Chapter 23
Sam
Skye was late picking up Ethan.
When she finally arrived, amid a flurry of excuses of why she wasn’t on time, I found I wasn’t irritable at all.
“It’s fine, we were just hanging, right Eth?”
She leaned down to hug him and he let her.
“How’re you sweetheart? Ready to visit grandma and grandpa?”
He nodded without looking at her.
“Go get your bag then.”
She looked around, “Where’s Nattie?”
“Nattie?”
She grinned. “Yeah, Ethan calls her that and I’ve found myself doing the same. I wanted to tell her about this shop; I was going to find out the name of a designer she asked about.”
“She’s not here.”
Something in my face must have given it away.
“Everything ok?”
“Sure, yeah,” I tried to recover. “She’s with her brother at her mom’s.”
“When’s she back?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, Sam,” she came over, hesitated, and then gave me a hug.
“What happened?”
I sighed and pulled a face. Then I gave her a short version of what had happened with Dana. Skye did not seem shocked.
“Come on, you knew she had a thing for you!”
“I didn’t know it was this bad!”
Skye gave me one of those looks to show that she didn’t believe me. “She was always running around after you, basically running your life for you.”
“I was paying her to do that!”
“She was always at your beck and call, you expected her to care about the business like you did.”
“What’re you saying?”
Maybe she thought she was overstepping because she suddenly waved her hands and said, “Never mind!”
But I wanted to know.
Skye was one of the few people who knew Dana and me, and what we’d been like.