Coming Home to Greenleigh

Chapter 13

<photo by Dave Lastovskiy on Unsplash>

Greenleigh had exactly one fancy restaurant—or so Shawn had thought. It was a nouveau American-style place with prime rib, cavernous ceilings, and candlelight, and it was the one restaurant that Shawn absolutely did not want to be caught at with Christine. He knew that gossip would fly fast and furious around Greenleigh, and the last thing he wanted was to be paired up with the beautiful lady lawyer from Boston before he had even been home for a month. On a Friday night, the Mill House Tavern on Water Street was going to be packed full of expensive suits and pearls and heels.

He thought he remembered something about Italian—hadn't Ricky Junior and Beth gone to some Italian place for lunch once? But when he shot Ricky Junior a text, he was nettled to discover that the Italian place was actually much fancier than he'd thought. Why the hell had Ricky Junior and Beth gone to such a fancy place for lunch? How had Beth afforded it?

He was annoyed when Ricky Junior cheerfully texted back, "Great place for a date, Beth loved the scampi." Date. This was not a date. And Ricky Junior and Beth were not dating. Definitely. Not. Dating.

Then a moment later, "Expensive but maybe it was the wine. Fun to treat Beth to a good wine tho."

Jesus. Shawn shoved the phone back into his pocket, fuming. Okay, then.

He knew that it wouldn't be wise to drive out of town on a snowy night where the nor'easter could take a turn for the worse at any moment, so that meant they were stuck with the Greenleigh options.

Well, then. The Mill it was.

He had dropped Christine off at her office across town and spent a fitful afternoon wrestling with the pile of work on his desk, uncomfortably aware of both Beth's and Ricky Junior's absence. He knew that Ricky Junior was responsible for Christine's sudden involvement in the Stewart case, and he wondered if Beth had gone off to meet with him. I'm paranoid, he told himself. She'd said she needed to speak to Angela, which sounded likely. Angela had not shown up herself, so there would be loose ends to tie up there. One thing about Beth, she did not leave any loose ends.

Except...for them. They were loose ends, weren't they. What explained this? Why had Beth been content to let their relationship die? Why had she abandoned him that night?

Shawn shook his head to clear the cobwebs, but the thought persisted. It was strange. He knew her now as an attorney, as a fully-fledged adult with adult responsibilities. When he'd left Greenleigh, she'd still been connected to the nexus of her family, that awful mother of hers and that ramshackle old house. He'd been all too ready to ditch his family, the family business, the town, the entire lifetime of connections—none of which were awful—so why hadn't she been willing to come with him? What could have been so hard for her? As far as he could tell, nothing she had in Greenleigh was good for her. It didn't help her to grow. It just tied her down.

How had Beth grown in a person who left no loose ends untied—at least when it came to her clients—when she'd been able to abandon him in a parking lot and never speak to him again?

The snow appeared to have slackened somewhat, but it was bitterly cold and getting colder by the time he stopped by Christine Roberts' office to pick her up for dinner. As much as he hadn't wanted this to appear to be a date, when he poked his head in her office door, he knew that there was nothing he could do about the gossip. He shook hands with the other two young attorneys who had been tasked, along with Christine, with setting up the new satellite office for their big city firm, and once his back was turned he could had sworn he could feel their smirks. The fifty-something-year-old receptionist was the wife of his dentist, and she seemed particularly interested in Shawn's lame attempts to downplay his connection to Christine—oh, did he know her? from school? from work? how nice that he was taking her out to dinner! The delivery guy stacking boxes in a corner of the posh new suite was the same guy who delivered to Lawson & Lawson, and he gave Shawn a knowing look as Christine emerged, donning her coat.