Page 42 of Wyoming True

“Just as well. His mother?”

“She was always frail. One winter she caught pneumonia, viral pneumonia. She was alone in the house because Cody was overseas, and by a quirk of fate, the distant cousin by marriage who was supposed to be staying with her didn’t show up. His mother died.”

Ida just shook her head.

“As you might imagine, he and the cousin never speak. I understand that she tried to explain, but he wouldn’t listen. She was only sixteen at the time. I always felt that Cody rushed to judgment. People usually have reasons for what they do, and the girl wasn’t flighty or mean-spirited.”

“He blamed himself, but it was easier to blame the cousin,” she murmured.

His intake of breath was audible. “Do you always do that?” he asked.

She looked at him with both eyebrows raised. “Do what?” she asked, all at sea.

“See things that most of us miss.”

She averted her eyes from his piercing silver ones. “I suppose I’ve become introspective from spending so much time alone.”

“No boyfriends, in other words.”

She shook her head. “Never again,” she said, the words rough and angry.

He frowned. “Ida, there are kind men in the world.”

“Maybe they look that way,” she said. “Even act that way. Then they get you behind a closed door...” She stopped abruptly and drew in a breath. “Where are we going exactly?” she asked with a social smile.

She was far more damaged than he’d realized. He wondered just what else her ex-husband had done to her and was surprised that he cared.

“This little fish place I know,” he replied after a minute. “Best fried oysters on both coasts.”

“And you’d know this, how?” she asked with a little smile.

He grinned. “Because I’ve eaten at most of them. I can pick a restaurant.”

“Can you, now?” she chuckled.

“Wait and see,” was all he said.

THERESTAURANTWASa tiny little hole-in-the-wall in a strip mall, right on the ocean. There was a back patio where people could sit at a small table and eat while they watched the waves come in, foaming on the white sand.

“This is absolutely charming,” Ida exclaimed when they sat, waiting for their order. “They could make money just renting the tables!”

He laughed softly. “I agree. It’s a beautiful place.”

“I lived in Massachusetts while I was going through college,” she recalled. “I loved the ocean. My husband actually bought a hotel on the ocean near Boston so that I’d have a nice place to go on weekends and holidays.”

He felt a pang of something he couldn’t quite identify. “Kind of him.”

She smiled. “He was like that. He sent me to Paris on our first wedding anniversary and had a personal tour guide take me everywhere I wanted to go. It was the grandest trip! I’d never even been out of the country. I saw Versailles and the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre...”

“He didn’t go with you?”

“No.” She sighed. “I never knew why until he died.”

He was thinking of Paris, how exciting it could be. He’d been in love once, with a model who’d worked there. He’d followed her to Paris, and they’d had an exciting few months while the affair lasted. Sadly, she was just getting over a failed affair, and just when Jake was ready to give her a ring, her old boyfriend came back and she was gone, just like that. It had left him with a bad taste in his mouth and an undeserved prejudice against the City of Light.

“You’re brooding,” she said.

He snapped out of it. “Sorry. Bad memories.”