Page 28 of Don't Cross the Blue Line
I step onto the ice where I belong. This day can’t get over fast enough.
Five
Everly
Blake’s Café is exactly how I remember it—and for once, that’s a good thing. Tucked into a corner near the food court, it smells like every good Saturday I ever had.
Mismatched mugs on wooden shelves. Seasonal drinks etched onto a chalkboard menu. Wobbly stools at a counter worn smooth by decades of elbows. Norah Jones crooning over the sound of coffee grinding.
And just like old times, I instantly recognize Helen. She was already rocking a little gray when last I saw her. Now she’s full silver, reading glasses on a beaded chain hanging around her neck.
“Hot chocolate,” I say, sliding onto a stool. “Extra whipped cream. Please.”
She looks up. Her face softens, blooming slowly into recognition. “Everly Hart.” Her gaze trails over my hair and face. “Oh, honey. Look at you.”
I can’t help but smile. “Hi, Helen.”
“Your father said you might come today. I told him I’d believe it when I saw it.” She’s already reaching for the cocoa. “How lon g has it been?”
I pretend to think on it. “Hmm…seventeen years? Give or take.”
Helen clicks her tongue. “Well, that’s just too long. You need to promise me you won’t stay away so long next time. I’ve been meaning to tell you how much I’ve been loving your books.”
Something flutters in my chest. “You read my books?”
Helen’s brows shoot up. “I might be a little bit of a fan.” She points to a shelf on the back wall. It’s lined with E.J. Hartley novels. “I never miss a release.”
I don’t know why that warms me down to my bones.
She sets the mug in front of me—hand-thrown ceramic, blue glaze, chipped at the rim. The whipped cream is Everest. “Your dad was in yesterday, setting up for the farewell.”
A knot cinches behind my ribs. “Oh?”
Helen leans against the back counter. Takes a sip of her own coffee. “You know, he talks about you like you hung the moon, Everly. Always has. Even when you two weren’t speaking.”
Through the café window, I catch a sliver of the rink through the open double doors—gray ice, banners, the flicker of the scoreboard. And for a half second, I see the ghost version: Dad on the ice in his coaching pullover, hands held out. And me, maybe seven, in a puffy pink coat and white figure skates two sizes too big, wobbling toward him with my arms out like a tightrope walker who has gravely miscalculated her qualifications.
Come on, Evie. I’ve got you. I’m right here.
He always caught me. Until the day he didn’t. Until the day he was coaching Beckett Benson instead, and Mom was crying in the parking lot, and nobody caught either of us.
I blink. The ghost dissolves.
I offer a polite smile, trying my best not to look like she just scraped away a very sensitive scab. “That’s sweet of you to say.”
Something beeps on the counter behind her, and Helen pulls away.
I take a sip of the cocoa, my gaze trailing over the old café, catching on the door leading to the kitchen. “Helen. Do you know if the old service corridors are still accessible? Behind the stores?”
She gives me a look over her reading glasses. “I think so. Why? You planning a mall heist?”
“Funny. But yes, I am writing a heist scene set in a mall. I need the back-of-house—loading docks, security cameras.”
Helen purses her lips. “Well, there’s an employees-only door by the food court. You take a left at the T-junction for loading docks. Security office is the room on the right—though it’s unmanned on weekends. I think management has been low-staffed on security for a few months now.” She refills my whipped cream without being asked. “Don’t tell anyone I told you that.”
“You’re an accessory to fictional crime now, Helen.”
“Honey, I’ve been an accessory to your father’s bad coaching jokes for thirty years. This is a lateral move.”
