Mary Brady - Silver Linings

Hunter went for the handle of the satchel.

“I’ll get it.” Delainey tugged the bag into her lap just in case her sister had made that very big mistake. She dug around a bit. No condoms, but Christina had made a definite statement. Delainey pulled out two submarine sandwiches and two large whole dill pickles sealed in plastic.

She handed one of each to Hunter and wondered if he saw what she saw or if she was just a frustrated single mom who had not had a man, no matter how many her mother threw at her, in a very long time.

Oh, she was so pathetic.

“How are things in Bailey’s Cove? I noticed a few stores closed.”

She felt the knot loosen at such a neutral topic and she said a silent thank-you. “The town is struggling. It’s not a new story. Young people leaving and never coming back. The tourist dollars are going anywhere but here. We’re trying to change that but slowly. We don’t want to completely lose the flavor of the town or to become a town primarily made up of people from outside the state looking for a break in the summer.”

“Wouldn’t an influx of tourists help the economy here?”

“Yes, it would, but the fear is that if too many of you people—” She paused and chanced a smile at him. When he smiled back, she turned her gaze to the light from the lighthouse out on the point. “Outsiders, you know. Too many outsiders and the town would lose control, lose many of the valuable assets that mark it as an early New England settlement.”

“I saw the church. The town has done wonders restoring it.”

“The town didn’t do it. Our museum curator, Heather Loch, did it with her family’s money. There’s a great story there involving a pirate and a skeleton bricked up in a wall.”

“Intriguing. Tell me about it.”

“That story is bigger than a sandwich in a car.”

“Were people digging for gold again like they did in the 1950s?” Hunter asked, and then took a bite of his sandwich.

“A bit, but some of the people around here found something better than gold. They found long-lost relatives. Anyway, the Pirate’s Roost, which you probably saw on your way into town, is new, one of the first town improvements. My sister has taken possession of the three Victorian houses on Treacher Avenue. She’ll turn them into a bed-and-breakfast.” She took a nibble of the cheese and lettuce sticking out from the side of her sandwich to keep herself from babbling.

“Each little improvement will grow the town, make the place of more interest to tourists, create jobs for some lucky people who want to live in a small coastal town,” she continued anyway.

“So the town has a plan?”

“Right.” But no way was the town going to grow fast enough for an extra attorney to make a living for herself and her daughter. “And maybe I can come back someday.”

“Come back? Are you leaving?”

She should have kept her mouth shut. She had just opened herself up for the “Why aren’t you an attorney?” question again.

She took a large bite of her sandwich, too impossibly big to speak around, and she chewed.

They ate in silence. It was shocking how fast a submarine sandwich could disappear when one was trying to make it take a long time.

She frantically tried to open her pickle until Hunter stilled her hands with his and took the pickle from her.

“Do I get an answer?” There was an edge of quiet anger in his tone. The same as when he confronted her at her office earlier, but he opened the pickle, drained the juice into a couple napkins and handed it back to her.

“It’s complicated.” She took a bite and resolutely stared out the window, now icy enough from condensation on the inside to blur the beacon from the lighthouse.

“You have a daughter.”

She couldn’t tell whether it was the vinegar or the surprise that made her sputter.

She shouldn’t have been caught off guard, though. In a casual office environment like Morrison and Morrison one needed only to stand anywhere near the break room to hear about everyone’s life, whether one wanted to or not.

“I do. Her name is Brianna.”

“A six-year-old daughter.” The smoke of a smoldering fire nearly poured from his ears.

Oh, no. He thought Brianna was his child. She breathed a sigh of relief. This was a simple problem, easily fixed.

“She’s not your daughter.”

In the light from the dashboard, horror flooded his features instead of the relief she’d expected. He turned away, and a moment later when he turned back, his face was a sculpture of pleasant disagreement. This would be the face he put on when the opposing attorney presented a shocking and damaging piece of evidence. She knew it was only because his guard had been down so far that she’d seen anything at all.

“You know that for certain. You have DNA results.” They weren’t questions. They were statements, as if this was the evidence he would need for proof. Her verbal assurances would fall short. Dark-haired, dark-eyed Brianna was her proof, but she wasn’t putting her daughter before an angry man for judgment.

“I don’t have to give you any sort of answers.” He had a legal right to his daughter, but with Brianna the only right he had was the moral right to know that a child was not his.

“If she’s not my daughter, then you...”

“Don’t. Don’t you even say those words.” He was her first and the only man she’d loved. Micky had been there after her heart had been broken into so many pieces she’d thought she would never heal. She had not left one man’s bed and gone directly to the other. “If we’re not careful, some of the things we say to each other might not be forgivable.”

He stayed silent, but his gaze never left her face.

“Would it help if I told you Brianna was born prematurely?”

She could tell he was trying to hide the scorn, but it was leaking out through his attempted mask of indifference. She would not fault him for that, either. Scorn had been what she had felt for herself starting the day Micky left. She and Micky had done nothing but combine bodies; there was not the commingling of souls Delainey had always thought making love should be.

She had made love with Hunter.

He did not speak.

He was using the silence technique. Give a witness enough time and she might say something incriminating or at least telling to fill the void.

She had thought they would use the time tonight to reacquaint themselves, maybe to recapture some of their old rapport.

She wasn’t sure there was anything to recapture and silence worked well on her. “You left me.”

He turned and looked out the windshield into the darkness. Silence would not work again. She put her seat belt on and started the car. When they reached the Murphys’ house, he paused before getting out of the car.

“We’ll have to finish this.”

When he bid her good-night and disappeared into Shamus’s house, her only thought was...he’d left her again.

After the first time, it should have gotten easier.

It had not.

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