The woman took down basic information—their names, home addresses, ages—and arranged to meet them at their hotel later.
“I wonder if she’s doing that with everyone,” she says as Landry and Kay settle into their seats.
Neither of them asks who—or what—she’s talking about.
“I’m sure she is,” Landry says.
“Probably,” Kay agrees, pulling on her seat belt.
“We should stop off someplace on the way back to the hotel,” Elena suggests as Landry shifts the car into reverse, “and get something to eat.”
Something to drink is what she means. Her nerves are shot.
“Now?” Landry asks. “I thought we were planning to go out to dinner later.”
“We are, but we should get something now. Just, you know, something light. Especially since we have the detective coming to talk to us.”
“That might take a while. I could go for a cup of tea myself,” Kay agrees.
“I guess I wouldn’t mind some coffee,” Landry decides, and so it’s settled.
Coffee. Tea. Terrific.
Elena had been thinking along the lines of cocktails—a little more hair of the dog for her pounding head. The Bloody Mary on the plane had done nothing to take off the edge. And now they have to face a meeting with the detective investigating Meredith’s death . . .
I want a drink.
No. I need a drink.
“There were a couple of restaurants back toward the hotel,” Landry says. “I’ll head back that way.”
Elena settles back in the seat, resigned to a low-key coffee break—for now—and wishing she’d insisted on driving, or at least that she’d taken her own car. The parking lot has become crowded with moving people and cars, and Landry is taking her sweet old time maneuvering toward the exit.
To be fair, it’s not as though she can just barrel out of here. Still, she’s as slow and deliberate about driving as she is about everything else.
When they first met back at the hotel, Elena had to fight the urge to hustle her friend along—even conversationally. Everything about the self-proclaimed Alabama belle strikes her as languid. Not a bad thing, necessarily. Just . . . different.
Kay is different as well. Different from Landry, and from her, too. Practical and perfunctory, she reminds Elena of someone’s maiden aunt.
Not of her own aunt—maiden, or otherwise. Thanks to her father, she’d lost touch with her extended family after her mother died. But her dim memories of her parents’ sisters and sisters-in-law are of vibrant women very much like her mother.
Had she initially met these two women, Kay and Landry, in person, rather than online, Elena is pretty sure they wouldn’t have clicked at all.
There’s a lesson in there somewhere, she decides. But what is it?
She’s always telling her students to look beyond the obvious.
“Dig deeper,” she urges her first graders. “Don’t accept anything at face value.”
Good advice.
Okay. So look at Tony. If she’d first gotten to know him online, might she possibly have clicked with him in a way that she doesn’t in person?
Just the thought of him sets her nerves on edge now. He’d called her cell phone and left her a message while she was on the plane, asking her to give him a call back when she landed.
She didn’t—and not just because her battery was drained. He called again while she and the others were leaving the hotel, and that time she ignored it. He didn’t leave a message, and she turned off the phone immediately afterward.
Now, reluctantly turning it back on, she sees that she missed a couple of calls.
The first one is from Tony.
Really? Really?
Scrolling through the missed calls log, she sees that his number is attached to all of them—and there are half a dozen. He left her a message the first time he tried her, then just kept dialing and hanging up on her voice mail.
Reluctantly, Elena puts the phone to her ear. She might as well hear what he had to say. Maybe he wanted to apologize for being . . .
Well, for being Tony.
“Elena, I need you to give me a call right away . . .”
Even in a recording, he annoys her. He urgently needs her to do something now? When she’s halfway across the country, at a funeral?
“ . . . I’ve been thinking about it and I don’t think you should be alone right now, and . . . you know what? Just give me a call the minute you get this. Okay. ’Bye.”
Jaw clenched, Elena presses Delete. Then she turns off her phone, in case he decides to call back yet again.
I’m not alone, Tony. I’m with my friends. Although . . .
In the front seat, Kay is pointing. “There’s a McDonald’s.”
Elena doesn’t acknowledge her. McDonalds? I’d rather be anyplace else right now—including alone.
Yes, preferably alone at a bar somewhere, drowning her sorrows. That’s what you do after a funeral. It’s what her father did after her mother’s . . .
For thirty years.
“I don’t think McDonald’s is exactly what we’re looking for,” Landry tells Kay.
Relieved, Elena looks toward the opposite side of the road. “There’s a Chili’s. And an Applebee’s.”
Landry makes her face. “I’m not crazy about— Oh, wait, I see Starbucks!”
She flicks on the turn signal and pulls into the left turning lane toward Starbucks as if it’s all decided.
Elena opens her mouth to put in her vote for going back to the hotel, or to someplace that has a bar, then thinks better of it.
If she goes back and sits in her room, she’s only going to stress about Tony and . . . everything.
And if she goes to a bar . . .
Look what happened to her after all that wine last night.
Look what happens every time she drinks too much.
With the detective meeting them soon, it’s probably best to stick with her friends and drown her sorrows in a cup of coffee. At least that’ll keep her out of trouble—for now.
Several cars in front of them make the left turn into the parking lot, and Landry creeps forward with each one. When it’s her turn, the light turns yellow. There’s only one oncoming car and it’s far enough away . . .
“You can make it,” Elena advises.
But Landry is braking. Stopping. So is the oncoming car.
Elena can’t help herself: “You could have made it.”
“Like I always tell my kids when they’re at the wheel, yellow means slow down, not speed up.”
“Not where I’m from.”
Landry shrugs. “Where I’m from, slow and steady wins the race.”
Finally, the light is green, the coast is clear, and they’re pulling into the busy parking lot. Starbucks is hopping at this hour on a sunny Saturday afternoon.
Reaching for the back door handle, Elena flashes back to what Tony said to her as she got out of his car at the airport this morning.
“Your secret is safe with me . . .”
What was he talking about?
What did I tell him?
She rubs her temples with her fingertips as they step from the parking lot glare into the dimly lit interior—then stops short, spotting Tony at the far end of the counter, waiting for a beverage.
Landry promptly crashes into her from behind. “Oops, I’m sorry!”
“It’s okay,” Elena murmurs.
It’s not him. As he turns, she’s almost positive the man is a total stranger who has on the kind of sleeveless muscle T-shirt Tony sometimes wears.
Or is it?
It has to be a stranger. This is Ohio. Tony’s back in Massachusetts.
Still, Elena keeps a wary eye on him as he walks out without a backward glance, half expecting him to come back.
He doesn’t.
Of course not, because he isn’t Tony.
Waiting anxiously for her turn to order coffee, she stares blankly at the menu board she’s seen a thousand times at Starbucks back home, frustrated with herself.
After connecting with the others back at the hotel, she’d finally managed to banish unpleasant thoughts of Tony and last night. But now that she’s heard his message and seen evidence of all those missed calls, toxic tendrils are once again unfurling in her mind, choking out all other thoughts.