“It’s so big.” Summer’s gaze moved to Damian, to his hands and his mouth and the way he kept smiling at her. “And it still needs a lot of work.”
“Ever thought about keeping it?”
Why did everyone ask her that? Summer shook her head. “I don’t think so. It doesn’t make much sense. My whole life is out in California now.”
“Well, are you going to do any decorating before you go?” Hannah walked into the front room and ran a hand over the chair rail, the wide bay window, the gilt fireplace mantel. “Change the colors, anything like that?”
Damian headed up the stairs as Summer followed the woman and pressed the backs of both hands to her face. His kiss had thrown her off-balance. Again. “I don’t know the first thing about any of it. My father bought the house and willed it to me.” She stood in front of the bay window and let her gaze rest on the black cemetery gates in the distance. That sobered her. “But I don’t live in Pine Point anymore. It would be silly to keep it. He planned most of the major work. I wouldn’t even know where to begin with the rest.”
Hannah waved a hand. “Ah, read a few magazines, spend an afternoon in a home improvement store, and you’ll get plenty of ideas.” She looked around. “I’d do this room in pale gray, maybe, or eggshell. Something soft. Redo the window seat, the mantel…” She wandered to the window. “Gorgeous view. Put a couple of chairs here, deep, comfortable ones so you can watch the sunrise—or the stars come out, depending what kind of hours you keep.”
Her voice, musical in the stillness, charmed Summer. She stole a glance at Damian’s mother and a sudden thought struck her. Hadn’t Sadie mentioned something about Hannah working in design before she moved to Pine Point?
“Would you—would you maybe like to help me? Pick out colors, maybe choose some light fixtures or something?” Might make the place feel a little more like home when potential buyers walk through. That’s what Sadie had told her, anyway. And Summer certainly wanted the sale to happen quickly. Did the request seem ridiculous? She leaned in the doorway. Hannah Knight probably had better things to do with her days than offer color-swatch suggestions to a total stranger.
But the woman’s eyes lit up, blue like her son’s, bright like her daughter’s. “I’d love to. I used to work as an assistant for an interior designer. A long time ago.” Her voice rang with an emotion Summer couldn’t identify.
“Was that in Poisonwood?”
Hannah looked surprised. “Yes, it was. How did you know?” Before Summer could respond, she answered her own question. “Damian.”
Summer nodded. “He mentioned it. Sadie too.”
Hannah crossed the foyer and inspected the master bedroom. She smiled as she wandered around the room. “Blues and greens,” she said, almost to herself. “I’d do this room in something cozy, relaxing. If you’d like, we could go to Walls and Windows over in Silver Valley to get some ideas. It’s a cute design place. Very good prices.”
“Okay.” Summer looked at her watch. She might not belong in Pine Point for good, but maybe she could find a way to make the next few days a little more interesting. “Tomorrow, maybe? I have some things to take care of this afternoon.” She ticked off the list inside her head. Four telephone calls. Three emails. Two press releases and a phone interview with one of the independent papers down in San Diego. Thank God for telecommunications.
“I can meet you here at ten, if that works.” Hannah interrupted her thoughts. “Dinah has soccer practice in the morning, but Damian can pick her up and take her to lunch.”
“Sounds perfect.”
They walked back into the foyer as Damian descended from the second floor. Grinning, he placed a hand on each woman’s shoulder. “Someone’s talking design down here.”
Heat flooded Summer’s face.
“You just stick to your hammering and sawing,” Hannah said, “and we’ll take care of making the place look nice.”
He planted a kiss on Hannah’s cheek. “Fine by me, Mom.” Then he leaned close to Summer. “Definitely fine by me,” he whispered into her ear, and she shivered.
Summer wondered if he’d kiss her too. He didn’t, and then she was glad, because she wasn’t sure she’d be able to keep herself from reaching for more.
Chapter Twelve
“Mustard or sage for the small bathroom?” Hannah flipped through a book of paint colors. Behind them, the bells on the door of Windows and Walls tinkled as another customer walked in. Only ten thirty, and already a handful of shoppers filled the tiny shop. Summer recognized a couple of them, but most were strangers.
“I don’t know,” she sighed, looking back at the thick book. “I’m no good at this.”
“Well, then, let’s take a couple of each.” Within a matter of minutes, Hannah had selected four color samples, plucked two catalogs from the rack in the corner and purchased curtain rod finials in a design Summer would never have chosen but had to admit looked perfect in the sunlight.
They squeezed their way back outside and found a coffee shop down the block.
“Thanks,” Summer said. Steaming lattes arrived for both of them. She picked at the edges of an apple fritter. “I really appreciate it.”
Hannah smiled. “It’s my pleasure. I love color and design, and…making someplace cozy. Took me almost three years, but the farmhouse is almost the way I want it. I’ve bounced Dinah around so much, I want a place she can call home.” She whispered the last word over the edge of her mug.
“Does she take after you that way? With the design, I mean?”
“Well, she’s at the age where she thinks pink is the perfect complement for any décor, so it’s hard to tell. Maybe she’ll grow into it.”
“And Damian…” Summer wasn’t sure what she meant to say or ask. She just liked the feel of his name on her tongue.
“You know men. They’re much better with tools than with fabric swatches. Though sometimes Damian surprises me. He has an eye for detail, for art, that pops out every now and then. I suppose spending most of his life with just his mother has rubbed off.” She frowned. “Not in a bad way, I hope.”
Summer’s brows lifted. She knew enough about family relationships not to prod. She and Hannah had barely met. She had no right to wonder about Damian or his family or how they’d ended up in Pine Point.
The woman sat back in her chair. “Did you know I had Damian when I was just nineteen?”
“Um, no. But wow.” Nineteen? Summer could barely remember that year in her own life, the bridge between eighteen and twenty, between the end of her life in Pine Point and the beginning of the rest of it. Just a haze of pain and depression and loss, mostly.
Hannah propped her chin in one hand, and memory tinted her eyes from blue to gray. “I fell in love with the guy working on the apartment house across the street.” She smiled at Summer’s startled gaze. “Yep. That’s where Damian gets his talent. Jimmy was the foreman of the project, the genius. He was better with inside details than the bigger stuff, but he could do anything with his hands.” She blushed. “You know what I mean.”
Summer smiled. “I do.”
“We dated for almost a year before I got pregnant. We were going to get married.”
Summer almost didn’t want to ask. “He left?”
“He died. Fell off a roof and broke his back. He might have survived, but he was by himself, trying to finish up a job after the other guys had left. No one found him for hours.”
“Oh, God. I’m so sorry.”
“It was a long time ago.” Hannah shook her head. “But I thought I might not even make it through the pregnancy, I cried so much. I was afraid I’d give birth to the saddest child in the world.” The emotion in her eyes shifted from sadness to loneliness to resignation and back again. “For a while, I didn’t even want to live.
“But you’re strong when you’re that young.” Hannah pulled in a long breath
. “You bounce back. And look what I got—a wonderful, handsome, talented son. He changed my life the instant I saw him. I never knew I could love someone so much. So unconditionally.” Her face brightened. “He looks so like Jimmy, sometimes I forget when Damian walks in the room that he isn’t his father.”
Summer tried to imagine a young Hannah and the man she’d fallen in love with. Did he have Damian’s quiet confidence? His mannerism of brushing the hair from his face, his smile that crinkled at the corners? Had he waved at Hannah from rooftops with a strong arm and glowed with the perspiration of a job well done? She guessed so, and she wondered at the difficulty of living with an image of the person you’d loved and lost so many years ago.
Dad did that, she thought suddenly. After Mom died in childbirth. He looked at me every day until I was eighteen. For the first time she wondered if Donnie’s death wasn’t the only reason he’d sent her away.
“After Damian was born, I stayed with my mom for awhile. That was when I worked for Flora’s Designs.” Hannah smiled. “I loved to create a picture in my mind and watch it come to life in a room.” She traced the pattern of the glass-topped table. “I worked there until Damian was about twelve or thirteen, and then I met T.J.”
“Your ex?”
Hannah nodded. “Also a construction worker.” She chuckled, but it wasn’t a happy sound. “I guess I have a weakness for them. Our house needed repairs, so Mom and I looked in the yellow pages. Called the least expensive company we could find, and T.J. showed up.”
“What was he like?”
The woman shrugged. “Oh, your typical good-looking guy who knows it all. Muscles everywhere, cocky, a smile that could melt butter…” She paused. “I look back now and wonder what I saw in him. We dated—oh, I don’t know. Maybe six months. He proposed with a big fancy diamond, and I said yes. I wanted to get out of my mother’s house and have a real father for Damian. I figured it was time I had a life of my own.” She looked straight at Summer. “People say yes for all kinds of reasons.
“I couldn’t get pregnant for a while, though, almost four years, and that was the beginning. He wanted a child right away, and when that didn’t work out…I started to see the real T.J. The one who drank and turned ugly when things didn’t go his way.” She crossed her arms.
“Even after Dinah was born, things didn’t change too much. He always found something to get mad about. When Dinah was two, I finally got smart. I didn’t want my daughter growing up in a house like that.” She smoothed her hands over her lap. “So we moved away to start over.”
“But now you’re worried about him finding you?”
“He has a temper. T.J. isn’t used to people telling him no, so when I asked for a divorce, he told me I’d be sorry. That he’d take Dinah from me if it was the last thing he did.”
A car backfired somewhere close by, and Summer jumped. Now she was doubly glad she’d arranged the rental contingency with Sadie. At least the Knights could feel safe no matter what happened with the sale of the house.
“Enough about my problems.” Hannah sipped her latte. The color came back into her face. “How did it go with those people who came to look at the house yesterday?”
Summer shook her head. “It needed too much work. They wanted something move-in ready.”
Hannah shrugged. “Then they weren’t the right people.”
“I guess.” But I can’t stay here and wait for the right people forever. I can’t pick out curtains and play house like nothing else matters. Guilt crowded Summer’s heart. She’d asked her assistants back in San Francisco to shoulder so much of the responsibility. She’d put that part of her life on hold, thinking she needed all the answers here in Pine Point before she left again. But maybe she didn’t. Maybe answers to long-gone nights, to relationships that had barely existed in the first place, were overrated.
Or maybe she was just afraid to face them head-on.
* * * * *
The red pickup truck gunned through the light, and Theo grabbed the door handle to keep from flying across the seat. “Jesus Christ. Keep it on the road, would ya?”
The guy behind the wheel grinned. “Shut the hell up. We only got thirty minutes for lunch, and I still gotta get a new drill bit if I’m gonna finish that job today.” He careened onto Main Street and slowed down, looking for a parking spot.
Theo cut a glance out the window. They’d ended up doing his boss’s errand in Silver Valley—one of the towns he meant to scout out for signs of Damian. Looked like a pretty la-de-da place, with fancy stores and fancy sidewalk benches and restaurants that had tables outside, complete with umbrellas and tanned teenagers running plates of food back and forth.
The driver jerked the wheel and stomped on the brakes as a yellow sports car backed out of a parking spot in front of Paul’s Hardware. He maneuvered the truck forward and back, but Theo could have told him from the start that it wasn’t going in.
“Shit. Too small.” He slammed the truck into reverse and craned his neck, waiting for a break in the traffic. “Can I go?”
Theo didn’t answer.
“Hey! We ain’t gonna make it back ’less we find a place to park.” He swore under his breath. “Maybe I’ll just double-park it and run in.”
Theo barely heard the guy. He was staring at the coffee shop next to the hardware store. Outside, three tables clustered around planters overflowing with purple flowers. One table was empty. A young guy with a goatee sat at another, pecking on a laptop. And two women sat at the third, drinking coffee and talking like they were best friends. He rolled down the window to get a better look.
“Son of a bitch.”
He’d found her. Without even trying, he’d found his ex-wife enjoying a cup of coffee right smack in the middle of downtown Silver Valley. He didn’t know who the hell was with her, but it didn’t matter. If she didn’t live in town, she lived close by. He shouldn’t have too much trouble tracking down where Hannah and Dinah lived and—as long as Damian wasn’t around—convincing them to come back to Baltimore with him.
Theo wet his lips and smiled. He could hardly wait.
Chapter Thirteen
Summer examined the tile samples and closed one eye. Yesterday’s shopping trip with Hannah had turned out better than she’d expected. They’d hit three more stores after lunch, returning to Pine Point late in the afternoon loaded down with bags and boxes. So much for paying off my credit card bill. It had been worth it, though. Today, rose-colored curtains waited to be hung in the front room, and she stood in the master bath before six different bathroom tiles, trying to decide which would look right. Mac had called in three extra guys to help him this week, so the exterior of the house was shaping up as well. Sadie had two buyers coming to look at it tomorrow afternoon, and Summer wanted as much as possible done before then.
“Mac?” Damian called from somewhere above her.
“Yeah.” Heavy footsteps thundered down the central staircase.
Summer’s chest tightened. She wanted to see him. She didn’t want to see him. She didn’t trust herself to keep her hands to herself if they ended up in a room together again. Nudging a turquoise tile into place, she closed one eye.
“Gotta pick up Dinah from soccer practice. Be back in a few.”
“Okay.”
A chill spiraled down her spine. God, she had it bad. Even his voice turned her into a neurotic schoolgirl, peeking around corners.
“I think I like the turquoise,” she said aloud. She piled the remaining tiles back into their box and lugged it into the center of the bedroom. Her stomach growled. She’d worked straight through lunch, handling two conference calls and trying to smooth out a mix-up with the Portland State Historical Society. Now four o’clock reminded her that a breakfast of day-old doughnuts and coffee left something to be desired.
The door slammed, and Damian stomped back inside.
“Thoug
ht you were leaving,” Mac said from the front room.
“Car battery died. I think I left my lights on this morning.”
“I’d offer you mine, but it’s a mess. The back and the passenger seat are full of stuff.”
Summer peeked into the foyer. Damian glanced at his dust-streaked watch. “Damn. She finishes in ten minutes. There’s no way I’m gonna make it.”
“What about your mom?”
“She went to Albany for the day to visit my great-aunt.”
Summer cleared her throat. “I can pick Dinah up if you want. I’m done here, anyway.”
“Really? You’re sure?” Relief spilled across Damian’s face. “I’d appreciate it. They play over at the elementary school, behind the baseball fields.”
“I know where it is.” She reached for her keys. “You don’t think she’ll mind?”
“Nah. Dinah’s a little shy around strangers, but she likes you fine.”
“Okay. See you in a bit, then.”
“Thanks.” At the foot of the porch stairs, she glanced behind her and waved. Damian stood with both thumbs hooked in his belt loops and the strangest expression on his face.
* * * * *
Practice had ended by the time Summer reached the soccer fields. An emerald carpet stretched out beneath the afternoon sunlight, empty except for one small figure and Joyce Hadley. Shoulders slumped, Dinah sat on a bench beside her coach and kicked at the grass.
Summer left the convertible running and walked over. “Hi, Dinah.”
Joyce was jotting something on a clipboard. At Summer’s voice, she looked up and shaded her eyes.
“Summer!” The girl darted from the bench and slid one small hand into Summer’s.
“Sorry I’m late. Your brother had a problem with his car.”
Summer's Song: Pine Point, Book 1 Page 11