Libby crossed her arms on the desk as she sank onto the chair. She laid her forehead on her arms and drew in a trembling breath. “Tell no one,” Paul said. It wouldn’t matter. Even if she told the truth, no one would believe her. Besides, she was good at keeping secrets. She had kept them for years. It’s what people in Gossamer Grove did.
Chapter 4
Annalise
The image of Eugene Hayes’s body lying cold in his trailer was vivid in Annalise’s mind. Her imagination sometimes worked overtime, and while it often resulted in great ideas, it could also put her in places she preferred not to go. Sights, sounds, feelings—all of it paraded through her conscious mind with a vividness that rivaled a full-color dream. It was better to push it all away until she could mentally process and categorize it later.
Annalise steamed the milk for a customer’s latte, the froth growing. Once finished, she pulled the stainless-steel pitcher from the steamer and poured the milk into the paper cup. The dairy swirled with the espresso. She hated pitying anyone, even the homeless. It seemed disrespectful. But, Eugene Hayes wasn’t homeless, although he was apparently one step above it. The man probably had to drink Folgers, or worse, instant coffee.
She blinked several times to refocus on the latte. She needed to stop obsessing over the dead man, yet she couldn’t forget the picture Brent had shown her. Or rather, the picture of a picture. A photograph of a Polaroid taken of Eugene Hayes. His wrinkled face, a bandanna around his head, Willie Nelson style, gray hair spiking out in random directions on his head, and skinny, bare arms with sagging tattoos. He looked like a gaunt version of a biker, or a Vietnam vet, or maybe both.
“Here you go.” She handed the latte to the guest.
He gave her his credit card and mumbled with a smile, “Double charge me.”
Annalise grinned, trying to shake herself out of her muddied thoughts and into the present.
“You got it. Thank you so much!”
She added an extra charge to the card and took comfort that word was spreading fast in Gossamer Grove. Her plan to raise awareness for the food pantry adjacent to the coffee shop and hopefully, sooner rather than later, open a shelter, was growing in popularity. When she’d started the pantry a few years before, there’d been suspicion and even a reticence from the public to patronize her coffee shop, where the majority of the profits went to support the pantry. Maybe now the community liked it because it was an uncomplicated way to help the needy without getting their hands dirty. But, Annalise preferred to think—hope, really—that it was because Gossamer Grove had people who genuinely cared.
Two palms rested gently on the rustic cherrywood counter. Annalise edged out of the way of her hired barista, who took the next customer. She recognized the hands, the strawberry-red nail polish, and the waft of sugary-sweet raspberry perfume.
“Hello, love.” The understanding voice of her closest friend, Christen, flooded her precarious peace with a bit of relief in the mixing bowl of the morning. Christen had a way of picking up people like someone adopted a stray puppy.
“Have you heard, then?” Christen’s green eyes were concerned. The normal smile missing behind her glasses.
Annalise bit her tongue. Brent had told her not to talk about Eugene Hayes to anyone. But he had to know his own wife, Annalise’s best—only—friend, would be the first person she wanted to confide in. Still, Annalise followed rules—especially ones laid down by the police—so the no-talkee rule would be inclusive of Christen too. This was going to be difficult.
“Annalise?” Christen craned her neck, trying to recapture Annalise’s attention.
Annalise twisted around, turning her back to her friend. She needed coffee.
Yes. Make the coffee. Alllll the coffee.
Annalise made herself busy tamping grounds into the espresso pod.
“You’re overthinking it, I can see that already.” Christen’s intuitive words ricocheted off Annalise’s back.
Good grief. Did Christen actually know about Eugene Hayes? Annalise hooked the espresso into the machine and turned the switch.
“I’m not leaving until you talk to me.” Christen’s voice held just the right mix of sternness and care.
Fine. Annalise faced her friend as espresso drained into her mug. She heaved a huge sigh, which earned her an extra understanding scrunch of Christen’s nose. Empathy. It was Christen’s strong point.
Christen brushed blond bangs from over her right eye. Her assessment of Annalise was like standing in front of an X-ray machine that read thoughts. Annalise winced. Brent had to know that Christen’s ability to draw her out of her introverted self was akin to a hypnotherapist. Minus the hypnosis. She was that good.
“Well?” Christen blinked, her ridiculously long eyelashes brushing the lenses in her cobalt-blue frames.
“I can’t say anything.”
Remain mum. Mumsie’s the word.
Annalise retrieved her espresso, and instead of proceeding to steam milk and make herself a latte, she sucked down the double shot, letting it burn its scalding path down her throat.
Choking, Annalise snatched a dish towel and wiped a renegade dribble from her chin.
“Wow.” Christen eyed her. “You really are upset. What are you going to do?”
“There’s nothing to do.” Annalise shrugged, tossing the dirty dish towel into a cloth basket beneath the counter.
“Ooooookay.” Christen pursed her lips, and her expression told Annalise she was not going to get away with a simple dismissal.
“Look,” Annalise tried again. Although, she could feel herself caving as Christen perused her with her probing gaze. “It wasn’t my fault the man died, and I don’t know why he had pictures of me all over his desk.” She choked and stopped. She needed to zip it.
“What are you talking about?” Christen drew back, a perplexed raising of the eyebrows to complete her bewildered look.
They stared at each other. Annalise had that growing realization they were talking about two completely different things.
“What are you talking about?” Today was a day from the Twilight Zone if ever there was one.
Christen tilted her head and widened her eyes. “Garrett? Garrett Greenwood?”
A dull thud in the pit of Annalise’s stomach told her it was more than the hastily downed espresso that was going to give her heartburn.
“What about him?” Annalise eyed Christen cautiously.
“Garrett Greenwood moved back to Gossamer Grove.” Christen’s look of disbelief told Annalise she probably should have known this already. Somehow.
The churning in her stomach worsened.
Christen cleared her throat. “You know, Doug Larson put in a bid to the town for the property you just petitioned the board for. Well, apparently, Doug is using Garrett as his ace up his sleeve. He hired Garrett to design and endorse a climbing gym and zip-line course.”
Annalise sagged against the counter. Of course. The town would far prefer Doug Larson’s proposed wilderness center and resort over her proposed homeless shelter. But Garrett? That was a no-brainer win for Larson right there.
Annalise motioned for Christen to follow, and she rounded the counter and moved into her office. She sagged against her desk as Christen flopped into one of the chairs. She stared up at Annalise.
“I’m sorry.” Christen screwed up her face into an empathetic grimace.
Annalise crossed her arms over her chest. Jaded. She was becoming more and more jaded as she grew older. Growing bitter wasn’t something she’d ever considered for herself. It wasn’t attractive, nor was it conducive to health and happiness. Worst of all, it made Annalise more and more like her mother, whom she’d separated from years ago for that very reason. Bitterness poisoned even the sweetest cup and turned it rancid.
Still, she couldn’t lie and say it was all right. It was far from all right. Garrett Greenwood was a professional rock climber. Bringing him back to Gossamer Grove to design and endorse a wilderness center was akin t
o bringing George Clooney to town to endorse a home movie. Annalise saw her dreams of championing the town’s impoverished winging its way out the window and over the trees where Garrett would be constructing a zip line. Being waterboarded would leave her with more breath than she had now. The doors of fate had opened and dumped all the what-goes-around-comes-arounds on top of her head in the same day.
“Hey?” Christen’s concerned voice filled the office. “There’s still hope, you know. Nicole might be the mayor, but she’s not stupid. She’ll look at all sides, even if Garrett has a vested interest in it and he’s her brother.”
Annalise gave a weak nod. But really, it was more than that. So much more. It was Garrett. It’d always been Garrett.
“There’s one more thing.” Christen reached out and patted the chair next to her. “You’ll probably want to sit down for this.”
Annalise stared at her, then spun and sank into the chair. “This can’t be good.” Steady. Deep breaths.
“Well, it’s not the worst thing, I guess.” Christen scrunched her face, her glasses hitting her eyebrows. “If you can get past the wilderness center and appreciate the muscles, your new neighbor Garrett will definitely be the best-looking garden ornament outside your house this summer.”
Christen was trying to be funny, but she didn’t know. Only Brent did, and Annalise’s parents whose lifestyle of the rich and retired in Scottsdale, Arizona, kept them blessedly out of Annalise’s life. But this?
The sick sensation Annalise was already fighting coiled her stomach into an even tighter, more assertive knot. “My next-door neighbor?”
The image of the For Sale sign in the yard of the modest house next door to her historical Victorian two-story flooded her mind.
Please, God, please. One break in life, that’s all she was asking. Just one.
But the expression on Christen’s face made it all nightmarishly clear: God had no intention of letting Annalise catch a break. It was penance, really. Now she would have to pay it in full . . . with interest.
Everything in her life was planned meticulously. Maybe not the little details—she wasn’t OCD, or maybe she was?—but for certain, the major events. Creating this entire homeless shelter proposal, for example, came after a successful term in office by Nicole Greenwood, but with a sad lack of concern toward the underprivileged in Gossamer Grove. They needed a voice, although Nicole was more preoccupied with tourism in the quaint vintage town that had been ranked as one of the top ten best littlest places to visit. The Biggest-Hearted Small Town in the Midwest.
So Annalise did what she did best. She mapped it out. The needs, the budget, the property—unused by the town—and the business sense and attention to detail it took to launch such a project. Opening their eyes to a bigger picture than just their happy little homes was an important initiative.
But she hadn’t mapped out this.
The red door stared back at her with two rectangular glass windowpanes for eyes. Garrett was never supposed to come home. It’d been twelve years, and he’d kept far away from Gossamer Grove. Until now. No contingency plan for his reappearance had been made.
Rapping the brass door knocker against its base, Annalise waited. Her stomach was a puddle of nerves, and if she didn’t have one made of steel, she’d be retching in the bushes right now.
A muffled “Door’s open” greeted her ears. A familiar voice, mature but with the same casual tone.
Annalise drew in a deep breath and blew it out, lifting stray copper hairs from her forehead. They fell over her eyes, and she brushed them back. The doorknob turned as she twisted it. It really didn’t matter how long she tried to plan for this; their first face-to-face meeting since high school wasn’t something she could plan for.
She was greeted with the full-on view of two muscled legs in ratty khaki shorts and a tapered bare back inked with a shoulder tattoo of Chinese symbols that stretched around and down to his corded right bicep. Garrett’s body descended as he lowered it from a pull-up, his hands gripping a hang board mounted over a doorframe. It was a molded rectangular creation, designed to be like crags of a rock. Garrett was hanging on by the tips of his fingers and pulling his entire body weight up until his chin hit the bottom.
Good Father in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come . . . please!
Yep. She couldn’t have planned for this. The full view of the very fit and shirtless Garrett Greenwood was not on her list of imagined potential scenarios. Scorn, yes. A slammed door in her face, most likely. A lazy grin, perhaps. But this?
He lowered his body again and spoke over his shoulder. “Yeah?” And back up he went.
“Garrett?”
The man released his hold, and his feet thudded onto the carpeted floor. He wiped his hands together as he turned, lifting his mahogany eyes. Now he was looking at her. Really looking at her. It was disconcerting, horrendous, and altogether the most awful thing she’d experienced in years. Annalise’s throat tightened. Raw anger mixed with betrayal, which couldn’t be healed with an “I’m sorry.”
“Q.” The old moniker slipped from his lips as easily as when they were young. Q. Annalise Quintessa. The very pretentious name her parents had given her when she was born. Evidence of their own quest to position themselves in the upper echelons of the Gossamer Grove community. Garrett always found it humorous and had dubbed her “Q” for her middle name just to irritate her. It had worked. It should have been her first warning sign.
“Hi.” The word was very inadequate for this moment.
Garrett snatched a T-shirt from the floor and shrugged into it, probably more to give himself something to do to fill the tense pause.
“You said you wouldn’t come back.” Annalise went for it. She wasn’t going to tiptoe around stupid pleasantries that were so fake a mannequin could see through them.
Garrett’s lip pulled up in disbelief. “You’re gonna go there already?”
“Yes. I am.”
“K then.” He didn’t bother to tug down the navy-blue T-shirt emblazoned with a climbing logo. The right side rode up on his hip while the left slouched over his pocket. “It’s been twelve years.”
“You said you wouldn’t come back,” she repeated. God help her, it was the only thing that came to mind. She was drowning in the brown bottomless chasms that were his eyes, and not in a good way. It was that same magnetic field that had sucked her in as a young girl. She hated it. She had prayed it would have dissipated over a decade’s worth of distance.
“Gossamer Grove is my home too, you know.” Garrett ran his fingers through his shaggy brown hair. He marched across the room into the kitchen. Annalise heard the faucet turn on and water filling a glass. She allowed herself the right to enter and follow him.
“And you’re here to work with Doug Larson on the land I’ve been trying to get the town to relinquish. Pulling strings because your sister is the mayor?” Annalise entered the kitchen and watched him gulp down the water.
“Wow.” He planted the glass firmly on the counter, his eyes narrowing. “That’s low, even for you.”
“Even for me? You don’t even know me.” Annalise’s words came out a hoarse whisper. “You never did know me.” She knew she sounded snippy. Mean even. Like a bitter old maid set out to pasture. Whatever that meant. But if only people could see inside her, they would see the pain, the unhealed wounds. They would understand. But no one had dared to do that, not even Garrett.
He interlocked his fingers behind his head, his elbows sticking out. “It’s been years, Q, let it go.”
“Fine.” The man really had no idea, no clue what she’d suffered, did he? “It must be nice to gallivant all over Europe while I had to stay here in Gossamer Grove and . . . ‘let it go.’”
His hands dropped to his side. Garrett took a step forward. “Hey—”
“Never mind. I just came by to tell you we’re neighbors, in case you didn’t already know.”
Garrett didn’t say anything. He had to know she still lived in
her childhood home.
“Well, we are,” Annalise affirmed.
“Okay?” Garrett’s tone registered the unspoken question of So?
Annalise backed away and turned toward the front door. She stopped and looked over her shoulder, once again locking eyes with the man who, as a boy, had more than broken her heart. He’d broken her.
“So stay away from me. Please.” The wobble in her voice betrayed the tender thread of emotion hiding behind her bravado. She could tell Garrett noticed, but he didn’t even blink.
“Not a problem.”
Not his problem. She should have been, though. She should have been.
Annalise closed the door softly behind her. Wishing Garrett Greenwood away wasn’t going to do a thing. Not when her bedroom window was opposite his, and not when their history together built an invisible bridge between the windowpanes.
Chapter 5
Libby
Libby stood against the yellow-striped papered walls in the Greenwood parlor. The scent of flowers suffocated her as bouquets sat on every end table, shelf, and flat surface. A mirror on the opposite wall was also covered in black crepe to comply with the customary superstition that the deceased’s spirit might be trapped in the looking glass for eternity. The piano was closed to forbid music or revelry. Gauzy crepe draped the south corner of the room. Nestled in its swooping embrace was the casket of Deacon Harrison Greenwood.
They’d arrived earlier than other invited guests. A special message in their funeral invitation had been penned by Deacon Greenwood’s widow to Libby’s mother, head of the Martha Washington Ladies’ Society, and therefore a logical first choice for support—regardless of emotional intimacy or friendship.
The Reckoning at Gossamer Pond Page 3