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Chapter 7
With Wayford only a thirty-minute drive from Riviera View, and her mother pushing those flyers to anyone who had set foot at the bakery, Anne wasn’t surprised to meet several of her parents’ friends and the bakery’s clientele at the gallery.
“It’s not a solo exhibition,” she had tried to warn, to no avail.
Her uncle and aunt, Darian and Fernando, were there, but luckily, their daughter didn’t see fit to attend.
Bella came the day before, and she had shown her around.
“I have no idea what I’m looking at,” her father said honestly when they stopped before a charcoal drawing that proclaimed it was a self-portrait. “A self-portrait of what?” Bert added, tilting his head ninety degrees.
“What’s there to understand? You just make up whatever you want of it. Right, Jane?” her mother said.
She smiled at them both. “Right,” was the easy answer. She worried if she started explaining, she’d have to take a sip with every other pretentious-sounding word she’d utter.
“Anne, congratulations,” a female voice said behind her.
She turned around. Connie Latimer and her partner, David. She had expected they’d drop by, but she was surprised to see Libby and her fiancé, Luke Delaney, with them.
“Thank you all for coming! I know my mom made you.” She chuckled.
“No, we want to support you and see this,” David said, swiping his hand across the gallery’s space.
“We looked around. Yours are the most beautiful here,” Connie said, leaning closer to her and speaking quietly, as if she was afraid to hurt the other presenters.
“I’m here for you, but also for Eddie. He’s an old friend,” Libby said.
“Oh, that’s true.” Anne smiled. She remembered Libby and Eddie being close at some point in high school, though she had always suspected that Libby had been secretly in love with Luke. Turned out, she had been right.
Seeing Luke reminded her of his older brother, Jordan, and the rumor Bella had repeated regarding Avery. To obliterate that thought before it’d bring Finn into her mind, a place he had occupied rent-free for years and expanded since his visit to the bakery, she hurried to say, “I know Hope wanted to come, too. She texted me earlier that she’s at her daughter’s Model UN competition in San Francisco.”
“She is,” Libby said with a smile.
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to imply you didn’t know,” Anne said. After all, she had only known Hope for two years. They had become closer after Hope had asked for unsold goods to distribute at school, and the food bank idea had been born.
“I didn’t think you were implying; I was just agreeing with you.” Libby put a hand on her forearm.
She wished they could stop walking on eggshells around each other, afraid that every well-intended gesture or word could and would be interpreted wrong.
Thinking of Hope, her mind leaped to Hope’s unworthy ex-husband, Eric the douchebag. From Eric, it was an easy leap to thoughts of Finn. Everything led to Finn.
These small towns were too small. Cincinnati had been easier. She had lived next door to an introverted librarian, and their connection summed up in watering each other’s plants when needed. Last she heard, Melanie had left for a vacation in Europe and had decided to stay.
When most of her visitors left, and she escorted her parents, uncle, and aunt to the door, Anne went back inside.
Lingering in front of a painting that had caught her imagination, the hairs at her nape suddenly bristled in anticipation as a flicker of familiar fragrance reached her. She closed her eyes.
“Jane.” She had known that voice would come, even before she had heard it, yet her heart still flailed.
It nearly stopped when she thought that her parents or, worse, his former in-laws had seen him come in. How would she explain his presence?
She turned around. “What are you doing here?” she asked, trying to repress the fact that his eyes were an ocean, his face the ache in her heart, and his shoulders under the black Henley her former respite.
“I could lie and tell you that I was in the neighborhood, if it helps.”
“It doesn’t. I need you to leave.”
He smirked. “Wow. I hope you’re nicer to potential buyers.” The warmth in his eyes was tinged with reminiscence.
