Instead of pulling out the divorce papers she assumed he’d want her to sign, he said, “You left.” Two words that felt like a one-two punch.
“Yes,” she said, her voice weak. There was no reason to deny the truth.
“Why?”
Tapping into unknown depths of bravado, Snow answered. “Mistakes were made. I didn’t see any reason to keep making them.”
“After all this time, you think that’s a good enough answer?” He straightened up off the wall with his words.
What did he want from her? Some tearful explanation of how he’d hurt her? A philosophical discussion about the negative effects of making spontaneous, emotional decisions and why there’s a reason the brain should have more sway than the libido?
Snow had some pride left. Even if she was having this conversation looking like she belonged behind a cauldron, minus the green skin. There was only so far she was willing to go for town acceptance, and goopy green makeup went beyond that.
“I have a business to run here, and trick-or-treating kids will be arriving soon.” He didn’t need to know the fun didn’t start for another forty minutes. “If you have more to say, you’ll have to come back at closing time when I’m free.”
“When is that?” he asked.
She’d hoped her lack of cooperation would result in him storming out and never coming back. The idea of having a second round set up a pounding in her temples.
She considered lying, but something told her to stick with the truth. “Seven.”
“I’ll be here at six forty-five.” With a nod, he strolled back into the store as if they’d done little more than chat about the weather. Caleb should have been fighting mad. He should have been making demands and refusing to be tossed into the street after eighteen months of nothing.
If he had ever loved her, he’d be doing all of those things. His lack of feeling wasn’t a revelation, but having the reality confirmed so clearly felt as if the betrayal had happened all over again.
Worried that Lorelei might stop him on his way through the store, Snow hastened to catch up and intercept any further interrogation. Though she’d been back in her small Tennessee hometown for less than six months, Lorelei Pratchett had regained the local tendency to grill strangers who dared step inside the Ardent Springs city limits.
As Caleb approached the exit, Lorelei paused her straightening of a perfectly organized china display to ask, “So how long will you be with us?”
Cutting his blue eyes toward Snow, he said, “That depends on my wife.”
Another subtle nod and Caleb exited the store, leaving bells jingling in his wake and a gaping Lorelei shocked speechless for what Snow guessed to be the first time in her life.
“Did he say—”
Snow held up her palm to cut off the question, and dropped into the yellow brocade chair behind her.
Stepping up beside her, Lorelei leaned down and whispered, “Vegas?”
Snow’s head jerked up. “How do you know about Vegas?”
“You pretty much gave yourself away earlier this month, at the Ruby festival,” said Lorelei. “Spencer and I were talking about setting a wedding date, and you vehemently preached against the evils of getting married in Las Vegas.”
Pulling off her hat and twisting the wire-trimmed brim in her hands, Snow asked, “Was I that obvious?” At Lorelei’s nod of affirmation, she sighed. “Then, yes. That’s Vegas.”
Caleb watched the entrance to Snow’s Curiosity Shop from the driver’s seat of his Jeep parked less than half a block away just in case she tried to make a run for it. Again. Her unexpected departure eighteen months before had been a blow to his ego, and he’d be damned if he’d take that hit a second time. Not after it had taken him so long to find her.
Tapping the steering wheel, he recalled restoring the ’85 Wrangler with Uncle Frazier, the man who’d been more of a father to Caleb than his own had ever been. Rebuilding a drive shaft might be easier than saving his marriage. At least cars came with manuals. He didn’t even know why his wife had run, let alone what needed fixing.
The morning he’d woken to find her gone, only two months into what he thought would be a long and happy marriage, he’d looked all over the house, interrogated the cook and gardeners, even Snow’s parents, who’d arrived the day before for a meet-the-family weekend, but no one knew where she’d gone.
Later in the morning, his mother-in-law had found a note written in Snow’s fluid handwriting and left on the older woman’s suitcase. It read, Don’t worry. I’ll be in touch.
At the time, Caleb couldn’t decide what had angered him more—that she’d left a note for her mother and not him, or that Snow had included so little information. Where the hell had she gone? Or better yet, why had she felt the need to go anywhere at all?