Yes, something was up. Whatever it was, it was bad. Very bad.
And it was written all over her mom’s face.
As Gabrielle grabbed the remaining tossed salad from the dinner table and emptied it into a Tupperware container, Haley followed her to the kitchen. Her socked feet slid a little on the laminate flooring as she tried to keep up with her mother’s busy pacing from the counter, to the cupboard in search of the hiding Tupperware lid, to the fridge, then to the sink.
“Mom,” Haley finally blurted out, tired of playing the guessing game that her mother seemed determined to play. “What’s going on? You’re acting weird.”
“Nothing, honey,” Gabrielle replied simply as she turned on the water, running it full blast. “I’m fine.” Emotionless.
Liar.
“I can tell something’s wrong, so why don’t you just spit it out?”
“I’m just thinking about your birthday coming up. What do you want to do? Go out to dinner or something?”
“Sure. That sounds fine.”
Gabrielle continued to wash the salad bowl, her hands mindlessly flipping the dish over. Rinsing. Sudsing. Rinsing again.
“We could see a movie in Erie if you want. I saw a couple good previews.”
“Yeah, whatever, okay.”
More sudsing. More rinsing.
“And I figured we could go to the mall and maybe pick something out together.”
Okay, the small talk is starting to get annoying.
“Mom, I know you’re not thinking about my birthday, so just tell me what’s bothering you.”
Gabrielle paused in front of the sink as the water drowned out the sound of her heavy sigh that Haley noted in the rise and fall of her shoulders. Haley waited. It was coming. The sigh always came before the lecture.
Yet this time no lecture. No preaching. Instead, Gabrielle turned from the sink, took a step forward, and hugged her so tightly that Haley could feel her mother’s heartbeat racing, thumping against her chest. Gabrielle held her for a long moment then released.
“I just want you to know I love you, Haley. But I just don’t want to go down that path with you again. I can’t. I don’t have the strength.”
Haley’s brow scrunched as her lips formed a grimace. “What are you talking about? What path?”
Gabrielle shook her head pitifully, her lids closed as if she was afraid to look her own daughter in the eyes for fear of what she’d see. Then she turned back to the sink to continue washing the same salad bowl for the sixth time—Haley had counted. Gabrielle was stalling.
“I’m not going to stop you this time. You do what you feel you need to do. If that’s what you want, I can’t keep monitoring you, protecting you from pain.”
What is she talking about? “Mom, I need a little more explanation than that. I don’t even know what you’re referring to.”
Suds filled the sink as Gabrielle kept scrubbing. “I know you don’t. Because you’re not a mother, you don’t understand. But you have a right to your privacy, your secrets, so I won’t barge in.”
“My secrets?” It felt as if Haley had been dropped into another dimension at another time in another life. Her mother was acting nuts. Speaking gibberish.
“Just promise me you’ll come to me if you ever need me, okay?”
“Sure, Mom.”
Gabrielle shut off the water, grabbed a towel hanging from the oven door, and dried the salad bowl. Her gaze refused to meet Haley’s as she watched her wrinkled hands fold the cloth, smooth it, then place the salad bowl in the cupboard. Then another sigh, this one more light.
“How about some tea?” Gabrielle said chipperly.
Haley nodded hesitantly. Who is this woman? And who just possessed her body a moment ago?
“Green tea or almond?” Gabrielle asked, tossing a bright-eyed glance back at Haley as she pulled down two mugs and placed them on the counter. In a single moment her entire demeanor had changed back to normal.
This was definitely the strangest conversation Haley had ever had with her mother to date.
Chapter 7
Haley’s eyes fluttered open at the sound of the beep that stopped the reel of distant memories playing on the big-screen in her head. She had fallen asleep… again. The desk clock ticked down the minutes, inching toward bedtime. She had slept the entire evening away.
She swallowed the choking stiffness in her throat and waited for the logon screen pop up on her PC. However, this time it didn’t come up. Not again. The screen was blank, and her screensaver was MIA. Please work. She rolled the mouse and pounded a few keys, but the black screen rejected her efforts.
“What’s wrong with this thing?” Haley exploded, slamming her fist on the glass-topped desk of her spare-bedroom-turned-office. She jerked up from her black leather chair and examined the back of the monitor. At least nothing was smoking. Though, other than that, she wouldn’t know what to look for anyways.
“Gotta call Marc.” Referring to Marc Vincetti—Westfield’s only computer repairman. Though the computer had been showing error messages the past couple of days, Haley got by with a simple click on “okay.” Not this time. Now a blank computer screen offered no trace of her work’s whereabouts.
When she’d first hired Marc a couple weeks ago to fix her printer, he’d warned her that her monitor wasn’t looking too good. Apparently a green tint to the screen wasn’t promising.
She picked up the cordless and glanced at the sticky note clinging to the edge of the computer screen that still had Marc’s office number scribbled on it. Her heart fluttered a brief moment as she pictured him in her mind and imagined his voice; he was a cutie, after all. Perfect crush material. Tossing the thoughts aside, she dialed and listened as the phone rang a couple times until his voicemail picked up. She left a brief message and wondered what to do next.
“Well, I guess I can’t work.” There’d be nothing good on television other than sitcom reruns at this hour, so she pulled out her diary tucked in the back of her desk and wondered what she could write about. Her first screenplay class? There wasn’t much to tell. The conversation at her mother’s house this morning over breakfast? Not that interesting. What was interesting was trying to figure out the identity of the person sending her letters. She reached into her back pocket, but the familiar sound of crinkled paper was missing. Her pocket was empty.
She shoved her hand into her other pockets. Nothing but a gum wrapper.
Oh no. Where is it?
This definitely wasn’t good.
Retracing her steps, she thought back to when she last had it. This morning. Could it have slipped out of her pocked in the car? Not likely, considering her jeans were skin-tight. Her mind rewound over each detail of the day.
On the porch. At her mom’s house. Then her memory jogged back to the sight of her mother bent over, picking something up. Oh no. Tell me Mom hasn’t read it!
This was getting worse by the minute.
But her mother hadn’t called. If her mother had read the letter, she definitely would have called asking questions. Questions that Haley didn’t know answers to. Basic questions, like who was so fixated on her daughter. Then again… her mother’s odd behavior explained it all. It made perfect sense. She had to have read the letter.
There was only one way Haley could stop the drama before it happened, and that was to find the identity of the sender. Put her mother’s mind at ease.
There were a number of ways to go that, but the easiest was to narrow down everything she knew about him. That was fact number one: It was a him. Based on the content, it could only be a him. Haley grabbed a notebook and paper, then padded across the hall to her bedroom. She plopped on her meticulously made bed, her striped sweater contrasting against the floral patterned bedspread, and pulled a handful of letters from a bedside table drawer. She rifled through each one until she found the very first letter, received fourteen days ago:
Dear Haley,
From the moment I laid eyes on you I knew I was
in love. Perhaps you felt it too? If only I had the courage to call you, I would. But I’m hoping that this letter will prompt you to seek me out. You’ve seen my face, yet you know me not.
I’ve been watching you, waiting for you. I know the loneliness you feel at night as you gaze into the empty darkness of your house, just you and no one else. I know how you try to mask it with a smile, resigned to single life as a way to bear your cross. I know how you hurt your mother and about the poverty that’s devouring her life. And I know how you miss your father—I read it in your eyes.
Let me make it all better. If you’re willing, please write me back. Leave your reply in an unmarked envelope in your mailbox, and I will pick it up. I promise you, Haley, that I can make your sadness go away.
She felt the compassion all over again as she read the words. She knew his face, but from where? Westfield only had a couple thousand residents, and she only knew maybe a hundred of them. And he knew her fairly intimately to know about her parents. And the final clue: He had to live somewhat close by in order to know when she’d put the envelopes in the mail—perhaps within sight? Yet never once had she seen anyone other than the mailman drop by. Odd how her admirer never escaped the shadows. A tingle crept up her spine as her eyes darted to the nearby window. Is he watching me now?
At the phone’s chirping ring Haley jolted, then she caught a glimpse of the number on caller ID. Marc.
“Hello,” she answered sweetly.
“Hello, this is Marc Vincetti’s Computer Repairs calling you back, Ms. Montgomery. I got your message,” the man’s smooth voice said.
“Haley—call me Haley. And I appreciate you calling me back so quickly, Marc.” She glanced at the time. “And so late at night.”
“Not a problem. Working for yourself means 24/7 service, which isn’t so bad when your clients are lovely ladies.” He laughed good-naturedly, and Haley’s laughter quickly joined in. “So tell me what happened.”
“I don’t know about lovely at this hour, but thanks. Anyways, I just tried turning on my computer and it’s blacked out.”
“Hm. I had a feeling that would happen.”
“I know, I know. You warned me. Do you think you can fix it?”
“I’m thinking your monitor is dead, but it could be something else. Now, you’re sure the computer is plugged in?” Haley rolled her eyes at his joke as a grin spread across her lips—IT people and their weird sense of humor.
“Do I look like an idiot?” she retorted with a giggle.
“I can’t honestly answer that since I can’t see you.”
“Alright, I surrender. Yes, it’s plugged in. So do you think you can fix it?”
“How about I come out to check it over?” Was that flirtation she heard in his offer? “I’ll give you a free estimate before I do anything, and if I can’t fix it, no charge. When would you like me to come by?” Definitely flirtation.
She glanced at the clock. It was already 8:30 p.m. She felt badly for asking him to come out when he was probably getting ready for bed… but not badly enough to decline. “The sooner the better. I’m desperate.”
“Well, I’m available right now. Anything to help a lady in distress.” Haley could almost hear a smile over the phone. “Remind me where you live again.”
She wondered if he really didn’t know. It wasn’t that big of a town; the village outskirts reached just under two miles from border to border. It took less than three turns to map it out for him. She lived a stone’s throw from Main Street, the central road and hub of activity in Westfield—if one considered shopping at antique shops and a thrift store “the hub of activity.” In Westfield, however, the townsfolk did.
“You can’t miss me. I’m in the only yellow house on the block.”
As she hung up, she felt an unexpected compulsion to brush her hair and dab her lips and cheeks with some color. No, that was ridiculous, primping for an IT house call. Though, a touch of lip gloss wouldn’t hurt, she finally decided.
Chapter 8
Ten minutes later, the doorbell rang. Haley opened the door and studied Marc with fresh curiosity. Even if she wasn’t interested—which she totally wasn’t, she told herself—she couldn’t help but admire the way his short sleeve polo shirt stretched over well-defined arms, and how his worn jeans hugged his thighs and loosened where they covered his boots. A black nylon case hung over his shoulder, an enticingly broad set of shoulders at that. His olive complexion accented intense brown eyes. What captured her attention most, though, was his genuine smile.
“Thanks for making it out here so quickly,” Haley greeted him after a momentary delay, hoping he hadn’t noticed her drooling.
“No problem. I had nothing better to do, so I might as well work, right? I appreciate the business.”
They paused in the doorway, then he held out a strong, rough hand, which enveloped hers in its grasp. It felt oddly familiar. Rugged near the fingers, but still supple in his palm. Strange. It vaguely reminded her of her father’s hands—the hands of a man familiar with physical labor. Then Marc squeezed, just as her father had squeezed her hand the last time she saw him alive.
Haley held on for a moment longer than would feel natural, letting the touch of his skin inspire a momentary slip back to a memory of her father. The touch only lasted a long minute, but as their hands parted ways, Haley’s mind burned the feel of her hand in his.
There’s just something about him…
Their handshake was a simple gesture, but a powerful one. It could have been his cute smile that got to her, or his incredible body, or his—
Why am I even checking him out? She had tried so hard to push dating out of her mind in order to focus on her writing.
Men were nothing more than a bad distraction. A relationship was off-limits if she wanted a career—case closed. It was after her last blind date gone bad that Haley at last resigned herself to singledom. Her co-worker set the whole thing up, assuming it would give Haley a fresh perspective. And perspective was about all she got out of it.
Her date’s withered flowers couldn’t make up for his gold-toothed grin and food-crusted mustache. It got even worse—if that was possible—when he insisted on dragging her to a seedy bar that night. The guy didn’t even have the courtesy to upgrade her from some watery beer on tap to a mixed drink. Haley couldn’t get home fast enough, and she made sure her co-worker knew about it, too.
A hundred apologies from her co-worker weren’t nearly a high enough price to pay for the guy’s beer breath in her face when he dropped her off… in the middle of the street in front of her house! The nerve—especially after putting her through four excruciating hours of bland conversation about his ex. Never again. Old maids weren’t that taboo, were they?
“Come on in,” she said, gesturing Marc inside. “My office is upstairs.” While leading him up the stairwell, she glanced back, finding him examining the pictures lining the stairwell wall. There were several portraying her and Courtney as kids, a family portrait taken when she was five, and one of her straddling her father’s knee when she was ten. Matching wood framed the cluster of pictures.
“Are these you?” he asked, obviously realizing she caught him red-handed staring at the cranberry wall.
“Yep, forever ago.”
“Oh, it couldn’t have been that long ago.”
She laughed. So he was a charmer, was he?
“Is this your family?”
“Yeah, that’s them. Me, my sister, my mom, and my dad.”
“I can definitely see the resemblance between you and your sister. And your father too.”
“Yeah, unfortunately my sister and I don’t talk much, but she’s in college… you know how that is. Too busy partying, I’m sure.”
“I guess we all gotta have our rebellion period, right?”
Haley chuckled. Was hers now?
“It looks like you had a fun childhood,” he said, before shifting his weight on the stairs.
The conversation took an uneasy twist as h
er gut did a little lurch.
“Yeah, I did,” Haley replied.
“This picture is really unique,” he said, examining the profile of a small child backlit by a brilliant sunset. “It captures the moment.”
She grinned. It happened to be one of her favorites too. “Yeah, we have the best view of the sunsets at my parents’ house. I miss seeing that every night. When I was a kid, my bedroom had a picture window facing the lake, so in the evening every color imaginable would pour in as the sun went down. Truly breathtaking.”
“There’s nothing quite like a Lake Erie sunset,” he agreed. “I designed my house around them.”
“Oh really? You built your own house?”
“Yep, me and my dad. And the way I planned it, I wanted all the rooms to have a view of the lake, facing the west, so I wouldn’t miss a sunset no matter where I was in the house.”
“Wow, that’s amazing. How did you do it?”
“Let’s just say it was an architectural nightmare.”
“Well, it’s nice to meet someone who appreciates the finer things in life,” she said as her grin reached a smile. A man after my own heart.
After reaching the second-story landing, Haley led him into her modern office. She walked him over to a glass and chrome desk accented by black and white still lifes on the walls. Pointing to the computer, Haley said, “There’s the cause of all my problems.”
Marc chuckled after she said it, his laugh wonderfully contagious. “Well, if that’s the only problem you have, that’s not too bad.”
“Well, it’s the problem of the day,” Haley exclaimed, hands raised in defense. “Trust me—it’s been a problem, alright. I think it lost some very important files, but I swear I didn’t do anything to make the computer go ballistic.”
“You probably didn’t. Sometimes they just have a mind of their own. Just be glad it didn’t go all Terminator on you.”
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