Turns out, I was just a charity case to him.
“You bitch!” A guttural voice tore her away from her thoughts.
Her head snapped up as Romina’s father stormed into the café. “You…” He pointed his finger at Debra. “You’re the reason he left her. You’re the reason she tried to kill herself. You’re the reason she’s dead!”
The conversations in the café halted; customers swiveled in their seats, their eyes widening with alarm.
“Sir,” Debra said. “Perhaps we could talk outside—”
“No!” He pulled his other hand out of his jacket pocket. The overhead light glinted against metal.
Debra ducked instinctively a fraction of a second before an explosive sound nearly deafened her. The light over the counter splintered, spraying glass shards over her. Screams erupted as customers stumbled over each other, rushing for the door.
Romina’s father twisted around at the commotion, his gun waving wildly.
“No!” Debra shot to her feet. She held her arms up. “Don’t shoot them. You’re not here for any of them. Just let them go.”
He turned, refocusing on her. His large eyes darted, flicking once to the side as the young man, Debra’s last customer, scrambled to the door. The tiny tinkle of the doorbell as the door slammed shut confirmed she was alone with Romina’s father, who held a gun pointed straight at her chest.
Chapter 12
“So I told her we were done,” Sean said, giving the terse summary of his breakup to his buddies, just as the door of the fire station opened and Patti walked in with a tray of cupcakes.
“Who’s done?” she asked as she set the tray down. “Come on and try these, boys. It’s Debra’s recipe, but I doubled the chocolate chips.”
Grown men swarmed around the cupcakes like flies.
Patti’s sharp gaze sought out Sean. “Who’s done?” she asked again.
“Debra and I. We broke up a week ago.”
“Why?”
Why?
Because Debra had been right about him. Saving animals had been his calling as a child. He had brought home stray and abandoned pets, nursed them back to full health, and then found homes for them. As an adult, he had progressed to saving people, like Romina.
And eventually Debra and Aidan. He cared about them, but when did care become love? He didn’t know.
What did love look like? Where were the bright flashing Neon signs, Vegas-style, when he needed them?
He had never found love with Romina, not in the five years they had been together. He had always been tense around her, dreading the next complaint that would fall from her lips.
With Debra, however, bursts of mutual laughter fit easily into the comfortable silence between them. Conversation were as much words as they were sideway glances and knowing smiles, the silent contact of hands and fingertips, the quick brush of her lips as she stopped to offer and receive a kiss. With Debra, it—whatever it was—had evolved sweetly and naturally over home-cooked meals and evenings cuddling on the couch. Even if she had never ever said “thank you” for his offhanded suggestion that she start her catering business, he would have willingly spent every evening in her company and in Aidan’s.
If that wasn’t love, then what was?
The million-dollar question. When does love become love?
Screams from the street penetrated the closed door of the fire station. Sean flung the door open and raced out, straight into a crowd of people hurrying away from the town square. “What’s going on?”
A young man, about his age, stumbled to a stop. “A gunman.”
“What? In the square?”
The man shook his head. “In the café.”
“Café? Where’s Debra?”
“The young man’s chest heaved. “She’s still in there. With him.”
Sean sprinted to the café. From across the street, he caught a glimpse of Debra standing behind the counter, her face pale. The gunman gesticulated, the gun moving with his wild gestures. He was shouting at her although Sean could not make out any words.
The back entrance.
Sean ducked into the alley and eased open the back door that was never locked during business hours. He crept into the kitchen and storage area, toward the sliding door separating the kitchen from the café. The sound of a familiar voice carried through the door that was slightly ajar.
“She wasn’t crazy. Not like Brian and Sean said,” Garry rasped, his voice breaking. “And now Bettina says it’s our fault—that we should have brought her to the doctor, like Sean told us to. But it wasn’t our fault. It was those boys. They did it to her.”
“Did what to her?” Debra’s voice was low.
“Broke her heart when they left. First Brian, then Sean. Then there was the baby. They said there was never any baby, but she said there was, so there was.”
“Did you take her to a doctor for pre-natal care?”
“No, she lost the baby before she could get to a doctor. She wanted the baby.”
“I’m sure she did. Was she your only child?”
“Yes, my Romina.”
“I’m sorry. It must have been hard to lose her.”
“It didn’t have to end the way it did. It shouldn’t have. She was young, so young.” Garry’s guttural voice turned into a snarl. “It’s because of you. Sean would have come back to her if you hadn’t kept him away.”
“Sean didn’t think he could help her anymore.”
“He didn’t try hard enough.”
“He tried; he did everything he could for five years. I’ve only known Sean for three months, but I know his heart. He’s a kind man, a good man. He tried to help—”
“But he left her.”
“No one stays forever. Not friends and not even family. The man who got me pregnant left because he didn’t love me or our son. My parents, who might have stayed to help me through single parenthood, were taken from me in a car accident. When Sean came to Havre de Grace, I was at my lowest, but I’d been there for
