It took me a minute, but I realized that Candace had known. I bet she’d sent me to the car to keep me away. It was especially obvious once I glanced over and saw the horrified look on her face as she witnessed this painful reunion go down. The Prices must have been part of the group Mac was so looking forward to escorting out. But she probably couldn’t give a proper boot to the local Baptist preacher and his family.
All of a sudden, awareness stole through me. If Hannah was here, then that meant?—
My gaze scanned the area for a stroller or a baby in someone’s arms. But Lyndsey would be three years old now—four next month. She wasn’t the chubby-cheeked, happy infant from my memories.
Once my brain caught up, I remembered. Slowly, I turned my head to the order window, twenty feet away. The man and the little girl were still there, only now he was holding her. She laughed while Chloe grinned and handed her a cookie.
My breath came out like I’d taken a punch. Greedily, I cataloged all the changes. The hair that was long and slightly curled at the ends. The way her body had grown. But her face—with those striking green eyes that belonged to neither me nor her mother—was so familiar that my chest felt tight.
“Mark, I—” Hannah cut herself off, but I still didn’t look away. I couldn’t. Lyndsey was right here, and it had been so long.
The little girl leaned forward, hand outstretched, and I had a moment of panic asshe lunged out of the man’s arms. But he caught her smoothly as she and Chloe shared a grinning high five.
“That’s what it looks like when a real man takes care of his family.”
The words were unemotional and matter-of-fact, in a voice from my past. The same one that had given me patient instructions on how to drive a stick shift and how to replant a tomato seedling. The same man who’d prayed over every dinner I’d shared at his table since I was twelve years old.
Candace must have reached my side at some point because her gasp was what finally turned my attention away from the scene at the order window. It took a lot to drag my gaze away. I wanted to linger over all the changes in Lyndsey that I hadn’t noticed right away. I ached to step closer, to hear her little voice.
Abruptly I realized that the Prices must have decided on Grandpappy’s for their family outing because they’d been sure they’d never run into me here. Hannah didn’t come back to Kirby Falls. I hadn’t seen her since she moved to Tennessee, a month before the divorce was final. But she was here now, practically begging me with her gaze not to cause a scene, not to make waves, not to reveal the truth.
“Daddy, let’s just go,” was what actually came out of her mouth.
But no one moved. Hannah’s father kept his gaze trained on me.
I felt Candace’s hand slip into mine.
“Reverend,” I said in greeting. “Mrs. Price.” And finally, “Hannah, how have you been?”
My former best friend bit her lip, looking miserable.
“You don’t get to ask that, young man,” the reverend asserted. “You gave up your family, and you don’t get to worry about how they are now.”
I didn’t reply. There was nothing I could say. No defense I could mount or argument I could pursue without revealing too much.
Awkward silence descended once more.
It wasn’t my voice that emerged into the charged atmosphere next. “How can you stand there?” Candace snapped angrily. She’d dropped my hand and stepped slightly in front of me. But her words weren’t directed at Reverend Price, she was staring directly at Hannah.
“How can you just let him take the fall for you over and over? You can’t even say hi? Be friendly? Ask how he’s been since you upended his life?”
I placed a staying hand on Candace’s arm. She was practically vibrating, and I realized this was about to go very badly.
“Candace,” I murmured quietly in her ear, but her attention was wholly on Hannah.
Briefly, Hannah looked surprised by Candace’s presence, how this former classmate had elbowed her way into this situation, the way she was positioned protectively between us. Hannah’s eyes moved back and forth between us until they narrowed to slits in realization. Then she raised her chin and said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about. This is none of your business.”
“I know more than you think,” Candace gritted out. “And a hell of a lot more than your own family. You’re a selfish brat who’s content to throw a good man under the bus. Do you like playing the victim? Is that what it is?”
“Candace,” I hissed as my pulse thundered and panic slithered up my spine.
But she didn’t hear me. “Did you know that he gets accosted on the street by your father’s church ladies? They bad-mouth him and spread lies about him all in your honor. You’re a lying, narcissistic user.”
Hannah’s mouth opened and closed but no sound came out.
The next voice I heard was the reverend’s. “What is this all about, Hannah Marie?”
“Candace, stop,” I hissed, trying to maneuver around her.
