There was a momentary hush as people turned to look at her but, to her relief, they just glanced at her and then returned to their meals and conversation.
The place was busy, but not crowded. Lainie looked around for a table, and then paused—was this a sit-down-then-order sort of place, or order-at-the-bar?
She glanced across at the bar and caught the eye of the woman working behind it.
“Grab a seat!” the woman hollered, waving a dishtowel at an empty table in a far corner. She was stocky and deeply tanned, in her forties, with a shocking scar across one cheek. “Be with you in a tick!”
Lainie made her way through the room to the empty table, surreptitiously looking around at the other diners as she did so. There were maybe twenty people scattered around the comfortable chairs and tables, tucking into plates piled high with seafood and crusty bread rolls.
And I don’t recognize any of them. Lainie let out a quick sigh of relief as she sat down. Old memories flickered up from those long-ago summers she had spent in Hideaway. She had spent most of her time with her grandparents in their house up on the hill, and swimming in the small beach below their house, rather than exploring the town itself. As a result, she didn’t actually remember much of the townspeople.
Let me think… There had been the ice cream shop, and the awful old woman who ran it. Would it still be here? Lainie could only hope the old woman wasn’t still working there. The sour look on her face as she served eleven-year-old Lainie had almost curdled her ice cream.
“There you are!”
Lainie blinked as the woman from behind the bar plonked a jug of water and a folded menu in front of her. She leaned her hip against Lainie’s table, looking down at her with a friendly smile that made her scar twist.
“Hi, I’m Caro. It’s not often we get visitors… I mean at this time of year. I hope you like seafood, because that’s most of what we do here. Regular fish, shellfish, chowders…”
“I’ll have the chowder, thanks,” Lainie said quickly. She hoped Caro couldn’t hear her stomach gurgling.
“Great choice. And anything to drink? I recommend the Blueskin Bay Chardonnay with the clam chowder.”
“That sounds lovely, thanks.”
“Not a problem.” The woman grinned, hollered Lainie’s order over her shoulder to the kitchen behind the bar, and didn’t move from her perch on the edge of Lainie’s table. “Have I seen you here before? There’s something about you that looks familiar. You have family around here, or something? How long are you in town for?”
“Just overnight,” Lainie said, returning Caro’s smile with a nervous one of her own. “I’ve got some business to look after, and then I’m headed back to the city.” She hoped Caro wouldn’t notice that she hadn’t answered the question about her family.
Caro raised her eyebrows. “That’s a long way to drive just to stay overnight!”
“I have to get back for work,” Lainie explained with a tight shrug. “You know how it is…”
Or maybe not, she thought, glancing around the room. Most of the people in here probably worked in the town, or on the boats moored out in the small marina. They were eating heartily, but without the furtive, stressed speed that Lainie was familiar with from back home. If any of them are stressing with one ear out to hear the phone ring and deal with a new client, I’ll eat my hat.
“Well, ain’t that a shame,” said Caro with another grin. “I hope you have a chance to check out the ice cream parlor down by the water before you go. It’s Hideaway’s best-kept secret.”
That seemed to be all Caro wanted to know; after the smallest amount of more small talk, she swaggered back behind her bar.
Lainie’s meal arrived a few minutes later, brought out by one of a pair of waitresses she’d seen flitting around the room. They both looked as though they were in their late teens, probably working at the restaurant as a part-time job after school.
The one who sauntered up with Lainie’s chowder and glass of wine was wearing long feather earrings that looked as though they came from some sort of gull. They flipped back and forth over her shoulders as she walked.
“I hope you enjoy it,” the waitress said with a smile as she put down the bowl of chowder in front of Lainie. “Jess ‘n’ me brought in the clams yesterday—nice eh?”
“It looks delicious,” Lainie said truthfully. The steam wafting off the bowl of chowder made her mouth water. The waitress beamed, and Lainie added on a sudden friendly impulse, “I like your earrings.”
“Thanks, they’re mine,” the girl said breezily, and then froze. She clapped one hand over her mouth, eyes wide, and fled.
Lainie stared after her, flabbergasted. Was it something I said? she thought. No, don’t be silly. The poor girl is probably just mortified about sounding silly in front of a new customer. “They’re mine”—who else’s would they be?
Biting her lip to keep herself from gigg
ling—she didn’t want to embarrass the girl even more—Lainie picked up her spoon. It had been a long day, and she was more than ready for dinner.
As she looked down at her bowl, the back of her neck prickled.
A lifetime of being the chubby girl at school had given Lainie a sixth sense for when she was being watched. Particularly during meals. These days she knew how to dress to flatter her figure, and how to do her hair so that it fell in straight waves rather than a flyaway cloud, but she still got twitchy when she felt people watching her eat. Like now.