“He seemed pretty comfortable here,” Tilly countered.
“I’m just that good of a hostess.” Melanie crossed her arms.
“Because it’s tacky to start hooking up like a week after you’re single,” Tilly said tartly. “It makes you look slutty.”
“Excuse me?”
“Just saying.”
Melanie wouldn’t be baited. Tilly wanted a fight, but Melanie was no longer legally obliged to provide her with one.
“He’s just someone I used to know.”
Tilly rolled her eyes. “Whatever. You’re single and all.”
“So how come you’re here and not with your father?” Melanie asked.
“Because Dad’s in Japan,” Tilly said, rolling her eyes. “On business.”
Melanie had always been the go-to childcare for the last fifteen years. She’d wondered how Adam would balance things on his own with his last child still at home.
“Doesn’t he have a girlfriend now?” Melanie asked.
“Exactly.”
That didn’t explain a lot. “And he said I wouldn’t mind you being here?”
“Yeah.” Tilly huffed out a breath. “I need to just...unwind. I’m not some kid anymore, okay? I figure you owe me this much.” She looked around the kitchen. “I’m hungry.”
Apparently, she hadn’t noticed the irony of both being terribly grown-up and expecting the adult in the room to feed her.
“What do you want to eat?” Melanie asked.
“I want, like, something sweet, but like, not.”
Melanie suppressed an eye roll of her own. You could either fight with Tilly or give in. And until she could send the girl off to her father, she’d at least have to feed her. “I’ll make you a BLT.”
Tilly sank onto the couch, her focus on her phone. Who was she texting so fervently? Melanie eyed her for a moment.
“You know you can’t stay here, Tilly,” she said. “Just for the record. I’m not your crash pad while you party.”
Tilly didn’t answer, and Melanie dropped some bread into the toaster. It felt too much like old times. She’d raised Tilly since she was a toddler, but there had come a point when Tilly had just...disconnected from her. Whatever warm relationship they’d shared had been over, and they’d never gotten it back.
“God, he’s such an idiot!” Tilly burst out, dropping her phone into her lap.
“Who?” Melanie asked.
“No one. I’ll leave soon. I just have to figure a few things out.”
So...not a few weeks, then?
“What do you need to sort out?” Melanie asked.
“Like where I’m going!” Tilly snapped back, but tears rose in her eyes. “Okay? I’m not just going to drive off into the sunset. I need somewhere to go.”
There was something deeper going on here—very likely something to do with whomever she was texting. Tilly wasn’t the type to be without a boyfriend for long, but she was only seventeen. If she was entangled with some older guy taking advantage, Melanie did have the adult responsibility to inform her father.
“Who’s the idiot?” Melanie asked. “Humor me.”
“Simon.”
Her on-again, off-again boyfriend. At least that wasn’t an alarming update.
“Tell you what,” Melanie said, pulling out her cell phone. “I’m going to call your father for you.”
She was no longer Tilly’s stepmother, and if Tilly needed some advice, her father was the one to give her guidance. She dialed Adam’s cell phone and it went directly to voice mail. Melanie sighed and opted for a text instead.
Tilly is here at the lake house. She needs her father.
Tilly had always needed her father, and Adam had always been too busy. Except now, after a painful divorce from Tilly’s dad, that dysfunctional family dynamic was no longer Melanie’s responsibility to try to balance out. Their marriage was over, and Adam was going to have to step up and be the dad his daughter needed.
CHAPTER THREE
LOGAN PARKED HIS truck out in front of the old brick building, his gaze drawn to the faded Mountain Springs Journal sign. It had been a long time since he’d been back in Mountain Springs, and somehow, he’d expected more to change around here, but the old newspaper office was exactly the same—just a little more worn.
When he was about twelve, Logan used to work as a delivery boy for the journal, and his mom, Elise, used to drive him down to this very office so he could pick up his papers at four thirty every Saturday morning.
Logan had asked his dad if he’d help with his newspaper delivery job, but Harry had said no.
“It’s too early, Logan,” Harry had said. “Why don’t you sleep in on your weekend?”
As if Harry knew what his son did on a regular day. Later, Harry took his seven-year-old son, Junior, to early-morning soccer practices and drove him around to all sorts of out-of-town games. So it hadn’t been about the hour. It was about which son had asked. That was a sting that never quite went away. He was a second-class kid for Harry Wilde—an inconvenience more than anything. Logan hadn’t even gotten his father’s last name—Harry hadn’t fought for that. He was Elise’s son.
So, Elise had gotten up early every Saturday morning, and she’d driven him to the newspaper office to pick up his stack of papers, and then she’d driven him out to his route. She’d sit in the car reading while he finished up, and then they’d head home together for a pancake breakfast. Even when she was sick with a cold or flu. She’d just fling a winter coat over her pajamas, and while he delivered his papers, she’d sleep in the car with her box of tissues, a hot water bottle and the emergency blanket they always kept in the car. Mom had been the one Logan could count on, and eventually he stopped asking Harry for anything. Harry didn’t seem to notice.
The problem was, he never did thank his mom for the way she stepped up no matter how hard it was on her. Even as an adult, his mother used to chastise him. You take a lot for granted, Logan. A thank-you wouldn’t kill you. He did try to
