“I’m only going to sleep for a few hours,” Eve said, leading the way upstairs. “Then I’ll drive into town and see if there was any damage to the store, and then go see how Maddy made out in the storm.”
“But the roads are impassable.”
“Now that it’s daylight and I can see what I’m doing, the delivery truck should make it through. It has plenty of clearance, and what I can’t drive over, I should be able to push out of the way with the bumper.”
“It was a really strange storm, wasn’t it?” Mabel asked, stopping at her bedroom. “The wind blew so hard, I thought the roof was going to come off. And the lightning was sort of brown and then red. And we never heard any thunder.”
Eve nodded. “It will be interesting to see what the meteorologists have to say about it. Will you be okay here while I go into town?”
Mabel waved away her concern. “Now that I know everyone’s safe and sound, I’m more than fine. And Kenzie will be around; it’s going to take a month of Sundays for him to clean up the mess in the yard.”
“Right.” Eve walked into her room, closed the door, and leaned against it with a sigh. Oh, yes, Kenzie would definitely be around—but they would be moving just as soon as she could arrange it.
Eve sped toward town, feeling only a little guilty for pretending she hadn’t seen Kenzie waving when she’d driven the delivery truck over the branches blocking the driveway. She was in no mood to talk to anyone—except maybe Maddy—after tossing and turning in bed for two hours. Every time she closed her eyes, she kept seeing an alligator’s tail snapping in a pulsing red light, and she kept feeling grasping hands trying to pull her into the ocean.
That is, when she wasn’t reliving her lovemaking debacle.
Eve eased back on the gas pedal when she realized she was picking up speed. She really had to get her emotions under control, or Maddy was going to have her committed. Eve laughed out loud, the sound startling her. At the rate she was going, she would be sharing a room at the looney bin with her mother.
“As soon as the power comes back on,” she said, “I’m getting our well tested. There has to be something in the water that’s making us all delusional.”
Last month she’d read in the newspaper that a family’s well, not fifty miles from here, had been contaminated from chemicals buried at an old mill site, making them all sick. Maybe there was a toxic dump somewhere on this farm, and chemicals had leached into the well over the years, and that’s what was making her and her mother delusional. How else could she explain deep wounds that healed in minutes, pens that glowed, and dragons with wings? Heck, Maddy spent plenty of time at their house and drank their well water, too, and she’d seen a flying moose and kissed a bogeyman!
Her mother had been living there for six years, which could easily explain her illness. She was sending in a water sample first thing, and until the results came back, they were drinking bottled water. Eve finally started to relax, now that she had a plausible explanation and a plan of action.
Oddly, the closer she got to town, the less wind damage there seemed to be. By the time she reached Main Street, everything looked quite normal. Everyone had power, and it was business as usual for all the shops.
Maddy stood in front of Bishop’s Hearth and Home, a perturbed look on her face. Eve pulled the truck to a stop and got out.
“Where have you been?” Maddy asked as Eve stepped onto the sidewalk. “I’ve been calling your house, but your phone isn’t working.” She tapped her watch, then glanced at the truck. “You’re three hours late opening the store, and you look like hell. And where’s Mabel? Is she okay?”
“She’s fine. She was sleeping like a baby when I left,” Eve assured her, unlocking the door and walking inside. She went to the back office and snapped on the lights, then tossed her purse on the desk. “And I look like hell because we don’t have power out at the farm, so I couldn’t take a shower. Did you guys lose your electricity last night, too?”
Maddy shook her head. “Nope. It rained all night and the wind blew, but not hard enough to knock down any trees.”
“It felt like we got a hurricane right along the coast,” Eve told her. “But I didn’t see any damage a mile or two inland.”
“That’s weird,” Maddy said. “You want to come to my house and take a shower? I’ll even lend you some clothes.”
Eve looked down at herself. “These clothes are clean.”
“But you’re not. You actually have grass in your hair. What’d you do all night, sit in the hayloft with Kenzie and make sure the animals were safe?”
Eve collapsed in the desk chair with a sigh. “If I tell you something, do you promise not to tell a soul?”
Maddy pulled up a chair and sat, nodding.
“Kenzie rode out on his horse just as the storm started, and when he didn’t come back by midnight, I went out looking for him.”
“In the storm, in the dark? All by yourself? Why didn’t you call 911?”
“Because the phones were out and there were trees down all over the place. It was me or nobody. Father Daar certainly couldn’t go, and neither could Mom. So I took a spotlight and went looking for him. I found him on a ledge on the cliffs about a half mile from the house, and since I couldn’t very well carry him back, I stayed with him. The ledge was sort of like a cave, and we were out of the rain and wind.”
Maddy plucked a piece of grass out of Eve’s hair. “So you took off all his clothes to dry him out, and then you took off all your clothes to warm him up, and then you…” She slapped her hand to her chest. “Omigod, you jumped his bones!”
Eve said nothing, her cheeks filling with heat.
Maddy shook her head. “I wouldn’t have had the courage.”
“He was unconscious at first. Then he woke up, undressed us because we were soaking wet, and he’s the one who insisted we use our body heat to warm each other up. It wasn’t until we’d been asleep for a while that I got the idea to…to start something.” She pointed at her. “This is all your fault, Madeline Kimble. If you hadn’t put the crazy notion in my head of having an affair with him, I wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“What mess? Did he wake up, shout, ‘Jezebel!’ and toss you off the ledge?” She laughed.
“Will you be serious for a minute? I didn’t exactly have a condom in my pocket; we didn’t use any protection! I could be pregnant. Or what if he’s got herpes or something? I had unprotected sex with a virtual stranger!”
“No germ would dare invade that gorgeous body,” Maddy said. “So what happened this morning when you woke up?”
“He apologized for undressing me, and then we walked home.”
Eve wasn’t about to mention all the other weird stuff that had gone on; having unprotected sex was bad enough. “So, what do I do?”
“About what? The VD part, or the getting-pregnant part?”
“What do I say to him? This morning, he acted as if nothing had happened between us.”
Maddy frowned. “Maybe he thinks he had an erotic dream.” She shrugged. “If that’s the case, you simply don’t tell him. We’ll just cross our fingers about your getting pregnant.”
“It really annoys the heck out of me that he doesn’t even remember,” Eve groused.
“There, there,” Maddy said, patting her back. “You’ll get another chance. He’ll probably be so grateful you went looking for him in the storm, he’ll take you out to dinner again. And with His ‘erotic dream’ lingering in his mind, he’ll finally kiss you, and you can take it from there.”
“I’m not going out with him again.” Eve started fussing with some papers on the desk. “And I’m going to quit being his housekeeper, and move us into the store until we can find a rental.”
“Because of last night? Eve, you really didn’t do anything wrong. And you and I are the only two people on earth who know about it. Get over it and go about your business as usual.”
“It’s not just the sex that’s bothering me.” She sighed. “I think ther
e might be something in our water that’s making Mom sick. I’m getting it tested, and buying bottled water from now on. I haven’t been feeling like myself lately, either.”
“I know you don’t want it to be true, but Mabel had a CAT scan, Eve,” Maddy said gently. “They actually found where her brain is leaking. Water doesn’t cause that. And I haven’t seen you sick since you’ve been home.”
“But I get as confused as Mom does sometimes, and I actually imagine things.”
“Like what?”
“Like last night, when I was looking for Kenzie. I swear there was something in the bushes, following me.”
Her friend gave her a crooked smile. “Eve, you don’t like the dark any more than I do. I still can’t believe you went looking for Kenzie all by yourself last night. Either you’re far more attracted to him than you’re willing to admit, or you should be given a medal for bravery.”
Eve sighed again. She couldn’t make Maddy understand without explaining about William—and she’d rather have a lobotomy than tell her friend she’d gone out in the storm on the say-so of a dragon.
“Come on,” Maddy said, dragging her out front. “Let’s go to my house and get you showered. You’ll feel like a brand-new woman.”
Chapter Fourteen
Eve sat on her stool behind the counter, her chin resting in the palms of her hands, and contemplated her life as of late. It had been three weeks since the freak storm, and she had acquired several new skills in that time—some she was pleased with, and some she wasn’t so proud of.
On the pleased side of things, she could boast that she made the best herbed goat cheese in the county, and eight-ounce containers of it were zooming out of her store faster than the nanny goats could produce milk. Mabel’s hand-churned butter was an equally big hit with the locals, as well as the few tourists who came through town.
The sign she’d put on the sidewalk, with a bunch of balloons, advertising that the farm-fresh eggs from her natural-diet-fed hens made lighter, moister cakes might be a bit over the top, though. Because when asked what that diet was, Eve had to claim it was an old family secret rather than admit that the hens ate bugs, grubs, and worms they scavenged around the yard, and leftovers from her dinner table.
But the pastries and artisan breads her mother baked, as well as the blueberry pies Maddy’s mom made, were their biggest hits. Eve had already ordered a new sign and renamed their store Bishop’s Hearth and Home Bakery.
She’d also discovered that she really enjoyed tending the goats, which she insisted on milking herself while their adorable kids danced around her. At the rate sales were going, the store would be in the black by the end of the summer.
Which ultimately meant that she hadn’t been able to move—because if she and her mom quit housekeeping for Kenzie and Daar, they would lose access to their profit source.
Which eventually brought Eve to her not-so-proud-of skills: she had become a master skulker when it came to avoiding Kenzie, as well as an expert at redirecting the conversation whenever her mother mentioned William.
Skulking, Eve had come to realize, was an art. She had to know where Kenzie was at any given moment and where he was going next, in order to avoid him. In the last three weeks, she could count on one hand the conversations they’d had.
Although to be fair, he didn’t seem all that interested in talking to her, either.
The ungrateful jerk. Sex aside, she had saved his life.
She hadn’t developed any unexplainable rashes or other symptoms, so she figured she was safe in the STD department. As for getting pregnant—well, she was only five days late, which was still within her margin of error. She wasn’t giving herself permission to worry about the price of diapers for another week.
Since the storm, which seemed to have hit only An Tèarmann, things had been fairly uneventful—except for the rumors that Midnight Bay had its own—and better—version of the Loch Ness monster. A couple of kayakers claimed they saw something the size of a large horse swimming off Birch Point early one morning last week, and that it had a long neck and tail and wings.
The lobstermen were complaining that the monster had ripped apart their traps right in the water, eaten their lobsters, and shredded their lines. Some of them had started carrying rifles on their boats, hoping to get a shot at whatever was stealing their income.
Eve had been tempted to warn Kenzie that her mother’s imaginary friend was getting the locals riled, but that would mean she not only would have to talk to him, but that she’d have to admit she believed there was a dragon living in their woods.
And she didn’t.
They could dangle her by her heels off Mount Katahdin, and she wouldn’t admit she’d seen anything out of the ordinary the night of the storm. All of it—every damn, unexplainable thing—had only been adrenaline-laced fear conjuring up bogeymen, ocean waves full of grasping hands, magical burls of wood, and pens that glowed.
The shop’s front door opened, and her mother and Kenzie walked in, their arms laden with bread. Eve jumped up to catch one of the loaves falling out of Mabel’s arms.
“Just set them down right here, Mom,” she said, relieving her of several more loaves. “People have been coming in all morning, asking if I had any of your olive or rosemary bread. They’re our best sellers.”
“Can you imagine people are paying for my bread?” Mabel said with a giggle of delight. She took off her coat and started arranging the loaves in the baskets on a table. “I think I’ll start making Mem’s old recipe for banana bread.” She winked at Eve. “She always soured the milk with a dash of vinegar, which gives the bread its unique flavor. But we’ll keep that little secret between us, okay?”
Eve pretended to lock her lips and throw away the key. “I loved when you baked Mem’s banana bread when I was little. We could even fix up a gift pack of banana bread with a quarter pound of butter. It’ll become our best seller, I’m sure,” she said, relieving Kenzie of his loaves. “Thank you for bringing her to town,” she told him, sorting their loaves into the proper baskets.
“Would ye walk with me to the truck?” he asked. “I believe Mabel also brought some butter.”
Eve looked up, sensing an odd note in his voice, and realized he wanted to talk to her in private. Damn.
“I’ll be right back, Mom. Why don’t you design a new sign for the banana-bread gift pack,” she suggested, following Kenzie.
When she reached the sidewalk, she saw him standing by the curb two stores down. “What’s up?” she asked apprehensively.
He glanced behind her, as if making sure her mother hadn’t followed, then took her arm and led her even farther away. “I’m afraid Mabel might be getting worse. She had a rather bad spell this morning and came very close to starting a kitchen fire.”
“What? Other than talking about her imaginary friend, she’s seemed perfectly fine lately.”
Kenzie frowned at her, started to say something, then apparently thought better of it. “I noticed smoke in the yard this morning, and saw Mabel holding open the porch door, waving a towel in the air. I ran inside and smoke was billowing out of the range.”
“She forgot to set the timer again,” Eve said. “Heck, I’ve done it myself. It doesn’t mean she’s getting worse.”
“When I got the oven shut off—which I noticed was on broil—and opened the door, I found a loaf of bread in a roasting pan. I carried it out to the yard and saw the bread was still in its plastic wrapper. The plastic had melted and caught fire. Then, when I went back in to open the windows, I found a chicken in the sink with the cavity stuffed with plastic bags.”
Eve hugged herself against the sudden chill of the breeze. She’d thought her mother was actually getting better, now that they were drinking bottled water.
The water test had come back negative for anything out of the ordinary, but she’d sent in another test, just in case.
“She also got lost on her walk this morning, Eve, and I found her on the road to town. She’d walke
d half a mile past the driveway before I realized anything was wrong and went looking for her. I’m sorry. I know ye don’t want it to be so, but ye can no longer deny that she’s getting worse.”
“But I was sure she was getting better,” Eve insisted, balling her hands into fists.
“Eve, you have to accept that she never will. In fact, Mabel seems to be dealing with her illness far better than you are. She’s devised little tricks to keep herself on track, like stacking little piles of rocks to mark her way on her walks. And Daar told me she always carries a pad and pencil in her pocket, and writes notes to herself about things she doesn’t wish to forget. She’s accepted her illness for what it is, Eve, whereas you have chosen to pretend she’s perfectly fine.”
“Haven’t we had this discussion before?” she growled.
“Yes, we have. But apparently you were too busy telling me this is none of my business to hear what I was saying.”
“And it’s still none of your business. If Mom is becoming such a bother to you, we’ll move out.”
“You are missing the point.”
“No, I’m not. You told me that she nearly burned down your house this morning, and that you had to leave whatever you were doing to go hunt for her. I can solve your problem by simply moving.”
Kenzie ran his hand through his hair, obviously as frustrated as she was. “The point I’m trying to make is that you can’t do this all by yourself. I wasn’t complaining when I told ye what happened this morning; I was trying to open your eyes. Moving Mabel to a new home would only confuse her even more, and she would likely withdraw from life. She’s thrown herself completely into her baking business, and taking her away from An Tèarmann would be the worst thing you could do to her right now.”
Eve stared down at the sidewalk, knowing he was right but not liking it one damn bit. She looked up, feeling defeated and defensive. “Then what do you suggest I do?”
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