Deliciously Obedient (4 page)

“
I’ll
buy you a ticket to the show, front row. That’s where they pick
people out of the audience and make them do skits in the improv
performances,” Lydia hissed in Krysta’s ear.

Sandy
looked at the two of them with a skeptical expression and then said,
“You have no interest in the talent show.”

“
Sure
I do,” Krysta argued.

“
No,
all of her interest is in Caleb,” Lydia answered. That got her an
elbow in the ribs—two, in fact. Somehow her mother and Krysta both
managed to nudge her. Sandy’s elbow was decidedly more friendly.

“
Besides,”
Sandy said, “Caleb’s not here.”

Krysta
looked stricken. “What?”

“
He’s
in Boston, helping my mother.”

“
Your
mother?” Krysta asked.

“
My
mother owns a diner.”

“
Oh,
that’s right, Madge. Madge is your mom.” Krysta shook her head as
if clearing it.

Lydia
frowned. “Why’s Caleb in Boston?”

“
He’s
helping get the diner menu in shape.”

“
He’s
done that before. Why would he need to actually go there?”

Sandy
shot Krysta the most subtle of glances, but Lydia picked up on it. “I
don’t know, but he’s been staying there while you were gone.
Wasn’t he at the apartment when you got back from Iceland?”

Lydia
shook her head slowly. “No, and Grandma didn’t say a word about
it.”

All
of the blood in Krysta’s face drained out. “That means he’s
with someone.”

Sandy’s
eyes lit up with a mix of glee, confusion and cunning.

“
If
anyone knows where Caleb is, it’s my mother, and I’m sure we can
get to the bottom of this.”

“
Caleb’s
a grown man. He can live his own life,” Krysta huffed. “You
should respect that,” she said, turning on Sandy, who took the
comment in stride and nudged Lydia once more.

“
Speaking
of brothers, where are Adam and Dan?”

“
Off
at some campground industry thing in Texas,” Sandy huffed. “One
of the rare opportunities to have all my kids together and they have
to miss it.” Sandy’s quick wince made Lydia all too aware of the
other missing brother. Luke.

“
Bummer.
They’re never around these days when I’m here.”

“
Then
maybe you need to be here more,” Sandy said, a happy smile reaching
her eyes.

“
If
the right man’s here, then maybe I’ll stay.” She smiled right
back.

“
If
we’re gonna talk about love lives and men,” Sandy said, “I’d
rather talk about your Viking.”

“
He’s
not a Viking.”

“
He’s
quite attractive.”

That
stopped Lydia short. Sandy didn’t talk about physical attraction
and other men. Lydia generally avoided the subject.

“
He
is, in his own bizarre sort of way,” Krysta said, as if she were
shocked that the words came out of her own mouth.

“
You
two done talking about how hot the guy I brought home is?”

“
No,”
they said simultaneously, laughing.

“
Speaking
of hot,” Sandy said, waving an imaginary fan in front of her face,
“we have a new long-term camper here who—oh my, oh my.” She
grinned at Lydia. “If you hadn’t brought someone home, I’d be
rushing to introduce you to him.”

“
You
say that every season, Mom.” Lydia just shook her head.

“
T
his
time I mean it, Lydia. You don’t know what you’re missing out on.
You’ve always been so afraid to take risks with your heart. But
then again, what am I thinking, pushing someone on you when you’ve
found Jeremy?”

An
uncomfortable silence stretched out between the three women, and as
it continued Lydia became more tongue-tied.

Sandy
peered closely at Lydia, and then her eyes flicked to Krysta, and
back. “You two have some catching up to do.” She patted Lydia’s
shoulder. “I’ll catch you later.”

Lydia
knew she meant that—she really would catch her later. Relief swept
over her. Talking about the past few weeks with Krysta would be hard
enough. Trying to explain it to her mother would be nearly
impossible. And then there were the dreams. The dreams hadn’t
stopped plaguing her, not once, not even with Jeremy’s arms wrapped
around her. His seemingly endless nude body pressed against hers,
their combined heat a cloud of comfort each night that she sank in
to. Even then, the dreams came. That was one thing she wouldn’t
talk about with Krysta, and certainly not with Sandy.
Who
the hell could she talk about it with?
Mike?

You
can’t talk to a ghost.

As
Sandy walked down the path toward the store, Krysta found an old
stump littered with yellowed leaves and sat down on it, stretching
her legs out. It gave Lydia a chance to take a really good look at
her. “You’re…looking really good, Krysta,” she said, trying
to keep the tone of amazement out of her voice, worried that she
might offend her bestie.

“
Thank
you.” Krysta’s beaming face told Lydia that she’d said the
right thing.

“
What’s
going on? You have a new guy?”

Shaking
her head, Krysta’s smile diminished by half. “No, just getting
into running.”

“
Running?”

Krysta
nodded. “That whole ‘Couch to 5k’ thing that’s all over
Facebook, and people do it for two or three days and then you never
hear about it again…”

Lydia
laughed.

“
I
stuck with it.” Krysta shrugged. Her legs were definitely more
muscular, and while she’d always been curvy, like Lydia, now there
was more definition to her.

“
Maybe
I’ll join you,” Lydia said.

Krysta
looked around, staring up at the giant oaks with their burnished
copper leaves. “If you just lived here and worked here,” she
said, “you’d get all the exercise you needed, wouldn’t you?”
Krysta gestured toward Sandy’s fading figure. “Your parents must
walk miles every day.”

“
Mom
isn’t exactly slim,” Lydia cracked.

“
But
she’s
fit
.”
Krysta’s nose crinkled on the last word, the rebuke a bit sharper
than either of them expected. “And fit is what counts.”

When
did we get on this topic?
Lydia wondered. All she’d done was try to give a compliment.

“
Besides,”
Krysta said, pursing her lips and taking a deep breath, “I don’t
want to talk about that. I want to talk about you and your
threesome.”

“
My
what?” The dreams smacked her across the face.

“
Your
threesome. I mean…love triangle.”

“
There’s
a big difference between a threesome and a love triangle, Krysta.”

“
Not
from the outside.”

Blink.
Lydia didn’t know what to say in response to that. “There’s no
threesome, first of all,” she finally croaked out. “And second of
all, there can’t be a threesome when one of the people is
completely missing.”

“
Do
you know anything about what’s going on with him?”

“
I
assume you mean Michael Bournham.”

“
No,
Lydia, I mean the Pope.”

“
T
he
new Pope’s kind of interesting.”

Krysta
shot her a smirk. “Not as interesting as Michael Bournham.”

“
I
don’t know where good old Mike is. It’s a mystery.”

Krysta
picked up an enormous leaf, bigger than the span of her hand, and
played with it in the sunlight. “Everybody’s talking about it at
work. Emails went out last week about layoffs.” Lydia’s heart
raced suddenly on Krysta’s behalf. A job loss right now would be
damn hard for her friend. She didn’t have a big family to fall back
on.

“
It
looks like I’m safe,” Krysta assured her. She rolled her eyes.
“Of course, I’ll end up taking on the work of another person and
a half just to keep my same job and salary.”

“
That’s
nothing new,” Lydia said.

Krysta
gave her a wry smile. “Yeah,” she said, shredding the leaf in
half and then picking it into tiny little pieces, dropping it on the
ground. “It’s not new, but the sense we all have is that once
Michael Bournham left…”

“
He
didn’t leave, he was kicked out.”

“
Okay,
fair enough. Once he was
gone
,”
she
said
archly, “the whole tenor of the company changed. And now there are
layoffs, questions about entire divisions—the whole Iceland
experiment is being shut down entirely.”

A
flash of memory of Siggi lying on the ground outside the nightclub,
with the imprint of Jeremy’s knuckles smashed into his nose, made
Lydia start to giggle. Siggi would be in the unemployment line then,
right along with Lydia.

“
What’s
so funny?”

Lydia
plopped down on top of a pile of leaves on the ground and pulled her
knees up to her chest. “I’ll tell you more later. But nothing
about Mike?”

“
Nothing
about him,” Krysta confirmed. “It’s a mystery. The tabloids
played with the story for a week or two, everyone at work was abuzz
and now it’s kind of like he was never there.”

Her
heart pierced, Lydia just sat with that idea.
It’s
like he was never there.
Oh,
how she wished that were true. That what she’d had with him were
some simple dalliance that she could flush out of her mind quickly,
and brush off her body with a replacement touch from Jeremy. If it
were that simple, she wouldn’t be here right now, back home,
seeking sanctuary.

“
What
about the video?” Krysta whispered. “That Diane chick. She
totally took the heat off you.”

“
You
mean she took the blame.”

“
I
don’t think
blame
was the word that woman would use. I think she took on the fame.”