The Glass Dolphin: Romantic Women's Friendship Fiction (Five Island Cove Book 9) by Jessie Newton

Author:Jessie Newton [Newton, Jessie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AEJ Creative Works
Published: 2023-07-31T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

Kristen secured her hair at the nape of her neck, then bent to pull on her shoes. The winter weather had taken a turn in the past couple of days, but she still went out walking with Theo most mornings. Sometimes, she went with Laurel, AJ, and Jean, the three of them pushing their children in strollers.

The wind rattled her window, and Kristen glanced over to Sweetie, who liked to perch on the edge of the dining room table and watch the passersby as they moved past the sliding glass door. She had a tiny patio where she kept a big potted plant and not much else. There wasn’t room for much else, though Sweetie did have a cat toy there she liked to scratch on in the spring, summer, and fall.

She shrugged into her coat and opened the door to her condo, thinking she’d meet Theo down the sidewalk toward his place. She’d only been there a few times, as they spent the majority of their time together at her house, with her friends, at a restaurant, or walking around their senior community.

“Oh.” She nearly plowed into the man, who was in the motion of reaching to ring her doorbell. That alone struck her as odd, because Theo just came in, calling, “I’m here, Kris,” when he arrived to go walking in the morning.

A gust of wind shot down the stairwell between the buildings, but Theo smiled anyway. “Good morning,” he said.

“Morning,” fell from Kristen’s lips, because Theo wasn’t alone. Another woman in her sixties or seventies stood a half-step behind him, her pasted-on smile as bright as the noon-day sun at mid-summer.

“Ready?” Theo offered no explanation. He didn’t introduce the woman. Kristen looked for similarities between them, thinking her a cousin or sister, but Theo hadn’t said any of his relations would be in town. Kristen couldn’t see anything the same about them either—other than their snowy white hair.

“Yes,” she said, continuing the movement she’d started to leave her condo. She smiled at the other woman. “I’m Kristen Shields.”

“Gladys Carrole,” the woman said. She extended her hand for Kristen to shake, which she did.

She also cut a glance over to Theo, who seemed to wake up in that moment. He started to walk out of the stairwell, and Gladys followed him, with Kristen bring up the rear. “Gladys is the historian for the Cove Fisherman’s Coalition.”

Kristen’s feet came to a complete standstill, then grew roots. “She is?”

“Was,” Gladys said with a playful laugh. “My husband was a fisherman here in the cove for, oh, at least sixty years. Just retired a few years ago.”

Kristen’s heartbeat bounced through her body, and if she’d been hooked up to a monitor, she was sure the blips would be rapid and close together. A whoosh moved through her, leaving her lightheaded and pressing one palm to her chest.

“Are you okay?” Theo asked from several paces down the sidewalk. He’d left the shadows of the building, and the weak February sunlight lit him up.

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