?”
She rolled her eyes. “Going after him, of course. You should just leave him alone.”
“I’m not—”
But a car was coming, and Leila gunned her engine, her tires squealing as she raced away. Casey wondered if the girl knew how to drive without burning rubber.
Letting Leila go with a shake of her head, Casey’s mind went back to the blow she’d just been given. Eric was Karl Willems’ son? It just didn’t seem possible.
Casey took a turn up an alley she thought would be a shortcut back to The Nesting Place. But she’d turned off a road too early, and the alley deadended at someone’s garage. Turning around, she took the next road to the left, and rode on the sidewalk until she found the next alley. This one went through farther, taking her behind Home Sweet Home, and eventually past the theater.
The theater. Where she’d felt closer to Reuben than she had in some time.
She jerked to a stop, made a U-turn, and pedaled back toward the Albion.
The parking spaces in the back were empty, and the heavy steel door was locked. She walked her bike around to the front of the building and parked the bike just off the sidewalk, underneath the marquee. These doors were open.
Stepping into the lobby she took a deep breath, wallowing in the familiar smells of dust and old wood. Newer theaters might have better technology—although not always—but nothing could beat the atmosphere of a space that had seen a multitude of performances. No matter that this place had shown movies for years. It was still a performance space, where people came to escape from reality, if only for a couple of hours.