Chapter 50: Chapter 50

“I don’t—” he starts, but she interrupts.

“Do you love him?”

The stutter in his mental processes is still there—same as when Jennifer asked—but it’s shorter, Ryan notes, and the answer is easier to come up with and not be an outright lie: “I don’t know. It might be heading that way, but I don’t know yet.”

She nods. “Are you falling for him, then?”

He can answer that one, and nods.

She smiles then, and reaches across the table to squeeze his hand. “Oh, Ryan.”

“You don’t…you don’t mind?”

“It’s not my business tomind, is it?” she asks cryptically. “I can’t say it’s something I ever predicted, or something I’m even particularly pleased about, but it’s not my business, dear. The two of you are old enough to know what you’re doing, and if it goes wrong, then you’re old enough to make your own mistakes as well.”

Ryan bites his lip, and squeezes her hand, tight, like he’s a little kid again, nervous of the cavernous space of the village church.