He shook his head, trying to wipe Kendall from his mind. He wished he could write off his fascination with her as infatuation, but while there was undoubtedly a spark of attraction there, his feelings were far more troubled than that. She too had that tough outer shell, that determination to make it on her own no matter the cost, a kind of grit that only came from a difficult, independent childhood. When he thought about what it must have been like, his heart ached for her . . . and he didn’t consider himself a heart-aching sort of person. So why did he feel so invested after a mere day and a half?
Because he knew what it felt like to be abandoned, even if it wasn’t in such a literal sense. And unlike him, she hadn’t had anyone to fall back on.
Enough of that. He couldn’t spend all his time worrying about Kendall when she would land on her feet more surely than any cat. The town, on the other hand, needed him. He sat down at his desk, plugged his own set of earbuds into his phone, and turned on his eighties metal playlist. Linda had once pulled them out to hear what he was listening to while he worked, and the horror on her face still made him laugh. He couldn’t explain why the loud, aggressive music helped focus his thoughts. Maybe it was because it took all his attention to keep his mind on his work and the music out of his head. He pulled out the blank, gridded notepad he used to mind-map his projects and set his favorite gel ink pen to the paper.
Within minutes, he had a messy scrawl of ideas around the central thought Resort Development, all the things that would have to be taken into account should they approve the permits: traffic flow and road improvements, watershed impact reports, real estate price appreciation, property tax increase, cost of living . . . Some of the markers were negative, while some were positive. Then there were the intangibles: quality of life, traffic, outside investors who bought real estate but didn’t actually live in the town, impact on the public school system, and so on. He was aware that what he was doing was wildly speculative and his perspective might be slanted, but if he was going to convince the city council, he would have to give a realistic view of what their town might look like in another ten to fifteen years should they go forward with the development. Growth didn’t have to be bad if it was done in a sensible way. He just wasn’t convinced this was it.
Now there was little he could do without creating a 3D model. He pulled up his modeling software on his laptop and—after a quick check of the coordinates—input the GPS locators to load satellite images of the town. The software wasn’t without its glitches—it occasionally picked out things like large traffic circles as buildings—but within hours, he had begun to build a respectable model to work from.
“Are you staying late?” Linda poked her head into his office, her bag slung over her shoulder.
He glanced up in surprise and checked his watch. Five thirty already. The afternoon had flown by while he was engrossed in the grown-up version of The Sims. “Not much longer. Don’t wait for me.”
“Thanks, Gabe. Don’t stay too late. You work too hard.”
He waved her off, as much a demurral as a dismissal, feeling like she had him completely wrong. He’d done very little for the town; this was the first concrete step he’d made toward his campaign promises. And even now, he was dealing in guesses, wishful thinking, and speculation. If only he had a crystal ball to guide his plans.
Or you know, you could try praying. The wry thought was half out of his own mind and half from his grandmother’s mouth. Without a doubt, she had been a pray-first type of Christian, whereas it was easy for Gabe to let his analytical nature take over, especially when it came to work.
“Okay, Lord,” he said out loud, leaning back in his chair. “What do You think about all this? Am I even headed in the right direction?”
After he stared at the ceiling for a minute or two, hoping for some sort of answering nudge, he concluded that it was time to knock off for the day and try again tomorrow. Maybe he’d wake up with a conviction one way or another. Or maybe he had to plow forward and hope it was made clear to him as he went along. This whole time, he’d been thinking he’d been sent to Jasper Lake to fix this, so he just had to believe that the solution would be made clear to him.
Or maybe he’d just gotten laid off and had to come crawling home, and he’d invented the whole right-time-right-place story to make himself feel better.
No, he couldn’t believe that. The town needed him. And he wouldn’t fail them.
It was cold. That was Kendall’s first thought as she let herself into the easternmost home with the keys. Of course the power and propane had been turned off for some time now, but somehow she hadn’t noticed how frigid her grandmother’s house was when she’d gone in yesterday. Today, it was hard to ignore her shivers and chattering teeth.
She clutched her arms to her body, wishing she’d worn the coat and not just a down vest. She’d have to make this quick and then head back to the hardware store just outside of town to pick up a space heater. Or Gabe would come out here only to find her a blue Popsicle, frozen with her hand around her cell phone.
The thought of Gabe gave her an oddly unsettled feeling. She kept having to remind herself that she’d met him yesterday, that they had opposing priorities, that she really shouldn’t trust him so easily. But his friendly and straightforward attitude was downright disarming. She couldn’t help but like the guy, especially when she saw him with his grandfather and his huge, silly dog.
There were also those arresting blue eyes, the lean physique, and chiseled features just a touch too masculine to be called beautiful, not that she’d given it much thought.
“Stop being stupid,” Kendall said to herself and marched through the parlor into the bare kitchen, her phone at the ready.
It didn’t turn out to be needed, though. The house had some of the same impressive architectural features as Connie’s, minus the period wallpaper, but absolutely no furniture. The old owners had taken everything with them but a battered breakfront that was good for little more than firewood. Kendall snapped a few photos of the home’s two fireplaces, which she would definitely salvage from demolition if necessary, locked up the house again, and headed straight for the warmth of her rental SUV.
Forty-five minutes later, she was back in the same place, this time carrying a small propane space heater and an extra bottle of fuel she’d purchased at the hardware store. She flipped through the keys in her hand, taking four tries to find the one for the second house. Tomorrow she would bring a bottle of nail polish and mark them so she didn’t have to go through this song and dance every time she wanted to open a door.
She didn’t even end up firing up the heater, though, because the second house was the same situation as the first. No furniture, period details, nice fireplaces. This one at least had some interesting built-in corner cabinetry in the dining room, which she thought might be removable if she were careful. But the most striking details, like the carved columbines on the molding’s corbels, were again absent. Did that mean Connie’s house was the original build, the house of the “big boss,” and the others were just copies for family members or high-ranking employees?
Kendall went through the two west-side houses with just as much speed, only documenting what she thought she might like to salvage, and then returned to Connie Green’s home, where she stood on the street and stared, her chest tight. If she were honest with herself, she’d been wasting time with the others because she didn’t want to face what might be inside.
If Connie Green had known she was alive, what might she find about herself in there? What might she find about her mother?
Kendall pulled out her phone and video-called Sophie, but her friend didn’t answer. She tried texting instead. What are you doing? Are you available?
A message quickly came back: with client ttyl.
Kendall shoved her phone in her pocket and sighed. She couldn’t even count on her friend to stall her entry into the house. Okay. No more dillydallying.
She let herself through the front door and paused
in the vestibule. She had to be disciplined about this. No standing here, wondering if her mother had thrown her backpack on this bench in the entry, if Kendall had crawled across this Persian rug as a baby. This was about the furnishings and the architectural details only.
Kendall decided to start in the library, though her throat already felt tight. It was easy enough to tell herself to stay impassive, but years of looking at pieces with not only an analytical eye but a creative one couldn’t be turned off at will. It was what made her good at her work, what allowed her to uncover the stories of the most obscure pieces—that willingness to imagine what the furniture had seen, the kind of people who had used it, how it had made its way from its place of origin to its current location. When she looked at these pieces, all she saw was a history that she should have been a part of but wasn’t.
The sob caught her by surprise, choking her throat and tightening her chest. She fled the library, through the hallway and out the front door, where she collapsed onto the first step, her head in her hands.
“I can’t do this,” she murmured, trying to still the sudden storm inside. The indifference she had managed to maintain for years felt broken open in the face of her past, what should have been her home. If she even really knew what that meant. She glanced at her phone, but there was no other response from Sophie. She was doing what she should—putting clients first—but Kendall still felt inexplicably cut loose.
The rumble of a diesel engine drew her head up, and she swiped at her eyes when she recognized Gabe’s truck. Slowly she got to her feet while he parked alongside the curb and got out of the truck.
“What are you doing here?”
“Just thought I’d check in.” He spun his keys around his index finger as he approached. Then his expression changed. “What’s wrong? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Just taking a break.”
He glanced back at the house before focusing on her again. “It’s harder than you thought.”
She started to deny it, but something about the understanding in his eyes made her change her mind. “It is.”
“What do you say we call it a day, then, and try again tomorrow?” He nodded back across the lake toward town. “We still have several restaurants you haven’t tried. Or if you want to experience what my life is truly like up here, I have a rather impressive collection of breakfast cereals.”
His mock-serious expression brought a laugh bubbling from her mouth. “Are you trying to warn me that cooking is not part of your charm?”
“Cooking is definitely not part of my charm. To be honest, I mostly get by on looks.” He winked at her, eliciting another laugh, and gestured to the house. “Come on. Lock up and we’ll go.”
Kendall only hesitated a moment before she turned back to the house. After a quick check to make sure that the heater was off, she returned to the stoop and locked the front door behind her. The tightness in her chest remained, but at least there was a lightness layered atop it that hadn’t been there before.
“What are the choices for dinner then? Besides cereal, I mean.”
“Sandwiches, burgers, or Italian. All of them are good.”
Kendall came down the steps toward him. “You know what? You choose. I trust you.”
“Do you now?” Another glimmer in his eyes made her feel suddenly unsteady. “In that case, I have an idea.”
Chapter Twelve
GABE LED THE WAY BACK TO TOWN, where they dropped off Kendall’s vehicle in front of the B and B, and then he drove her back to Main Street to pick up their dinner: sandwiches, huge dill pickles, and bags of salt-and-vinegar potato chips from the deli. Gabe half expected her to balk at his dinner choice, but true to her word, she calmly ordered her pastrami on rye and an unsweetened tea. Minutes later, they were heading back to his truck with their brown paper bag dinners in hand.
“You’re not afraid of heights, are you?” Gabe asked as he put the truck in gear and headed out of town to the highway.
She cast a suspicious look at him. “No . . . at least I don’t think so.”
“Good.” He grinned. “And I’m not telling you where we’re going.”
He realized he was asking for a lot of trust, considering they barely knew each other, but after finding her crying on the steps of her grandmother’s house, he figured she needed an escape from town. He drove back around the lake the way they’d come, but instead of turning toward Lakeshore Drive, he continued onto a dirt road that wound upward into the hills. They jostled over a rut, and Kendall reached up to steady herself with the grab handle.
“Sorry. The later in the season it gets, the worse the roads get. We only have the resources to grade it once a year if we’re lucky.”
“I guess that’s a good reason to have four-wheel drive, isn’t it?”
“Something like that.” He smiled and continued up the hill, then pulled off onto what was little more than a path. When he finally stopped, they were perched on top of a rocky promontory, the mountain sloping steeply down to the lake. The town was spread out before them in miniature like the buildings on a model railroad, simultaneously realistic and whimsical because of their tiny scale. It reminded him of the model he had been building in his CAD application today, reminded him of the things that couldn’t be communicated in a rendering.
Kendall opened the door and stood on the running board so she could take in the view. “Wow.”
“My thoughts exactly.” Gabe hopped out of the truck and withdrew a heavy wool blanket from the back seat. Then he grabbed their dinners and circled around to the front of the truck, where he climbed up on the hood. “You joining me?”
Kendall’s eyes widened, and then her face softened into a delighted smile. “Okay.” It took her a couple of tries to get onto the bumper, so he held out his hand and hauled her up next to him. She shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t want to dent your hood.”
“Trust me, you’re not heavy enough to dent my hood. Besides, can’t you see all the hail damage?” He indicated the golf ball–size dents that peppered the hood and the top of the truck.
Kendall cringed. “I bet that hurt.”
He shrugged. “I bought it this way. Made it more affordable, and I knew if I was going to be spending any time up here, I would need something rugged. Last March we got fifty inches of snow.” He peeked into one of the paper bags and handed it to her.
Instead of digging into her food, she scooted back against the windshield and stretched her legs out in front of her. The waning, pink-tinged sunset added a warm glow to her blonde hair, the color in her cheeks. She took in the view silently as the horizon melded into a collection of sherbet shades, the sky above it starting to drift into a hazy violet-blue. “This is beautiful.”
“One of my favorite spots.”
She cast him an amused look, but there was something guarded beneath it. “I bet you bring all the girls here.”
“When I was a teenager? Of course. It was known as Make-Out Point when I was in high school.” He grinned at her. “But I haven’t been up here since I was seventeen.”
She reached for her iced tea and took a sip while she considered his words. “I take it you don’t have a wife or a girlfriend.” She held up a hand. “I’m not fishing; I just figured you wouldn’t bring me here if you did.”
“No, I don’t have a wife. Or a girlfriend.” There had been someone back in Michigan, his coworker. He thought he and Madeline had potential, but that evaporated when he was let go from his job. Maybe she was afraid that the layoffs would rub off on her, or maybe she just hadn’t been that interested in him. Or maybe it was the fact that they’d seen each other on and off for over a year and they’d never slept together. He thought that made him a Christian and a gentleman, but he was finding that some women took it as an insult. They hadn’t been as in sync as he’d initially thought.
Gabe shifted the focus back to Kendall. “How about you?”
“No, I don’t have a wife or girlfriend.”
For a se
cond, he wasn’t sure what to think, but then she cracked a smile. “No boyfriend or husband either.”
“Cute.”
“I couldn’t help it. You were very nonspecific.”
Gabe leaned back against the windshield beside her and reached into his bag for his sandwich. “I find that hard to believe.”
“Why is that?”
“Because you’re beautiful and accomplished, and you probably have men asking for your number wherever you go.”
She lifted a shoulder, which he took as grudging acknowledgment. “If they can’t be bothered to have a conversation with me first, I can’t be bothered to give them a call.”
He could understand that. He’d had a few of those interactions in Jasper Lake, though he’d chalked them up to the dearth of young single men in town. Which, he supposed, proved her point.
“Their loss,” he said finally.
Kendall fell silent and removed her own sandwich from the bag, then took a big bite. She chewed thoughtfully for a minute and lowered her food to her lap. “I don’t think I can do this.”
He glanced at her. “Eat the sandwich or sit here with me?”
A ghost of a smile. “Go through Connie’s house.”
He’d been wondering if she would say anything about that. It was part of the reason he’d brought her up here. Somehow, sitting on the top of the world made it easier to face your problems. “Why do you say that?”
“It’s like having amnesia. I know that this place is somehow connected to me, but I have no recollection of any of it. It doesn’t mean anything, even though I know it should. It feels like . . .”
“. . . an alternate reality?”
She cocked her head and studied him. “Sort of. You sound like you know how that feels.”
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