Awakening (Lily Dale #1)(54)

No, this is one of the Great Lakes—Lake Erie. They’re in Dunkirk, a small city of tree-shaded neighborhoods lined with two-story clapboard houses, brick schools, plentiful church steeples, nineteenth-century storefronts, and a couple of factories. After Lily Dale, it feels like a metropolis. They passed a Super Wal-Mart on the way into town, and Calla asked Blue to stop there on the way back so that she can pick up a few things.

He wrinkled his nose. “You don’t want to shop there.”

She does . . . but she tells him to forget it. Maybe she can get Odelia to take her someday.

The municipal parking lot isn’t at all crowded at this hour on a weeknight, but it takes Blue a few minutes to find a suitable space for his BMW, one that’s a good distance from the café, where there aren’t cars parked on either side.

“Sorry we have to be way out here.” He opens Calla’s door for her. “I got a door nick on this a few weeks after my dad gave it to me, and he wasn’t thrilled.”

She finds herself wondering about his dad as they walk toward the store, but she doesn’t want to ask. He hasn’t mentioned him except in passing, and he hasn’t brought up his mother at all. Probably because she isn’t a part of his life. Was she ever?

Calla finds herself feeling empathetic—or maybe it’s more sympathetic—for him. He comes across as self-assured on the surface, but she suspects there’s a vulnerable little boy somewhere beneath.

The Chadwick Bay Café is a stone’s throw from the long, wide pier jutting into the lake. Fishing boats and tugs are moored alongside it, and there’s a flock of ducks on the sloped launch at the base of the pier. A family is there—father,mother, little girl—doling out a loaf of bread to the ducks and laughing as they fend off swooping, angry gulls.

Seeing them, Calla feels an ache in her throat and quickly turns away.

“If they’re not careful, they’re going to end up covered in seagull crap.” Blue seems utterly uncharmed by the scene. But Calla sees a fleeting glint in his eyes, and she realizes that he, too, might long to be part of a family like that again. If he ever was.

Death, even divorce, is one thing, but . . .

How could his mother willingly leave him? Calla tries to imagine how she’d feel if her mother had abandoned her by choice. It’s all she can do not to reach for Blue’s hand and give it a squeeze as he opens the door to the café for her.

The place is cozy, just a counter and a couple of small round tables with matching wrought-iron chairs. A glass case holds baked goods that seem picked over at this hour, and there are several stainless steel pump carafes behind the counter, along with an espresso machine.

The teenage girl wiping down the counter looks up. “Hey, Blue, hey, Wil—oh.”

Not Willow, exactly, but that’s what she was about to say.

Blue must be a regular here with his ex-girlfriend. Nice.

“This is Calla,” Blue announces, as Calla looks everywhere but at the counter girl, and him. “Calla, this is Sue.”

They both say hi. Calla makes an effort to smile and show the girl that she can fit in here every bit as well as Willow . . . who, come to think of it, didn’t strike her as friendly at all.

“What do you want?” Blue asks her.

“Just . . . coffee.” She never drinks the stuff, but maybe it’s time she started. A little jolt of caffeine might be just what she needs. That, or a solid night’s sleep, she thinks grimly.

“Flavored, or non?” Sue asks. “We have hazelnut,Viennese Cinnamon, Irish Cream, Black Forest.”

Calla, who was hoping for chocolate, says, “I’ll just take nonflavored, thanks.”

Blue asks for a complicated beverage in what sounds like a foreign language. The girl pours Calla a steaming cup from the carafe marked Regular before foaming the milk for Blue’s drink. Calla adds a liberal amount of half-and-half and two packets of sugar to her cup, takes a sip, and makes a face.

“What’s wrong? Too hot?”

She looks up to see Blue watching her. “No, it’s just . . . it seems kind of . . . flavored.”

“Let’s see.” He takes the cup and tastes it. “Yeah. Hey, Sue, you gave her Irish Cream.”

“I did?” The girl looks up, surprised. “Are you sure?”

“Positive. Here.”

Sue takes the cup from him, sniffs it, then looks at the carafes. “I could swear I took it from the Regular.”

“You did,” Calla tells her. “I saw you.”

Frowning, Sue takes a tiny paper cup, fills it from the spout of the Regular, and sniffs it.

“This isn’t flavored,” she says, and hands it across the counter. “See?”

Calla sniffs it warily. She’s right. It doesn’t smell like Irish Cream at all.

“I guess I took the other cup from the wrong carafe by accident,” Sue says with an apologetic shrug. “It’s been a long day. Sorry.”

As she gets Calla another cup—this time, regular—Calla uneasily studies the row of carafes. The flavors are clearly marked on laminated signs. The Irish Cream one is toward the end, a few carafes away from the Regular one. It’s not as if they’re right next to each other and Calla simply thought Sue was filling her cup from the Regular carafe when in fact it was the Irish Cream one.