Provenance

by Carla Laureano

  It also meant that she would be leaving Gabe to his own devices to save the town.

  “So what?” she mumbled, her voice defiant in the silence. “I don’t have any responsibility here.”

  But Gabe had no personal responsibility to her; in fact, he had every reason to see her as the enemy, and yet he was still sacrificing his time and his effort to help her.

  And there was that little bloom of warmth in her chest whenever he took her hand that was impossible to deny.

  She liked him and she didn’t want to see him fail.

  “Ugh.” She slid down into the bathtub until she was fully submerged and held her breath as long as she could, hoping for some clarity in the echoey expanse of water. When she rose spluttering a minute later, she had made no more sense of her feelings than before; she’d only dissolved her mascara into tracks down her cheeks.

  “Fine, fine,” she said to no one in particular. She levered herself out of the tub, splashing water onto the antique tiles, and reached for the towel waiting on the warmer. She still had way too much time before she met Delia, but her long, thick hair would take an hour to blow out, so she wrapped herself in the fluffy towel and reached for the hairdryer in a basket beneath the pedestal sink. She took extra care drying it straight and smooth, then turned her attention to her makeup.

  Finally, at a quarter to six, she pulled on her jacket and boots and headed out the door, but she was still shocked by how cold the air felt now that the sun had gone down. It was easy to underestimate how much the sunlight contributed to warmth at this altitude until it was gone, and she was shivering before she even made it down the B and B’s front steps. She picked up her pace onto Main Street, hoping she would warm up, but the whip of wind around the buildings and through breezeways on each block chilled her to the bone every time she thought she was finally getting warm.

  Even so, Kendall could admit how pretty the town looked at night. Old-fashioned streetlamps cast a yellow glow on the buildings, and every time she passed a gap between them, she could see the reflection of the moon on the shimmering lake. She came to the park next, saw the wood piled in the center of a cement-block pit, waiting for tomorrow night’s bonfire. Long strings of huge white bulbs swayed between poles and trees and streetlamps, making the sky overhead twinkle like a cloud of dancing fireflies. Finally she glimpsed the Pine View Cantina ahead, warmth and light and voices spilling out through the open door.

  She slipped inside, the combined heat of a hundred bodies immediately taking the chill off her. It looked like every single person in town had come tonight, and she was at a loss for how she was going to locate Delia in this madhouse.

  And then she heard someone call her name. From a corner booth, Delia waved wildly to get her attention. “Over here, Kendall!”

  Kendall made her way slowly through the crush to where Delia sat with four women between twenty and forty, all dressed similarly to her in jeans and vests or puffy jackets.

  Delia extracted herself from the table and gave her a hug in greeting. “I’m so glad you made it. Let me introduce you.”

  The first two were about Kendall’s age. Rebecca was a pretty brunette with a flashy manicure and her name on a pendant in gold script. Delia told her that Rebecca owned the gift shop at the end of the street. Next came petite, blonde Eliza—“call me Liz”—who worked as a backcountry backpacking guide when she wasn’t pregnant, which she most definitely was now. The other two spanned the opposite ends of the age spectrum: Allison, a twentysomething with pink-tipped hair, was doing her master’s degree in social work online while picking up extra shifts here at the cantina as a waitress. And Dawnice, a statuesque beauty who had to be in her early forties, volunteered that she was working on her first novel in Jasper Lake while her husband taught science at the county high school.

  There couldn’t have been a more disparate group of women, but they all seemed to know each other well, and now they smiled at Kendall warmly. Dawnice scooted over to make room for her next to Delia, and Kendall sat down, feeling equal parts awkward and welcomed. “What’s with the crowd?” she asked, looking around. There were people eating dinner, but there seemed to be just as many milling about with drinks in their hands.

  “Live music,” Delia said. “The Hometown Heroes.”

  “Now that everyone’s here, we can eat.” Liz stood and waved to a server, who waved back in a harried fashion. She rubbed her expanded belly and sat back down with a sigh. “I’m starving. I swear this baby sucks every last calorie out of my body.”

  “Don’t be like me,” Dawnice said. “I gained forty pounds when I was pregnant with Jaden, and it took me two years to get rid of it. It’s nice now, but you regret it later on.”

  Kendall looked among the women. “Do you all have kids?”

  “Just me,” Dawnice said, “and of course Liz is about to. The only ones who aren’t married are Rebecca and Delia . . . and you, of course. At least I assume you aren’t?”

  “No, I’m single,” Kendall said. A few of the women exchanged glances, and Kendall frowned. She was about to ask what she was missing when the server finally made her way over to their table. Up close, she recognized Julie, who had waited on her and Gabe the first night, but she showed no special sign of recognition. “What can I get you girls?”

  Delia ordered something ominously called the Mother Lode to share, and then they ordered cocktails and beers—nonalcoholic for Liz, of course. Kendall looked around the table, struck unusually dumb by the gathering. She’d always prided herself on being personable and comfortable with strangers, but that was usually in a business situation or with men she met in a social setting. This kind of girl gathering was new and entirely unfamiliar. She suddenly had the overwhelming feeling of being an outsider in a place she wasn’t sure she wanted to be inside.

  Allison leaned across her folded hands and focused with laser precision on Kendall. “So, Kendall, what do you do?”

  “I’m an interior designer,” she said. “I own a design firm in Southern California.”

  “Oh, that sounds interesting!” Dawnice exclaimed beside her. “How did you get to do that? It always sounds like a dream job, but I don’t know how you get from wishing for it to actually doing it.”

  Kendall opened her mouth to give her usual short-and-sweet prepared answer, but the curiosity in the women’s faces seemed genuine, and she found herself telling them the whole story: how she had needed a job when she moved out at eighteen—she left out the part about aging out of the foster system—and found it as the receptionist at a design school. “I really had nothing else to do but go home to a tragic—and I do mean tragic—shared apartment, so I started auditing classes. Somehow, one of my professors took notice of me and recommended an internship with one of his friends, a well-known interior designer in Santa Barbara. Joseph taught me almost everything I know and gave me the opportunity to work on some projects of my own. When I was ready, I opened my own firm, and the rest is history.”

  “That’s amazing,” Delia said. “Sounds like God had it all planned out for you.”

  “I don’t know about God,” Kendall said, “but it worked out in the end.”

  Delia smiled in response, but Kendall caught the looks passed between the ladies and realized her misstep. Oh. She always thought of Colorado as so liberal and progressive; she hadn’t realized that she’d stumbled into the middle of a bunch of church people here in Jasper Lake.

  But so far they’d been nothing but nice to her, so she swallowed down her discomfort and turned the question back on Allison. “Social work. That’s a pretty intense field. How did you choose that?”

  “I had my own fairly traumatic experiences with child welfare when I was younger. I grew up really poor—falling-down-cabin poor—and for a while, I got taken away from my mom and put in foster care. But we happened to get lucky and had a really good social worker who was dedicated to reuniting me with my family. I know it doesn’t work that way all the time, and now that I’m older, I r
ecognize the challenges that social workers have in an overcrowded system, but I realized the impact a single person can have. I wouldn’t be here had she not gotten my mom back on her feet and given her the tools to care for her kids, so I feel like I have a responsibility to do that for someone else.”

  “Wow.” There was really nothing else Kendall could say in the face of that statement. Unlike some of the kids she’d met in foster care, she’d never really blamed the social workers. Even as a young girl, she realized that they had an impossible job with no real options. And most of the ones she’d dealt with were pretty decent people, even when the system got it wrong. If Allison wanted to try to survive in that world, more power to her. There was just a reason why no one in charge of Kendall had ever lasted more than two years.

  “Yeah, so now that you’ve heard all about Saint Allison, go ahead and ask me why I made souvenirs my life’s work,” Rebecca quipped. The table laughed, obviously some kind of long-running joke, and Allison stuck out her tongue like a teenager.

  Kendall grinned. “Why are souvenirs your life’s work?”

  “Because if I don’t sell overpriced, ugly refrigerator magnets, who will?” Rebecca chuckled. “No, really, it used to be my parents’ shop, and I took it over when they decided to leave snow behind and move to Arizona. I grew up in that shop. I couldn’t stand to see it shut down.”

  “So what’s your feeling about this resort they want to put in?” Kendall asked. “It seems like it would only help you.”

  But Rebecca didn’t get a chance to answer, because all heads swiveled toward the stage, where several musicians were getting into place behind microphone stands and shrugging on guitar straps. She craned her neck to see the rest of the band, but she couldn’t see past a large man in a puffy jacket.

  Without introduction, the band started into the first song with a scratchy guitar and a sharp rap of drums, filling the tiny space with an explosion of sound. It took Kendall a second to place the song: early 2000s Maroon 5 . . . the only era of the band’s music that she happened to like. A laugh spilled out of her mouth when she realized that the band’s lead singer was Luke, the painfully good-looking web designer and welcome-wagon guy, and that he was actually really good. She leaned forward to see if she could glimpse the other band members. She didn’t recognize the other guitarist or the bassist, but the drummer . . .

  Her mouth dropped open. “No.”

  Dawnice grinned at her. “Oh yes.”

  Kendall clapped a hand over her mouth, a goofy grin spreading before she could control it. Sure enough, the man behind the drum kit was none other than Gabe Brandt, dressed in jeans and a faded T-shirt and looking like an absolute pro with sticks in his hands. She wanted to ask questions, but she found she couldn’t look away from the band—from Gabe. The town mayor was a drummer in a cover band. It was so ridiculous and so perfectly right that she could do nothing but watch in giddy fascination until the end of the song.

  When she broke into applause with the rest of the room and looked back to the girls, more than one of them was exchanging a knowing glance with another. “What? Was this a setup?”

  “No,” Delia said slowly, her voice thoughtful. “Definitely not a setup.” But the way she studied Kendall made her once more feel like she was missing some important subtext.

  The band started into the second song, which again took her a moment to recognize as Green Day—alt-punk in the Colorado high country? It gave her the chance to be awed at how ridiculously fast the drums were. What did you call that anyway? Drumming? Stick work? She’d never really paid attention to the details, but there was one thing for certain: Gabe could really play. She couldn’t help but be impressed.

  “I don’t even know what to do with this,” she announced to the table and was rewarded with a round of laughter.

  That could have just as easily applied to the platter the size of a trash can lid that a different server placed in the center of their table, heaped high with bar favorites like potato skins, chicken wings, and mozzarella sticks. She took the small plate that Delia passed her and transferred some of the food to it.

  The band cycled through some classics before going to more recent hits, and while Kendall tried to follow the conversation flowing beneath the music, her eyes kept returning to the stage, where Gabe seemed to be having the time of his life. He was friendly and witty on a normal day, but there was an undercurrent of seriousness to him that had made her start to think maybe he was a little . . . dull. There was definitely nothing dull about performer Gabe. She suspected that blond god Luke with the unexpectedly fabulous voice and serious talent on the guitar got most of the attention, but she was far more interested in the endlessly energetic drummer.

  Right.

  She was interested in Gabe.

  For more than just friendship.

  Kendall glanced at Delia, who was watching her with a knowing smile. “Seriously, though, this was the whole idea of the girls’ night out, wasn’t it?”

  “Maybe a little.” There was still something careful in her tone that made Kendall’s stomach flutter inexplicably. “Mostly I thought you wouldn’t want to spend your Friday night alone in a B and B, however comfortable it might be.”

  Kendall flushed, embarrassed that she’d read so much into a friendly invitation, and glanced back at the stage, which didn’t help the warmth in her cheeks. She couldn’t help but see Gabe in an entirely different light now, and it wasn’t because she had a thing for musicians—she was maybe the one woman on the planet who as a rule didn’t. It was just that watching him do something he really loved purely for fun reminded her that maybe he wasn’t all about business and saving the town. And if he wasn’t, maybe she wasn’t either.

  Maybe they weren’t.

  The band finally went on break, and true to her prediction, it was Luke who was immediately approached by two young women. The other guitarist and the bassist dispersed to what she assumed were wives or girlfriends, but Gabe stood and scanned the crowd for a minute. Surprise registered on his face, and he wove his way toward their table.

  “Hey.” He addressed the whole table, but his eyes were firmly fixed on Kendall. The women knew it too, because they kept quiet and let Kendall do the talking.

  “Hi,” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me you were playing tonight?”

  He ran a hand through his hair and winced. “I don’t know. Thought maybe you’d think the cover band was lame. We have fun, though.” He glanced at the other women as if just realizing they were present. “Did you guys enjoy the first set?”

  Allison responded. “Of course. You guys are always good. Can you play some P!nk on the next set?” She grinned and tugged the ends of her hair.

  “I think there might be some on the set list, given prior requests.” He grinned at Allison before his eyes traveled back to Kendall. “Can I get you a drink? I’m going to grab a soda before we go back up there.”

  “Um, sure. But I can get it myself.”

  Delia slid out of the booth to let her out, and Kendall straightened her sweater self-consciously. She’d spent the last several days with this guy, so why did she suddenly feel awkward? She started to follow Gabe through the crowd to the bar, but when she cast a look back at the table, Dawnice flashed her a thumbs-up. Kendall shook her head with a low laugh.

  “So this is where you tell me how impressed you are, right?” Gabe waggled his eyebrows and grinned at her while they waited for the bartender to get to them.

  “I would’ve before you went fishing for compliments. But now I don’t think your ego needs any more help.”

  “Harsh. But probably fair.” He glanced back at the table. “Seriously, though, are you having fun? When I ran into Delia, she told me she’d invited you to go out with them, and I thought it was a great idea. They’re all nice women and they’re smart. Seemed like your type of people.”

  “Why, Gabe Brandt, was that a compliment?” She fluttered her lashes at him. She hadn’t even been drinking that much,
but she felt suddenly light and flirtatious.

  “I think it might have been.” He caught the eye of the bartender, who came over immediately. “A Coke for me and . . .”

  “. . . sparkling water.” She shrugged. “One beer is kind of my limit. And I already stuffed myself with appetizers.”

  “The Mother Lode,” Gabe groaned. “You’ll all need a wheelbarrow to leave. It’s killer.”

  It dawned on Kendall that they were making inane small talk like they’d just met, rather than having shared some very personal information about themselves already. But it was like the change in venue—the change in perspective—had landed them in new territory, and she was struggling to find her footing. Should she flirt? Should she bring up business? Should she—?

  “Oops. I’m being summoned.” Gabe nodded toward the stage, where Luke and the bassist were already taking their places again. He took his Coke from the bartender. “I have to get back up there. I understand if you don’t want to stay the whole time. I mean, you’re welcome to . . . but don’t feel obligated to stay on my account.” He seemed to realize that he was babbling, so he took a quick drink of his Coke and cocked his head back toward the stage. “I’m going to go now.”

  Kendall watched him leave, a smile spreading over her face. The oh-so-smooth and collected mayor seemed to have gotten tongue-tied over her. At least she wasn’t the only one thrown by the change of venue. She took her sparkling water and made her way back to the booth.

  Delia slid over to make room for her again, but no one said anything, just beamed knowing grins her direction.

  “There’s really no way I can play this cool, can I?”