by Sophie Gunn
But then, Emily left him. She said she couldn’t be with a man stuck in the past. He didn’t blame her, but he didn’t know how to fix it. After Emily had left, he’d spent his time dealing with his tenants, fixing what needed fixing, and sometimes what didn’t, just to keep himself busy. The older ones made him casseroles and tried to introduce him to their granddaughters and nieces. He owns property, he’d hear them whisper. It’s a good life.
The younger tenants flirted, and once in a while, he’d take them up on their offers of dinner or beers on the fire escape.
But no one ever stuck. No one seemed to notice that his smile was forced and empty. No one really understood why he couldn’t just forget the accident, move on, and get back to making money and having fun.
Hell, he didn’t understand it either.
But he couldn’t go back to his old life. The accident had taught him that life was short; but even knowing that, he couldn’t get on with it. Any pleasure he found made the guilt that was a constant presence deepen. It was like a game he could play on himself.
He tried it right there on his deck. He closed his eyes and called to mind Lizzie’s flashing eyes. Sure enough, like a knife in the gut, there it was. First, the lump in his throat. Then, the slicing pain as images of the crash pushed away images of Lizzie and her beautiful brown eyes.
So he tried to think of Emily and how she’d left him. Selling his buildings had been the final straw for her. That matched his black mood. But it didn’t lessen the guilt. Ironically, the accident spared him the huge mistake of marrying a woman who didn’t understand him. The irony wasn’t lost on him that the biggest tragedy of his life had helped him avoid the tragedy of marrying the wrong woman. It was as if the world conspired against punishing him. First the police let him off with not even a ticket. Then the DA didn’t press charges. Then her family—what little was left of it—let it go at that.
Get on with life, everyone said. Not guilty. Accidents happen. How ’bout them Yankees…
So why couldn’t he let himself off? Why couldn’t he smell the forest around him or feel the cold of the fall evening? Why couldn’t he think of a woman like Lizzie without the thought’s being followed by stomach cramps that doubled him over?
He sat on the porch that overlooked the lake, slung his feet up on the railing, and spread the want ads in the local paper open on his lap. He had to find something to do. A day job. Anything to keep his mind and body occupied until he could leave this town. Sitting around thinking didn’t suit him.
White jumped onto the paper, cutting off his job search before it even began. He stroked her a few times before easing her to the ground. “You trying to stop me, girl? You want to go back and get another shot at those bird feeders, huh?” White rubbed against his leg. He could feel the rumblings of her purring. “Look, Lizzie wants nothing to do with me. She made that perfectly clear.”
He tried to focus his mind on the lists of lousy jobs—dishwasher, sales, work-from-home scams—but White wouldn’t back off, so he gave up. He sat back to stroke the cat who jumped into his lap and happily crunched the paper under her paws in ecstasy. Tay let his mind wander, which was usually a mistake. But this time, to his surprise, it didn’t wander to the accident. It wandered to Lizzie.
Lizzie. He couldn’t blame her for chasing him off. Ever since the accident, he’d been letting the rules of society fall away, partly out of numbness, partly out of not giving a damn. But his renegade directness made him forget how odd his actions seemed to people still playing by the rules. A stranger who does a good deed for no reason, especially in the dead of night or the fog of dawn, is definitely not playing by the rules. He got that and he wouldn’t bother her again. He hadn’t meant to scare her. Not that she seemed scared exactly, more like insistent. He hadn’t meant to get caught fixing her gate. He thought he’d be gone before she spotted him, but the hinge was trickier than he’d expected, and it had taken longer than he’d thought. He should’ve known from the bird-feeder chaos on her front porch that she was a morning person and not risked it. Coming back a second time had been asking for trouble.
He wouldn’t bother Lizzie again and he wouldn’t bother Candy again either. He’d get the money and split and figure out some other way to get on with his life.
Maybe there was a gorge he had somehow missed.
He’d go out later to get some groceries and a map. Then he’d do a systematic search before he gave up and—
And then what?
He had no idea.
He had to find the money. That was the key.
Find the money before someone else did and get out.
CHAPTER
11
Annie Wynne wasn’t sure this mother thing was going to work out for her. Here she was, practically attached to another human, and she’d never felt so alone in her life.
Okay, so it was a very small human. Her six-month-old daughter, Meghan, fussed in the stroller Annie pushed up the gorge trail. No one had told Annie that being a new mother would be this dead crazy, mind-numbingly hard. Well, okay, her sister, Lizzie, had, but she hadn’t believed her. After all, Lizzie had her baby alone when she was sixteen. Annie was thirty-four with a husband. A police officer husband, no less.
Which is why she thought it would be different for her.
Ha.
She loved her daughter madly. Loved her so hard it hurt.
Which was disturbing, because Annie hadn’t felt this aching love for another person since meeting Tommy sixteen years ago. But after twelve years of marriage, she and Tommy didn’t have the kind of love that hurt anymore. They were comfortably married, snugly in love. But the years were over when Tommy walked into the room and she thought, Let’s get naked. Now she thought, Babysitterman, and lusted for a shower. Alone.
Annie knew she was supposed to cherish every moment with her precious daughter and that lots of women would kill for her problems, but it didn’t help the fact that lately, she wanted to cry all the time. Annie and Meghan’s daily morning stroll through the gorge trail that climbed its way to campus had become less a lovely walk on a beautiful fall day, and more a desperate attempt to fill the hours and hours and hours (and hours) of empty time.
And that was just the morning.
Annie’s head might explode if she kept on like this. She wanted to cry and she wanted to scream and if something new didn’t happen soon, she just might do both right there under the Main Campus Bridge.
As if to protest Annie’s dark thoughts, Meghan let out a banshee cry and flung her pacifier into the undergrowth that led down to the swirling water. It disappeared into the dense foliage and Meghan’s face crumpled.
One, two, three…
Meghan erupted into a high-pitched, piercing scream.
Disgusted undergrads on their way to class through the gorge-trail shortcut glanced at Annie. “I guess I shouldn’t have poked her with that knitting needle,” Annie mumbled. The students pulled each other past on the narrow path. Look out, good citizens, a child-abusing, knitting-needle-wielding mama on the loose.
Annie peered into the dense green weeds, unable to see the small, green pacifier, and thought, I am the world’s worst mother because I want to hurl myself over the edge of this cliff. I just can’t bear to listen to my daughter scream another second.
Meghan’s wails got louder, if that was possible. Her face had turned fiery red. Her tiny fists clenched and shook.
“Okay, honey. Okay. Mommy will find it.” Unless it’s plunged over the side, in which case Mommy might just follow it over. Annie leaned over the simple wooden fence that signified the end of safety, but she couldn’t see the pacifier. She got down on her hands and knees, crawled under the rough, single fence rail. She rummaged among the leaves and tangled roots. No luck. Meghan must have the arm of a major leaguer to have penetrated this growth.
The crying stopped abruptly. “Ru-ru!” Meghan called out.
Annie looked up.
“Ru-ru!” the baby commanded.
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“Ru-ru” meant “ruff-ruff,” which meant Meghan thought Annie was playing doggie. This favorite game involved Annie on her hands and knees, barking.
“Ru-ru!” Meghan repeated.
So what could Annie do? She barked.
Meghan clapped her tiny hands.
“Ruff! Ruff!” Annie kept barking as she searched the ground, trying to remember what poison ivy looked like. Three leaves? Five? Nature was never her thing. She was firmly a bookish, inside sort. She knew exactly where on the shelf the three volumes of The Illustrated Guide to Identifying Forest Plants of New York State was located in the library where she used to work, but she had never bothered to read the thing.
A set of jean-clad legs stopped next to her. She looked up to see a handsome undergrad eyeing her with amusement. She wondered what her thirty-four-year-old butt poking up in the air looked like to a twenty-something student. Completely disgusting, no doubt.
“No dogs off-leash on the campus gorge trails, ma’am,” he said, a sly smile on his face.
She growled at him and he laughed and strode onward, his backpack slung carelessly over his shoulder.
She watched him go. Ma’am? Ma’am!
Great. Now she was barking and crying in the gorge.
What a day.
From Meghan’s usual 5:30 A.M. wake-up call, to 5:31, to 5:32… to now. It wasn’t even ten o’clock and she’d lived three lifetimes already in this one endless morning. How would she make it to dinner without slitting her wrists, at this rate? When had her heart grown so black? She had been the golden girl of Galton. Her only equal had been Lizzie, until, of course, Lizzie lost her golden girl crown and scepter. Maybe that’s the way it was—having a baby lost a girl her golden status no matter what the circumstances.
Annie looked up at the narrow bridge that led to campus, then down at the stream rushing far below, and wondered how much it would hurt to jump off that bridge. She’d lived in Galton her whole life and had known some of the people who’d thrown themselves over the rail. But she’d never known their secrets. Like when they hit the long, smooth rocks lurking under the black water below, had death been instantaneous, or did they feel pain? Did the fast-flowing water carry their bodies away, or had they sunk to the bottom?
What thoughts. Where had they come from? What was happening to her?
She wished for a miracle. Nothing major. Just a quick sign that she would get through this, a two-second glimpse of, say, an angel on the rocks down below. Maybe a unicorn peeking down at her, a flash of his elegant, twisted horn catching in the light. Hell, she’d settle for a winking leprechaun. That would have been enough to get her through. Just one little sign that there was something more in the world than everyday drudgery. She could take it from there.
Annie made one last, halfhearted attempt to feel around under the foliage for the pacifier.
Her hand hit something. Something wedged into a crevice in the rock, as if it had come hurtling out of the sky, or maybe off the bridge, with considerable force. She leaned over, nervous with vertigo at the closeness of the cliff.
She pulled it out.
It was a duffel bag.
Annie looked back to the stroller. Meghan had found her foot and gotten it into her mouth. She was “ru-ruing” softly to herself, the sounds muffled into the hand-knitted pink booty the New Agey one in Lizzie’s Enemy Club had given her. She seemed content for the moment.
The bells in the clock tower began to chime in the distance, hurrying the last of the students still on the trail up the last ascent to campus. By the time the bells chimed their ninth peal, the path was deserted. Except for Annie and Meghan.
And the bag.
She pulled the army-green duffel onto her lap. Annie’s first thought was that she ought to leave it. Maybe someone had meant to hide it there. But curiosity got the best of her. She tugged it and whatever was inside shifted intriguingly.
The gorge was quiet around her except for the rushing stream far below.
Annie unzipped the bag.
It was stuffed with neatly wrapped packets of hundred-dollar bills.
It wasn’t exactly a unicorn. But mythological creatures were so overrated.
CHAPTER
12
Lizzie walked along the shore, next to Scott Halpinger, Nina’s yoga student and at the moment Lizzie’s first date in years, trying to explain to him her fascination with birds. The plan was to hike around the lake trail where a pair of great blue herons had been spotted nesting in an enormous dead pine, then up the road that led to The Pines, where they’d stop for a bite and, she hoped, fall in love, for a few months anyway.
Lizzie jabbered about the surprise of the herons’ staying so late into September, and how they’d be gone any day now, maybe they were gone already, but they’d probably come back, because that’s what that kind of bird usually does…
Scott nodded politely. He had been enthusiastic about the hike, even suggested she bring her birding binoculars so she could teach him a thing or two, but now, after an hour or so of spotting nothing more exotic than a single egret fishing by the shore, his interest in habitats and tail feathers was cooling fast. She was relieved he wasn’t too engaged, because she was also having trouble keeping her mind on her flying friends.
Because she couldn’t stop thinking about Tay.
Stop thinking about Tay.
But she couldn’t. He hadn’t been back since she’d called Tommy, and who could blame him? Calling the cops wasn’t exactly the best way to make friends. But his being gone was good; it gave her time to find a suitable boyfriend so maybe then she wouldn’t think so much about Tay. Or dream so much about him…
Having an affair with the mysterious charity handyman was so not all right on so many levels.
She focused on the man by her side. Scott was sweet and normal. There was nothing wrong with the way he looked, blond, healthy, athletic. So she should be happy. Cute guy sent by fate, pretending to care about birds, which they couldn’t find because she was so nervous and agitated she couldn’t shut up long enough to not scare them all away.
Isn’t this what she wanted? A lukewarm man, so that no one would get hurt.
Or was Tay right and she had no idea what she wanted?
As they searched in vain for the heron nest, she thought about all her mixed-up wishes. She had wished for what Paige wanted because she wanted Paige to be happy. After all, wishes didn’t have to be selfish. Lizzie had spent her life wishing for the best for Paige. She’d spent her life being a good mother, doing the right thing. So why would she stop now? No, at this of all times being a good mother was of utmost importance. Not a time for selfish wishes.
By the time they made it to the Pines, a locals’ restaurant overlooking a cliff by the lake, Lizzie’s fingers and toes were frozen solid. They got a table inside by the window overlooking the water, and Scott excused himself to go to the bathroom. He’d been slathering himself with insect repellent and bug spray nonstop since they’d set off, and now, apparently, he was afraid the toxins in his protection would kill him if ingested.
He had used the word ingested.
Lizzie tried to keep a positive attitude.
She could like a man who said ingested for three months.
That kind of man wouldn’t cause any pain.
She looked out over the lake and told herself that this was lovely. She should have dated more in the past years, nothing to be afraid of, if she didn’t take it too seriously.
She looked over the menu and looked and looked.
I don’t have the slightest idea what I want to eat.
All at once, she felt as if she might start crying.
She looked around the restaurant with alarm. Dotted around her were people she recognized. The couple at the table behind her came into the diner every so often for lunch. The man always ordered a tuna sandwich with tomato, white bread, root beer, and a side salad. His wife sometimes ordered the Cobb salad and an unsweetened iced tea, but sometimes
went with the soup of the day, if it didn’t have meat. But here, they were eating huge burgers dripping with blue cheese with sides of fries and ice-cold beers.
They didn’t just know exactly what they wanted, they knew where they wanted it and where they didn’t and probably exactly how they wanted it cooked…
When they felt Lizzie staring at them, they waved tentatively, unsure how they knew her. She waved back and ducked her head into her menu.
How did a person forget what she wanted? Was it because her head was stuffed with what other people wanted? She thought of Nina’s words at the diner on the day Lizzie had told them about Ethan’s letter: Lizzie, if you want something, you have to face it, admit it, then wish for it with all your soul. That’s how the universe works. It will hear your wish and if it’s sincere, it will answer.
But what if you weren’t sure what you wanted? Or worse, what if what you wanted—like keeping your daughter close—was selfish and wrong?
Scott came back to the table. “So, you know what you want?”
She started to laugh and then before she knew it, she was fighting back tears. This was ridiculous. He was going to think she was nuts. And she was nuts. Ethan’s return was disturbing the equilibrium of her life and Tay’s odd presence wasn’t helping. She felt as if everything she thought was settled was coming undone. She buried her face in her menu and said, “I’ll have the Cobb salad.”
So he ordered a burger with fries for himself and a salad for her and two Molson Goldens. When conversation died down for the third time, he asked if she could see where the heron nest was supposed to be from here.
Relieved, she got out her birding binoculars and scanned the pines. The treetops were deserted, so she lowered her sights, scanning the ground. Cabins dotted the woods. They looked so peaceful, tucked into the trees, docks reaching out into the water in front of them. The leaves were almost in full fall splendor. In two weeks, the view would be postcard perfect and tourists from as far away as New York City would fill these tables.