Auf'd (The Belinda & Bennett Mysteries, Book Two)

Chapter 11

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Bennett didn't sleep well that night. He'd driven home after following Belinda to make sure that's where she went and then vainly tossed and turned for hours. He had too many thoughts—most of them involving Belinda—crammed in his head. So he gave up once it was light out and spent the morning cleaning, responding to client e-mails, and taking off to the beach with his kayak. Even after getting sprayed over and over with cold salt water, he swore he could still smell beer on his skin. And those activities still provided him with too much time to think. So he took refuge in the one place he could always find it: his grandmother's.

Bennett plopped down on the porch of her beach cottage after waking up from a nap in the room he'd slept in as a kid all summer for years. It was surreal sitting there with a bowl of her homemade granola, listening to the water lap along the shore of the inlet her house sat tucked inside. Her kayak was propped on its nose in a corner next to a towel drying on the rail. Her cat, S'mores, snored in a coil next to him. The wind chime made of shells swung in circles below the roofline. He felt the way he always did. Sheltered from the mania of downtown—and his own life.

"So, how's Belinda?" His grandmother sunk into a chair next to him, her short salt and pepper hair spiking out around her head and her reading glasses folded in on her shirt collar. Bennett had a lot of her features. Her dark hair (well, her hair used to be almost-black like his) and smoky eyes. She was still a beautiful woman, and Bennett loved that she refused to act like an old lady.

Bennett balanced his bowl in one hand, studying the granola. They hadn't talked yet. He'd come over and after a short exchange, she'd told him to go get some sleep. But he chose not to answer her. Not because he was being stubborn, but because he didn't know how to.

"Uh-oh." She set her mug of tea down and sat up straighter. "You have your bad news mouth." She quirked her head. "What's wrong, baby?"

Bennett licked his lips. He intended to quickly summarize the situation, but he always struggled to be as succinct with his grandmother as he was with other people. It was something about the way she listened. She just drew out all of these things he would never tell anyone else. He wanted to ignore all the details and get to the point, but as he started relating the story from the top, he drifted and digressed until he felt he'd pretty much said every thought and feeling he'd had since. It was like he channeled Belinda.

His grandmother just listened with her hands tucked between her knees, not even interjecting with an uh-huh, until he concluded. Bennett shook his head, resting his face on his palm. He might need another nap. Just going over it all exhausted him.

She leaned sideways on her lounger, mulling over his story. After a long silence, which could swing either way for him, she spoke. "Why are you really letting go of Belinda?"

A probing question. Her favorite kind.

Bennett stared overtop the sea grasses swaying in circles, unsure what she wanted him to say. He could just make out the patch of beach his grandmother walked to sometimes, and the old school wooden bathhouses across the road from it. It was the kind of thing Belinda would like.

His grandmother sucked in a breath and let it out slowly, not waiting for his answer. "You know, when your father said he was getting married, I worried that he was doing it mainly to spite me."

Bennett glanced at her sideways. So the probing question had a story linked to it. Not surprising.

"You see," she said, "before that we had a chat about your mother, and I pointed out some things that concerned me." She rubbed her berry-stained lips together. "She never made any bones about how much she wanted her career in New York, but I knew your father would never go. He liked living simply, and he's no city dweller. He would never agree to move."