The New Hope Cafe Read Online Free PDF Page B

and Beth Ann had backed away.
    Losing her daughter’s trust felt worse to Cara than nearly
dying.
    “If you change your mind, I’m next door.” She shut off the
reading light. The peace sign sent a golden glow from the doorway.
    “Jonah’s kind of grouchy,” Beth Ann said. “Maybe he won’t let
me pet the cat.”
    “I bet he will. He put in the night-light for you.”
    “He did?”
    “So you could see your way to the bathroom. And he made sure
you had this lamp to read by.”
    “So he’s grouchy, but nice.”
    “Mostly nice, I think.”
    “I like the light.”
    “You can tell him tomorrow. When you ask about the cat.”
    “Okay.” She sounded calm now, thanks to Jonah’s thoughtfulness.
“Good night, Mom.”
    “Good night, sweetheart.”
    Back in her room, Cara undressed and got into the bed Jonah had
slept in as a kid. When their father had his
troubles. With alcohol, she assumed. And Jonah had been through
something awful related to children based on what Rosie had started to say. Had
he and his wife been unable to have any? Had he lost custody?
    Not her business at all, but she couldn’t help being
curious.
    Cara closed her eyes. She needed all the sleep she could get if
she was to start work at five. She was glad, really. Staying busy slowed the
churn of dread and panic in her head. Working at the café had distracted her
from her troubles. For those hours, she’d felt more herself. She enjoyed meeting
the customers, tracking orders, juggling tasks, timing her moves so no one
waited too long for a refill or their tab.
    She turned onto her side, hoping to fall right to sleep. Five
o’clock came early. What about Barrett?
    He would go to Cara’s mother, of course, where he knew they
were staying. Her mother would tell him anything she knew. She’d thought Barrett
walked on water from the moment they met, when Cara was sixteen. He was the
attorney who convinced her mother’s unstable boyfriend to leave the state.
    Her mother believed Cara had exaggerated Barrett’s behavior,
that Cara’s injury had been an accident. But then Deborah Price believed men
over women, even to her own detriment. Or her daughter’s.
    The betrayal hurt all the same.
    Cara would have expected it from Barrett’s mother. Alice Warner
had despised her from the beginning. The punitive prenuptial agreement she’d
insisted on should have been a clue, but Cara had been too blinded by love to
realize it. She would never forgive herself for being so trusting, so naive.
    The divorce attorney Alice had hired had kept child support as
low as possible. Alice had offered a “supplement,” as long as Cara and Beth Ann
moved into her guesthouse and complied with her “house rules.” She was building
a case to win custody of Beth Ann, Cara realized.
    The worst blow of all, the most outrageous, was that Barrett
had won supervised visitation rights with Beth Ann when he was released.
    The judge’s rationale was that Barrett had never harmed or
threatened Beth Ann or struck Cara in Beth Ann’s presence. So, in theory, Cara
was breaking the law by keeping Beth Ann away from him.
    As soon as she could save the money, Cara would hire an
attorney to reverse that decision, but that was down the road.
    Cara’s mother would help Barrett however she could, Cara knew.
She had told her mother nothing of their plans, simply packed up, traded
Barrett’s BMW for her mother’s sedan, said goodbye and driven off.
    What if her mother had overheard a phone call with the domestic
violence counselor or peeked at Cara’s laptop’s browser history? She’d tell
Barrett. What if he was on his way here?
    The thought burned through her.
    They were sitting ducks, trapped here, just off the highway,
with a broken car. She gulped air and sat up, dripping with sweat, scared out of
her mind. She felt small and helpless, like the mouse she’d been in the
marriage.
    Cara heard the whine of a saw. Looking out the window, she saw
golden light glowing from