Dream Lake (Friday Harbor #3)(42)

“I could try,” the ghost admitted. “But I’m afraid if I do, I might not be able to talk with you again.”

Alex gave him a sardonic glance.

“You don’t know what it was like,” the ghost said, “being alone and invisible to everyone. It was bad enough that even getting to talk to you was a relief.” He looked contemptuous at Alex’s expression. “Hasn’t occurred to you to think about that, has it? You ever tried to put yourself in someone else’s shoes? Ever taken one minute to wonder about someone else’s feelings?”

“No, I’m a sociopath. Just ask my ex-wife.”

A reluctant grin spread across the ghost’s face. “You’re not a sociopath. You’re just an ass**le.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s good you got divorced,” the ghost said. “Darcy wasn’t the right woman for you.”

“I knew that when I first met her. Which is exactly why I married her.”

Pondering that, the ghost shook his head in disgust and looked away. “Never mind. You are a sociopath.”

Thirteen

As soon as the contracts were signed and a schedule of periodic payments had been agreed upon, a large number of decisions had to be made quickly. Zoë had instantly approved of the cream-colored stock cabinetry and the maple for the butcher-block countertops. However, she still had to choose hardware such as knobs, pulls, and plumbing fixtures, as well as tile, carpet, appliances, and lighting.

“This is where it helps to have a limited budget,” Alex had told Zoë. “Some of the decisions are going to make themselves when you see the prices.” They had agreed to keep to the bungalow style of the house as much as possible, with simple wainscoting, rich wood, and subtle tones with the occasional bright splash of accent color.

Justine had no interest in color palettes or browsing among tile samples, which meant that Zoë would choose the decorating and finishes. “Besides,” Justine had said to Zoë, “you’re the one who’s going to live there, so you decide how it should look.”

“What if you end up not liking it?”

“I like everything,” Justine said cheerfully. “Go for it.”

That was fine with Zoë, who liked going to builders’ supply stores and looking through hardware catalogs. And she wanted the opportunity to spend more time with Alex. No matter how much she learned about him, he remained a fascinating stranger. He was not a charmer like his brother Sam, nor did he try to be. There was something unreachable about him, an intransigent remoteness. But somehow that only made him sexier.

Although Zoë had no doubt that Alex drank too much—he certainly hadn’t tried to pretend otherwise—so far he had lived up to his reputation for being reliable. Alex arrived early whenever they had agreed to meet. He liked schedules and lists, and he used more sticky notes than anyone Zoë had ever met. She was sure he had to buy them in bulk. He put them on walls and windows, attached them to cables and flooring samples and catalogs, used them as business cards, appointment reminders, and shopping lists. When Zoë didn’t know the location of a place he had mentioned, he drew a little map and stuck it on the side of her bag. When they went to an appliance store, he stuck blue squares on all the models of refrigerators, dishwashers, and ovens that were the right dimensions for the kitchen.

“You’re wasting trees,” Zoë told him at one point. “Have you ever thought of making notes on your phone, or getting a digital tablet?”

“Post-its are faster.”

“What about writing a list on one big piece of paper?”

“I do that sometimes,” he said. “On jumbo Post-its.”

Maybe it was because he was so controlled that the discovery of a quirk was something of a relief to Zoë. She would have liked to learn more about him, to find out his weaknesses. To find out if she could possibly be one of them.

There were, however, no chinks in the armor. Alex had taken to treating her with a calculated politeness that made her wonder if the scene in the kitchen at Artist’s Point had been a dream. He asked Zoë plenty of questions about her family and her grandmother. He’d even asked about Grandpa Gus, whom she’d never met and knew next to nothing about, other than he’d been a pilot in the war and afterward had worked as an engineer at Boeing. Eventually he’d died of lung cancer long before Zoë was born.

“So he was a smoker,” Alex had said in a faintly censorious tone.

“I think everyone was back then,” Zoë replied ruefully. “Upsie told me that my grandfather’s doctor said that smoking was probably good for his nervous condition.”

Alex had taken particular interest in that. “Nervous condition?”

“PTSD. Back then they called it ‘shell shock.’ I think Grandpa Gus had it pretty bad. His plane was shot down over the Burmese jungle behind Japanese lines. He had to hide for a couple of days, alone and wounded, before he could be rescued.”

After telling Alex about her family’s past, Zoë expected him to do the same. But when she tried to find out more about him, asking about his divorce, or his brothers, or even something like why he’d become a contractor, he turned quiet and standoffish. It was maddening. The only way she knew to handle his evasiveness was to be patient and encouraging, and hope that in time he might open up to her.