My phone buzzes and I ignore it to thank Silas for the Coke. After a refreshing swallow, I pull my phone from my pocket to check to see who it is.
Tate: Dad around?
Me: Should be soon. Meeting him here at The Icehouse. You coming?
Tate: Nah. Tell him to text me. Trudy’s in a mood. Maybe he can talk to her while he’s there.
I shoot him a thumbs up. Tate’s a good friend of mine. We went to high school together and played football. So that’s why it’s strange I ended up becoming best friends with his dad. Monroe just fits my personality better. We’re both chill and satisfied with doing nothing. Tate would rather die than sit around drinking beers with his dad at his uncle’s bar.
The seashells clatter together again and, unfortunately, Branson Harker strides in. At least I know why Trudy’s in a mood. He’s an arrogant bully who knows how to push all her buttons. I’m still perplexed why Corbin and the gang are friends with him.
Branson smirks at me before sauntering over to their reserved table. Silas only needs to put the reserved sign up during BudgieFest. All the locals know who that table belongs to.
Monroe finally enters the bar and I’m grateful. There’s a calmness about him that always takes the edge off me. And, after today’s doozy with Nora, I could use my friend right about now.
“Uniform is off,” I say with a grin. “Someone get this man a drink.”
Monroe claps a massive hand on my shoulder and squeezes. “Good to see you out in the real world.”
“That’s what I said,” Silas adds, setting an old fashioned in front of his brother. “You’re later than usual. Preoccupied with tourist drama?”
Monroe and the other police officers stay busy in June. Crime spikes when the visitors are here. It’s mostly public drunkenness, but it keeps them on high alert.
“Thought so,” Monroe says with a grunt, “but turns out, I was wrong.” He cuts his eyes my way and lifts a brow as if I’m keeping something from him. “Right, Cove?”
Silas, sensing good gossip, leans forward on the bar top, bright teeth gleaming with a wicked grin. “Do tell.”
I roll my eyes and keep my focus on the crumpled straw wrapper pinched between my fingers. Something about Nora leaves me completely unsettled. Maybe it’s because she reminds me of a younger version of Goldie. Maybe it was all the tears and snot. I’m not good with criers. Or maybe it was just because she’s genuinely not a good person and I don’t have time for people like that.
“Nora Everhart’s here,” Monroe blurts out. “It’s why our buddy here is all up in arms.”
I grumble and shoot him a glare. “How in theHelsinki could you come to that conclusion?”
Silas sniggers at my dodge of saying another “bad” word. Goldie whipped me into shape with my language and it’s going to be difficult to break. I feel like I’m thirteen years old again, replacing stupid words for curse words just to feel like I’m being cool.
“I ran into her at the post office just now,” Monroe reveals, side-eyeing me. “I connected the dots. She’s ruffled your feathers somehow.”
To say the least.
“Wait,” Silas says, humor fading. “As in Sandy’s Nora? Goldie’s granddaughter?”
I grit my teeth, not wanting to say anything, but end up blurting out my words in anger anyway. “One and the same. Can you believe the nerve she has showing up a week after we buried that woman? Who doesn’t show up to their grandmother’s funeral?”
“Sandy said she was stuck in Europe for work,” Monroe explains as if this somehow fixes everything. “Not saying it’s a great excuse, but it’s a reason.”
“I still don’t know why you didn’t ever hook up with her,” Silas says to his brother, spinning off subject per usual. “You two were literally Mr. and Miss Budgie Bay your senior year of high school.”
Monroe shakes his head in exasperation. “She was my friend, Si. Plus, I was with Wren. Sandy and I were never into each other like that.”
There’s a pregnant pause as we acknowledge a moment of silence for Wren. Tate lost his mom when he was just five, and Trudy, having been born as her mother was dying, never even got to meet her. It wrecked Monroe to his core losing his wife twenty-five years ago and he still hurts to this day.
“Sorry,” Silas mutters. “Sometimes I speak without thinking.”
Monroe shrugs it off, but he rapidly drums his fingers on his thigh. His never-ending heartache over his deceased wife reminds me a lot of how Goldie was whenever she’d speak of Amos. Again, I can’t imagine the pain they went through.
Luckily, our somber conversation ends when a group of loud tourists—also wearing the same dumb generic shirts—waltzes in, oohing and ahhing over the “clever” decor in The Icehouse. Silas, dialing his charm up to a ten, makes his way over to greet them, no doubt eager to escape the bomb he detonated a minute earlier.
“So, what’s really bothering you about this girl?” Monroe asks, turning to face me. When he stares at you dead-on, it’s hard to evade or lie to him. He goes into interrogation mode and there’s no avoiding it.
