Dougie’s mouth quirked up into a smile and then did an immediate arch in the opposite direction, “Oh sure, but…you’re not going to like this.”
“What?”
“It’s Ned.” He sighed.
Ned. Ned Fitzroy. The Ned she’d left in her wake without a second look when she ran from this island in the summer of 1995. Of course.
Dougie nodded, his expression sympathetic. “He went to this program for historical restorations over at Eastern Michigan. He got some fancy degree on top of all of his regular licensing for general contracting. He could be making loads of money under the bridge, but he stays here.”
She dropped her bag on the floor, rattling the boards and making a considerable cloud of dust curl around her feet.
“The hotel is still an option,” Dougie told her, watching the dust settle on her boots.
“No,” she told him. “It’s not.”
2
The next morning, Ana was crouching in front of the massive oak bed in the master suite, sorting through her socks.
It may have seemed like a strangely obsessive task for someone who had much more important things to accomplish—job one, buy a shower curtain. It turned out that bathing without one was …challenging. So was sleeping in a dusty bedroom that smelled of damp and disuse. She was basically camping, without the fresh air or feeling of being virtuously “outdoorsy.” She should feel grateful for the fact that she’d come to the island in spring.
If this was the middle of winter…she shuddered to think of it. She would be long gone before winter came. The one thing she had was a plan. She’d started with nothing and she tried to tell herself that she could build it up all over again, but honestly, the very idea exhausted her. She was not some nubile twenty-something with endless energy powered by ambition and an empty belly. She was nearly middle-aged. She used to pride herself on the fact that she’d never considered having work done. Sure, she had a monthly appointment with her derm and a bathroom solely dedicated to her styling team’s machinations. But she’d refused to re-arrange her face to stave off the inevitable.
Now, she sort of wished she’d taken advantage of the plastic surgeons when she could afford their attention. The gray hairs were creeping in like an invasive species. No matter how much fancy French cream she applied under her eyes, the tiny lines kept showing up. And she couldn’t even afford the damn creams anymore.
She couldn’t go back to working multiple jobs and constantly scanning the horizon for opportunities. She had nothing. For the first time in almost twenty years, she had no safety net. She’d gotten used to it so quickly, having that cushion that protected her from the reality of her old life. She would get her cushion back. And that started with unpacking her socks. She pulled each pair out of her duffle bag and unrolled them.
Inside each pair was a sizeable diamond piece—a ring, a necklace, a pair of earrings, most of them at least five carats. She’d collected them over the years, when she reached the end of the month without spending all of her “allowance,” and stashed them away in her sock drawer. There was enough Gustavsson left in her to believe the good times might not last forever. She’d thought if the worst happened, she could present Bash with her secret hoard and he would be so thrilled with the practical, thoughtful woman he’d married. In her panic, she’d almost run out of the apartment without them. Then she remembered to tell the agent who was supervising her packing at the last minute, “I need socks!” and shoved all of them inside her bag while the agent tried to find a reason to argue.
She hadn’t had time to sell them before her exodus from the city. There were too many reporters following her and she didn’t want to be seen hocking her jewelry. Agents from the IRS or Treasury Department might see it and come after her for the proceeds of the sale. She planned to go below the bridge somewhere, probably Traverse City or even Grand Rapids—somewhere she could find a jewelry store capable of paying what she needed. Most likely, she would need to find several jewelry stores to avoid raising red flags. All she needed was to get reported to police for trying to sell her own “stolen” jewelry.
She knew she wouldn’t be able to get retail price for the pieces, but she hoped it would be enough to fix up the house for sale. Selling Fishscale House wouldn’t be enough to set her up for life, but maybe it would be enough to prop her up while she found a divorce lawyer willing to take her case, to get her a settlement she could live on. She understood that might mean working, and while she felt intimidated and unsure of what she could possibly be qualified for, she wasn’t afraid of earning her keep.
Satisfied that no one had stolen her sock treasures from her carry-on, she stowed the jewelry in her bag and scrubbed her hand over her face. She was going to have to see Ned today. She wanted to put it off, after selling the jewelry and about a million other moving-in tasks she could use to procrastinate. But getting Ned to agree to work on Fishscale House was an important first step, one she desperately wished she could skip.
Seeing Ned and asking for help meant swallowing more than her pride. Once upon a time, Ned was the man she saw living her dream life with in Fishscale House, her happily ever after. Sure, most of the kids on the island just knew it was haunted, but Ned and Ana always saw it as a fairy tale castle. They’d imagined what it would be like to find a way to buy the place and turn it into their home, a place they could raise kids and be happy. Because they were about sixteen at the time, staying up as late as they wanted and controlling the TV were also mentioned.
But then her dreams changed. She told him that she would leave one day, and he’d grin at her and say sure she would, and then go right back to talking about all the improvements he would make to Fishscale House. Ned had been a trap, baited with honeyed promises he might deliver, but would never be enough. She hadn’t even said goodbye when she left. She’d just taken her savings out of the bank—cash she’d hoarded ruthlessly while working summers at the Dairy Moo —and boarded the ferry. She knew that if she told Ned, he would have talked her out of it. He would have convinced her to stay just for the summer, just until she saved a little more. And then next thing she knew, she’d be pregnant, living with Ned in the apartment over the pub, stuck there in resentful domesticity for the rest of her life.
Ned seemed to be the only person who was honestly surprised that she left—if the emails he’d sent her AOL address had been any indication. Her parents had been…resigned to the fact that she would never make her life on the island. They knew that she planned on leaving, that there was nothing for her on the island. Sometimes, Anastasia thought her mother had wanted to leave, too, when she was younger, before married life and a child pinned her to the island. They’d been so pleased when she’d married Sebastian, though they hadn’t come for the wedding. They were embarrassed, said they didn’t feel comfortable with “those type of folks,” and asked her to send pictures. They just weren’t comfortable leaving what they saw as their place.
But Ned had seemed shocked, like he wasn’t listening when she told him she couldn’t be content living there. She wanted more than living in a clapboard shack where the wind rattled the windows all winter. Not that New York was warm exactly, but it felt like the center of the universe. It had all of the color and movement and life that Espoir never had. When she’d first arrived, she’d gone down to Times Square like a tourist and sat on the outdoor café chairs, nursing the single black coffee she could barely afford and watching all the people go by.
She’d worked two and sometimes, three, jobs, had five roommates in a two bedroom walk-up apartment, eaten Ramen like she was personally endorsing it. Every cent she could spare went to buying designer staples she could wear frequently without anyone’s notice; a classic Calvin Klein sheath dress, a pair of Louboutin heels, a black Chanel clutch. She’d never attended college. She’d devoured etiquette books, Tiffany & Co. catalogues, fashion magazines, interior design textbooks, histories on the Kennedys, the Rockefellers, anything that would help her navigate their world. She�
��d ruthlessly pared the Yooperneese from her vocabulary, using diction tapes to help her take on a more neutral “newscaster” accent. She’d created her own education from nothing. She’d created her life from nothing.
By asking Ned for help, on this project of all things, she was swallowing a Great Lake’s worth of regrets and apologies. And she didn’t even know if it would be worth it. He could slam the door in her face, and she wouldn’t blame him in the least.
He’d never said anything about going to school for construction or restoration. He wasn’t even interested in carpentry when she knew him. How was she supposed to approach him after all these years and ask for a favor? Would she just brazen her way through, acting as if she hadn’t stomped all over his feelings years before? Or would this require more of a hair shirt and groveling tactic?
Argh, if she approached him at the pub, it would be witnessed by half the town, including Ned’s sister, who had threatened to burn off Anastasia’s eyebrows via that same AOL account.
“Well, if you’re going to be knocked down a peg or twenty, you might as well get it over with,” she muttered, digging her travel makeup case out of her bag. “What exactly does one wear to a humbling?”
Before she could find a suitable outfit for the occasion, a loud knock at the door caught her attention. Since all of her financial eggs were in one basket, er, duffle bag, she slid the bag into the wardrobe in the corner and locked it, pocketing the key.
“Coming!” she yelled, treading down stairs she didn’t entirely trust, wondering who the hell could be knocking on her door at this hour. Dougie had sworn that he wouldn’t tell anybody she was in town. It was part of “client confidentiality” or some code of property management ethics that he had made up on his own, but stuck to religiously. One thing was certain, it wouldn’t be Ned. She’d be lucky if her former high school sweetheart didn’t leap over the bar and bolt out of the pub when she approached.
It was when she opened the door and saw said sweetheart standing on her front porch that she realized that while Dougie may stick to his strict property management protocols, Bonnie Jergenson did not.
On those long dark nights when Sebastian was traveling on “business,” she’d imagined Ned Fitzroy. She’d told herself that he was probably balding, with a dad bod and a frumpy wife who had to clip coupons to feed their brood of loud, sticky children. The phrase “sour grapes” haunted her lonely marriage bed no matter how many luxurious custom bedding sets she bought.
Well, he still had a full head of dark, almost black, though it was shorn into a tousled sort of style instead of the long waves that once curled behind his ears. He had the same long straight nose, thin lips and hard, gray eyes. While he’d smiled so much when she’d known him in school, he had a stern air now, that reminded Ana of his father. Or it may have just been her. Tom Fitzroy, a stubborn Scotsman who’d insisted on making his living here on an island full of even more stubborn Scandinavians, never seemed too thrilled to clap eyes on her…or anyone really. For a man who ran a pub, he didn’t seem to have much use for people, in general.
Still tall and rangy, Ned had the sort of body honed by years and years of hard, physical labor, the sort of body that would have made Bash suck in his middle self-consciously. Hell, she sucked her own stomach in, even if a ruthless diet and exercise regimen kept her in the same size she’d worn since before the girls were born.
Somehow, he looked more attractive in an old blue-gray cable-knit fisherman’s sweater and battered jeans, than in any of the bespoke designer clothes her soon-to-be-ex’s stylist curated for Bash over the years. Tailoring could only do so much.
And she was just standing there, staring at him, without speaking. It was entirely possible her mental state was making the hormones in her brain think whimsically destructive things. Also, she was wearing yoga pants and not a brushstroke of makeup. Not even lip balm. Had she brushed her teeth that morning? She couldn’t remember.
She’d had nightmares like this.
“Ana,” he rumbled in that low voice of his that used to make her thighs ache.
Maybe “used to” was giving herself a little too much credit. The new gravelly element of that voice certainly wasn’t helping her situation.
He was staring at her as if she wasn’t real, though she couldn’t tell from his expression whether he saw her as a mirage or a specter from a nightmare.
“Ned, hi. What are you doing here?”
And then his eyes narrowed angrily and she decided it was probably the nightmare. “Really? That’s all you have to say to me?”
Her mind was completely blank. She knew she was supposed to be asking him something, something important, but right now, all she could think about was her rat’s nest hair and the fact that Ned still smelled like cedar and oak moss after all these years. He didn’t even wear cologne. How was that even possible?
“How are you?” she guessed.
“There is something very wrong with you,” he told her, turning on his heel and walking out the door.
“Ned, wait, I’m sorry. I’m just in shock, seeing you again after all these years,” she said, following him onto the porch as he jogged down the stairs. “I don’t know what to say.”
His mouth bent into an even more unhappy shape. “How about, ‘Hi, Ned, how have you been? What have you been up to since I left without a word and didn’t talk to you for twenty years?’ Or maybe, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t trust you enough to tell you what I was planning. It’s nothing personal, you just weren’t that important to me.’”
“I’m sorry, Ned.”
He held up two large hands. “No, I was wrong, ‘sorry’ was for twenty years ago…you know what, I thought this would make me feel better. Closure and all that bullshit, but I just can’t even look at you right now. I thought I wasn’t mad anymore, but seeing you? I’m not ready to talk to you.”
“Ned, wait.”
“Is that what you think I’ve been doing all these years? Waiting? Did you think I was just going to sit around alone, pining for you?”
“I’m not saying I wanted that necessarily, but did picturing it made me feel better? Yes,” she said, shrugging. He stared at her. “OK, maybe now is not the time for humor.”
“No. It’s not. Are you still doing that?”
“Blurting out inappropriate jokes at the wrong time to make myself feel better? No. I’d kicked the habit until just now,” she admitted.
Bash had hated it. He’d never found it snicker-worthy like Ned had, or understood it as a release valve for emotional pressure. He said it was embarrassing, a psychological tic for which she should seek therapy.
“I missed it,” he admitted, staring down at the peeling porch boards as if they were the most fascinating thing in the world. When he looked up, his expression was softer, the Ned she remembered, the one who had been the first to touch her, the first to make her laugh so hard she cried. “Bonnie said you would probably want to talk to me.”
“Of course, she did.”
“Are you all right?” he asked. “I know things have been…difficult for you lately.
She nodded. “I did want to talk to you.”
His head tilted as he stared at her. “You don’t want to talk. You want something.”
She blushed. She liked to think she was less transparent than this.
He groaned. “This isn’t like one of those true crime shows where you ask me to murder your husband for you, is it? Because I am a lot of things, but “too stupid to function” is not one of them.”
“What? No! I was going to ask you to help me renovate Fishscale House. Why would I ask you to murder my husband?”
“Why would you ask me to renovate your house?” he demanded, throwing his arms up toward the pile of decrepit wood she was trying to saddle him with.
“Because I’m told you’re one of the few people around here qualified for the job!” she exclaimed.
“And I’m just supposed to do this out of the kindness of my heart?” He stared
at her, his mouth agape. “Can we go back to the murder thing?”
“I would pay you,” she protested. “Not for the murder. There’s no murder. I meant the renovation. I don’t know how much I could pay you exactly, but—”
“You’re insane,” he told her and stomped down the stairs to an old red truck advertising Fitzroy Construction.
As he sped away, she pinched her nose, sighing deeply. “That went well.”
Since she’d failed utterly at her most important task, Ana hoped she was prepared for something a little easier, like buying the damn shower curtain. Because the island was too small to support a proper supermarket, locals shopped at the Laine Mercantile, a sort of general store that carried everything from canned goods to blue jeans, and whatever the Laine family could special order from their mainland contacts. Fortunately, the house was within easy walking distance of Main Street. If she didn’t go too crazy on canned goods, she could carry it back easily enough.
Just outside the low-slung cedar shake building she stopped, wondering for the first time in too many years whether she had enough cash on her to cover the things she needed. She didn’t have a credit card as a safety net. She wasn’t sure what her groceries would cost. She didn’t even know what a loaf of bread cost nowadays. For some reason, she found that to be even more humiliating than losing her husband to a girl with one name and no discernible brain cells.
Maybe she should find a quiet place and do a cash count again.
“Ana? Ana Gustavsson?”
She turned to find Bailey Laine, who had been just a year behind her in school, standing in the doorway to the store. Bailey hadn’t changed a bit, with her thick sandy hair, just starting to gray around the temples and wide dark green eyes. Bailey had been one of the sweeter girls in school, carefully packing extra sandwiches in her lunch for the students whose families struggled. If more Espoir Islanders had been like Bailey, maybe Ana would have taken more pains to stay in touch.
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