Free The Missing Year by Belinda Frisch Page B

long story,” Ross said, using her words against her.
    “Mommy!” A smile spread across the timid boy’s face as a dyed redhead wearing enormous hoop earrings and tiny shorts with the pockets hanging out the bottom rushed down the aisle toward them.
    “Viv?” Ross couldn’t have picked her out of a lineup.
    “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Viv ruffled the boy’s hair as she apologized to Camille. Her voice was deeper than Ross remembered, probably from the cigarettes he could smell on her breath. “Goddamned court again. The asshole, of course, didn’t show up. Like I have the kind of cash to pay for everything on a part-time job.”
    Camille covered the boy’s ears.
    If it weren’t at the exact moment Vivian recognized Ross, he wasn’t confident Viv would have taken the hint that she shouldn’t have been disparaging the boy’s father in front of him.
    “Ross Reeves is that you?” she said.
    “In the flesh.”
    “Are you back ?”
    “That’s the burning question, isn’t it?” he said. “No. I’m not back.”
    “Logan’s had lunch, but he’s hungry,” Camille interrupted. “You had better get him home and get him something to eat.” She ushered Viv away.
    “Nice seeing you again.” Ross waved to Viv, who scowled at Camille over her shoulder.
    “You, too,” Viv said, rolling her eyes.
    “I’m so sorry about that.” Camille couldn’t hide her embarrassment. “Family Court stuff, and Logan.”
    Ross couldn’t imagine anyone dressed the way Viv was dressed coming off as the “responsible parent.”
    “She wore that to court?”
    Camille nodded. “Really says something, right? You’ve missed a lot.”
    “Apparently.”
    “Speaking of missing ….” Camille made a show of surveying his cart. “That’s not much food. Shopping for one?” she asked, prying the way small town women do.
    Ross nodded. “Yep.”
    “Then you don’t have plans?”
    “For when?”
    “For right now?”
    “I guess not,” he said.
    “Why don’t you let me buy you a drink?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
     
    Mick’s Tavern—a floor to ceiling green, two-room bar that smelled of fryer grease and stale beer—was an Italian’s attempt at an authentic Irish Pub with an “Every day is St. Patrick’s Day” motif.
    Ross and Camille had gone to high school with the owner, Luca Stefano, who had purchased the place shortly before Ross and Sarah had left town. Ross looked around thankful Luca was nowhere to be found.
    The last thing Ross needed was more pity.
    “Luca’s really gone tacky with the place,” he said.
    “And filthy, too, but it’s a staple, right?”
    “I guess so.”
    Mick’s had been the late-night spot in its heyday.
    A middle-aged waitress wearing a plaid skirt and a white blouse greeted Ross and Camille at the door with, “Sit anywhere you want.” Easily twice the age of the other girls, the uniform wasn’t nearly as flattering on her. Her sour attitude indicated that maybe she knew it.
    Camille surveyed the room and settled on a booth near the corner where the table was still wet. “At least it’s wiped down,” she said, sitting across from Ross and opening the beer menu.
    Ross, who had narrowly escaped a bachelor’s spaghetti dinner, went straight for the food. He settled on ordering Shepherd’s pie and set the sticky menu on the table next to his vibrating phone.
    “You need to take that?” Camille asked.
    It was Mattie again.
    “It can wait,” he said, sliding the phone into his pocket. “How have you been?”
    “Good. Well, not good , but okay. It is the craziest coincidence running in to you. I had heard … I mean, people were saying …”
    Ross lifted his eyebrows. “What’s the rumor?”
    “That you’re holed up like some kind of crazy hermit halfway across the country.”
    “I don’t think it’s quite halfway.”
    “And the rest?” Camille said.
    “I’d say hermit is fairly accurate.”
    “That’s a shame. Sarah wouldn’t want that. You know that, don’t