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She snort laughs at my formality. “Now there will be none of that. How many times I have told you to call me Hannah? I mean I was almost your momma in law.” She nudges me on the arm.
“Momma!” Shannon scolds her as she comes out of the store room at the back. “If Ed heard you saying that.”
“Oh, shush. He’s nowhere around, is he?” Hannah says with a roll of her eyes.
“Yeah, well Jackson and I were never going to be anything serious, were we?” she says, shooting me a look that I can’t quite figure out. “How is your daddy?” she asks, changing the subject.
“Of course,” Hannah exclaims, her hands covering her flushed cheeks. “That was terrible what happened to him.”
“He’s not good.”
“Has he said anything about what happened?” Shannon asks, her face full of concern. Fuck, why is she even here? I hate having her pity me. She’s busted my ass for years about my relationship with my father.
“He hasn’t woken up yet,” I reply, surprised that they don’t already know this. News travels fast in a small town.
“Such an awful thing,” Hannah says sympathetically as she places her hand on my arm.
“Yeah, that’s kind of why I’m here. Do you remember the ad he put in the window a few days back?”
“Yes. For a crib,” she nods her head. “I told him that we had one just like it. It was Shannon’s when she was a baby and then her little brothers’ too.”
“You do?” I frown at her.
“Did,” she corrects me. “Shannon and Ed took it. For when they have babies.”
“Momma!” Shannon hisses, nudging Hannah in the arm as her cheeks turn pink.
I look between the two of them.What the fuck? Something feels off here.
“The delivery guy needs you, Momma,” Shannon says to Hannah.
Hannah rolls her eyes, bids me goodbye and then disappears into the store room.
“You going to be in town much longer?” Shannon asks me.
“A day or two, probably.”
“Your wife not with you?”
I frown. “No. She had to go home to our son.”
“Ourson?”
“Yeah. He calls me Dad. I married his mom. He’s my son.”
“Okay,” she snaps, holding her hands up in surrender. “I was only asking.”
I’ve known this woman for eight years and I’ve never had cause to doubt her before. She knows things about my childhood and my past that I’ve only ever told Alejandro and Lucia before. Not that I told her any of it, but she gleaned it from working at the ranch all these years. I didn’t mind though, because I considered her a friend. But she is hiding something from me.
“Everything okay, Shan?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t it be?” she replies with a frown.
Maybe we’re both just on edge? I haven’t seen her since either of us were married. Maybe she doesn’t know how to be around me now?
“You still have that crib, Shan?”
“Yeah. My mom would kill me if I ever sold it,” she whispers behind her hand and then she starts laughing. And there is the woman I know.
