“What?” I asked, suddenly eager for any scrap of information on him.
“Nothing. I shouldn’t spread gossip.” She focused extra hard on her cleaning rag.
I rolled my eyes and put a hand over her wrist, stopping her frantic motion. “Nat, please. Who the hell would I tell? No one is even speaking to me around here!”
She sighed and stopped wiping. “Well, after he left here one day, I heard these women talking about him, something about his having a nervous breakdown last year and moving back home to recover. One of them might have been a relative of his.”
“A nervous breakdown? Really?” My heart ached a little for the lonely, frustrated kid he’d been and the awkward man he’d become. Memories long forgotten surfaced—the way he’d arrived mid-year in the fourth grade and struggled to make friends. The way he’d stayed in at recess once to help me in math. The way he’d struggled to meet my eyes the few times we’d been lab partners. The way he’d eaten lunch alone. I should have been nicer. Then and now. I’m a horrible person. As if I needed another reminder.
“That’s what I heard. Apparently he was a lawyer in New York City, and engaged to be married.”
Intrigued, I reached for a chocolate chip cookie from under the glass lid of a cake stand and took a bite. “Wow. I wonder what happened to the girl.”
She shrugged and resumed her cleaning. “I don’t know, but he comes in here a lot and there’s no wife or girlfriend that I’ve seen.”
I took another bite, trying to recall one real conversation we’d had in all the years we knew each other, and failed. “That’s sad. I remember him being, like, super smart. He helped me in math sometimes. And chemistry. His family still around here? If I recall, he had some older brothers. Maybe one of the women was a sister-in-law.”
“I think they’re still around, based on the limited conversations we’ve had, but he still seems lonely to me. Like he might need a friend, you know?”
Depressed, I stuck the rest of the cookie in my mouth. “Well, he doesn’t want to be my friend,” I mumbled. “He made that pretty clear.”
“I think he’s just shy.”
“I think he hates me,” I said, swallowing the last of the cookie and eyeing another one. “Just like the rest of the world.”
“So what happened to you today, anyway? Why were you so mad when you walked in?”
While she swept up, I told her about being fired, about my brilliant idea to work for the festival, and about the humiliating meeting with Joan Klein. Then I reached for a second cookie.
“They took your crown away?”
“Yes!” The outrage hit me all over again. “So I smashed it!” I took a giant chomp out of the cookie as Natalie burst out laughing. “It’s not funny!” I yelled, crumbs flying from my mouth.
“I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t laugh, but it’s just so silly. Who cares who was queen all those years ago? It’s ridiculous.”
“I care!” I thumped my chest. “It was the one thing I had, the one great achievement in my life, my mantle picture! And now it’s gone and I have nothing! My life is a complete mess and I’m a total failure at everything I do!” I threw the cookie down, put my face in my hands, and finally gave in to the urge to cry like a baby, which made me feel even worse about myself.
Natalie came over to sit beside me, leaning the broom against the counter. “Hey,” she said, rubbing my shoulder. “Don’t say that. You’re not a failure. You’ve had plenty of great achievements. Look at all the starring roles you had around here growing up. Mom has entire albums full of your pictures on stage.”
I picked up my head, tears leaking from my eyes. “Yes, I was a big fish in this little pond. But I wasn’t good enough to make it for real, Nat. I didn’t even like trying. You know what I liked best about acting?”
“What?”
“The curtain call. The applause when it was over.” I sat up straight and sniffed. “Let’s face it. I’m shallow and vain.”
She slapped my shoulder gently. “Come on. Everyone likes to hear praise sometimes. And OK, maybe you’re a little vain, but you’re a hard worker too—you just need to find what it is you like to do. If it’s not acting, it’s something else.”
“But I’m not good at anything,” I fretted. “I’m not smart and ambitious like you and Jillian.”
“Stop it, yes you are. And you could be good at anything.” She slung her arm around my neck and squeezed. “You’ll figure it out, Sky. Things will work out.”
“How? The entire town, possibly the entire country, hates me, I have to go home and ask Mom and Dad if I can move in with them because I was canned, and a really cute guy just gave me the brush off.”
“Mom and Dad will support you no matter what, and so will I, and so will Jillian. That’s what family does.”
I swiped at my nose. “I’m just so fucked up compared to you guys.”
“What?” She leaned away from me. “What are you talking about?”
“You and Jilly did everything right. Your lives are perfect.”
“Now you’re just talking crazy. No one’s life is perfect. Jillian was just complaining to me the other day that she wants to date but can’t meet anyone worth her time, and she’s buried in student loans. Running this business is exhausting and I’ve got a bunch of debt from it, and if you want to know the truth, I think Dan’s cheating on me.”
I gasped. “What? No way. You guys have been together forever.”
She shrugged. “That doesn’t mean anything. I saw some text messages on his phone from a girl at his office that have me wondering.”
Dan was like a brother to me, since he and Natalie had been together since high school, but I’d kill him if he hurt her. “You need to talk to him. Right now.”
“I will. Maybe it’s nothing.” Her expression said otherwise. “Anyway, we were talking about you. Are you going to be OK?”
“Yeah.” I sniffed. “I need a tissue.”
Natalie reached for the napkin dispenser and slid it over to me. “You still have plenty of old friends here. Why don’t you look them up? You work all day and spend all your downtime working on those guest houses. You should get out a little.”
Plucking a napkin from the dispenser, I blew my nose. “I don’t know. I only stayed in touch with a few people after I left. And everyone who stayed around here is either married and pregnant or married with kids. It’s hard to relate.”
“Well, then, I think you should make a new friend.” She flashed a meaningful look out the door.
I considered it. He was cute, and smart, if a bit socially awkward. Maybe I could draw him out. That was one thing I was good at, talking to people. “I could ask him if he’s going to the reunion, I guess.”
“There you go.” She stood and picked up the broom again, resumed her sweeping.
“How can I find him?”
“He’ll probably be back in here first thing tomorrow looking for that notebook. I’m surprised he’s not here already.”
I thought for a second. “I do need a job. Want to hire me?”
“You know what?” She stopped sweeping and looked at me, resting her chin on the top of the broom. “I was planning to hire someone part time since the tourist season is picking up. I can’t pay you what Rivard paid you, and you won’t like the hours, but the job’s yours if you want it.”
“I’ll take it. At this point, I don’t even care what it pays, I just need something to do while I figure my life out.” I picked up my half-eaten cookie. “These are amazing. I’m going to get fluffy working here.”
Natalie groaned. “They are, and I’ve eaten way too many today so I’m heading to the gym after this. Want to go for a swim with me?”
Natalie had been a champion swimmer in high school. Her definition of “go for a swim” was not the same as mine, which involved more floating than laps, preferably on a raft with a cupholder for my frozen daiquiri.
“No way,” I said. “I’m too out of shape to swim with you. But I’ll get on a bike or a treadmill or something.”