by Meg Tilly
Twenty-three
“HOLY MARY MOTHER of God,” Rhys groaned. He rolled over to grab his cell phone from the bedside table and switched the alarm off. “Four a.m. I volunteered for this?”
He forced himself out of bed, showered, dressed, and staggered out of his room. Eve was waiting by the front door, bleary-eyed and holding two travel mugs. He could hear Samson’s dog tags jingling in the mudroom as he wolfed down his breakfast.
“Coffee,” Eve said, handing him one of the mugs with an apologetic smile. “Early, huh?”
“You’re not kidding.”
“I really appreciate you helping me out like this.”
“Better save your thanks ’til we see how I do.” He took a long slug of the hot liquid. “Thanks for the coffee.” He followed her out the door as he took another long slug, feeling the caffeine starting to make an inroad through the fog. “Let’s get this party started.”
* * *
• • •
HE LADLED TOMATO soup into a bowl, glanced at the soup page in the blue binder.
Drizzle a little spiral of cream on tomato soup.
Right. He drizzled, then plopped the heavy cream in the fridge. Sprinted to the stove, flipped the grilled cheese onto the chopping board, and cut it at a diagonal.
The buzzer on the third oven went off.
Too much to do. Too little time.
He arranged the bowl of soup and the sandwich on a plate, added a sprig of parsley, and hit the bell.
Eve dashed in, grabbed the soup and sandwich combo, then dashed out again. No way in hell she would’ve been able to handle this on her own. Even with the help of her possible-convict dishwasher and her kooky senior-citizen waitress. He shoved his hands in the blue-and-white-striped potholders, removed the sheets of fresh-baked chocolate cookies from the hot oven, and placed them on the counter. Yanked the mitts off, then flipped to the page for salted chocolate caramel cookies.
“Okay, next . . .” He glanced at the handwritten instructions in the binder. “Melt caramel. Caramel? Where would that be?”
“Hey, you,” Larry barked.
Rhys turned. Larry was glaring at him, hands on his hips. “Can’t leave ’em like that,” Larry growled. It was the first full sentence the man had uttered to him since arriving at work four hours ago.
“Like what?”
Larry stomped over to a cupboard, yanked it open, pulled out several wire racks, and slammed them on the counter by the baked sheets of cookies. “Gotta cool ’em on these, like Maggie does.” He slapped a spatula on the counter as well.
“Thanks, Larry. Appreciate the help.”
“Ain’t helping you. It’s for the girls. Don’t want you scaring off their customers with your soggy-assed cookies. Tested one of those oatmeal cookies you made this morning. They sucked.”
“Now, come on . . .”
“No crisp around the edges. Shoulda used the cooling racks. Don’t mess up again,” Larry snarled. “I got my eye on you.”
“Well, that makes two of us,” Rhys said. He thought he’d kept his tone pleasant, but the guy flinched as though he’d gotten a flash of what Rhys was really feeling behind the smile. Then, pale-faced but defiant, Larry hoisted his middle finger in the air, his jaw thrust outward like he was begging for Rhys to break it.
Rhys was tempted, but he’d promised Eve he wouldn’t do anything to upset Larry, and a broken jaw might fall into that category.
“You are allowed to have your suspicions,” Eve had told him on the drive over that morning. “But unless you come up with concrete proof that Larry was lying, I want you to be civil to him. When Luke gets back from vacation, he can run a check on him, make sure no red flags pop up—knowing Luke, he probably already has. He’s so damn protective of Maggie. But even if he hasn’t, I can’t afford to lose Larry. He’s hardworking, never late, and a fabulous dishwasher to boot.”
“Who might just happen to—”
Eve didn’t let Rhys finish. “Let me make this absolutely clear: if you run him off, you’re the one who will be staying here until midnight up to your elbows in dirty dishwater. Not me.”
Rhys picked up the spatula and started transferring the cookies to the cooling racks. The woman is tough, he thought with a grin. No doubt about it. She’d never let some asshole use her as his private punching bag. Then the sorrow hit. As it always did when he thought about his mom.
* * *
• • •
EVE CAME THROUGH the swinging doors, a stack of plates in her hands. “It’s finally calming down out there. Thank goodness. What a madhouse it’s been. Everyone talking about that poor person whose body was found under the bridge.”
Rhys was standing motionless by the cookies cooling on the rack, spatula in hand.
“You okay?” she asked, because he had a funny look on his face, sort of lost and forlorn.
“Yeah,” he said. He headed toward the fridge, then paused. “You mind if I take five?”
“Anytime,” she said. “I’m so grateful you’re here. I would have been well and truly screwed without you.”
He smiled, his mood lightening. “I’d have preferred that sentence with the ‘out’ removed.”
“‘Screwed: a difficult or hopeless situation; ruined or broken,’” she said with mock severity. “Not generally considered a positive thing.”
“Depends who’s doing the screwing,” he said, a slight smile quirking the corners of his lips. Then he stepped outside into the parking lot and the door swung shut behind him.
“He didn’t finish the cookies,” Larry said. He’d been acting sullen ever since he’d arrived and seen that Rhys was installed in the kitchen.
“He will,” Eve said, scraping the dishes.
“Hi, Sue Lynn.” She heard Rhys’s voice drifting in through the cracked-open window. “It’s me.” Eve glanced out. She wasn’t spying, just human curiosity was all.
Rhys had parked himself on the stairs leading up to her apartment. He was sitting against the brick wall, his head tipped back, cell phone to his ear. His eyes were shut as though he were savoring the burst of midday sun that was beating down. There was a vulnerability about him.
She felt a flare of something. If she didn’t know better she’d think it was jealousy. Which would be ridiculous. She’d started to share a kiss with the man, then shut it down. What was there to be jealous about? She didn’t give a rat’s ass if he was talking to some stupid girlfriend named Sue Lynn. It just reinforced the absolute correctness of her decision not to let her hormones drive the bus.
“Things are fine.” The familiarity in his voice as he spoke wrapped around Eve’s chest like a boa constrictor. “It’s very beautiful here.” There was a pause as he listened, the corner of his mouth quirking up. “Well, ‘peaceful’ isn’t exactly the word that springs to mind.”
“Have they figured out how the person died?” Larry said, his gravelly voice drowning Rhys out. “Or who did it?”
“No.” Eve dumped the scraped dishes at Larry’s station. “No clue. They’ve sent the jaw into the lab to check dental records.”
“Ah.” Larry grunted. He said something else, but she didn’t hear what. She’d already slipped through the swinging doors to deal with her hungry customers.
* * *
• • •
“HOW’S SHE DOING?” Rhys asked. He felt weary, as if the air around him was pressing in, weighing him down.
“Oh, you know,” Sue Lynn said with her seemingly ever-present good cheer. “She has her good days and her bad ones. She was mighty glad to see you. We all were, if you want to know the truth. You’re a ray of sunshine.”
“Yeah, that’s me,” he said, a wave of self-loathing washing through him. If he was such a ray of sunshine, he wouldn’t have hopped on that Greyhound bus headed for LA the day after he graduated from hi
gh school. Couldn’t have fled that hellhole fast enough. If he had stayed, maybe things would have been different.
“You should’ve seen us, Rhys. Last night”—Sue Lynn was still talking—“the entire day staff went to see your movie Laws of Attraction. Mr. Abrams, the activity director, let us use the Sunnyvale bus. Actually, he came with us—his wife and daughter, too. We prebought tickets to make sure we all got in. We filled up that theater like nobody’s business.”
Rhys jumped in. Sue Lynn could talk the leg off a cat. “Well, thank you all for going. That was awful sweet of you. I’m on a bit of a time crunch, but I was hoping I could talk to her for a moment.”
“Oh, certainly. Let me put her on.”
Rhys could hear the rustle of fabric, then footsteps as Sue Lynn made her way to his mom. “Lorelai? Lorelai, it’s your boy, honey.”
“Who?” he could hear his mom say.
“Rhys. Your boy, Rhys, the movie star. He’s on the phone. Wants to say hello.”
“Who?”
“No, that’s all right, Lorelai. I’ll hold the phone. Okay, Rhys, she can hear you now.”
“Hi, Mom.”
“Hello. Who’s this?”
“It’s Rhys, Mom.” It was one of those days. She had them. He always thought he was prepared, but it still caused a pang of sorrow on the occasions when she didn’t remember who he was.
“Rhys . . . I have a son named Rhys.”
“Yes, Mom. That’s me. I was just thinking about you and wanted to call and tell you that I love you.”
“Come for a visit?”
“Yes. I’ll be there Thursday evening.”
“Thursday?”
“That’s the day after tomorrow.”
“Bring candy?”
“Uh-huh. I always bring candy, Mom.”
“Oh good. Fudge. I like fudge.”
“I know. I’ll bring some.”
“Good.”
“Is there anything else you’d like me to—”
“Who is this?”
Rhys made himself concentrate on the feel of the warm brick wall behind his back, the sunshine on his face, the slight breeze. “Rhys. It’s Rhys, Mom.”
Twenty-four
“I CAN’T BELIEVE we have to do that all over again tomorrow,” Rhys said, rolling his shoulders and rotating his spine while Eve locked up. He felt like he’d been run over by a Mack truck. “The restaurant business is hard-core. I’m knackered.” He fished his car keys out of his pocket. “Need anything from upstairs before we head out?”
“I’m good,” she said, removing the restaurant key from the lock and dumping it in her purse as she walked past him toward his SUV rental.
“I checked upstairs during my lunch break,” he said. “No sign of entry.”
“Great.” There was a tinge of sarcasm in her voice.
“I didn’t go in,” Rhys said. “Wouldn’t violate your privacy like that. Just checked the tell I left in the doorjamb. It hadn’t been disturbed. I walked around the building—your upstairs-window tells were in place as well.”
She gave a short nod. Didn’t answer. No Thank you for thinking to do that. What a relief. So glad the break-in appears to be an arbitrary incident, not someone with a personal vendetta against me. And by the way, I am so grateful you had the presence of mind to install high-security locks on my front door and windows yesterday. I’ll sleep much better knowing they’re there.
Nope. Nothing.
Rhys didn’t consider himself to be on the short list for Mr. Intuitive-Man-of-the-Year. However, it didn’t take a genius to ascertain that she was pissed off about something. He watched her climb into the vehicle, her back stiff.
He got in, started the engine. “Wanna tell me what’s going on? Or are we gonna play the guessing game?”
She didn’t say anything, just strapped herself in, acting as though his voice were background static on a radio station.
He strapped in, backed up, shifted into drive, and pulled onto Rainbow Road. “Okay, guessing game it is. This is fun. You’re never gonna believe this, but in my experience, it’s usually the woman in the relationship who wants to talk things out. You know, get all touchy-feely with the emotions, analyze the minutiae.” He shook his head. “If my buddies could see me now, they’d laugh their heads off.”
Silence. She didn’t even crack a smile.
He sighed. “Eve,” he said. “Talk to me.” Her lips were compressed into a flat line.
“I heard you on the phone,” she finally said, as if that would explain everything.
“And . . . ?” He waited.
She opened her mouth to speak. Shut it again. Glared out the window.
“Spit it out. You’ll feel better.”
She turned the full force of her glare on him. “Who’s Sue Lynn?”
He couldn’t help it. He had to laugh, unexpected warmth bubbling through him. “She’s one of my mom’s caregivers, early sixties, generously proportioned, married to her childhood sweetheart . . .”
“Oh,” Eve said. Her voice was so soft he almost didn’t hear it.
She looked at him, eyes dark with compassion.
“Brain damage,” he said, answering her unspoken question.
“Has your mom always been that way?”
He shook his head.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Must be difficult.”
He managed a shrug, throat suddenly constricted. “Could’ve been worse.” Keeping his eyes focused on the road. “The neighbors called the cops before Howie—her dipshit boyfriend—could finish her off. Even so, the damage was pretty extensive. Didn’t know if she was going to pull through.” He paused, tangled in the past for a moment, and forced himself to exhale. “She seems pretty happy most days. She’s still my mom, just more childlike is all.”
She nodded. Neither one of them felt the need to disturb the gentle silence that had filled the car.
A white-haired couple in their late seventies stepped into the crosswalk. Rhys slowed his vehicle to a stop. The woman was speaking, the man leaning toward her slightly to catch her words. Her thoughts, what she had to say, still important to him after all those years.
Rhys felt something click into place, as if this were a sign. He glanced at Eve. She was watching their slow progress across the road, a wistful smile on her face. “They remind me of my mom and dad,” she said, tilting her chin in their direction. “In another twenty years or so.”
“Could be us”—his words surprised even himself, and yet out they came—“in forty or fifty.”
He heard her breath catch. “Don’t play me,” she said, her mouth more shaping the words than speaking them aloud.
“I’m not,” he said. “I won’t,” he added. Like a vow. His gaze locked on hers. He could feel his pulse pounding slow and steady in his throat.
She watched him, eyes wary. She extended her hand, pinkie outstretched. “Pact?” Almost like a dare.
“Pact,” he said, interlocking his finger with hers.
Someone honked behind them. Rhys took his foot off the brake, pulled forward with a mix of exhilaration, peace, and a sense of rightness thrumming through him. Her pinkie still clasped in his on the console between them.
Twenty-five
HE’D TRAILED HIS ladylove all the way from the café parking lot until the high-end glossy SUV she was riding in turned off Morningside Road onto a long driveway. He couldn’t slam on the brakes. It would’ve drawn attention to him. Instead, he rounded the bend, pulled to the side of the road, threw open the car door, and sprinted back just in time to see the solid wooden gates closing securely behind them.
He started to move closer but noticed a security camera perched in a tree at the head of the drive.
Shit!
He needed to think fast. He bent over, hands on knees, pretending
he’d been running for a while and needed to catch his breath, peeking under the shelter of his arm to get the lay of the land.
He spotted more security cameras on the gateposts and along the six-foot wall. What the hell? he thought, anger surging. This is fucking Solace Island! Who the hell needs a security setup like that? She must be two-timing me with that asshole! Rage filled his mouth with bile. Not so fucking pure, is she? Little slut.
He couldn’t stay bent over forever, pretending to suck in air, so he straightened. Rolled his head, stretched out his calves, and started running again.
Now what? he thought as every footfall took him farther from his car, farther from her, his preordained destiny.
He was not wearing appropriate footwear. Could feel a blister forming on his left heel.
Another thing she was going to have to be punished for.
Twenty-six
THEY’D DECIDED TO forgo a hot dinner. It’s a pleasure, Eve thought as she perused the contents of the refrigerator, to forage in my sister’s fridge. It’s so clean and shiny and bursting with tasty food.
Her own fridge was usually quite barren, boasting a couple of Tupperware containers with ancient leftovers from dinner at Maggie’s. A few withered carrots lurked in the produce drawer. On the shelves were several food products that had morphed into science projects.
“Ah, what do we have here?” she exclaimed, her mouth watering. She removed a couple of crisp Granny Smith apples, a local garlic and chive goat cheese, a wedge of four-year cheddar, and a triple-cream French Brie from the fridge. Next she sliced the apples, plopped them on the chopping board along with the cheese, a jar of wine jelly, and a baguette.
As she passed through the living room, Samson lifted his shaggy head from his dog bed, his nose twitching. She broke a small chunk of cheddar off the wedge and tossed it to him. Could hear his lips smacking as she exited through the doors and onto the deck.
