Burying Water (Burying Water #1)(79)

Her face softens. “I’m glad to meet you. My name is Hildy. Ginny and I used to be best friends.”

“Really?” I can’t keep the surprise from my voice. Ginny had a best friend?

She chuckles. “Yes, for most of grade school and into high school. We were going to move to Seattle together, the summer after we finished our senior year.”

“Were going to” obviously means that they didn’t.

Hildy doesn’t elaborate on the reasons why, but she doesn’t need to. “I went anyway, and then met my husband, and got married. Then I had children and we just . . . we lost touch.” Her brow pulls together in a way that tells me she genuinely feels bad about that. “I’ve thought about her over the years, but you know how it is. Well, I suppose you’re still too young to lose touch with people, but you’ll understand one day.”

I stifle my derisive snort. Lady, you have no idea how out of touch I am.

“Well, didn’t my granddaughter go on about the amazing ranch where she just brought her horse, Lulu, for boarding. I didn’t put two-and-two together until she started describing the barn and the corral. I realized I had been there before. Plenty of times, actually.”

“You’re Zoe’s grandmother?”

Her head bobs up and down. “She’s a good girl, that Zoe. Too bad she has a schmuck for a father.” She pauses. “I would like to come visit Ginny when Zoe and Teresa go again. Do you think Ginny’d be okay with that? I’d love to see her. Talk to her again.”

“I’m sure I can talk her into it.” Ginny could use a friend. One that doesn’t walk on all fours and harbor fleas.

“Thank you so much.” She reaches out to pat my forearm, and my chest instantly fills with warmth. “My daughter said you were a kind girl. Ginny’s lucky to have you.”

I watch Hildy leave Poppa’s, her words clinging to me. Ginny’s lucky to have me. I’ve always thought of it as the other way around.

I finally dare take a sip of my coffee.

I don’t believe it.

Jesse was right. I am a two-and-a-half milks and one sweetener.

Or maybe I just want to be?

“What are you drawing now?” I lean over Dakota’s shoulder to peek at her sketchbook, watching her black pen fill in a frog’s belly with steady strokes.

“Tina wants to get this on the back of her neck for her eighteenth birthday, to symbolize her transformation,” she explains, leaning against the counter on an elbow, her chin propped in her palm.

Tina is Lauren’s daughter, and Poppa’s granddaughter. I’m guessing by “transformation,” she means Tina’s extreme weight loss. The high school senior has apparently lost eighty-five pounds in the last year through diet and exercise. “How’s Poppa going to feel about that?” Tina serves at the diner on weekends. I’ve only said hello to him in passing once or twice, but he doesn’t rub me as the kind of guy who wants his staff displaying neck tattoos.

“Well, rumor has it Lauren got knocked up at eighteen and they had trouble identifying who Tina’s father is, so I would think a tattoo won’t be a big deal to Poppa. But Tina can deal with that. Or Lauren.”

Another few months and I probably won’t be able to look at a single person in this town without having to push their dirty laundry out of my line of sight. Dakota doesn’t gossip with malicious intent, the way Amber’s friends seemed to. She simply has an archive of information that she shares liberally with me.

“They’ll know who enabled her, though.” My eyes drift to the dream-catcher tattoo that stretches across the top of Dakota’s back from shoulder to shoulder, on display thanks to a black tube top and a sleek ponytail. She has several more on her body, all similar in style and all designed by her. Dakota’s sketches are distinctive—curvy pen strokes, with tribal undertones. Most depict what she calls “spirit animals,” something Dakota seems very into. I thought this was a tie to her own native heritage but apparently she’s been studying spirit animals and their meanings for years, adopting other tribal beliefs and traditions and adding her own unique flare.

“Do you want to annoy the woman who makes our coffee every morning?” I remind her.

She smiles, her teeth all the more white against her dark complexion. “She’ll still love me.”

I chuckle on my way over to the old cedar chest that’s serving as a table and begin tidying the stack of blankets. Dakota’s laissez-faire attitude is a refreshing change from what I deal with from Ginny. Nothing seems to ruffle her. Not even the fact that we haven’t had one customer step in in the last hour and she probably doesn’t need to be paying me to stand here. “It’s a weekday. Everything’s slow on a weekday,” is her only response.

“You know that you could charge people money for those designs,” I suggest.

“I know.” She hums softly as her hand slides over the paper. “Hey, do you have any tattoos?”

“I do. A small water symbol, right here.” I pat the right side of my pelvis, silently wondering what I was wearing—or not wearing—when I had that done.

There’s a long pause. “You should let me design one for you.” The end of her black pen is tapping rhythmically on the counter.

“What did you have in mind?”