She stepped forward and covered his hand with warm fingers. “I believe in you, Greg. You’re exactly what I’ve been waiting for.” She squeezed, and then released his hand. “For my business, I mean.”
He grinned. “Don’t suppose you’d be interested in a job as my campaign manager, would you?”
“Well, now, I just might.” A flirty twinkle flashed in her eyes. “Depends on how you handle yourself tonight.”
She disappeared through the swinging doors into the kitchen, and Greg picked up his spoon. The suggestion about becoming his campaign manager hadn’t been serious, just lunchtime banter. But now that the idea had been voiced, he liked it. Everyone in the Cove loved bubbly, energetic Rowena, and he did need the help of someone who believed in his goals for the Cove, especially if tonight went well and he got enough public support for his plan. Jill would help with some of the details as the election drew close, but she certainly couldn’t do it all, especially since she was just starting to show a few real signs of recovering from the accident.
People not only loved Rowena, they respected her. She was probably the youngest business owner in Seaside Cove, with twice the energy and five times the drive of any of the others. With money inherited after her parents’ death several years ago, she’d bought a failing restaurant, and transformed the place into a thriving hub of activity in the community. In fact, what Rowe had done with the café was exactly what Greg hoped to do with the Cove, so she was the perfect person to partner with him. The more he considered the idea, the better it felt.
He scraped out the last bite of chowder, then picked up his glass as Rowena returned. “You know, Rowe, you really would make a great campaign manager. I think we’d work well together.”
She set a huge piece of gingerbread in front of him and leaned a hip against the counter. “Oh, I’m sure we would.” The dimples appeared. “I’ve thought that for a long time.”
“So you’ll do it?”
Her gaze went distant as she considered. Then she gave a slow nod. “I think I’d like that.”
Greg grinned. “Excellent. With your help, this election will be a breeze.”
“I don’t know how much help I’ll be, but I can tell you one thing. When I set my sights on something, I get it.” She held his gaze while a slow smile curled the corners of her full lips.
The door opened behind him. Rowe’s gaze wandered over his shoulder. Her eyes widened and the smile faded. She straightened and turned hurriedly back to the grill, leaving him with the impression she wasn’t fond of whoever had just entered the café. Curious, Greg glanced over his shoulder toward the door.
Jill stepped inside the noisy café and scanned the room for Greg. She caught sight of him seated at the counter, talking with Rowena Mitchell. The café owner leaned over the counter toward him, her attractive features arranged into a flirty and disturbingly possessive expression. A sharp pang of jealousy stabbed at Jill. What was that woman doing flirting with her fiancé?
She’d never been overly fond of Rowena, though obviously Greg thought highly of her. So did everyone else in the Cove. And Jill had always grudgingly admired her spunk, her determination to overcome obstacles and make her restaurant successful. But there was a reason most of her customers were men. The woman flaunted her buxom build to full advantage, which hadn’t made her many friends among the town’s women.
Until this moment, Jill hadn’t realized she’d set her sights on Greg. When did that happen?
The door whooshed closed behind her with a bang that silenced the chatter in the restaurant. Every head turned her way.
“Hey, it’s Jill.” A big, burly figure rose from a nearby table to stand before her. “Good to see you out and about. You look great.”
Jill tore her gaze from Rowena and focused on the man in front of her. Danny Ferguson. They’d gone to high school together. She found herself enveloped in a gentle hug, while other voices around the room called out greetings. When Danny released her, she was swept into another hug, and then another, as though she was a long-lost relative coming home for a family reunion. Gosh, had it been so long since she’d seen these people? Yes, probably. For the past year she’d spent most of her time huddled in her apartment, fighting memories and losing herself in soap operas. Obviously, she’d been missed.
The last set of arms to encircle her were Greg’s. “This is a terrific surprise. We haven’t had lunch together in a long time.”
Before the accident, Jill met Greg for lunch several times a week, whenever her concert schedule allowed her to be in town. She’d forgotten. Her gaze met Rowena’s. Obviously, the time had come to emerge from her self-imposed seclusion.
“I had to escape the clutches of the wedding planners, so I dropped by your office to see how the plans for tonight were going. Teresa told me you’d be here.” Jill allowed him to lead her to the counter, and settled into the high-backed stool beside him.
When she’d returned from visiting Mom, Nana’s knitting circle had been encamped in the living room. They’d consumed five pots of tea and three loaves of apple nut bread while they examined the magazine pages Jill had dog-eared. They shot down her flower preferences like so many clay pigeons, and ignored her when she mentioned that she didn’t want a wedding cake at all. She’d slipped away when the conversation turned to newspaper announcements. Her eyes were so heavy she welcomed the ten-block walk along the harbor in the frigid air. Anything to keep her awake until after Greg’s meeting tonight, when hopefully she’d be so exhausted she could sleep without dreaming.
Greg gave her a sympathetic smile. “You’ll probably have to suffer through more of that from my mother Wednesday night. But look on the bright side. At least it will be over soon. Imagine if you had to put up with this for months.”
“What can I get for you, Jill?” Rowena’s question was couched in friendly tones, but she didn’t quite meet Jill’s eyes.
“Just some coffee, please.” A jolt of caffeine might help. She rubbed her burning eyes.
Greg peered at her. “You look tired. Did you not sleep well again last night?”
She shook her head and stirred cream into the fragrant black liquid Rowena set in front of her. When his expression grew concerned, she flashed a quick smile. “I’ll be all right. So, are you ready for tonight?” Deflection was a tactic at which she’d become expert in recent months.
“I still have to go over my talk a few times, but I think I’m ready.” He sliced off a corner of the thick slab of gingerbread in front of him. “I have some good news. Rowe has agreed to become my campaign manager. Isn’t that great?”
Jill cast a startled glance at the woman, who was suddenly busy scraping the grill with a metal spatula. Great? That’s hardly the word Jill would use to describe the news. Her hand trembled as she set her spoon on the paper placemat and forced herself to speak pleasantly.
“That’s wonderful. I’m sure she’ll be a lot of help.” With exaggerated care, she raised the coffee cup to her lips and gulped the hot liquid.
“Mmmm.” Greg closed his eyes as he chewed the gingerbread with obvious delight. He stabbed his fork toward the cake. “This is delicious. You should try a piece, Jill.”
Rowena turned. “I’ll be happy to get you one.”
“Oh, don’t bother. I’ll just have a bite of Greg’s.”
Jill resorted to middle school tactics and placed a possessive hand on Greg’s arm. She leaned toward him, her mouth open. He sliced off a bite and fed it to her, unaware that the gesture was being closely watched by the café owner. Jill saw her eyelids narrow a fraction, and knew the message had been delivered.
Unfortunately, Greg was right. It was the best gingerbread Jill had ever tasted.
The afternoon hours after she walked Greg safely away from the café and back to his office crept by like the last day of the school term. Jill returned home to find a note from Nana saying she’d gone to the church and wouldn’t be home before tonight’s meeting. In vain Jill surfed through the televis
ion channels for something to hold her interest. Her limbs felt as though someone had attached anchors to them, and by four o’clock she’d rubbed her eyes so much she looked like she’d been on a weeklong crying jag. The fluffy throw pillows on her sofa beckoned. If only she could rest her head on them for just a few minutes.
No. She intended to stay awake until after the meeting. By then her brain would be as exhausted as her body, and maybe she would sleep without dreaming. In the meantime, she had to do something to occupy herself for the next three hours.
Her gaze went to her silent piano, no longer shrouded but still ignored. Before the accident she’d lost herself in music more times than she could count. The minute her fingers touched the keys, she’d be transported into another world, the intricate world a brilliant composer had labored for months or sometimes years to create. Emotions would rise, crest, and fall like a stormy sea, and hours would slip away unnoticed.
But that was before. Now, her left hand wouldn’t be able to handle the intricacies of any piece that mattered. She couldn’t bear to perform ineptly, to ruin a masterpiece that she’d previously played with the grace and ability the composer intended.
I have to play sometime before next Saturday. A piano teacher has to touch the whole keyboard, not just the upper registers. Kaylee and Mariah need someone to demonstrate the proper techniques, not just describe them.
She clenched the fingers on her left hand into a fist. Today was only Monday. She had five more days to worry about that.
In the meantime, she could dig out her old music books and glance through them. When she was a girl, she’d filled the pages with painstaking notes about her lessons, notes which would no doubt come in handy as a teacher.
Since Jill’s apartment occupied the top floor of the house, the entrance to the storage area of the attic was covered with an access panel in her kitchen wall. She slid open the panel and stooped nearly double to enter the cold, dark space. The musty odor of old insulation tickled her nose, and dust danced in the beam of her flashlight. A plywood floor had been laid across the wooden rafters, not quite all the way to the sloping walls. Dozens of boxes had been stacked three deep, each labeled with Nana’s careful script.
The plywood creaked as Jill crept among the boxes, looking for the one in which she’d packed away her old music books. She found it near the back, beneath an ancient box labeled LORNA’S THINGS. The masking tape along the seams of the upper box was cracked and stiff with age. When she shoved the heavy box out of her way, it fell to the floor and the tape broke on impact.
“Great.”
She knelt, turned the box upright, and inspected the seam. Later she’d bring a roll of tape in here and do a repair job. For now, she’d just push it off to one side. She began to shove things back inside. An empty picture frame. A heavy glass paperweight. A couple of old cassette tapes. She glanced at the covers. Kansas and Journey. Mom had always liked classic rock. An old paperback novel, The Thorn Birds. Jill shined the flashlight on the back cover to read the description. The story sounded good, and it was thick enough to keep her entertained for hours.
She set the book aside and scooped up a pair of envelopes held together with an oversized paper clip. The top was a letter addressed to Mom. When she caught sight of the return address, Jill’s heart lurched. Lieutenant Michael King, HMCS Huron. Daddy had served in the Canadian Navy before he and Mom married. He’d been a cook on a ship, and Jill had a dim memory of him setting a plate of scrambled eggs covered in ketchup in front of her when she was tiny and saying, “That’s exactly the way the skipper liked them.” The memory brought a smile to her face. Mom must have kept a couple of his letters. Jill flipped to the second envelope, and recognized the same handwriting. Maybe Mom would enjoy hearing the letters again. Jill set them on top of the paperback and finished scooping the rest of the stuff back into the box.
She found her old music books exactly where she’d left them and flipped through the pages of the oldest ones. A glance at her own childish scrawl made her smile. Yes, these were going to be helpful. After sorting through the ones she wanted, she repacked the rest and left the attic.
Flames crept along a thick rope, blackening it to char. Voices reached her, oddly distant and yet distinguishable. The high-pitched question of a child. A woman’s patient explanation. Conversational tones, without a trace of the urgency that held Jill’s breath in her chest like a fist shoved down her throat.
Why were they just standing there talking? They had to leave! She had to warn them.
The pounding of her heart echoed throughout her skull and drowned out their voices.
The dream again.
I’m not here. I’m on the sofa in my living room. I can even feel the cushion beneath my cheek. God, please. Help me wake up.
The burning rope disappeared, followed by a series of images parading before her eyes almost too quickly to see. A child flying through the air. A line of people, covered with blood. The face of a wristwatch. A jagged boulder. Newspaper headlines, all the letters blurred except the date — December 6.
Jill’s eyes flew open. The fabric of the sofa beneath her face was wet with tears. She struggled to raise herself upright, her vision blurry, her brain groggy with a dream hangover. Music books lay scattered across the coffee table, and one sprawled open on the floor beside the sofa. She’d been reading that one when she fell asleep.
Her moan echoed in the room. She’d tried so hard not to sleep. Which was stupid, because nobody could go without sleep forever. No matter how hard she tried, sleep would eventually catch up with her, and the dream would come. It seemed nothing could stop it, except …
The silence around her grew heavy with certainty. She knew how to stop the dream. She had to warn the people of Seaside Cove to leave town in the early morning hours of December 6. When she’d done that, the dream wouldn’t return.
This is ridiculous. How do I know that?
No answer came, just an escalating conviction that she had to act, and act quickly. Only then would the dream set her free. If she didn’t act, it would drive her truly crazy.
She forced herself off the couch and stumbled into the bathroom to splash her face with cold water. Doreen said to do whatever it took to get rid of her stress. Okay, if she had to make herself look like a lunatic to rid herself of the dream, she was ready to do that. But how could she get a message to everyone in the Cove? Rent a billboard? Take out an ad in the paper? Cold water filled her cupped hands, and she bent over the basin. Maybe she could print a notice and pass it out all over town, like a politician during an election.
In the act of lowering her face into the pooled water, she froze. Greg’s meeting. Half the town would be there. Everyone was interested in his plans, because the future of Seaside Cove concerned them all. But if her dream came true, Seaside Cove might not have a future.
I’ve got to talk to Greg.
She dashed out of the bathroom toward the kitchen, and rummaged in her purse for her cell phone. The display was dark. Oh, yes. She’d turned it off this morning when she went into Doreen’s office, like she always did before a counseling appointment. She punched the button to turn the phone on, and while it powered up, glanced at the clock on the microwave. Her stomach plummeted as the numbers registered on her sleep-fogged brain. Seven twenty-one.
She’d missed the first half of Greg’s meeting. If she didn’t hurry, she would miss the whole thing.
Chapter 12
GREG PRESSED THE BUTTON TO advance to the next slide. The screen on the stage lit up with the colorful chart he’d worked so hard on.
He spoke into the microphone. “Several of the Nova Scotia communities who have developed targeted tourism programs were happy to share their numbers from last year with me. As you can see, the green bars here represent each town’s total budget, and the red sections indicate the percentage of that budget allocated to their tourism programs.” He pressed the button again and more bars appeared on the chart. “Now, take a look at their
tourism revenue. The correlation is obvious. The higher the budget allocation, the higher the return.”
He scanned the faces in the crowded school gymnasium and saw the understanding he’d hoped for. A few wore skeptical expressions, but many heads nodded. The hum of whispers bounced off the elementary school’s polished wooden floor as people whispered a comment to their neighbors. In the center of the front row, Rowena sat with her video camera trained on him.
Hers wasn’t the only one, either. He saw several cameras in the crowd, and he’d lost count of the number of flashes as people snapped pictures. Best of all was the presence of a reporter from the local newspaper standing against the rolled-up bleachers to the right, who stopped scribbling on his notebook only long enough to take pictures with an elaborate-looking camera. He’d hoped The Cove Journal would cover the event.
He still couldn’t believe the turnout for tonight’s meeting. He’d expected several dozen, maybe, though the handful of folks who’d showed up to help him get the gym ready had insisted on unfolding a hundred chairs in rows facing the stage. Turns out they’d underestimated the crowd by at least half. They’d ended up grabbing more child-sized chairs from the classrooms, and still, standing spectators lined the rear walls of the gym. From his seat in the middle of the fifth row, Samuels’s heavy glower stood out among the smiles like a mustard stain on a white shirt.
But where was Jill? Greg’s gaze switched to the two empty chairs on the front row, beside the ladies from church who’d showed up to support him, as Ruth promised. Worry gnawed in his stomach. Jill knew how important tonight was to him. She wouldn’t miss unless something was wrong. Had something happened to her mother? Or, God forbid, to Jill herself? He’d tried repeatedly to call her before the meeting began, but her phone went straight to voicemail. The rational side of his mind told him that she had probably taken his suggestion of an afternoon nap and overslept. She’d looked so tired at lunch he could easily believe that.
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