AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
But Leona was prepping for the Five and I didn’t dare interrupt her to ask questions.
She wasn’t above refusing to answer unless I took her place at the anchor desk and I had another evening with Tom and Tamantha ahead — two in a row on weeknights!
Diana showed up beside my desk, just as I started to turn off my computer. “Something secret?”
“No. Getting ready to leave.” I was picking up Tamantha after her after-school activity. Which one was a little hazy — I’m new to this parenting stuff — but I knew the time and place and would not be late.
Besides, she’d tell me as soon as she got in the SUV.
“What were you doing?”
“Looking up Will Rogers. I would have guessed he was born in Texas. Good thing I didn’t guess.”
“Uh-huh.”
“He was born and raised in Oklahoma.”
“Okay. Is that significant?”
“Probably was to him,” I murmured putting together my belongings. “And to Oklahoma. I also hadn’t known Will Rogers was Cherokee.”
Like me with Will Rogers, Jennifer had assumed Keefer Dobey was from the place she associated him with. Though her assumption was based on the tendency of younger people to think that how it was when they first noticed was how it had always been.
“Let me reframe that question,” Diana said. “Is there a reason I need to know about Will Rogers at this moment, a moment in which I’m trying to get out of here to meet Russ for an early dinner at the Haber House Hotel?”
“Sorry. No, no there isn’t a reason. We can both head out and—”
“Not yet.” She gestured and I sank back into my chair. “Have you told Tom you want to redecorate the ranch house?”
This was what I’d delayed my departure for? “What are you talking about? I don’t want to—”
“All those details about how warm and inviting the McCrackens’ house was? The comfort and the style? Granted, you don’t have to blend the super high ceilings with human scale at the ranch house the way you say Serena McCracken has done so beautifully.”
“Might not have been her. Might have been a decorator,” I mumbled.
She examined my face, which turned into my profile as I moved my bag to get out my sunglasses. “So, it’s not the ranch house. Then... Oh.”
She remained silent until I looked at her. Sunglasses can only account for so much time. Putting them on would be chicken. I put them on the top of my head and faced her.
“Mike’s house?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Which really means Mike.”
I shook my head.
She ignored the denial. “First, you do know that being with Tom doesn’t mean you stop caring about Mike.”
“Of course not. And Tom would never—”
“No, he wouldn’t. It’s not Tom I’m talking to. Second,” she continued without taking a breath, making it hard for me to break in with another denial, because I not only needed a breath, I needed to think through what she’d said, “you are not responsible for taking care of him.”
“He’s a friend and—”
“He’s my friend, too. We support him and we care about him. We don’t fret about his house being a gaping cavern that would make a sworn minimalist start grabbing throw-pillows and tchotchkes by the armful. Maybe we fret — a little — about his life being less decorated with a romantic relationship than we’d like, but we do not take on the job of decorating for him.
