Rewrite the Stars

by Julieann Dove

  She took the road that went toward the guesthouse. Frieda was most likely to have kept them in her room there, Claire thought. She parked the car and went up to the door. She stood on tiptoes and rubbed her fingers along the top edge of the doorframe. Nothing was there. Crap. Where was the extra key? She tried the doorknob for obvious reasons. Locked. She walked around back.

  The wind had begun to pick up speed. Leaves flew in the air like a tossed salad, and trees swayed back and forth, banging limbs on limbs. The noise was eerie. A storm was about to hit Kelly’s Cove before nightfall.

  Claire tried the back door. No luck. She looked up and noticed a window that had been cracked open. The screen would be easy enough to poke out if she could reach it. There was a shed on the other side of the house, out toward the line of pine trees. Claire went to find something to stand on.

  She was in luck. There was a ladder lying against the back wall of the shed. She had to remove some pots and a couple of chairs before getting to it, though. Something moved in the corner of the small outbuilding and frightened her to scream. She ran from the building, clutching and dragging the ladder along with her.

  The heels of her shoes sunk into the soft ground as she made her way back to the house. She leaned the ladder against the side and wiggled it for stability. It didn’t appear to not be able to support her and this covert mission. She pulled her hair together and tucked it in her blouse. With caution, she stepped on the rungs with her toes, hoping not to get her heels caught. On the sixth rung, she heard someone say something. She turned quickly and almost fell off.

  “I said, are you considering breaking and entering a new hobby?” He yelled it louder, cupping his hands around his mouth for her to hear better.

  “Why do you always do that?” First the creature in the building, now Colin. She heard her heartbeats like drum rolls inside her head.

  “Do what?” He went and held on to the swaying ladder.

  “Sneak up on me.”

  “When have I ever snuck up on you, Claire?”

  “That night on the dock. You nearly killed me then spooking me, too.”

  He covered his mouth, laughing. “Spooking you?”

  “Yes, spooking me.” She started to climb back down. “Don’t you remember?”

  She stepped on the last rung and was eye to eye with him. “Yeah, I remember that night.”

  Stop the presses. She was sorry she mentioned it. The way his eyes stared at her when he said it meant he was feeling all the same things she was when she said it. His line of vision was now resting on her lips. She felt his breath on her face and the inside of her thighs began to burn.

  “Well then. Try not to do it.” She stepped off and clapped the dirt off her hands.

  “Then stop trying to kill yourself. Why are you on a ladder, anyway? And here? I thought you were going to the hotel.”

  “I thought you were going to the ferry.”

  “I had to take care of something at the church first.”

  “Well, I needed to get in there.” She pointed at the house.

  “I see that. Why?”

  She stammered. The wind had managed to blow some hair from her blouse and it was getting in her face. She pulled at the strands. “I forgot something.”

  “From six years ago? You could’ve called. I’m sure Frieda would’ve been more than happy to have sent it to you.”

  “She didn’t know it was there.”

  “What is it?”

  “My diary. I hid it underneath the mattress. I couldn’t very well ask her to send it. She’d have read it.” Close call. Thank God she’d just watched a movie with a similar scenario in it.

  “Ahh.” He looked intrigued. A little devilish smile danced on his lips. “Good stuff in it, huh?”

  “Not really. Just private things.”

  “Then by all means, let’s go inside and get it.” He held up his hand to escort her around to the front door. She went first.

  Suddenly she stopped abruptly and put her hand up to his chest. “I need to go by myself, if you don’t mind.”

  He furrowed his brow. “Why? You told me where it’s at. It’s not like you can hide it there again.”

  “I know. I just want to go in by myself. If you don’t mind.”

  He didn’t question her and handed over the key and waited outside on the stoop.

  She shut the door behind her and quickly darted to the kitchen, pulling open cabinets and opening drawers. She didn’t want to leave any stone uncovered. With nothing to find there, she ran up the stairs. She opened all the doors. Not looking for pictures, per se, but revisiting her times there that summer with Colin.

  She remembered it as if it were yesterday. So many times she replayed it in her mind. How they tripped up the stairs to get to the bedroom. How her heart beat for the first time, lying beside him after they’d made love on the yellow sunflower sheets. How she knew he was special and no one would ever measure up to what she felt for him. She swallowed hard and took a deep breath. That chapter was over. She needed to move on.

  She made it to Frieda’s room and taped to her mirror was a collection of children’s pictures. Among them was Pearl. With precision, she extracted the little photographs, marking each year from her birth on—one of her as a ballerina in a school production and another one dressed like a clown for Halloween. She left the others remaining. It didn’t look too odd with the missing spaces. She made sure to clean off the sticky tape residue.

  Looking around, she couldn’t find anything to carry them out in. She opened the top of her blouse and tucked them inside her bra. She fixed herself in the mirror and went back outside to where Colin waited for her.

  “Find it?” He stood up from leaning against his car.

  Her look was priceless. She’d forgot about the stupid made-up diary story. Her eyes stayed open, widely, and unblinking. The air was beginning to dry them out. Her forehead was drawn into ten folded wrinkles. She was had.

  “It wasn’t there. I must’ve misplaced it somewhere else.”

  “Well, now you won’t be thinking it was here anymore, I guess.”

  She stepped down from the porch steps. “I guess.”

  “So, what’d you write in that thing, anyway?”

  He must’ve been thinking it was all about him. She smiled and flipped back her hair. “You’ll never know.”

  A loud noise came from back of the house. Colin ran to see what it was.

  The ladder had fallen down, blown by the angry winds coming from the cove. The clouds were gray and black ones were beginning to push them out of the way. A few sprinkles fell from the sky.

  “I’m screwed. This is all I need.”

  “Why?” She pulled the hair from her eyes and squinted from the blowing wind to see him.

  “Dad called and asked if I could board up the house before I left. Frieda never called the handyman and now he’s left the island and moved back to the mainland for the winter.”

  “Is there no one else? You can’t do that by yourself. Especially in this weather.”

  “I have to, at least try to. I’m not coming back, and they waited too long to find someone. If I don’t do it, we could get damage to the house.”

  “I can go help you. It won’t take long if we both do it together.”

  “Claire, it’s started to rain. We’ll never finish before the storm, and I’ve got to catch the last ferry out of here. Screw it. I’ll tell Dad I couldn’t.”

  “Let’s be storm chasers, Colin.” She grabbed his hand and ran toward her car with him. “The storm isn’t here yet. We’ve got another thirty minutes at least. I can feel it.”

  They got in her car and sped to the beach house. The very worst idea she’d had yet.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Reconnecting

  Claire held onto the other end of the two-by-four piece of wood as Colin hammered nails into it. They only had three windows to board up before they were finished.
By now her hair had stopped blowing and was matted to her head by the pelting rain. The howling wind that ripped through the trees made it impossible to hear if someone had something to say. Rain would come harder at times than others. Colin’s black suit jacket steadily flapped up in the back as he hammered with a vengeance. He was soaked to the bone, and wanted Claire to go in earlier before the rain broke loose, but she’d refused to go.

  “Okay, Claire. That’s all for now. Let’s go inside.”

  She shook her head and followed him to the back door. Colin flipped the switch to the light by the entryway. Nothing happened. The storm had taken the electricity with its fierce winds and blowing rains. It was 4:00, yet it seemed much later by the darkness of the rooms inside. The boards they nailed up made it almost impossible to see anything.

  Claire’s teeth began to chatter. “I’m freezing. Are there any blankets around here?” She opened the front closet and stood on her tiptoes to see the top shelf. The wind whistled under the threshold of the door.

  “I’ll run up to Mom’s room and see if I can find one.”

  Colin ran up the stairs, pulling at his jacket sleeves on the way. The dampness was settling a coldness in his bones.

  Claire was rubbing her arms when he brought the blanket back down to her. “Here, take off your jacket and put this around your arms. I’ll go back up and see if there’s anything for you to change into.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Colin. This blanket will be fine.”

  He took out his phone and tried to make a call. Claire sat on the sofa, shivering. His cell service couldn’t pick up a signal in the storm.

  “I guess it’s pretty bad. I can’t even make a call.”

  “Well, there’s no sense in thinking I’ll get any warmer under this blanket. I should just get going. I’m sure the hotel has power. If not, then a generator. I can take a shower when I get there.” She stood and folded the cover.

  “I hope the ferry is still running. They usually stop in bad weather.”

  He looked at her standing there in the living room. Like so many years ago, only now the dream of having her as his own was gone. Their fate had found them. She was married to another man and he was with Emily. He knew he’d probably never see Claire again. He wished he could touch her just once more. To pull her close to him, smell her hair, and hear her breathing in his ear.

  “Colin, are you ready?” She stood at the back door, waiting.

  He’d gotten distracted by the dream. “Sure.”

  The wind pulled back the screen as he tried to lock the door. Claire caught it and held onto it while he finished locking the door. He turned to her. “Thanks for helping me, Claire.”

  She yelled back to him, holding her hair from whipping in her eyes. “You’re welcome. Drive safe, Colin.”

  They ran off the porch together and got in their cars. They didn’t get far. A tall pine tree had blown across the road, just past the driveway. There was no way around it. Colin backed up his car and turned around in the road. Claire followed him back to the house.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Claire was shivering as Colin opened the back door, again. She was clutching her overnight bag. If she didn’t get changed into something warm, she’d freeze to death.

  “I can’t believe it. Will they send someone to cut the tree?” She laid her bag down on the kitchen floor as he shut the door behind him.

  “I doubt it’ll be anytime soon. The storm will have to stop before that happens. Plus, most people on the cove are gone for the winter. The ones who stay are older and wait for people to come and cut trees.”

  “Great.” Claire sighed. How was this all going to go down with Alex when he found out she was stranded in the beach house with Colin? What was she thinking? He could never find out. It’d taken so long to assure him she was over Colin, it would be like opening a wound if she told.

  “And there’s no way to call anyone. Hopefully when the storm passes, the cell tower will return service.”

  “Have you got an important call to make?” Claire asked.

  “Kind of. More than that, Emily thinks I’m coming back home tonight. She’ll wonder where I’m at.”

  The only thing Claire could think when she thought of Emily was her being a little fashion twit who came with her big daddy and long-sleeved-wearing mother to ruin her life and steal Colin away. She deserved to worry a little bit about him. Furthermore, she wished the little socialite would know Claire was with him. That was, until Claire came to her senses and realized she’d grown up since then. Now everyone had responsibilities. Colin’s to Emily’s included. But still.

  “If you don’t mind, I think I’m going to change out of these wet clothes. I don’t want to get sick.”

  “Hey, remember that first time when I got back from London and you were in the shower?”

  Her head tilted and she threw out her hip. “Um, yes. And you came barging in the bathroom—”

  “Which was my bathroom.”

  “Which was your bathroom. But certainly you could hear and see that—”

  “I heard nothing. Had I, I wouldn’t have opened the door.”

  “But you swore you saw nothing.”

  A devilish grin crept to his mouth. She picked up a fake orange that sat in a basket and threw it at him. He dodged it. “Hey, we’ve all told white lies, right?”

  She thought about the big one she told to have him forget he ever met her. Some might say that wasn’t exactly the shade of white. “I knew better.”

  “I’m going to go in the back and bring some wood to make a fire. Hopefully there’s still some. It looks like we’ll be staying here tonight.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Claire returned downstairs to see Colin carrying in a pile of wood. She could only see his nose past the bundle he carried in his arms. “Need some help?”

  “If you could just find some matches in one of the drawers in the kitchen and maybe some candles. We’re going to be in complete darkness soon.”

  She heard the wood fall to the floor and searched for the matches. They were in the drawer next to the silverware. She took them to Colin before she searched for the candles.

  “Here.” She handed them to him. “After that, maybe you should change, too. You’ll catch cold staying in those clothes.”

  “I didn’t pack anything. Remember, I was leaving?”

  “Well, I’ll go upstairs and look for something.”

  She found a candle on one of the end tables and lit it first before going. When she returned, he was standing over the fire. It was small; only one or two places on the wood had begun to burn. He was tossing newspapers on top of it. Smoke was filling up the room.

  “Do you have the flue open?”

  He adjusted it and like magic, the smoke began drawing up the chimney.

  “How do you know about chimneys?” he asked, taking the clothes she brought down for him.

  “Last winter, we moved to a house that has a fireplace. Alex tried it out for the first time and it did the same thing. It was quite a learning experience.”

  Colin drew a deep breath with the mention of Lucifer’s name.

  “What is this?” He held up a tank top and a pair of boxer shorts.

  Claire laughed. “It’s the only thing I found in your drawers. By the looks of it, you were in high school when you last wore it.”

  He held it up and shook his head back and forth. “You really expect me to wear this?”

  “If you don’t want to die of pneumonia. Your clothes are dripping, Colin.”

  “Okay, but no laughing.”

  “I have a nightshirt you can put on over it. It’s too cold to just wear a tank top.” She yelled out to him as he ran up the stairs to change.

  Claire fumbled through her bag and pulled out the silk nightshirt. It was feminine but would do in a pinch. The shirt she wore would never fit him.

  She walked down the hall to his room and knocked and waited.
She put her head against the door and didn’t hear anything. The dim light was quickly leaving the inside of the house. She cracked the door and called his name. She jumped when he touched her shoulder from behind.

  “Colin, I swear, I’m going to kill you for scaring me.” She put her hand up to swat him and he grabbed it. They stood still, both looking into each other’s eyes. She could feel her chest rise and fall at feeling his touch. And she could see his eyes searching for a sign from her. She gulped and held up the nightshirt to his chest.

  “I brought this to you.”

  He didn’t say a word. His eyes looked at her lips and her knees buckled a little. They were inches apart from each other.

  “Thanks.”

  She edged away from him and walked back down the dimly lit hall.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  He found her in the kitchen, staring in the pantry. Why couldn’t she have just tilted her head the slightest…given him the okay with her eyes? He would’ve devoured her right there and then. Taken and laid her on his bed and had his way with her. His body burned with desire for her. Nothing had changed. His heart still longed to be beside its counterpart. This was not going to be easy to share the same house and not fall into bed with Claire.

  “Find anything to eat in there?”

  She turned around and laughed.

  “What? It’s not my color?” He stood there in the silk nightshirt. Luckily it was blue. He wore it unbuttoned, just enough to cover his arms and some of his legs. The little boxer shorts had shrunk to speedo size and his muscle shirt clung to his chest. He felt like the Incredible Hulk in that getup.

  She bent over, laughing at him. “No, it’s lovely. And now I’ll never be able to wear it again and not think of you.”