“How did you do that? I was gone like three hours.”

“Ever hear of a hardware store?”

She glared at him. “I hate you.”

“You’re not my favorite right now, either. If you’re going to act like a kid, I’m going to treat you like a kid. You snuck out. That’s unacceptable behavior. Now go to your room. We’ll talk in the morning.”

She held out her hand “I want my phone.”

“I want a daughter who acts her age. We’re both going to have to live with the pain of disappointment.”

She literally stomped her foot, screamed out loud, then disappeared into her bedroom. The door slam was hard enough to rattle a couple of pictures on the wall.

Keith sucked in a breath and wondered where his baby girl had gone and how he was going to get her back.

Ellen sat in her Subaru in the parking lot of the North Bend outlet mall and tried to gather her courage. There was not a bone in her body that wanted to be shopping today. She had plenty of clothes in perfectly good condition. Yes, they were baggy, but they were comfortable and practical and, perhaps most important of all, paid for. She’d been raised to be frugal and while she might rail against her parents and their weird rules, she couldn’t escape them. Not wasting money was a biggie. Plus there was the whole “saving for college” thing.

But a deal was a deal. She would get a few things for the bus trip and the summer. Shorts and T-shirts for home, some crop pants and maybe a blouse or two for the college visits. She had a budget, she had a free morning. All she was lacking was the will.

“I’m already here,” she muttered, getting out of the SUV.

As she stepped up onto the sidewalk, her thighs reminded her that day two of her yoga video had been just as painful as day one. Not that she wanted to do yoga—it was stupid—but in an attempt to prove to her son she had a life, she’d dutifully dug it out and had gone through the whole, tedious thirty minutes of stretching and reaching and breathing.

It all felt like a stupid waste of time. She wasn’t a bendy person. She liked to think that her flexibility was more mental. Still, it had been worth it when Coop had asked her what she was doing and she’d been able to tell him she was practicing yoga so she felt comfortable going to a class. He’d been surprised, she’d been only mildly uncomfortable lying. All in all, a moment.

Ignoring the general why-did-you-do-this-to-us ache in her body, she walked into the store and looked around.

There were plenty of sale racks, which she appreciated. She whipped through crop pants and shorts, only to remember she wasn’t going to buy her usual size fourteen clothes. She tried to figure out her actual size. A twelve? A ten?