Local Flavour (Book 1, the Local Flavour Series)

Part 4: Move

"Oh come on." Lucy cursed under her breath before blasting the horn. "Move!"

She glanced at her designer watch and grimaced. She was stopped dead on a dirt road just outside of town. Just weeks before, she was living in a sleek downtown condo and sipping flashy cocktails in the VIP section of the hottest clubs in Toronto with her friends. Now she was stuck on a dusty road behind two geezers in pickup trucks with their windows rolled down, chatting away and blocking the road.

She shook her head in disbelief. She hadn't lived home in years and yet nothing had changed. Folks still stopped and chatted like they had all the time in the world. Why didn't they go to the ancient coffee shop on Main Street if they wanted to yammer all day? Lucy blasted the horn again.

"Move your truck off the road or I'll move it for you!" She yelled out the window, with another long horn blast.

Finally, the truck in front of her slowly pulled ahead.

"Finally," she muttered under her breath. "Assholes!"

"Lucy McLean?"

The flannel-clad man in the truck on the opposite side of the road peered into her car. She flushed, turned and looked straight ahead.

"Hi, Mr. Carmichael."

He shook his head, making a tsk noise. She shrunk down in her seat. "You weren't this rude when I taught you in high school. You're not in Toronto anymore, missy," he said through the open window. With his thick, East Coast accent, he pronounced it like T'ranna.

"Sorry, Mr. Carmichael," she mumbled, filled with embarrassment. She wished a hole in the ground would open up so she could crawl into it.

"Looks like you came back home just in time. The big city was turning you into a jerk." He nodded, putting the truck in gear. "Good to see you. Tell Faye we said hello." He gave a short wave and drove off. His wife glared at Lucy from the passenger seat as they slowly passed by.

Lucy blew out a breath, put the car in gear and slowly pulled away. She didn't live in a big city anymore, she reminded herself. She had to stop yelling at strangers. It was easy to forget that nobody was a stranger in Port Ross.

The sunny sky suddenly filled with swollen, bruised-looking clouds as the evening closed in. She was beyond exhausted, having worked a long day that included meeting with the blunt-bordering-on-rude field producer for what she was starting to think of as The Stupid Reality Show.

That was followed by text-fighting with her cousin (the self-appointed 'head chef' of her restaurant) and a quick trip to the city to pick up some new kitchen equipment. She rubbed her eyes, heart sinking at the thought of the hours of work still ahead.

"Oh Dad, you really dropped me in it," she muttered. And where are you?

No matter where she was in the world, her father was only a phone call away at any time, ready with a strong shoulder for her to cry on or some tough-love wisdom. She wasn't quite as close to her mom, but she rarely went a full week without talking to her Dad. The past few weeks, he was strangely silent.

At first, she barely noticed, she was so horrified by the state of the restaurant and busy working around the clock to try and turn the ship around. She called him at the end of the first week, concerned about some discrepancies in the accounting. He never called her back, she realized. It was weird.

"I spoke to him the other day, he seemed fine," Faye had said when Lucy mentioned it. There was no cause for alarm, she told herself. He was all right. But something felt off.