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She smiled and nodded at her mom. Her mom understood the value of friends and the importance of keeping a confidence. She appreciated that, that and the fact that her mom didn’t try to micromanage her life, as tempting as it probably was. She was almost thirty and hadn’t gotten married, didn’t have any prospects, and was totally content with her small dog grooming business. She wasn’t super happy about her lack of romance, and her mom knew it. She probably wanted to try to matchmake. But she refrained.
At least as far as Eleanor knew.
With that thought, she hurried out of the barn, hearing the waves of Lake Michigan crashing in the distance and smelling the scent of horses on the wind.
It was cold, and a storm was brewing, would be there any time. In fact, as she hurried to her car through the parking lot, the first snowflakes were dribbling down.
The barn dance would soon be breaking up, and people would be going home. No one wanted to drive in the kind of snow that they were supposed to get. High winds, low visibility, and snow totals reaching up to two feet. It would be tomorrow afternoon before the snow stopped, and probably the next day before most roads were plowed out.
Everyone was probably planning on staying home tomorrow if they possibly could. Even though they lived in Michigan and were used to this kind of weather, snow was always more enjoyable when one wasn’t trying to drive in it.
She pulled out on the road, but an orange glow made her look down.
Shoot. With all the dance preparations, she’d forgotten to get gas. Her car was almost out.
Then she remembered the last time her light had come on, it had barely been another twenty miles before she’d been sitting along the road.
Thankfully, Peter’s farm wasn’t that far away, and she should be able to get Franklin out fairly quickly.
Regardless, it made a curl of anxiety go through her, and what had been just a routinesave the dude who was kidnapped from the shed and bring him back to the party, soothing his ruffled feathers and making sure he wasn’t going to sue anybodyhad turned into ahope she wasn’t stranded along the road in the middle of a snowstorm out of gas.
That probably wouldn’t be worse than being sued in the long run, but in the short run, she couldn’t think of too many things that she would not want more.
This was probably going to be about the most awkward thing in the world, since she’d just asked the dude to dance, only hadn’t done it in a coherent manner, and not only had he not understood what she was asking, but she’d scared him away.
Sure, he’d gotten a phone call, but still, he had made no effort to continue to talk to her.
Not that she could blame him.
Pulling off the road with a cautious eye on her gas gauge, which showed she was less than empty, she pulled down the mostly grass drive toward the shed. Maybe once upon a time, it had been well used on the farm, but until Peter had bought the farm earlier that year, it had been pretty much abandoned.
There wasn’t even a house on the farm anymore. It had fallen into disrepair and been bulldozed by the previous owner.
As far as she knew, Peter was living with his brother in Strawberry Sands over the old diner.
There’d been rumors around town that both of them were planning on building houses near Strawberry Sands, but if they had, she hadn’t heard about it.
Knowing that this was going to be one of the most awkward and embarrassing things that she’d ever endured in her life before, after the unfortunate encounter at the dance where her words wouldn’t work, Eleanor put her car in park and held onto the wheel for just a moment staring at the shed.
If this were her...would she be upset?
She’d probably be scared, to be honest. She was pretty sure that Franklin had been in town long enough to know that no one meant any harm by it. And he wasn’t in any danger. No one could look at Sally and think she could harm a fly. But if it were her, she’d be afraid that she was going to be stuck in the room forever. She didn’t particularly like to be alone and in the dark.
She couldn’t figure out whether she would be upset or not. Sometimes when she got scared, she covered it with anger. Not on purpose, that just seemed to be something she did naturally.
Regardless, she couldn’t blame him for being angry. Just because something didn’t upset her didn’t mean it shouldn’t upset someone else. The man had been taken from a dance under false pretenses and shoved in a closet, out in the middle of nowhere, well, on his brother’s farm, but still. And then he’d been abandoned.
Hopefully he wasn’t a violent type of person, and suddenly with that thought, Eleanor thought maybe Sally was smart for not opening the door and letting him out. She was a little afraid that if he had a tendency toward violence, he wouldn’t be able to control himself.
She would say she deserved it, but while she knew her friend had been thinking about this, she hadn’t thought she’d actually go through with it.
Trying not to think about all the people she knew who would be very upset, very angry, over this, she reached for the door latch and got out of her car. Whatever Franklin felt, she would have to face it. She would have to take the blame, even if she didn’t feel like it was entirely her fault. Because nothing was his fault.
He had thought he was doing a good deed by helping someone with a cat in distress, and instead, he ended up trapped.
Looking around at the snow that was falling steadily and thick, with occasional gusts of wind, she figured she needed to hurry, or she really wasn’t going to be able to drive home.
Her tires were mostly bald; she’d been waiting until winter to put new ones on. Then, with all the preparations for the barn dance, she hadn’t had time.
