There was a distinct way in which Nate’s stomach dropped as Lydia fell into step beside him. Of all the people he could have ran into this morning, she was at the top of his ‘do not want to come across’ list - actually she may have been the only inhabitant of that list. The blonde cop wouldn’t be fooled as easily as many of the other inhabitants of the island, which was exactly why in that moment he began praying like hell that maybe it was his lucky day.
It wasn’t. He knew that the moment she inquired about Louisa.
“Morning,” Nate returned the greeting, attempting to eradicate the clipped tone he’d been using with everyone else that morning. “Guess you could say I was feeling restless this morning,” he used to be better at lying than this - what the hell happened? “And breakfast won’t be happening for Lou and I for at least a couple more hours.” Yeah, that last part wasn’t helping him any and he knew it.
The best way to get the attention off of himself was to redirect the conversation, he knew that. “What has you up and about so early this morning?” Nate knew it wasn’t the greatest of redirections, but there was a small glimmer of hope that he could get Lydia talking about her reason for being up and she’d forget entirely about why he was up at this ungodly hour.
The likelihood of that fact was slime - he knew too many cops back home to believe she’d stop with her casual, yet very clearly a line of questioning as to where his daughter was or what he had been doing.