by Becky Melby
“Yeah. Says you.”
Yeah. Says me. Emily swallowed sarcasm with a mouthful of coffee. “Did you and Luke check over this place before you”—practically gave me your inheritance out of pity—“sold it to me?”
“Nah. Neither of us could get away. Mom and Dad and my grandma were there in February. They took a few things and hired the auction people. Is there a problem? I mean, I know there are problems with the place, but is there something you didn’t expect?”
I didn’t expect mysterious letters or a hidden room or an iron cross or a little boy in a striped shirt. “Well, yes. There were a few things left here.”
Cara groaned. “I was afraid of that. Listen, just hire somebody to cart it out and send me the bill.”
Emily cringed. “I found a tin box with a bunch of toys.” She balanced the truck on her knee. “Marbles and stuff, like a little boy’s collection. It all looks old enough that it could have belonged to your great-grandfather.”
“Huh. Well, just toss it or give it to some little kid. Knowing you, you’ve already met all the kids in the neighborhood.”
Knowing you. The air through the window turned strangely cold. “I’ve met a couple. Um, what do you know about the things in the attic?”
A carefree laugh glided on airwaves from Highway 1. “I didn’t even know there was an attic! Sorry I’m not much help. Luke and I were actually baffled that she’d left it to us. Other than that summer with you, I’d only been there a few other times. She was my grandma’s mom, you know. That’s kind of distant.”
“I guess.”
“So whatever you found, it’s all yours to keep or dump. Hey, I have to make a couple calls for work. Can I call again tomorrow? I need some guy advice.”
This time, the sarcasm wouldn’t fit down her throat. “Sure. Call me. I’m the go-to girl on relationships.”
“Don’t be like that. The past is past. Isn’t that what your counselor said? You learned from the Keith mistake and that makes you an expert.”
“Right. Expert.”
“Stop that! Forget I ever brought him up and go have an awesome day. What are you doing today anyway?”
“Shopping for bedroom furniture.”
“See? You’re headed in the right direction. But don’t get serious about anyone, okay? I’m scoping out the possibilities here. Love you!” With another airy California laugh, she said good-bye.
It was much cooler in the barn than in the gravel drive where she’d parked the van. Emily unrolled the thin sleeves of her blouse as she followed Tina Palin around long tables filled with linens, glassware, and knickknacks.
“Do you need a bed?”
“No. I’ve got that covered.” No need to explain that she’d already bought a mattress—only a mattress, as the closer she was to the ground in the morning, the better.
“Over here’s the air conditioner. It’s kind of massive. Does it look like it’ll fit?”
Calculating the weight of the behemoth partially hidden by a tarp, Emily nodded. “It’ll be perfect.” She envisioned Jake fighting it up the folding stairs he’d just installed.
“Good.” Tina bent over and shoved a stack of flowerpots out of the way. “I should send all these with you to give to Jake. Have you met his brother-in-law? Now there’s a piece of work. A friend of ours just closed her greenhouse and Ben Madsen bought, like, two hundred flowerpots from her. Weird guy.” She pulled the tarp away.
“Don’t you try moving that.”
With a laugh that bounced from the empty stanchions on one side to the hay hook swinging overhead, Tina shrugged. “I won’t. I’ll have Colt, my hubby, load it all in his truck and bring it to you. Though I probably could do it. I hayed the whole season I was pregnant with my first.” She prodded the slight bulge of her abdomen with one finger. “My OB says in a healthy pregnancy you’d actually have to be trying to hurt it for anything to happen.”
An unseen hand stretched over Emily’s windpipe. She turned away, pretending to be engrossed in the curved arm of an old rocking chair.
“That rocker belonged to my great-aunt. My mother got it when her cousin died. She was an only child and she’d never married, so there was no one to pass it on to. My mother said she was probably rocked in it when she was a baby, so it’s a little sentimental, but my sisters and I don’t have the room. I have my mom’s chair. She rocked us girls in it and nursed all my babies in this chair.” Her words used up the air Emily struggled to suck in through her closing throat.
“You said you had a little desk,” she rasped. “May I see it?”
“Sure. Sorry, I know I ramble.” She pointed at an oak desk with a single drawer. “You’re seriously going to live in your attic?”
Following slowly, Emily breathed the spots from her eyes and the thoughts from her head. “I’ll be out of the way and I won’t have to move from room to room.”
“Yeah, guess that makes sense.” Tina pulled a cloth from her back pocket and swiped it across the top of the desk, leaving a clean path in its wake. “The lady from the Historical Society almost bought this. Will it suit you?”
“It looks like it’ll fit through the attic door—that’s the main thing.” Emily turned a brass drawer knob. “I’ve been wanting to get in touch with someone from the Historical Society. I’d like some more information about the house.”
“It’s a one-woman show in this town. Dorothy Willett. I’ll introduce you. Hey! What are you doing on the twenty-third? It’s a Friday night.”
Emily opened the desk drawer and closed it again. She wasn’t here to make friends. She was here to make money. “I—”
“Are you in a relationship?”
Emily blinked. The boldness was disconcerting, yet easier to deal with than the eggshells friends and family had tiptoed over in her presence since the accident. “No. I’m not.”
“Wellll.” Tina’s voice rose up the scale. She held the single syllable until she ran out of breath. “Then it’s settled. We’re having a barbeque on the twenty-third. Dorothy will be there and Jake can pick you up.”
“No!” It popped out, too loud and way too emphatically. “I hardly know him. I mean, I don’t want—”
“Then this would be a great way to start.”
“Tina…” Her exhale scraped the lining of her tight throat. “I’m not staying here. I’ll be leaving Rochester at the end of the summer.”
“All the more reason. It’s the perfect setup for a summer romance with no strings.” Her smile spread like a puddle of glue. “Kiss and run. Oh, what fun.”
Emily promenaded up the sidewalk on the arm of a floor lamp. Her cane swung from the harp beneath a cockeyed shade. Clanging through her front door like a peddler, she dodged a head-on collision with the extension ladder descending the stairs. Her cane backflipped, hitting Jake in the shin.
“Ah!”
Emily gasped. “I’m sorry!”
Jake laughed. “That thing’s wicked.” The attic heat had tightened his disheveled waves. Rock-star tendrils skimmed his collar. Heredity and sunlight had accomplished what some guys paid dearly for, and he was probably oblivious to it.
And she shouldn’t be noticing. But as she did, “Kiss and run, oh what fun” played in her head like a jingle for a low-budget commercial.
“Did it hurt?”
“No.” He pointed to the lamp. “Want that in the attic?
She nodded. “This is just the beginning. I bought an air conditioner and a desk.”
“It’s going to be cozy up there. I tacked down that roll of vinyl I found, so half your floor is covered anyway.”
“Thank you. None of this is in your job description and—” Her phone rang. She grabbed it on the fourth ring, opening it as she raised it to her ear. “Hello?”
“Emily? Hi, it’s Sierra. How are you? I heard you moved.”
How am I? The question crackled across four states and eighteen months, amplified by guilt. Emily turned her back on Jake and staggered toward the dining room. S
he should be the one asking the question, should have asked it long ago. How could the girl still sound the same? Young, joyful, as if a hope-filled life still lay ahead of her? As if Emily hadn’t stolen her future. “I’m fine. How”—the question she didn’t want answered lodged in her throat—“how are you doing, Sierra?”
“I’m good. Actually, I’m really, really good. Guess what?”
Leaning her elbow on the windowsill, Emily tried to stem tears. It didn’t work. “What?”
“Oh! I forgot why I called. Thank you for the birthday gift. You didn’t have to do that. I mean, that was übergenerous!” Her laugh tinkled like wind chimes. “So I have to tell you what I’m doing with the money. Are you ready? You won’t believe this.”
Through tears and regret, a sad smile tugged Emily’s mouth. “Tell me.”
“I’m buying a dress. For prom!”
“You’re going…to prom?” Emily wiped the dampness from her chin. What did prom look like at her school? There couldn’t be dancing.
“Yes! I met this guy, Dillon. He goes to my old school, so I guess that tells you something.” Again, the silvery laugh. “He calls himself a music geek. That’s how we met. He started taking lessons from my old piano teacher and she asked us to do a duet for Christmas Eve. It was so amazing. He said it was like we could read each other, like we had a soul connection. Isn’t that awesome?”
God, don’t let her get hurt. Don’t let him use her. Prayers for Sierra were the only ones she knew these days. “That’s wonderful. What does your mom say?” The image of Dawn Anne, leaning against a hospital doorway, sobbing uncontrollably, was the only one she could call up. Years of memories. Girlfriend getaways overflowing with chocolate, wine, and laughter disappeared forever with a neurologist’s prognosis.
“She loves him. She should—he’s taking over half her job. Dillon picks me up on weekends and brings me home and over Christmas break he took me back and forth to rehab. He’s amazing. I guess I said that already. Oh, and Beacon loves him.”
“Beacon?”
“Sorry. I figured you would have heard about him from Mom. He’s my dog. I just got him in February. We’re still training together, but he’s so smart. He gets me almost as much as Dillon does.”
Emily ran a finger down a wavy streak on the window. A red dot bobbed and swam on a limb of her pine tree. “That’s…wonderful.” She turned away and sat on the floor.
“Have you talked to Mom lately?”
I haven’t talked to your mom since I left Colorado. Not because of Sierra’s mom. Dawn Anne hadn’t created the distance. Dawn Anne didn’t blame her. Because she didn’t know the truth. “No, I haven’t.”
“Cool. Then I get to tell you. But maybe you already heard about it from Aunt Susan.”
Emily’s sister hadn’t told her anything. Susan was an eggshell-walker, and sometimes that was just fine. “I haven’t heard anything.”
“Mom and I and Beacon are driving back to Michigan in June for her high school reunion. We want to stop and see you on the way.”
Her stomach contracted, her tongue roughened like the canvas on her sandals. Excuses flooded her mind. She didn’t have a place for them, or the emotions they’d leave behind like suitcases stuffed with dirty laundry. “I don’t have any furniture and the house will be torn up by then and I—”
Laughter cut her off. “We’ll only be there one night. We’ll find a hotel and you can stay with us and we’ll take you out to eat and you can show us your new town.”
Show you? A solitary tear dropped to her knee, darkening the faded denim. “There isn’t much to see.” Her teeth ground together. Stupid choice of words.
“Well, you just mark your calendar and we’ll have fun no matter what. I’m making enough chocolate-covered pretzels to last the whole trip, so plan on getting fat.”
Emily nodded, wiping her face with her sleeve. “Sounds…fun.”
Her diaphragm tightened over her twisting stomach.
“Cool. Well, I have to get to class. See you soon.”
“Okay.” She rested her cheek on her knees. “Bye.”
Arms hugging bent legs, she groped for a mantra to banish despair, but the words that spit out of her roiling thoughts were ones her counselor had forbidden. My fault…if only…I never should have… why her?
“Excuse me.”
Emily lifted her gaze from the distressed floorboards. For the second time in two weeks he’d found her in a fetal position.
Jake cleared his throat. “Colt Palin is here with your stuff. Do you want the desk upstairs, too?” He acted as if women in tears on the floor were an everyday occurrence.
Too spent to brush the tracks from her cheeks, she nodded. As his footsteps echoed through the parlor, she closed her eyes.
But even with her hands pressed against them, she couldn’t make the room as dark as Sierra’s world.
CHAPTER 8
Jake closed his bedroom door and checked to make sure the only window was open. No matter what the temperature outside, he couldn’t sleep with it closed. The glow from a streetlamp filled the window well and he closed the shade. Black cement-block walls sucked the brightness from his bedside lamp. He’d painted the room when he was fifteen, right after his father died. It suited his shortlived Goth phase. And it suited him now, at thirty-three, back in his cave in his mommy’s basement like all the other statistics who’d failed at playing grown-up.
He hadn’t failed. But only his two closest friends knew that. He wasn’t advertising his reasons for selling the house he’d put his sweat and soul into. He wasn’t talking about why his work truck was now his only transportation. His friends just assumed the economy had sucker-punched Braden Improvements and he was hanging on by his fingernails like too many of the guys he’d known since he was a kid. None of it was true. In spite of refusing to cut corners, the business his father had started the year Jake was born was still growing. But human nature gravitated to the worst. He put up with the razzing and enjoyed his mom’s cooking.
He sat on the bed and opened his laptop. His version of Emily’s floor plan lit the room. Tomorrow would decide which one of them would cave on the two walls he was determined not to destroy. The girl was definitely falling under the house’s spell. He had that on his side.
His eyes traced the double black line encompassing the dining room and stopped at the window, at the two square feet she’d occupied when he walked in on her, saw the tear streaks on her face, and did nothing. Palms sweating, mouth turning to dust, he’d merely said good-bye and left.
But even when he played the scene over, he couldn’t make it end right. In his first do-over, he asked if there was anything wrong. She responded with a head shake and an awkward silence. The next remake featured him dropping to one knee beside her and brushing away tears with the back of his hand.
Slapping the laptop closed, he slumped against black pillows and turned off the light. In the thick blackness he couldn’t even make out the outline of the hand that acted out the sweep of tears from a soft, damp cheek.
“Like this.” Jake dropped the pencil onto the unsteady card table and dared Emily with an unblinking gaze.
“But you said you’d changed your mind about doing it my way.” She picked up the pencil and aimed the eraser at the line he’d just sketched on the floor plan she’d drawn by hand.
“You’re a very good artist.” His voice dripped with intentional patronization.
“I majored in art.” She chewed her bottom lip, until it slipped out with a quiet sucking sound. “And you majored in getting your own way.”
Jake snickered through his nose. “You’re right. I have a BS in narcissism.”
In spite of the straight line of her mouth, her eyes glittered with mirth. The pencil lowered and she closed both hands around it on the table. She leaned back. “So what I need to do is figure out how to get that ego to want what I want.”
If not for the telltale glint, she might have pulled off the coldhearted, ruthless
act. “Exactly.” He followed her lead, as if the rickety table were laden with poker chips.
“So what is it that will break you, Mr. Braden? Money? Fame? Your rep—”
His phone, on the table beside him, vibrated against his watch like a swarm of yellow jackets. He looked down. Ben. Or Ben’s phone anyway. Any other number and he would have ignored it and let Emily play out her hand. “Sorry. I have to—”
“Take it. I’ll just occupy myself….” She opened her hands. The pencil rolled out. She picked it up and began erasing.