The Other Woman. Brenda Novak
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ponytail behind her ears. If Keith hadn’t caused the damage at her shop, was it some sort of hate crime? Vengeance from someone who blamed her for wrecking Reenie’s first marriage?
She couldn’t imagine anyone holding a grudge over that. Especially since she hadn’t done it intentionally and Reenie was so obviously in love with Isaac. Watching him and Reenie for two seconds revealed how happy they were together. The only people who weren’t pleased about their relationship were Keith and his family….
Narrowing her eyes, Liz stabbed a finger into Keith’s chest. “Your brothers would never do this, would they?”
“My brothers? Cal lives in Boise, for crying out loud. Do you think he’d drive up here just to wreck your sink? And Luke’s still in Texas. He’s staying at Baylor for summer term.”
“What about your father?”
Keith gave the fertilizer a kick because it had tipped again. “Come off it, Liz.”
“Your folks have never liked me, Keith. Even now that they help out with the kids, they barely speak to me.”
“They’re still struggling with what’s happened. You can’t blame them for that.”
No, she couldn’t. What had happened was entirely Keith’s fault. Which was one of the reasons she could never reconcile with him. As hard as she tried, she couldn’t completely forgive him for the devastation he’d wrought in her life. And she couldn’t imagine trying to belong to a family that resented her as much as Frank, Georgia, Cal and Luke did. She was the physical embodiment of the disappointment and embarrassment they’d all suffered over Keith’s deception.
“Are they struggling so much that they’d try and make me fail?” she asked.
His jaw dropped as if he couldn’t believe she’d even suggest it. “Of course not. They’re better people than that.”
Liz wanted to think so. But she wasn’t entirely convinced. Someone had torn the sink from the wall.
“Maybe it was Mary Thornton,” he said.
Liz bit her lip. She and Mary had exchanged words, but…“She wouldn’t go that far.”
“Why not? You know she’s upset that you’re opening a chocolate shop right next to her candy store.”
“When I leased the space, she wasn’t selling candy. She had a card-and-gift shop!”
“That’s my point. She’s green with envy. Grant Nibley did that big write-up on you in the paper and how you’re basing your shop on the movie and all that, so she copied you, and still her shop didn’t make the paper.”
“At least her store is open.”
“But not doing particularly well, from all indications.”
Pressing her fingers to her forehead in an attempt to ease the headache pounding behind her eyes, Liz sighed. “She’s just disappointed that she didn’t think of a chocolate shop.”
“I agree. She feels you’ve outdone her, and yet she has as much riding on her business as you do on yours. She quit her job at Slinkerhoff’s law office to make this big career change. She’s a single mother. Her ex-husband has been a total flake—”
Liz didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t feel sorry for Mary. Maybe Mary’s ex-husband paid his child support in fits and starts and rarely came around, but Mary had it better than she liked to portray. “Are you kidding me? How stressed can she be when she’s still living with her parents? When they’re helping her raise her son and filling in with anything else she needs? It’s their money behind that shop, not hers.”
“No one our age likes accepting help,” Keith said. Liz knew his parents had had to come to his rescue a time or two during the past eighteen months. Keith hated needing help. But that didn’t mean Mary Thornton felt the same. She used her parents.
“So why doesn’t she move out? Make it on her own?” Liz asked. “Like the rest of us?”
Because of her stepmother, Liz had run away from home at seventeen and had never returned. She’d graduated from high school while living with a girlfriend, spending most her weekends hanging out with Isaac at college.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m just saying that if you’re having trouble at the shop, Mary could be behind it.”
Liz stared at him. Was her neighbor really trying to cause trouble?
“Listen, I’ll pay the plumber to reinstall the sink, okay?” Keith said. “Then maybe you won’t think I caused the damage.”
Liz didn’t want him to pay the plumber. Because of what Dave had suggested earlier, Liz had accused Keith without any real proof, and now she felt terrible. “Thanks anyway, but…I’ll take care of it.”
She started out of the store, but Keith caught her arm. “Liz.”
“What?” she asked as she turned.
“You believe me, don’t you?”
She noted his earnest expression. “I believe you. I’m just scared,” she admitted. She was putting everything she had into the shop—all her money, her hopes, her dreams.
“It’ll be okay,” he promised.
There was a time when Keith’s words would have encouraged her. But her trust in him had been destroyed when Isaac had revealed his infidelity.
She nodded, but he still held her arm. “There’s something else,” he said.
“What?”
“When you first came in here, I thought…Well, since you haven’t mentioned it, I’m guessing you don’t know.”
The seriousness of his tone made her leery. “What?” she repeated.
“Your father’s in town.”
“No!” The word came out far too loudly. Ollie frowned at the two of them, but Keith ignored his employer.
“Yes. I ran into him at the gas station on my way to work. He looked a bit rumpled around the edges, as though he’d driven all night, but it was definitely the man I’ve seen in your childhood scrapbooks. I spoke with him briefly and tried calling you afterward, but no one answered.”
“I was at the shop,” she said numbly.
“I went by there.”
“Then I must’ve been at your parents’ house, dropping off the kids.”
“I figured you were in transit. And since you don’t have a cell phone…”
Cellular coverage had improved to the point where people in Dundee could now get service. But local reception wasn’t the best, and Liz couldn’t afford it. Keith didn’t have a cell phone, either. Since he’d left Softscape, they’d both been forced to tighten their budgets.
She blinked, wondering how she could even be thinking about cell phones.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She took a deep breath, trying to dispel the shock. “What does he want?”
“You haven’t talked to him recently?”
She shook her head. The past two Christmases, she’d sent her father a card containing a few photos of the kids. In more than ten years, that was the extent of their contact.
“That would explain why he didn’t know we were divorced.” A muscle flexed in Keith’s cheek. “It was pretty damned embarrassing.”
“Embarrassing?”
Regret filled his eyes. “Right before we got married, I called to see if he’d meet us in Vegas. He gave me some flimsy excuse, which made me mad, so I told him not to bother. I said you didn’t need a bastard like him, that I’d take care