Lost and Found

Chapter Seven

Nate blinked rapidly, and Krissa couldn’t drag her eyes away from his face. Those eyes pulled at her like a receding wave in the ocean and she swallowed.

“I’m going to change and then go do my shopping.” She set the bottle on the table. “If you still want to come, we could go get some lunch somewhere.”

“Nah, never mind.”

She blinked. “Oh. I thought you wanted to come with me.”

He rose to his feet. “I changed my mind.”

He turned his back on her and walked stiffly toward the stairs.

Disappointment flooded her. She’d been looking forward to having company while she did her grocery shopping. “What’s wrong, Nate? Are your eyes bothering you that much?”

“They’re fine,” he snapped without turning. “Just leave me alone.”

She stood there, watched his retreating back. Ooookay. Rude prick. God, she was surrounded by grouchy testosterone.

Then she felt ashamed of that thought. He wasn’t a prick. Just like Derek, he had big problems. And didn’t want to talk about it. Fine.

Besides, she’d been a bitch herself last night. Guess she deserved that. They were all behaving badly.

She went to her own bedroom to change out of her plaid shorts. She pulled on a short denim skirt and a T-shirt, brushed her hair. As she slicked some gloss on her lips, she heard a knock on her door.

The door was open, so she just turned. Nate stood there hands in his pockets, dark glasses shielding his eyes. She looked at him. Waited.

“I…uh…I’m sorry I snapped at you earlier.”

She nodded, twisted the cap back onto her lip gloss and dropped it into her purse.

“I would still like to come,” he said. “If you don’t mind some unpleasant company.”

She swallowed a laugh. “I don’t know,” she said thoughtfully, slinging her purse over one shoulder. “If you’re going to be an asshole I’d rather do my shopping alone.”

“I’ll behave.” The corners of his mouth tipped up.

“Okay, then. How about lunch?”

“Could we go to Darby’s?” She smiled at the hopeful note in his voice. “I get cravings for their bacon mushroom cheeseburger.”

She laughed. “Then you should have one. Come on, let’s go.”

They sat on the outdoor deck at Darby’s in the shade of a huge fig tree, enjoying the quiet neighborhood with only a faint hum of traffic in the background. Krissa plunged her straw into the glass of iced tea she’d ordered.

“Lauren liked it here, too,” she remarked, extending her bare legs under the table. Her foot bumped Nate’s, his legs much longer than hers. “Sorry.” She shifted her feet in her flip flops away.

He said nothing.

“You must miss her.”

“I don’t want to talk about Lauren.”

She blinked. She, too, wore sunglasses now. “Why not?”

Was it still that painful for him to talk about her? It had been over two years since she’d died. Surely he should be moving on by now.

“I just don’t want to.” His voice was hard.

“But it would be good for you…if you can’t get past it, talking about her might help. You must miss her.”

“No. I don’t.”

Astonished, she stared at him, her glass of tea half way from the table to her lips. “You don’t miss her?”

He shook his head, gave the menu his attention. Then he snapped it shut. “Don’t know why I’m even looking at that. I already know what I want.”

“Bacon mushroom cheeseburger.”

“You got it.”

Krissa looked at her own menu, decided on a spinach salad and they ordered.

“Nate. What’s going on?”

“What do you mean?”

He knew exactly what she meant. The lack of eye contact was driving her crazy, but she felt his understanding. “Lauren. Why don’t you miss her? Why don’t you want to talk about her?”

He sighed. “It’s a crappy story, Krissa. You liked Lauren. I don’t want to spoil your memories of her.”

“Well, you definitely can’t say something like that and then not tell me what you mean.” She sipped her drink. “What would spoil my memories of her?”

Nate turned his face and looked across the street at the small used book store. “Just drop it, okay.”

“No.”

It wasn’t like her to push for an uncomfortable conversation. She normally tried to avoid that. But she had to know. That morning when they’d been talking about Lauren, something had made her feel funny, something Nate had said. And his reaction didn’t seem normal to her. He should be at the point where he wanted to talk about his wife—sharing happy memories. But clearly he wasn’t.

“I want to know,” she said softly, leaning forward. “Truly, Nate, it will help to talk about it. I told you about wanting to have a baby. I’ve never told anybody else that, except Derek.”

He tipped his head to the side as if thinking about that. “Nobody?”

She moved her head side to side. “Not even Cameron.”

He gnawed on his bottom lip. “Well, I’ve never told anybody this, either.”

Something tightly coiled inside her softened. “I won’t tell anyone else.”

“Yeah.” He paused, studied the glass of Coke in front of him, took a deep breath. “After Lauren died, I went through her stuff. I found her journal. She wrote in it all the time, but it was personal. I probably shouldn’t have read it, but I wanted to connect with her one last time…to know her thoughts and feelings. That must sound crazy.”

“No. Not at all.” She ached for how he must have felt. “I think it would feel like talking to her…one last time.”

Their eyes met and held. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “That’s it. Anyway, I started reading the most recent stuff. About…well, stuff. Anyway.” He cleared his throat. “She’d been having an affair.”

Oh. Dear. God. Krissa stared at him, mouth open. “Oh, Nate. Are you sure? That can’t be.”

“Unless her journal was fiction, I’m sure.”

“Who was it?”

“I have no idea. She never mentioned a name. She called him ‘my lover’.” Krissa heard the disgust in the rough tone of his voice. “She wrote about what they did.” His voice deepened even more. “Where they went. What they talked about. How guilty she felt, but yet she couldn’t stop seeing him. It started when I was away in Thailand for two months.”

Krissa remembered that trip. She’d wondered at the time how Nate could leave his wife for that long, but believed their marriage was strong enough to handle a couple of months. After all, many couples spent much longer periods of time apart. “That’s awful.”

He lifted a big shoulder, turned the glass of Coke between his hands. “It was shitty, yeah. Here she’d just died and I was all broken up inside about that, and then I found out she’d been cheating on me. Our whole life for months before she died was a lie.”

Krissa closed her eyes against the pain she felt for Nate. She knew the agony of wondering if her husband had cheated, and even though he hadn’t, she could imagine how painful it would be. “It must be even worse that she’s dead. You can’t even ask her about it…why she did it.”

“Yeah.” He was silent. She sensed there was more but she didn’t press this time.

“Derek doesn’t know about that?”

“No. And please don’t tell him. I’m a big enough loser with my eye problems right now.”

“But he’s your friend. You could talk to him about it…”

“Maybe some day. He’s got enough problems.”

“Oh, Nate.”

“Don’t feel sorry for me,” he growled, the corners of his mouth turned down. “I know how pathetic I am, but I don’t like the world feeling sorry for me.”

“It’s not like that. I am sorry…sorry that you had to go through that. That you’re still going through it. But I don’t think you’re pathetic. Not at all.” She tried a smile. “I think you’re an amazing, strong man, Nate.”

He snorted, turned away again.

The waiter arrived with their lunches.

They talked about other things while they ate, but Krissa couldn’t get her mind off the fact that Lauren had cheated on Nate. It was shocking. Hurtful. And Nate was right—it did change her feelings about Lauren, all the pretty memories she had of her friend. She and Lauren hadn’t been best friends or anything, but because Nate and Derek were such good friends, they’d spent a lot of time together. She’d thought she knew Lauren, and learning this about her made her feel betrayed too. God. It must be a thousand times worse for Nate.

Nate accompanied her to the grocery store, and they discussed choices of steaks for grilling that night, what size of shrimp to buy, what kind of mushrooms would complement the steaks. “I want shiitake mushrooms,” she decided, but when they looked in the produce department there were none. She asked the produce manager.

“Sorry, ma’am, we’re out right now. Should get some in tomorrow.”

Krissa pouted briefly. “We’ll stop at another store on the way home.” She loved good food, loved to cook and especially loved to feed people, so debating shiitake versus oyster mushrooms was so much fun she could almost forget the mess her life was in.

“Are you going to marinate the steaks?” Nate asked, pushing the cart for her down an aisle.

“I was going to use a rub…I make a really good one.”

“What’s in it?”

She told him the seasonings she used and he made approving noises. “Sounds good. Should we get some wine?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Nate knew wine, too, and they lingered over selecting a red and a white. Then he insisted on paying for the wine and half the groceries.

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “I’ll let you buy the wine, but not the food.”

“I’m costing you guys money.”

“We can afford to have a guest for a while.”

“I can afford to contribute.”

They looked at each other and burst out laughing. “Tell me how much you make,” she challenged him. “And I’ll tell you how much I make.”

He grinned. “Never mind. I’m sure you’re raking it in.”

She grimaced. “Not. Derek makes way more than I do. My business is just new. I’m doing okay, though.”

She started lifting items out of the cart and piling them on the checkout counter. Nate leaned into the cart too, to help, his shoulder brushing hers.

“I know you’re doing more than okay, with the prices of those photographs. And it was in the news how much you made off that deal with House and Home.”

He grinned. “Yeah. That was sweet. After I made that deal, I was able to travel wherever I wanted, do what I wanted. And the prices my images are selling for still blows my mind.”

He placed the steaks on the conveyor.

“That show in L.A. you mentioned…is it a sale?”

“Yeah. At Gallery 228. A new dealer. Generally I do really well at those shows.”

She nodded. She felt…proud. It had taken Nate a while to find his way, too, though not as long as it had taken her. When she’d met him and Derek, Nate had been running a business renting bicycles at the beach. He’d done well, had lots of flexibility and was outside a lot, as he loved to be, near the ocean. When he and Derek weren’t doing triathlons, he’d played around taking pictures, displaying them every Sunday at the Arts and Crafts show on Cabrillo Boulevard, selling the odd one. Selling photographs was tough in Santa Barbara because of the big photography school. Everyone was a photographer. She was so happy it had turned into such a successful career for him.

“So, the money’s good…but you love it, don’t you?”

He paused, a bottle of wine in each hand. “Yeah. I love it.” He set the wine down.

“Your eyes are going to get better,” she said softly, putting a hand on his forearm. Strong, bare, soft with dark hair. She felt the muscles tighten beneath her fingers. “I know it.”

He nodded, reached into the cart again, removing his arm from her touch, and she moved through the checkout, pulling her wallet out of her purse to pay.

When they stopped at another grocery store, they, too, had no shiitake mushrooms. “Damn.” Krissa stood there, arms folded. “Well, there’s one more place we can try.”

“Do we have to have shiitake? How about oyster mushrooms? They have those.”

“I want shiitake.”

He shrugged. When they had no luck at the next store, Krissa could have screamed.

Nate put his hand on her back and rubbed. “Hey. Mushrooms are not an important thing.”

His touch and his words calmed her. He was right. She was just being her usual stubborn self. She shook her head, and they selected mushrooms from the types available at that store.

Nate helped her carry the groceries into the house and put them away in the kitchen. Then he sat at the counter while she mixed up the rub for the steaks.

As she pressed the spice mixture into the meat the phone rang.

“Want me to get it?” Nate asked.

“Sure.”

He grabbed the cordless phone. “Hi. Hey, Derek.” He listened, looked at Krissa. “Okay. What time? Yeah. I’ll tell her.” He pressed the button to disconnect and set the phone down.

Krissa’s stomach tightened. “He’s not coming home for dinner, is he?”