She put the brochure back in the box and took out the map of Louisiana.
How random. It was all so random.
“Have you ever been to Louisiana?” she asked.
Isaac slung his arm across Olivia’s shoulder, pulling her into his side. “Louisiana,” he said the word carefully, suspiciously almost, as if saying it that way would draw out the true meaning behind it. “Nope. I’ve never been to Louisiana. You?”
“No, never. It looks like a nice place to visit.”
“If you say so.”
“We should go someday?”
Isaac stilled, hesitated briefly.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he replied quickly, sipping his tea. “What about the page from the Bible?” he asked, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “Have you read it?”
“The page? Or the Bible?”
“The page, smarty pants.”
Olivia smiled, grateful to see Isaac a little more relaxed. He’d been so tense just a second before and she wasn’t sure why?
She snuggled farther into his side.
The man didn’t have an extra inch of anything on his body, no fat, nothing to grip, not even sitting down. He was all hard lines and firm muscle, and she wondered if maybe she should start running too. It obviously worked for Isaac.
Or maybe she should just lay off the cookies for a while.
“You’re the churchgoer,” Isaac continued, enjoying the closeness and the smell of Olivia’s hair dancing in the gentle breeze beneath his chin. “So you tell me what it all means. What does the book of…?” He squinted at the near translucent page, the writing so small it was hard to read with the glare of the snow behind it. “The book of Genesis, have to do with any of this?”
“No clue.”
“Do you think they actually are clues?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Like you said before, what if we’re sitting here trying to put together the pieces of a puzzle that doesn’t even exist? What if all these things are just completely arbitrary and don’t connect in any way whatsoever?”
Olivia thought about it for a few minutes, mulling things over in her head. It was aching from all the thinking she’d been doing lately and she was tired and hungry, so she took the page from Isaac’s hand and placed it carefully back into the box, along with the map and the brochure.
They weren’t going to solve it all in one day, and the box wasn’t going anywhere.
It was hers.
Or… was it?
Olivia suddenly smiled, turning to look at Isaac with a mischievous grin as she pulled her phone from her back pocket and sent off a quick text message.
$350 and it’s yours. Leave the money at Hathaway’s. The box will be waiting for you there. And then LOSE THIS NUMBER!
Isaac watched Olivia type out the message, frowning slightly when he realized who she was sending it to. But then his frown quickly slipped away again like the tide, and it was replaced by a small grin of his own.
“So you’re a smart-ass, irritating, and kinda mouthy, but also beautiful and brilliant as well. Evil. But brilliant. What do you plan on putting inside it?”
Olivia hadn’t thought that far ahead yet, but even if she had, she was way too stuck on Isaac’s words to have hatched a plan worthy of revenge. She looked up at him, her gaze stuttering and halting when she looked deep into his eyes. “You… you think I’m beautiful?”
“Of course I do. You’re stunning.”
No hesitation.
And Olivia felt the words pin her to the porch, surprised by the way such simple words could cause her so much happiness.
They vibrated in her stomach and echoed around the yard, coming back at her double so that she could only see pink and red and a setting sky that looked the same as the colors behind her eyes.
“I’ve always thought you were beautiful,” he whispered, brushing his lips against her temple. His mouth moved gently over her skin. “From the very first day I saw you. You were the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.”
“The day I came to your house looking for help with the fuse box?”
Isaac laughed quietly, and Olivia felt his warm breath tickle her cheek. His lips trembled slightly, like they wanted to share something with her, as if they dared to expel all his secrets. And then, just like seeds from a dandelion caught in the wind, Isaac breathed life into a story that Olivia didn’t even know existed.
“No, baby. Long before that.”
Mrs. Ackerman smiled down at the new little boy sitting in the farthest corner of the classroom.
She’d heard the stories, of course she had, and her heart ached for the poor boy with burns still so fresh and raw that he had to wear a pressure bandage on his right arm and leg, and the skin on his neck always looked wet.
“Have you finished your lunch yet, Isaac?” she asked softly, not wanting to frighten the dear boy with the big brown eyes. “You didn’t eat your sandwich. Aren’t you hungry?”
Isaac blinked when Mrs. Ackerman leaned down and gently pushed his hair back from his face. His mommy used to do that very same thing to him when she spoke, when she wanted his full attention, and he missed his mommy more than anything else in the whole world.
“Pa made it too big,” he whispered. He always whispered his words so the other children wouldn’t hear him. If they couldn’t hear him, then maybe they couldn’t see him either. “He put too much baloney on it, and my mouth can’t stretch that big. It makes my cheek hurt.”
Mrs. Ackerman’s eyes swam with tears and grief stabbed at her heart. The little boy with the messy hair and the big brown eyes had suffered too much. His short life had already been filled with so much pain and Mrs. Ackerman felt herself soften and her stomach lurch.
She smiled softly, and she nodded down at him as if she understood. But she didn’t understand his pain. She knew grief. She knew what it felt like to have the gnawing hands of the most unimaginable grief dragging you under the surface.
But she’d never fully stopped to consider how hard those feelings must be to deal with when you’re only six years old, your mommy has gone, and the only person you have left in the world is suffocating too.
Mrs. Ackerman took a deep breath, and then smiled again, sweetly. She took out the box of Crackerjacks from Isaac’s lunch box and opened them for him.
“Here, you eat these instead and I’ll make sure to tell your pa about the baloney when he picks you up this afternoon.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t forget your prize, Isaac. Take a look. What did you get?”
Isaac’s shoulder ached from coloring in his pictures all morning, but he bit back the pain and slid the little prize out from the box, a crooked smile forming when the green and red bracelet slid out from the packaging and tumbled onto his desk.
Isaac touched the bracelet with his tiny finger, tracing the plump red cherries in a circular motion. He looked back up at his teacher and he beckoned for her to come closer, closer, closer. So that he could whisper in her ear and he made sure she knew exactly what he wanted her to do.
He wanted the pretty little blonde girl in the front row—the girl whose name he’d never heard of before, the name he wasn’t sure how to pronounce—to have the bracelet.
She’d stared at him often, right along with everyone else. But her gaze was different to the other kids in Woodlake. She’d stared at him like she wanted to know his favorite color or ask him what his favorite noodles were. She stared at him like she wanted to talk to him. And she stared at him like she wanted him to talk back.
But Isaac only watched her when he knew she wasn’t looking. She had nice hair, and a real cute smile. She was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen.
And he wanted to know more.
He made sure Mrs. Ackerman knew what to say. He wanted to tell the blonde girl with the name he couldn’t always remember, the same words that his mother told him each and every night before he went to sleep.
That he was adored. That he was beautiful. That he was loved.
Olivia simply stared, her mouth agape. And then the tears started falling like the floodgates had lifted and she couldn’t stop them.
Her voice cracked, barely audible and she slowly turned her gaze toward Isaac, as if the memory he’d just shared with her was too much to absorb all at once.
“I don’t believe… I can’t, it was—it was you, Isaac?”
Isaac nodded. “Yes.”
“You gave me the bracelet?”
“Yes. I did.” He smiled shyly. “The night you came looking for help with the fuse box, you were wearing it. And I couldn’t believe my eyes. You still have it, and you still wear it?”
“Only on special occasions.”
“It looks good on you. As good as it did back then.”
“I can’t believe you gave me my cherry bracelet. I love that thing so much, and it means the world to me. Now it means… oh, God, Isaac… I don’t even know what to say. Thank you sounds pretty dismal under the circumstances.”
“You don’t have to say anything.” Isaac kissed Olivia’s forehead, his thumb brushing delicately over her cheek. “I wanted you to have it then, because you were the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. I was lost in you. I still feel the exact same way today.”
Olivia closed her eyes and let out a soft sigh as she leaned into the wonderful man beside her.
And it was there in that moment that she let herself get lost too. Lost in the warmth of Isaac’s body. Lost in the sound of his tender breath. Lost in his vulnerability and lost in his immeasurable strength.
Lost and found, in the best possible way.
For the weeks that followed, Olivia and Isaac fell into a comfortable routine that took them both by surprise.
Isaac wasn’t used to being crowded, having someone fill up his space. But he searched Olivia out more often than not, and she always seemed happy to be found.
They stayed up well beyond the setting sun, talking, laughing, kissing too, and when the dawn replaced the darkness with golden lengths of light that pierced the low-lying fog over in the meadows, they fell asleep in each other’s arms. And if time had stood still for just a moment it might not have been long enough. There was no place in heaven or hell either one of them would rather be.
They were falling. Hard. Together and alone. But falling nonetheless.
Isaac and Olivia had made improvements on the house every single day—repainting the trims and the baseboards in a record amount of time. They’d stripped back the wallpaper in the kitchen, the living room and the hallway. They’d done the same in the bedroom and repainted the entire room in one weekend.
The bed had been replaced, as had the dresser, the couch and the coffee table. They’d spent so much money at the furniture store in Williamstown that the manager had offered them free delivery and they didn’t hesitate to take him up on the offer.
Isaac had hired a machine from the hardware store in Williamstown too, and he was almost halfway done with stripping back the floorboards. The living room had been finished first and now it was stained a beautiful cedar color, and he’d helped Olivia replace all the window frames, and added new light fixtures too.
Olivia had put up three open shelves in the kitchen, brought new crockery and silverware and she loved the look of the plain white dinner set stacked against the navy backdrop of the kitchen walls.
She’d replaced the curtains with more modern ones, and she’d washed and soaked all the floor rugs so that now they looked brand new again.
Isaac had helped her repair the loose boards out on the front porch, and he had carved new corbels for her at the hardware store, fixing them in place when she wasn’t home, so that it was a wonderful surprise when she arrived back one afternoon from an extra long shift at the bakery.
December had arrived in all its glory, and with it came the bitter cold. The entire town was blanketed in a thick layer of white and the days were growing shorter with every passing storm.
Abe and Isaac were all but done with the renovations to the gazebo, and they had just completed the brand new facades for the shopfronts with just days to spare before the Woodlake Winter Festival.
The stores of Woodlake were well and truly in the Christmas spirit now. Garlands of green with red berries, as well as silver, blue and gold baubles decorated the store windows.
Fairy lights hung from lamp post to lamp post, zigzagging their way down Main Street toward the town square, where Miss Harriet Clay and her gaggle of gossiping church ladies were well into setting up for the festival, which was thought to be one of the biggest and most successful on record.
A hundred bales of hay had been delivered by an enormous truck, and Harriett had men folk from far and wide arranging them just so—temporary seating in front of the newly erected stage—and a makeshift dance floor had been set up on the far side of the gazebo.
Some evenings Olivia and Isaac would leave the renovating for the following day, choosing instead to stroll around town once all the stores were closed—hand in hand, stealing the odd kiss here and there—breathing out the frozen air in white puffs, regardless of being rugged up in thick winter coats and woolly scarves.
Despite Olivia’s desperate pleas, Isaac always kept his hair down. He insisted he wasn’t ready for anyone other than her to see his scars, and so he wore a thick black beanie on his head, and a sweatshirt with a hood that hung low over his forehead.
Olivia often wondered if he was really that cold, or if he was still hiding.
At least he was outside.
It was dark, apart from the twinkling lights and the big moon sitting high in the sky, and the streets were deserted, but at least he was with her.
And that’s all that mattered.
Some nights they wouldn’t go out at all. Instead, they would sit in front of the heater and talk until their throats hurt and their voices were thick and hoarse.
Most nights they ate dinner together—sometimes at Isaac’s place, other times at Olivia’s—and while they had come so far, felt so much, and longed for so little, they still hadn’t crossed that unspoken point of physical intimacy.
Not that they hadn’t wanted to. Not that it wasn’t a constant struggle not to surrender to the urges, to give in to the throbbing ache of desire that left them both restless and lying awake at night with heads filled with nothing but thoughts of each other.
It was pretty much all Isaac thought about. Ever. He wasn’t entirely proud of himself, but he hadn’t been able to concentrate clearly on anything else in months.
Not that they hadn’t been tempted to go that little bit further, take a touch, a kiss, to the next level. The temptation was there alright.
But they hadn’t.
Olivia knocked and walked through Isaac’s front door simultaneously, not bothering to wait for him to tell her to come in.
They’d come to that comfortable point in their relationship and Isaac loved the way it felt to be part of something. Something greater than the both of them put together.
He looked up from where he was lifting weights on the floor in the living room. “Good morn—”
“Hey, come and look at this.”
Olivia didn’t bother with niceties. Her heart was pounding hard, and it wasn’t because she’d just raced all the way over to Isaac’s house—through thick snow so deep it almost swallowed her whole—or the fact that she’d just walked in on Isaac working out, which meant his T-shirt was damp with sweat, clinging to his ridiculously muscled chest—though, neither of those things helped.
“Do you remember the old neon sign out the front of the Forrester Motel? The big one, by the side of the road?”
Isaac placed the weights down on the floor at his side and then wiped his brow with a towel. “Yeah. Why?”
“It was there for years before they renovated the motel. They knocked it down and built that new one farther down the road. On the corner?”
“Yeah. Thank God.” Isaac made a
disgruntled noise in his throat. “The old neon sign used to flicker and zap all the time. Used to make it hard to see. I could never make out the traffic lights at the end of Main Street at nighttime with that stupid sign in my way.”
“Yes, exactly! Mayor Dell made old Betty Forrester take it down a few months back. He told her it was dangerous and distracting for motorists passing through town. They replaced it with that big metal sign, the one that boasts free Wi-Fi and a spa-suite.”
Isaac furrowed his brow as he paused, obviously thinking. “Why are you telling me this?”
Olivia tilted her head as a small smile crept over her face. “The sign in the brochure is the new metal one. Not the old neon sign.”
Isaac stared back at her. “So?”
“Well, doesn’t that stand to reason that Mrs. Ackerman only put that brochure inside the box in the last few months? The box looked like it had been sealed for years and years, untouched by hands or time, but apparently that’s not the case at all. The brochure is one of the new ones that they had printed after the renovations. After the new sign was put in place.”
They were both quiet for a moment.
Isaac sighed, rubbing a hand over his forehead as though he was struggling with whether or not to say what was on his mind. “I just… does knowing any of that help? Or does it just make it more of a mystery.”
Olivia shrugged and then let out a breath, seeming to deflate slightly. “I know what you’re saying. But it just seems like there’s something there. Knowing Mrs. Ackerman placed those things in the box not too long before she died means something. Or at least, it feels like it might mean something.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
Olivia tossed her hands in the air, as if giving up on the whole conversation altogether. She walked from the living room into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Then took out a carton of orange juice and poured a glass.
“No, please, help yourself,” said Isaac, following her into the kitchen.
But Olivia’s head was so full of fractured thoughts that she didn’t pick up on his dry sarcasm. She rubbed her fingers over her brows, exhaling as she took a long, slow sip of the juice.
The Winter Before Page 17