Page 109 of Things We Left Behind

The explosion had happened a little earlier than anticipated. Nolan’s giddy “Holy fucking shit!” still rang in my ears.

Knox would have been proud. Nash would have been furious. As for me, I was starting to appreciate Nolan as more than a minion.

“Follow me, my dear,” Karen said, leading the way toward the kitchen.

The condo was nothing like the family home in Knockemout. I’d chosen it for proximity to the hospital, not personality. But in the two years that they’d lived here, Karen had managed to convert the off-­white-­walled, blank slate into a comfortable home.

The large, framed photo of Simon, Sloane, and me the day Sloane got her driver’s license caught my attention as it always did. Though this time, it delivered a punch to the gut in addition to the twinge of regret I usually felt.

Simon wasn’t waiting for me in the kitchen like he had been for so many years of my life. I didn’t know how Karen managed to stay here surrounded by memories of a life she’d never get back.

She was barefoot and casually dressed in a pair of leggings and an oversize sweater. Her hair was held back from her face with a wide, paisley-­patterned headband.

I liked that there was no formality among the Waltons. The women I dated—­however briefly—­were never seen without a full face of makeup, their hair perfectly coiffed, and their wardrobes ready to be whisked away to the symphony, Paris, or a black-­tie fundraiser.

“You sit. I’ll pour,” Karen insisted when we entered the small but efficient kitchen. She’d painted the walls a sunny yellow and swapped out the sedate white quartz countertops for terra-­cotta tiles topped with cobalt-­blue accessories.

I pulled out an upholstered stool in tangerine corduroy and reached for the appetizer plate. There was always a can of my favorite smoked almonds in Karen Walton’s pantry. She stocked them alongside Maeve’s favorite cereal and Sloane’s root beer as if I too were one of the family.

“How is it being back?” I asked.

She slid a wineglass in my direction and picked up her own. “Terrible. Okay. Haunting. Comforting. A never-­ending misery. A relief. You know, the usual.”

“We could have rescheduled,” I said.

Karen managed a small, pitying smile as she moved to the oven. “Sweetie, when will you learn that sometimes being alone is the last thing you need?”

“Never.”

She snorted and opened the oven door, filling the room with the scent of store-­bought pizza.

I got off my stool and rounded the island to nudge her out of the way.

“You get the salad, I’ll cut the slices. You always cut them crooked,” I teased. She also never remembered to wash the cheese off the pizza cutter, which resulted in a congealed mess that required serious muscle.

She handed over the utensil. “Teamwork makes the dream work.”

We both froze. I’d heard the phrase a few hundred thousand times in the Walton kitchen, mostly from Simon when he and Karen shared meal prep duties.

I didn’t know where to look. The glimpse of raw grief as it flitted across her face was like a knife to my heart. I wasn’t equipped to deal with emotions like that. I handled problems, presented solutions. I didn’t navigate personal loss with someone, no matter how much I loved them.

Karen was more a mother to me than my own. And Simon had been the kind of father I wished I’d deserved.

She cleared her throat and pasted a cheerful look on her pretty face. “How about we just pretend everything is normal for a while?” she suggested.

“Fine. But don’t think that I’ll let you win at rummy just because you’re a widow now,” I warned.

Karen’s laugh was nothing like Sloane’s. It was a loud, joyous guffaw that made my chest feel warm and bright. Sloane’s was a throaty chuckle that went straight to my gut.

I could picture her across the table, smiling at me as if we weren’t poison to each other.

A sharp burning sensation against my thumb yanked me back to the present moment.

I adjusted my grip on the potholder.

I’d managed to set fire to a vehicle without burning myself, but give me a frozen pizza and time to think about a certain blond librarian and my guard crumbled.

I forcibly blocked the vexatious vixen from my mind and focused on the Walton woman before me.