Dream Lake (Friday Harbor #3)(36)
“She used to live in Friday Harbor?”
“Yes, the cottage is hers—it’s been in the family forever. But my grandmother actually grew up at that house on Rain-shadow Road. The one you’re helping Sam restore.” Seeing Alex’s interest, she continued, “The Stewarts—that’s her family—owned a fish-canning business on the island. But they sold the Rainshadow house a long time before I was born—I’d never set foot in there until I went to visit Lucy.”
Hearing an imprecation from the ghost, Alex glanced at him quickly.
The ghost looked stunned and worried and excited. “Alex,” he said, “it’s all connected. The grandmother, Rainshadow Road, the cottage. I’ve got to find out how I fit in.”
Alex gave him a short nod.
“Don’t screw this up,” the ghost said.
“Okay,” Alex muttered, wanting him to shut up.
Zoë gave him a questioning glance.
“It’s okay,” Alex revised hastily, “if you want to bring her to Rainshadow Road for a visit. She might get a kick out of seeing it restored.”
“Thank you. I think she would. I’m going to visit her this weekend, and I’ll let her know. It’ll give her something to look forward to.”
“Good.” Alex watched her as she continued to look over the renderings. It struck him that she was doing something remarkably selfless in sacrificing a year or more of her life to take care of an ailing grandparent. Was she going to have some help? Who was going to watch over Zoë? “Hey,” he said softly. “You got someone to give you a hand with this? Taking care of your grandmother, I mean.”
“I have Justine. And a lot of friends.”
“What about your parents?”
Zoë shrugged in the way people did when they were trying to gloss over something unpleasant. “My father lives in Arizona. He and I aren’t close. And I don’t even remember my mother. She bailed on us when I was still pretty young. So my dad gave me to my grandmother to raise.”
“What’s her name?” the ghost asked in wonder.
“What’s your grandmother’s name?” Alex asked Zoë, feeling like he was playing the old telephone game in which a sentence was repeated until it no longer made sense.
“Emma. Actually, it’s Emmaline.” Zoë pronounced the last syllable “lin,” as if there were no e at the end. “She took me in when my dad moved to Arizona. She was a widow at the time. I remember the day Dad dropped me off at her house in Everett—I was crying, and Upsie was so sweet to me—”
“Upsie?”
“When I was little,” Zoë explained sheepishly, “she would always say, ‘Upsie-daisy,’ when she picked me up … so I started calling her that. Anyway, when my dad left me with her, she took me into the kitchen and stood me on a chair at the counter, and we made biscuits together. She showed me how to dip the biscuit cutter in flour, so the circles of dough would come out perfectly.”
“My mother made biscuits sometimes,” Alex said, before he thought better of it. He wasn’t in the habit of revealing anything about his past to anyone.
“From scratch or from a mix?”
“From a can. I liked to watch her hit it against the countertop until it split open.” Zoë looked so horrified that he was privately amused. “They weren’t bad biscuits,” he told her.
“I’ll make you some buttermilk biscuits right now,” she said. “I could whip them up in no time.”
He shook his head as he stood from the table.
Standing in the fragrant kitchen with its cherry-print wallpaper, Alex watched as Zoë went to retrieve her apron from where it had landed on the floor earlier. She bent over, her denim capris stretching over a perfect heart-shaped bottom. That was all it took to make him want her again. He had the insane urge to go to her, take her in his arms, and hold her, just hold her and breathe her soft fragrance while the minutes bit through a long quiet hour.
He was tired of denying himself the things he wanted, and of being haunted, and most of all he was tired of picking up the pieces of his life and discovering that most of them were pieces he didn’t even want. He’d learned nothing from his failed marriage with Darcy. They had always done what was necessary to satisfy their own selfish needs, taking without giving, knowing it was impossible to hurt each other because the worst hurts had already been inflicted.
“Take a few days to look at this stuff,” he told Zoë as she returned to the table. “Talk it over with Justine. You’ve got my e-mail and phone numbers if you need to ask something. Otherwise I’ll be in touch at the beginning of next week.” He glanced at the bandage on her arm. “Keep an eye on that. If it starts to look infected—” He stopped abruptly.
Zoë smiled slightly as she looked up at him. “You’ll put another Band-Aid on it?”
Alex didn’t smile back.
He needed to numb out. He needed to drink until there were a half-dozen layers of smoked glass between him and the rest of the world.
Turning away from her, he picked up his keys and wallet. “See you,” he said curtly, and left without looking back.
Twelve
“Well, that was fun,” the ghost said, as Alex took a right on Spring Street and headed to San Juan Valley Road. “Where are we going now?”
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