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Miss Heather was a force of nature. He almost thought that she was probably a lot like Becky when she was little. He told that to Becky once, that she was going to grow up and be just like Miss Heather, and Becky had gotten so mad at him she hadn’t talked to him for a week.
It wasn’t his fault she couldn’t handle the truth.
He laughed a little at the thought.
As he walked by the diner, he glanced in, seeing Miss Chi standing at a table, laughing with the patron. The patron had his hand on her hip, and it slid down around her thigh.
Rodney wrinkled his nose. He knew plenty of people like that from the circles his parents moved in. He wouldn’t have thought Chi was a person like that, though. She moved just slightly, and the man’s hand fell off. Maybe she hadn’t wanted it there.
But when she moved, he got a better look at the man and his heart stopped. Then it started to beat harder, like he’d run the whole way from his house to the diner, instead of walking.
That man was his dad.
Hundreds of thoughts ran through his head, thousands, in just seconds. There had been music blasting from his dad’s door. Was that a ruse? His mom hated it, and she stayed far away from it. Did his dad want her to stay away while he was gone, so he left the music playing?
Funny, but the thought that circulated over and over was the fact that his parents had said, both of them, over and over, that Strawberry Sands was just a hick town, with nothing to recommend it, and they never went there. They enjoyed their house on the bluffs, the big ocean view, and all that came with it, but Blueberry Beach was where they called home.
They didn’t like to admit that they were from such a tiny, nowhere town, and to hear his dad talk, the place was basically a ghost town.
But there he was, sitting in the diner, his hand just having been brushed off the waitress’s thigh.
Rodney turned sharply, doing a complete one hundred eighty and rushing to the path that ran between the diner and the building beside it.
Halfway back, he leaned against the cool wood of the wall, putting his head back and closing his eyes, trying to still the staccato beating of his heart.
It didn’t mean anything. Didn’t mean anything but his dad had wandering hands.
It didn’t mean his dad was cheating. Didn’t mean he was thinking about it. Didn’t mean anything.
Except it did.
Anyone knew that a married man should not touch another woman’s thigh.
He never even saw his dad touch his mom’s thigh. In fact, thinking back over the last year, he couldn’t remember his dad touching his mom at all. Nor her him.
And yet there was his dad, laughing and touching the waitress.
The music was a ruse. A cover.
Rodney gritted his teeth. His dad was a fraud.
“Dixie. Why did you run from me? Are you ashamed of me?”
Becky’s shrill voice cut through the clutter in his head, and he straightened away from the wall.
“Why would I run from you, Bekpet? And why would I be ashamed of you?” They’d been in the diner before. Although both of them knew they had to be careful. People might think they were brother and sister, but if they saw them too often, they’d want to know where they were from, where they lived, where their parents were, and all kinds of other things that small towns were notoriously nosy about.
“Did you just get up?” Becky narrowed her eyes and looked at him. For a girl as young as she was, she was pretty shrewd.
He swallowed. He didn’t want her to know anything. He couldn’t let her know what a mess his family was.
Then he almost laughed. Her family was a bigger mess than his.
Still, it was a pride thing, he just couldn’t admit that anything was less than perfect. Even though it was far, far less than perfect.
He had no proof. No proof at all. Just because his dad touched someone inappropriately didn’t mean that he did all the time.
He just needed time to process. Time to think. Time to rationalize.
