His mind was a knot.
He had asked Lila on a date.
He pulled into the small gravel drive at the front of Hearts Hotel and parked.
The hotel sat warm and golden in the afternoon sun. Tom climbed the front steps, nodded to the young woman at the front desk, and made his way down the back corridor to George’s office.
The door was open a crack. Tom knocked once and pushed it gently.
Linda’s head shot up from behind the desk. Her eyes widened. She quickly stuffed something into a drawer beside her and slid the drawer closed before Tom had crossed the threshold.
He paused in the doorway, his hand still on the handle.
“Am I interrupting?” Tom asked.
“No,” Linda answered, a little too quickly, looking as guilty as he was feeling. “Not at all.”
She watched him for a moment. The line between her eyebrows deepened.
“Are you all right, Tom?” Linda asked.
“Yes.” Tom drew a breath. “No. I don’t know.”
He stepped fully into the office and closed the door behind him.
Linda set down the pen she had been holding. The worry on her face settled into something far more focused.
“Tom, are you ill?” Linda asked.
“No, no, nothing like that, sweetheart.” Tom rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “I just...”
He stopped. He could not believe he was about to do this. He was seventy-five years old, about to ask his stepdaughter for advice on a woman, and he was not at all sure he had the words for any of it. He shook his head as if to clear it, then let his eyes drift around the office, landing on the wall of family photographs.
Linda and Michael, as children, sitting on the front porch of Heart House with their mother between them. Michael in his graduation cap. Linda, on her wedding day, on Tom’s arm, the look on her face that he would carry in his heart to his grave.
And the picture of Linda’s father in his army uniform on his last leave before he was killed.
Tom’s eyes settled on it. The tightness in his chest eased by half.
“I can’t believe how much Michael looks like his father,” Tom said quietly.
Linda turned and followed his gaze. Her expression softened.
“Yes, he really does,” Linda agreed. “Ryan looks just like them, too.”
“I know.” Tom let his eyes drift to the next photograph, and his heart squeezed.
Eleanor, in front of the bakery, her dark hair pulled back, an apron tied at her waist, Linda at twelve and Michael at thirteen on either side of her. The summer light on the day the photograph had been taken had bleached the colors a little, but Eleanor’s smile had held.
Tom felt the lump rise in his throat before he could stop it.
“I can’t do this,” he said under his breath.
“You can’t do what?” Linda asked. “Tom, I’m starting to worry now. What’s going on?”
Tom drew in a breath and his gaze stayed on Eleanor’s photograph.
“I miss her every day,” Tom said quietly.
