The Book Club Hotel(86)

She took a slow breath and tried to calm herself.

They weathered everything together. There was nothing they couldn’t handle. They’d sort this out.

Everything would be fine.

But why hadn’t he said I love you, too?

Had he forgotten? No, Pete never forgot.

She grabbed her phone and called him, but he didn’t pick up and her call went to voice mail.

She left a message. “I’m so sorry I hurt you. I love you. Call me back when you get this.”

She sat there, holding her phone until there was a tap on the door and she realized that it was Erica, and that it was time for lunch. For a wild moment she considered saying that she couldn’t join them, but she knew that was ridiculous.

Pete was cooking lunch, too, which was why he hadn’t answered his phone. Or maybe he’d left his phone in a different room and forgotten about it, as he sometimes did.

He’d call her later, she reasoned, and when he did she’d apologize and find a way to make it up to him.



TWENTY


Hattie

Hattie stared at the dress in the mirror. It was black, well-cut and—safe? She’d bought it when she was in college and had found it useful in all kinds of situations. But was it right for her evening with Noah?

Just dinner, he’d said. As if it was nothing. And maybe to him it was nothing. But to her? She didn’t know exactly what it was, but it certainly wasn’t nothing.

She’d pushed it to the back of her mind while she was dealing with the fallout of Stephanie’s and Chef Tucker’s departures, but now she needed to deal with it.

Was it a date? If it was a date she should be dressing up. But if she dressed up and he was thinking of it as a casual evening with a friend, then she’d be wearing the wrong thing. And she had no idea what the right thing was. She lived in her “uniform” of a short skirt worn over thick tights, and her favorite pair of boots. She hoped she looked businesslike, but also friendly and approachable. On Christmas Day the year before, she’d added a sparkly sweater, but that was as close as she got to dressing up.

She rifled through her clothes, rejecting everything she touched. This was ridiculous. There had to be something she could wear.

She needed a girlfriend’s opinion, but she didn’t have any girlfriends. She thought about Erica, Anna and Claudia and felt a stab of envy. They were so comfortable with each other. Supportive. They’d all been willing to check out if that had been what Erica wanted. They teased each other in that way that only people who knew each other really well could get away with. No doubt if one of them needed a second opinion on what to wear, they wouldn’t hesitate to call each other.

Hattie didn’t have a close girlfriend she could call. She’d had plenty of support from the local community and she knew lots of good people, but there was no one she could talk to about something like this. Brent had been her closest friend, and since his accident she hadn’t had time to cultivate friendships.

There was Lynda, but she could hardly ask Lynda what she should be wearing for a night out—she still couldn’t think of it as a date—with her son. And of course there was Noah himself, who had been an excellent friend to her—but that simply raised the stakes. If she made a mistake, she might damage a friendship and she’d rather have something than nothing.

Delphi wandered into the room with Rufus at her heels and her dinosaur tucked under her arm. “Why are you wearing a dress?”

“Because I’m going to dinner with Noah on Thursday and I need something to wear.”

Delphi clambered onto the bed and sat there, all curls and innocence. “You’re going on a date.”

“It’s not a date.” Hattie’s pulse took off. “Who told you it was a date?” She wondered what their conversations would be like when Delphi hit her teenage years.

“Lynda. She told me she is going to look after me so that you and Noah can go on a date. Are you going to marry him?”

“What? No, of course I’m not going to marry him. Wherever did you get that idea?”

“Eddie’s mom just got married. It’s her second time, and she hopes it will be the last because her first husband—that’s Eddie’s biological daddy—was a loser. Eddie heard his mom say so.” Delphi frowned. “I don’t know what he lost. Eddie doesn’t know, either, although his toy car did go missing so it could have been that.”

Eddie was in the same kindergarten class as Delphi, and clearly talked too much.

“I don’t think we should be talking about Eddie’s family. It’s not kind to talk about people when they’re not around. What are you going to do when Lynda is here?”

“We’re going to read, and make Christmas decorations. And I’m going to be really good so you can enjoy your date.”

“That sounds like fun. I hope you’re also going to go to bed at some point and sleep. And it would be good if you could stop calling it a date.” Hattie turned sideways. “What do you think of this dress?”

“It’s too black. It needs more glitter. Or maybe feathers. I have some in my art box. We could stick them on.”

Glitter? Feathers?

That was what happened when you asked a five-year-old for fashion advice.

“What do you think I should wear?”