Dream Lake (Friday Harbor #3)(83)

The ghost looked at him with a flare of incredulous anger. “That wasn’t honesty. It was cowardice. I should have married her. I should have made sure that no matter what happened, she would have always known that she meant more to me than anything else in the world.”

“Not to be insensitive”—Alex began, and scowled at the ghost’s humorless laugh—“but you probably would have died in the war anyway. So it’s not like you would have gotten any more time together.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” the ghost asked in disbelief. “I loved her. And I failed her. I failed both of us. I was too much of a coward to take a chance. Some men go their whole lives dreaming of being loved like that, and I threw it away. And all my chances to make it right went smashing down to the ground along with me and that airplane.”

“Maybe you were lucky. Have you thought of that? If you’d lived through the war and made it back to Emma, you might have ended up with a lousy marriage. The two of you might have ended up hating each other. Maybe you were better off the way things turned out.”

“Lucky?” The ghost looked at him with horror, fury, disgust. He stood and wandered aimlessly around the landing. A couple of times he paused to glance at Alex as if at some mildly repellent curiosity. Eventually he stopped in front of the window and said in a hostile tone, “I guess you’re right. It’s better to die young, and avoid all the miserable, messy business of loving other people. Life is pointless. Might as well get it over with.”

“Exactly,” Alex said, resenting the moralizing. After all, he was willing to make his choices and pay for them, just as the ghost had. It was his right.

Staring at the window, with all its flourishing colors, the ghost said with quiet malevolence, “Maybe you’ll be lucky like I was.”

Twenty-two

“Maybe you’ll be lucky like I was.”

Although Alex hadn’t wanted to admit it, the words had bothered him more than the ghost would have suspected. He knew he’d been a jerk, telling the ghost that he might have been better off dying young. It was all kinds of wrong to say something like that, even if it was what you believed.

The thing was, Alex wasn’t entirely sure what he believed anymore.

Introspection had never been his strong suit. He’d grown up thinking that if you expected nothing and then got nothing, you wouldn’t be disappointed. If you didn’t let someone love you, you’d never have your heart broken. And if you looked for the worst in people, you’d always find it. Those beliefs had kept him safe.

But he couldn’t help remembering a line in that grief-stricken letter Emma had typed so long ago … something about her prayers being trapped like bobwhites beneath the snow. The ground-roosting birds, sleeping in a tight circle in winter, welcomed the falling snow that covered them with a layer of insulation. But sometimes the snow iced over, trapping them in a hard shell that they couldn’t escape from. And they starved and suffocated and froze to death. Unseen, unheard.

There were times he had felt like Zoë was breaking through the layers of protection. She had given him some of the few moments of happiness he’d ever known in his life. But he would never be able to inhabit the feeling fully because of the unshakable conviction that it wouldn’t last. And that meant Zoë was a danger to him. She was a weakness he couldn’t afford.

He was different from his brothers, who were both more easygoing, more comfortable with giving and receiving affection. From what he remembered of their sister Vickie, she had been like that, too. But none of them had still been living at home when their parents had sunk to the worst of their alcoholism. None of them had been neglected for days or weeks at a time in a silent house. None of them had been given cups of booze to keep them quiet on weekends.

Despite his own issues, Alex couldn’t find it in himself to begrudge Sam’s newfound happiness. Sam had gotten back together with Lucy. He had told Alex that the relationship was serious, and he was going to marry Lucy someday. Their plan was that Lucy would accept the year-long art grant in New York, and she and Sam would maintain a long-distance relationship until she came back to Friday Harbor.

“So it’ll be convenient to have you move in at Rain-shadow Road,” Sam told Alex. “I’m going to go to New York at least once a month to visit Lucy, while you keep an eye on things for me.”

“Anything to get rid of you,” Alex said, unable to hold back a smile as Sam gave him a jubilant high five. “Jeez. A little too happy. Can you bring it down a notch? Just so I can stand being in the same room with you?”

“I’ll try.” Sam poured some wine for himself and looked askance at Alex. “Want a glass?”

Alex shook his head. “I’m not drinking anymore.”

Sam gave him a brief, arrested glance. “That’s good.” He began to set aside his wine, but Alex gestured for him to keep it.

“Go ahead, I’m fine.”

Sam took a sip of wine. “What made you decide to stop?”

“I was getting too near the invisible line.”

Sam seemed to understand what he meant. “I’m glad,” he said sincerely. “You look better. Healthier.” A deliberate pause. “Looks like going out with Zoë Hoffman has its benefits.”

Alex frowned. “Who told you that?”