Page 15 of Meeting Me, Loving You (Hearts of Maple Lake #1)

Of course the town would eventually start gossiping about me. I had stayed out of the gossip this long, but it was only a matter of time.

“Wait. Someone told you this? Who told you?” I’m curious, yes, but I’m also hoping I can steer this conversation in another direction.

“Oh, you know, Shirley’s knitting group gathers at the diner on Sunday afternoons, and Paula was arriving late and said she talked to you two out by the lake.”

“So Paula told you about this?”

“Well, no.” Mrs. Simons—Francine—has the decency to blush slightly. “Paula told the ladies at the diner. Then Rose told Jerry, her husband, who told me when I was filling my car at the gas station. But I would have been at that knitting group if I hadn’t been fighting a cold that day.”

“Oh, sure.” I nod my head a few times. “So you might have seen us in town yourself, if you were there.”

“Exactly!”

She looks excited, like she just made sense of a riddle and found the answer. I fight the laugh that’s trying to escape, keeping my face as stoic as possible.

“It was just two old friends catching up, Francine , nothing more.”

She reaches over the small table and pats my hand, her features becoming thoughtful.

“That girl needs a good friend, Cameron. She’s been through a lot in a short amount of time. She could use a little more excitement in her life.”

Her words surprise me, and I wonder what she could be talking about. Then I realize she might be speaking of the incident with Natalie. Whatever it was that Jules didn’t want to talk about.

Francine’s hand goes back to holding her thermos, and I search her grayish blue eyes.

“What happened?” I ask.

“She didn’t tell you? ”

I look at my hands. “No. I think it has something to do with Natalie, but all she said was she moved away… She seemed upset about it though.”

“Well, I don’t know all the details—no one really does. But Natalie ran away from home.”

My eyes must express the shock I’m feeling, because Mrs. Simons gives me a look of sympathy.

“Juliet doesn’t like to talk about it. I believe it truly broke her heart to lose her sister like that.”

“But why? Why would she run away?” My mind is spinning with all the reasons teenagers might run away from a loving home, landing on some of the worst.

She shrugs, making her dangly earrings sway. “I don’t have the answer to that. We might be a nosey town, but we know to stay out of the business of others when it’s extra sensitive like this.”

The overwhelming desire to protect and comfort Jules spreads through my chest. I ponder her life for a moment, the loneliness she must feel and her struggle to cope with her sister—essentially her best friend—leaving.

Jules encouraged her parents to travel and explore, to chase their dreams of seeing the world.

Tyler had to leave in order to accept the job that he loved in the city.

Although it isn’t far from town, a mere two hours, it isn’t like he can just visit every day.

In that moment, I decide I have to do something.

“How can I help her?” I ask.

I have no idea if Mrs. Simons even knows the answer to my question, but there’s a chance she has a good suggestion. Having lived in this town her whole life, she probably knows quite a bit about each one of its inhabitants, Jules included.

She takes a few sips, deep in thought, before she sits back in her chair and regards me thoughtfully .

“She needs to be happy, Cameron. Juliet hasn’t had that infectious, joyful light in her eye since Natalie left.

You can help her rekindle that spark she once had.

Show her that life is worth living, the potential it holds!

You’re one of the few friends she has left here, now that you’re back.

I know she’s always looked up to you, like she has with her brother. ”

I sit back, contemplating.

She continues. “Think of a few things you could do with her to get her out of her shell, help her open up. She’s so stuck in her ways, always busy and thinking of everyone else before meeting her own needs.

It’s not right for a young girl like her to never have any adventure.

” She eyes me with a knowing smirk. “If that sweet, trouble-loving teenage boy is still inside of you, Mr. Dunne, then I know she’ll be in good hands.

” Mrs. Simons stands and, with a smile in my direction, leaves the break room.

I sit with my thoughts a little longer. Although I can relate to a measure of loneliness, Juliet’s experience is different.

Where I was never close with my parents, Jules could never be separated from Natalie.

They were two peas in a pod, excited to share the same bedroom, even when they were given the option to have their own rooms. They shared everything—clothes and toys, even their friends.

But that was when I knew them a lifetime ago.

The thoughts in my mind spread to Tyler as I wonder how he’s dealing with his sister running away from home.

I doubt he’d open up to me about it, simply because we don’t talk anymore, and that’s my fault.

It’s difficult to keep up a friendship long distance when you’re fifteen and forced to make a different life.

From what little information I know of Tyler now, I know he’s done really well for himself and I’m happy for him. However, I can’t help feeling that if I had done a better job of keeping in touch with him, I would have known that he and Jules were quietly struggling for some time.

I feel guilty. They were always there for me growing up, being the family I needed when my parents weren’t. I should have been here for them.