Page 50 of Heidi Lucy Loses Her Mind
“Thank you,” I say, eyeing my ice cream. Rocky road is my favorite, and Teddy’s has the best waffle cones. It’s a little ice cream parlor located directly across the town square from me, and it does a raging business with the tourists, especially in the summer. In a few weeks, once summer officially begins and people start taking family vacations, it will be impossible to find seating at any of the little tables out here. So I soak it in while I can, watching as Soren digs into his ice cream too.
“Is that a new flavor?” I say, taking a lick of mine. I nod at his cone, which is piled high with one gigantic scoop of something tannish-brownish. “Don’t you usually eat strawberry?”
“I wanted to try the salted caramel,” he says.
I stare at him for a second. This was a man who was made for the sun—it makes everything about him more beautiful. His hair goes from golden to multihued and shining, his tanned skin seems to glow, and the sunlight on his body casts shadows that bring his musculature into sharp relief.
“Did you know you have a bit of red in your beard?” I say, my gaze transfixed.
“I did,” he says with a little nod. He takes a lick of his ice cream. “Mostly in the sun.”
“Mm-hmm,” I say. Then I blink hard, forcing myself to stop staring.
I’m being weird.
“So. Thoughts?” I say. I stare with determination at my ice cream as I speak, mostly so I won’t stare at Soren instead.
“I like it,” he says with a shrug that I see out of the corner of my eye. “It’s not as good as strawberry, but it’s worth finishing, definitely.”
I snort. “I wasn’t talking about the ice cream,” I say, my lips tugging into a smile. “I meant Phil and Elsie and Mr. Foster and all that.”
“Oh,” he says with a bark of laughter. “Right. Uh, I think they’re all sketchy.”
“The neighbor had to be lying, right?” I say. “Didn’t Elsie say he and Carmina were in some sort of feud about his dog?”
“Yep,” Soren says, still paying attention to his ice cream.
“So either Elsie was lying, or Mr. Foster was lying,” I say. I’m mostly thinking out loud at this point. “And to be honest, she didn’t seem too torn up about her mother-in-law dying.”
“Nope,” Soren says. “She didn’t.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, racking my brain. I picture Elsie, and Phil, and then the neighbor. Do any of them seem familiar? Do I recognize any of them?
Oddly enough, Mr. Foster’s face does ring a bell, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why. He’s a generic-looking man, I guess; there are probably a lot of people who look like him. And nothing in my memory stirs for Phil and Elsie; no flash of recognition tells me that maybe I’d seen or heard from any of them during my missing day.
I sigh, my eyes popping open. I take another lick of my ice cream as I comb through what Idoremember.
“I’m trying to think about what I did on Tuesday,” I say. “I know I stayed up late reading that night.”
Soren nods. “And during the day?”
“I worked,” I say slowly. “Gemma and I closed…” But the combination of thinking about Tuesday as well as Gemma pulls a new memory to the front, one I grasp eagerly. “My hair,” I say, sitting up straighter. I look at Soren. “I made a hair appointment.”
“Did you?” he says, looking surprised. Then he glances at my hair. “I don’t notice any difference.”
I roll my eyes. “I wouldn’t expect you to. Men usually don’t. Let me see.” I pull my hair out of its ponytail, letting it fall around my face. Then I examine the ends, noticing where they fall. “It’s shorter,” I say, my pulse picking up. “And the ends are cleaner. I got it trimmed.” I look back at Soren. “I made the appointment because I noticed I had a lot of split ends,” I explain. “I must have gone on Wednesday!”
“We can check it out,” Soren says with a shrug, looking at me. “It won’t hurt to try.”
“I agree,” I say. “I’m not getting my hopes up, exactly, because whatever happened to me happened at night, but still. Maybe I said something at my appointment.”
Soren nods. “Do you want to go over there today?” he says. He picks up my phone, which is sitting on the table in front of us, and presses the home button. “It’s not too late,” he says when the time flashes. “They probably close at five.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Let’s finish our ice cream and then go.”
He gives me another nod and continues eating.
“Are you sure that’s okay, though?” I add. “Do you need to work at all today?”
