Well Played, стр. 18

“Excellent.” She went back to her beloved sandwich. “We’ll need the people, so I’m glad you two are coming. Chris’ll be heading back to Florida soon with nary a care in the world.”

“I heard that.” Chris, the store’s owner and our ersatz Queen Elizabeth at Faire, appeared from the back room, but she didn’t look particularly annoyed. She looked at the two of us with an indulgent smile. Part of her was probably still Queen, and we her benevolent subjects.

“You know what I mean.” Emily turned in her chair to watch Chris get her own lunch out of the café fridge. “It’s not like we have a million people in book club. Once your daughter goes back to school, and then you leave for Florida, there’s a noticeable drop in membership.”

“There’s plenty to keep you busy.” Chris approached our little table, and we scooted over to make room. “The writing group still meets twice a month, and you have to keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t get too rowdy. Not to mention your Shakespeare reading night with the high school kids. You still doing that?”

Emily considered the question while she nibbled on her sandwich. “Probably. I should pick a play and see if the kids want to do it again.”

“Oh, right,” I said. “I forgot you did that.” Emily was an unabashed Shakespeare nerd, and she’d started a read-along of some of his works that had been well attended by the junior and senior high school students who volunteered at Faire. Most of the kids, in fact, were in Simon’s advanced placement English class. Simon and Emily really were ridiculously perfect for each other.

“Like I said. Plenty to keep you busy.” Chris took the lid off her Tupperware and started fluffing through her salad with a fork. For all that Chris owned the bookstore, and had for years, she seemed perfectly happy to leave the running of it to Emily these days. And why not? Em was really good at it. And Chris had more important things to worry about.

“How’s your mom doing? Any better?” I didn’t know a lot about strokes, but I knew they could be tricky to recover from.

But Chris’s smile was unconcerned. “She’s fine. As well as can be expected, anyway. Not any better, not any worse. But I think it helps for me to be with her.” She shrugged. “Better that than assisted living.”

I didn’t have anything helpful to say, so I just nodded and popped the last of my sandwich into my mouth.

But Emily’s mind was still on the store as she turned back to me. “Okay. So with you and your mom joining book club, maybe you can help me brainstorm titles, since Chris is off to Florida in October.”

Chris snorted. “Just one more month till I’m back in the land of alligators and mosquitos.” For the past couple years Chris had split her time between Maryland and Florida in the winter, taking care of her mother in both locations. It seemed like a hell of a sacrifice, but I would probably have done the same thing.

“And hurricanes.” I nodded solemnly while I checked the time on my phone. My lunch break was about over; I needed to think about getting back to work.

Chris chuckled as I got to my feet and collected the lunch trash into one of the bags I’d brought. “Hurricane season’s about over by the time I get there. That’s the best part of Florida, at least: the winters. Don’t have to worry about getting snowed in anywhere.”

Emily groaned. “Don’t start. Your emails all last winter were bad enough, mocking us for freezing our asses off up here.”

I threw the both of them a wave over my shoulder as I headed back to work. I checked my phone again on the walk back, but my notifications were all but empty. Just a couple comments on an Instagram picture I’d posted of Benedick over the weekend. He’d been especially cute, snoozing in a patch of sun, and frankly it should have gotten more attention than it did. But there was never any telling what the internet liked. I shoved my phone back into my backpack with a frown. I’d been hoping for another message from Dex; now that we were messaging, and our conversations were getting deep, I wanted more from him.

It wasn’t until I was about halfway through the afternoon that I realized he’d been the last one to send an email. It was my turn to write to him. I almost slapped my palm against my forehead in the middle of scheduling an annual cleaning, but quickly got my mind back on task and filled out the reminder card. Then I impatiently counted down the minutes until the end of the day. After work I stopped for another Pumpkin Spice Latte (number four of the season so far) and sat at a table with my phone to reread his last email before answering it.

To: Dex MacLean

From: Stacey Lindholm

Date: September 5, 5:44 p.m.

Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: My Real Name

Oh, yes, I’m an only child. I know I mentioned the whole IVF thing, but I don’t think I mentioned that Mom was almost forty when I was born. That’s the other part of me being a miracle baby. I think I was also her last-chance baby. No more kids after me, so they got to take alllllll their parenting issues out on me. It’s fun.

I’m kidding, it’s really fine. My parents are great, and they’re ridiculously supportive of me. And I’d do anything for them. Which is one of the reasons I still live in Willow Creek. We’ve been a team of three my whole life, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Also, you’re wrong. Anastasia was a fancy Russian princess who met a gruesome end. There’s nothing about that that fits a small-town girl like me.

Inexplicably, tears filled my eyes when I typed that last sentence. What