Take a Chance on Me(59)

Claire sprayed her stainless steel workstation with cleanser, ran a cloth over it. “Grace, do you want to go home?”

Silence.

Grace was giving her a long, strange look. “I, uh . . . Stuart promoted me to summer manager. I need to stay until close. But you can leave if you want.”

Claire opened her mouth, the words absent. Oh. Silly tears edged her eyes. “Right. Congratulations.” She hadn’t exactly gotten back to Stuart—apparently he tired of waiting for her answer. She should have told him, but the fact that he filled the position without hearing from her . . . “Okay then.” She unknotted her apron. “Sure. I have things to do.”

Things. Like . . . ? She hung up the apron, punched out, and headed out the back door into the night. Her bicycle was propped against the side of the building.

She stood there in the dirt beside her bike, blinking back more tears. It wasn’t like this job meant anything.

Claire pedaled off toward her apartment, but the windows looked dark, forlorn, no lights even from Ivy’s place in back.

The night arched above her, a few clouds blotting out the moon. She could smell the tinge of campfire in the air, hear the complaining of seagulls.

She turned and began to pedal toward the cemetery.

Claire parked her bike at the entrance by the wrought-iron gate. Moonlight dappled the Deep Haven cemetery in variegated shadow, but she knew the route by heart—four rows up the path, cut to the right, seventeen spaces over.

Felicity rested near a towering tree of heaven, the yellow blossoms dropping like tears on the pathway. The summer after Felicity’s death, Claire had planted a garden. It seemed such a small gesture, but it kept Felicity alive somehow, especially after Mrs. Holloway thanked her.

She’d started with hostas around the base of the simple marble stone, then dug out around it and every Memorial Day added annuals—blue ageratum and white sweet alyssum, purple lobelia and hardy pink geraniums. This year, she’d added red salvia around the edges.

Next year, she’d plant a rose of Sharon. She’d taken a clipping from the garden in town and had it rooting in a container at home.

Claire stopped in front of the grave to wipe grime from the stone. Maybe she shouldn’t have come out here at night—she could hardly tell the weeds from the flowers—but the wind reaped the fragrances, and just sitting here, working the soil by the feel of her hands, seemed to untangle her anger and let her experience her grief.

She felt around the soil, found a thistle, worked her fingers to the roots.

You try killing the woman you loved and see how you sleep at night.

She heard Jensen’s words again, this time with pain at the edges.

No. Jensen didn’t belong here, at the foot of Felicity’s grave, and Claire refused to feel sorry for him. He’d known that Felicity was married, known exactly what he was doing.

And Claire had watched it happen, right there at Pierre’s Pizza.

Felicity hitching Tiger to her other hip, then offering Jensen a one-armed hug, her eyes in his when she let go. She’d given him that cheerleader smile. “I didn’t know you were back, Jens.”

Claire wasn’t sure how Felicity did it. She possessed a sort of bewitching power over men, but Jensen, who knew better, walked right into it. Tall and tanned, his blond hair cut short, fresh out of his second year of law school . . . the sight of him in the Pierre’s lobby had turned Claire dumb. She longed to hide, mortified when he turned to her and spied her wearing her uniform.

Yeah, she was still here. Still hawking pizzas. Still wearing the silly visor, still—

“Sure, I’ll help you,” he’d said to Felicity. He’d tickled Tiger in the stomach then, the two-year-old dissolving in laughter.

Claire hadn’t wanted to know what happened after that.

You are so selfish!

She remembered that thought curling inside her as she watched Jensen help Felicity tuck Tiger into his car seat, watched her throw her arms around Jensen’s neck, press her body to his. Hating her best friend for—

No. No. It wasn’t Felicity’s fault. She’d been lonely, and who could blame her, with Darek off for weeks at a time—the entire summer, really—fighting fires?

When Felicity explained it, it made perfect sense.

“He’s been helping me with a few things. And, well, Jensen just knows me. Understands. He’s always been that way, hasn’t he?” She’d dipped her feet into the cool, sun-tipped lake, Tiger asleep in the portable crib under the shadow of a trio of paper birches in her yard. “He’s always been so . . .”

“Nice?” Claire had filled in the word, searching for innocence.