“You look beautiful,” Zoey had told her.
“Yeah, you do. When I get married, I’m going to wear a blue dress, too,” Jessica decided. “Not some ridiculous foofy white gown.”
Compliments, especially about her appearance, always seemed to embarrass Sylvia, who dropped her chin and quickly put the dress away again. Even at that young age, Zoey recognized that her aunt cherished the dress because it was a symbol of how much Marcus had cherished her. It incensed Zoey that Mark had flung it aside in his quest to find whatever he’d been looking for. He has no regard for his grandmother’s past, she seethed.
Suddenly, she recalled the nonsensical comment her aunt had made the day she died. It will be our secret… for now it’s best to let the past stay buried in the past… beneath the roses. It had been such a peculiar thing to say, so she had assumed her aunt hadn’t been aware of her remark. She still believed that was the case, but she questioned whether Sylvia happened to babble the same sentiment in front of Mark. That could have been why he was so interested in searching her trunks, since they contain the only remnants from her past, she thought. It certainly would have made a lot more sense if he’d been motivated to go through Sylvia’s things because of something she’d said than because of anything Mr. Witherell had said the day of the funeral, as Zoey had been mulling a couple of nights ago as she struggled to sleep. Either way, she didn’t want to waste any more time pondering it—she needed to get downstairs to change or else Nick was going to think all she owned was running clothes. Not that she cared. Not really.
She picked up Sylvia’s dress and opened the trunk. The small boxes inside were piled every which way, but at least the trunk wasn’t very large, so it was easier to straighten than Sylvia’s room—Zoey had spent an hour rehanging and refolding her aunt’s clothes after Mark had searched it the other week—and it didn’t take her more than a few minutes to restack the boxes. She carefully placed the dress into its garment bag, laid it on top of the boxes and shut the lid of the trunk.
As she pulled the croquet tote from the wire rack, its contents shifted to the opposite end. Someone—Mark?—must not have zipped it all the way shut because a ball popped out and rolled to the edge of the room.
Fantastic. Zoey crouched down and inched across the plywood beneath the most sloped section of the roof. She retrieved the ball from where it had come to rest atop of the insulation that was overflowing the wall cavity and turned around. She’d almost made it back to the solid floor boards again when she felt something crawling across her neck.
“Eww!” she screamed, brushing it off. A large dark spider dropped to the floor and scurried away, unharmed. Zoey wasn’t as fortunate. Her erratic movement caused the plywood to shift sideways and her leg to slip between two joists. Although she managed to boost herself upward and narrowly avoid crashing through the ceiling of the room below, her left calf grazed the thick and ragged wood.
As she lay sprawled on her stomach—amazingly, still clutching the croquet ball—it occurred to her the spider might still be close by. She rolled onto her back on the solid flooring and sat up. But when she tried to stand, a searing pain shot through her lower leg and she reflexively plopped down on her backside again. Given how much her leg hurt, she expected to see a lot of blood where she’d scraped her calf against the joist, but there was only one small blob. When she bent to examine it closer, she understood why: it was a puncture wound, not a scrape, and above the wound she felt a hard line.
Aware that a sizable sliver of wood was embedded in her flesh, she felt queasy as she tried to figure out what to do next. She couldn’t walk on her leg unassisted, but Gabi wasn’t home to support her. If she shouted for help, her aunt would be alarmed and she might rush up the stairs and suffer from chest pain. Then how would Zoey help her?
Using her hands and the heel of her good leg, she inched toward the staircase on her rear end, but the effort and movement intensified her pain, so she gave up. I’ll just have to wait until Gabi gets back and comes upstairs to look for me… If she comes to look for me, Zoey thought, feeling sorry for herself.
She stretched her left, injured leg flat and hugged her right knee to her chest as she kept watch for any more spiders. The day must have been shaping up to be unseasonably warm again because a rivulet of sweat trickled down Zoey’s face along her hairline. Within another ten minutes, her T-shirt was sticking to her back. She was thinking about how much she wished she had an iced coffee when she heard footsteps on the staircase. “Gabi? Is that you?” she called.
“No, it’s me,” Nick answered, cresting the staircase. He was wearing a deep indigo short-sleeved Henley that made his eyes appear even bluer and his biceps appear even bigger, if that was possible. Just seeing him looking so pulled together when she was coming unraveled made Zoey wish she had tried harder to make it downstairs on her own. Why did he always have to catch her at her worst possible moments?
He crossed the room and squatted beside her. “Are you okay?”
She knew what he was really wondering was why she was sitting immobile in the middle of the attic floor holding a green croquet ball. But the concern she saw in his eyes—those beautiful eyes—was so heartfelt and it had been so long since anyone had asked her that question that she teared up.
She wanted to answer, No, I’m not okay. I’m worried about whether I’m doing a good job looking out for my aunt and taking care of my niece. And I’m worried about my finances and about whatever scheme my cousin may be plotting. And lately I miss my sister so much I can hardly breathe. Instead, she stuttered, “I-I got a splinter.”
Understandably, Nick tipped his head as if he couldn’t believe something so trivial had nearly reduced her to tears. “A splinter?”
“Yeah, the plywood slipped out from under me and I scraped my calf against an old tattered joist.” She turned her leg to the side. “See?”
Nick took one look at the nail-sized hole and his expression went grim. “That’s not a splinter in there—it’s a two-by-four.”
“I know. It really hurts. I couldn’t stand up.”
“You shouldn’t try to. I’ll carry you downstairs.”
“No.” Zoey didn’t want him to get that close; she had coffee breath and her back was all sweaty. “Thanks for the offer, but if you give me your arm, I should be able to make it.”
Nick pointed to her calf. “Listen, I can barely see the tip of that thing as it is. You don’t want to drive it in there any farther. And you really don’t want to put pressure on it and snap it in half. So if you insist on walking downstairs on your own two feet, at least let me go get a pair of needle-nose pliers from my toolbox so I can pull the splinter out first.”
Nauseated at the thought, Zoey covered her mouth. “I don’t think I can handle that,” she mumbled between her fingers.
“So you’ll let me carry you downstairs?” Nick pleaded, his eyebrows almost touching together.
“Oh, all right,” she groaned, but she sounded more reluctant than she felt.
He wrapped one arm around her torso, slid the other beneath her knees and adroitly straightened into a standing position in one smooth motion. And as Zoey rested her cheek against his chest, the thought flashed through her mind that maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing that he’d arrived at one of her worst possible moments after all.
Chapter Seven
“This is all my fault. I never should have sent you up there,” Ivy lamented after Nick brought Zoey into the kitchen and she told them the story of what happened.
“No, it’s not your fault,” Nick objected before Zoey could say anything. “It’s my son’s fault.”
Aidan balked at that. “My fault?”
“Yeah, yours. I distinctly remember telling you to secure that plywood into place last autumn when you were putting the screens away.”
The teenager squinted at his father, as if he’d spoken in a language he didn’t comprehend. Then he smacked his forehead. “Oh, yeah! I remember that now. I mean, I remember
that you asked me to do it—I don’t remember why I didn’t. I’m really sorry, Zoey” he said, laughing nervously.
“You think this is a joke, Aidan?” Nick glared at him. “You think it’s funny that she got hurt?”
“No, Dad, of course not. I feel terrible about it.”
“You feel terrible? How do you think Zoey feels? She’s just lucky—you’re just lucky she didn’t fall halfway through the ceiling! How would she have felt then?”
Aidan’s ears were scarlet and he appeared to be shrinking, Ivy was flustered almost to tears, and Gabi hid beneath her hair as she knelt in front of Zoey, applying antiseptic to her wound. Zoey appreciated why Nick was frustrated with his son for not following through and she didn’t want to interfere with his parenting, but she could also see that it was demoralizing for Aidan to be lectured in front of everyone.
“Like a chandelier,” she joked, hoping to break the tension. When everyone stared at her, looking stumped, she awkwardly explained, “Nick asked how I would have felt if I fell halfway through the ceiling…”
Gabi got it first. “Good one, Aunt Zoey.”
Then Ivy swept her hand through the air. “Oh, you!”
Zoey could tell Aidan was trying not to laugh, but when Nick rolled his eyes and cracked a smile, the boy gave in and chuckled. Zoey winked at him, confessing, “If anyone is to blame for me falling in the attic, it’s the ginormous spider living up there.”
“Why? Did it trip you?” Gabi asked, loosely fastening an adhesive bandage to her aunt’s calf.
“No, smart aleck. It crawled on me and I got creeped out and slipped.” Zoey imitated the spider’s movement on her skin by tickling her niece’s neck, which made Gabi giggle and roll back on her heels.
“There. That should keep the germs away until you get to the ER.”
Nick commanded Aidan, “While we’re gone, I want you to nail down that plywood and put the screens in the windows. Got it?”
Aidan nodded but Zoey protested, “You can’t take me to the ER. I might be there for hours. I don’t want you wasting half your day waiting around for me. The new range is coming and you guys have to install it.”
“They don’t have to install it today. We can wait until the next time they’re both free,” Ivy opened a small purple thermal bag and set something inside it.
“No we can’t, Aunt Ivy. The delivery people are taking your old oven away and we won’t have anything to cook on,” Zoey reminded her. “I’ll submit a ride request. Gabi, could you bring me my phone? It’s in my room on the—”
Nick cut her off. “No. I’m taking you to the ER.” Before she knew what was happening, he’d scooped her up again.
I could get used to this, she thought as her aunt looped the handle of the thermal bag over her wrist. “What’s in here?”
“Sticky buns and milk. There are napkins in the side pocket,” she said. Zoey half expected her aunt to add, Have fun you two, as if they were going on a picnic instead of to the hospital, but instead Ivy kissed her cheek and told Nick, “Take good care of her, okay?”
“I will, Mrs. Cartwright,” he promised, using her surname as if to show how seriously he meant it.
Before they pulled out of the driveway, Nick said, “I’m sorry for what happened in there. I shouldn’t have bawled Aidan out like that—not until we got home, anyway. Sometimes I try so hard to keep him in line that I end up being out of line myself.”
“It’s okay. Nobody gets it right every time—I know I don’t,” Zoey said. “It might not mean much coming from me, since I’m a novice as far as being responsible for a teenager goes, but Aidan seems like a really good kid—he works hard and he’s smart and friendly and well-mannered. A lot of that has to be to your credit.”
Nick glanced her way, beaming. “Thanks. That actually means more to me than you know.”
As they drove, Zoey asked him what it was like living on the island year-round, saying, “Until this year, I’ve never stayed here for longer than a week or two in the winter. I’ve always wondered if the islanders go stir crazy by the time spring comes because they’re so isolated.”
“A few people get cabin fever, sure, but most of the full-time residents are used to it. Those who can’t hack it usually move after the first year,” he answered. “I actually prefer the off-season to the summers, when the island gets so crowded. But even then, it’s not nearly as crowded as the NYC suburb where I used to live.”
Zoey couldn’t keep the surprise from her voice. “I thought you were a die-hard islander.”
“No. I left here after high school to go to college in upstate New York. Majored in computer science. Graduated. Got married—too young. We moved to the city and lived in a cell of an apartment. I was working for a tech analyst firm, in a cell of an office.”
“I sense a theme here.”
“You’re right about that. But after Aidan was born, we moved into a better place, a house in the suburbs. Which meant I needed to get a better job—actually, the job wasn’t better, it was worse in terms of how mismanaged the company was and how many hours they expected us to clock. But the salary was better. I got a lot of my fulfillment from being a husband and especially from being Aidan’s dad. And I was happy we could afford to live in a nice, safe area, so it was hardly a sacrifice to work at a job I didn’t exactly love. Unfortunately, Aidan’s mother…” Nick cleared his throat. “Anyway, we divorced when he was twelve and two years ago I decided to return to Dune Island to get a fresh start. Or maybe I should say I started over again, since I moved back to my home town and into my parents’ house.”
“You live with your parents?”
“Ha!” Nick snorted. “No. I inherited their house when my dad died, since my mother passed away about two years before that.”
“And Aidan relocated with you? Wow. From NYC to Dune Island is a huge adjustment for a teenager. Gabi’s only visiting, but I’m glad that the town she lives in in California is pretty small, otherwise I’d worry about her experiencing culture shock, in addition to all the other changes that come with moving to a new place and starting a new school.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. But Aidan’s thriving here. He went through a lot in New York… not because of school, but because of my ex-wife’s new husband’s drinking. Aidan’s found some kids here who have been really helpful to him though. And I enjoy the work I do as a contractor so much more than when I was working in a box for someone else… Anyway, that’s my life in a nutshell.” He brushed his hand through his hair. “What’s yours?”
Zoey told him about her family, how much she loved coming to Dune Island every summer, about getting her masters degree, living in Providence and being a librarian.
After she finished, he asked, “Right now, you don’t have—I mean your aunt said you aren’t…”
He seemed embarrassed to finish his sentence. Zoey realized her aunt must have mentioned to him she was unemployed, so she confirmed, “No, I don’t have a job. The branch I was working in closed in late November. But I have an interview in a week and I’m very hopeful about it.”
He pulled his chin back. “You lost your job? I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah. Wasn’t that what you were about to ask me?”
His face reddened. “Actually, I was going to ask if you were seeing anyone.”
“Oh. No, I’m not.” Zoey answered absently; all she could think about was how careless she’d been to let it slip that she was unemployed. What if Nick told Mark? She really didn’t want him to know. “Please don’t mention it to Mark, though.”
“You don’t want your cousin to know you’re not seeing anyone?”
“No. That I’m unemployed.”
Nick chuckled. “Okay.”
“Seriously, it’s important to me.”
“I understand and I won’t say anything about it.”
“Then why were you laughing?”
“Because I hardly ever talk to him anyway and when I do, it’s not about anything perso
nal, like our families.”
“You guys aren’t old friends from high school?”
“I suppose some people might refer to us as old, but I wouldn’t call us friends. In fact, when we were in our final semester, senior year…” He shook his head. “Nah, never mind.”
Zoey had to hear this. “Go on, say it.”
“We both liked the same girl. Amber Grant. And we both asked her to the prom.”
Nick had the same taste in girlfriends as Mark did? That wasn’t a good sign. “Which one of you did she choose?”
“Neither. She went with Brent Harris.”
“Smart girl.”
Nick laughed—Zoey liked that about him; he could take a joke. “Yeah. And we were stupid boys.”
“Why, what did you do?”
He coughed into his fist. “I’m not admitting to anything on the record. But I will say before either of us found out Amber had already agreed to go to the prom with Brent, we may or may not have had a shoving match that got a little rough. And there may or may not have been some after-school detention involved.
“And by ‘may or may not,’ you mean ‘definitely,’ don’t you?”
“Definitely. As I said, we were stupid boys. We were idiots.” He shook his head. “But please don’t tell your aunt.”
“Why? Are you afraid the next time Mark comes here, she’ll ground him?” Zoey teased.
“No, I’m afraid she’ll fire me.”
Zoey giggled. “Nah, at worst she’ll forbid her nieces to hang out with ‘those incorrigible Armstrong boys.’”
Aunt Ivy's Cottage: A totally gripping and emotional page turner Page 13
