“Had a feelin’ this is where you’d be. Had Dad drop me off on the road where you left your truck. Whole family’s looking for you.”
“Then they’ve seen it too?”
“Yeah.” She took a deep breath, and then she glanced over toward her mother’s headstone, asking in silence, he imagined, what the elder Lily might’ve said to someone in this sort of a state.
Then she took a long, deep breath and it was almost like she exhaled the words. “So if this is your worst nightmare, then it’s happened. It’s done, it’s out there. And you’re still here, still upright and functioning. Aren’t you?”
He looked at her, narrowing his eyes. “Mostly. So far.”
“Well, what is there to be afraid of now, then? The worst is over.”
“It could ruin my career,” he said.
“Scandal? Ruin a country music star’s career? What planet do you live on?”
His dread shifted slightly, letting a little of her light beam in through a crack in the door. He became thoughtful, interested. “Angelo, that’s my manager, he said he’d figure out how to make this work in our favor. Damned if I know how.” He lowered his head.
“Sounds like that’s his job. What’s his advice in the meantime?”
“I’m under orders not to sell the cantina right away. He thinks I should stay here, under the radar, and work on the place ’til further notice.
She lifted her eyebrows at him. “So you’re staying, then?”
He nodded.
“For the um…good of your career?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Huh.” She rose from the bench and walked a few steps nearer the pond, gazing into the water but not at him. Sunlight gleamed down, reflected, and danced across her cheek.
He was trying to figure out what she was thinking and failed. He stayed where he was, overwhelmed with options and questions and uncertainty. After a long moment, without turning around, she said, “So what are you gonna do about the cantina?”
“What Ang said, I guess. Hang out here, work on the place.”
“I got all that. I meant, work on it how?”
“Expand it like we talked about, I guess. Add that stage and dance floor. I liked your ideas about the parkin’ lot too, the outdoor tables. Heck, I agreed with most everything you said.”
“Uh-huh.” She didn’t sound flattered by the compliment, and he was reminded sharply that her parting words to him at the end of their most recent conversation had been, “Well, fuck you, then.”
“You think you’ll be here long enough to do all that?” she asked.
He swallowed hard. “A coupl’a months, anyway,” he said. “I could get most of it done, assumin’ I can book local contractors on short notice.”
“And then what?”
He frowned at her, but she was still gazing into the pond with her back to him. A slash of sunlight on the crystal-clear water gleamed almost the same white blond as her hair. His brain didn’t work right when she was around. “I don’t under?—?”
“When all this blows over and your manager says you can hit the road again, what then?”
“Oh.” He could tell by the rigidness in her back and shoulders, and how still she held her head that his answer was important, and he knew it would make her mad all over again. “Then I’ll probably sell it—with the stipulation that the new owner keeps it open—and hit the road again.”
“That’s what I figured,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m an even bigger stain on my family’s name now that this is out. You gotta be able to see that. I can’t stay here. I can’t live in Quinn.”
She turned to stare at him as if he were an idiot. She didn’t say anything or contradict him. Not with words, anyway. But the look in her eyes said it for her.
