Too bad he wasn’t her type. She wasn’t his, either, which was what made their friendship so perfect.
Cassie merely nodded at Jonathan’s comment. She didn’t trust herself to speak yet, the tears still a bit too close to the surface. Taking in a deep lungful of fresh Adirondack air she steadied herself, waited a beat or two, then gave another nod.
“Okay?” Jonathan asked, his voice laced with sympathy as he came around the car and dropped a comforting arm over her shoulders.
“Yeah, I think so. I hate funerals.”
“We all do, sweetie.”
“She was so young.” Lake Henry was a small town, just about everybody knew everybody else anyway, but Caroline…she was loved by all. Every last one. She was one of those people. Visitors actually had to attend her wake in shifts, there were so many who wanted to pay their respects. And this morning, the funeral home had been packed. “Only a few years older than my mom. I can’t imagine losing her already.” A lump formed in her throat, and her eyes welled.
Jonathan squeezed her close. “Your mom’s fine, Cass.”
“So was Caroline before the blood clot. She had no idea she was even in danger. And then, bam! That’s all she wrote.” The tears spilled over. “It’s so wrong, Johnny.”
“I know, honey. I know.” He turned her face into his chest and held her tight while she cried.
After a few moments, she pulled away, dried her eyes with a way overused tissue, and blew her nose yet again. “Okay. Enough.” Another full-body shake and she felt better. “Enough. I’ve got things to do, Johnny. Why do you keep me here in the parking lot while you wallow? You’re so needy.”
Jonathan smiled, revealing a row of perfect teeth. “I can’t help it. I’m such a queen.” He slid his hand down her arm, clasped her hand in his. “Hey, speaking of royalty, did you notice the Ice Princess?”
Cassie rolled her eyes at the mention of Caroline’s daughter. “You mean that she barely shed a tear? I think she was the only one.”
“Some things never change.” He kissed the top of her head. “Catch you later. Time to go to work.” He headed toward the back door of his high-end gift shop, Boutique. Cassie watched until he disappeared inside, then turned to face the lake.
The back parking lot was a mere few steps to the water, which was calm and sun-glinted today. Just looking at the surface made Cassie feel more peaceful, so she stood there for several long moments. To her left was a long dock that reached twenty-five yards out into the water, and was used to help her customers give kayaks and canoes a test drive before they purchased them. The bottom floor of her store, the basement, was actually a walk-out, the whole wall that faced Lake Henry a bank of windows, and featured any water equipment you might need. She could see her mother inside behind the counter, ringing out a customer. The floor above her was the main one and housed general sportswear, jackets, and equipment for any team sports, plus the shoe department and the front door, where customers entered from Main Street. Frannie, Cassie’s very first and most trusted employee (aside from her mother) was managing at the moment. The second floor was stocked full with winter apparel, ski equipment, snowshoes, snowboards, and anything else that might be needed for the coming months. She had two employees working up there today, as it was the beginning of peak season. A third would be in at noon.
With a deep breath, she turned and headed inside.
“Hey, Mom,” Cassie said in greeting as the customer left with a large bag. Three more were milling about.
Katie Parker opened her arms to her daughter. Cassie stepped into them without further prompting. “How’re you doing, sweetie?”
“Ugh,” Cassie groaned into her shoulder, then breathed in the scent of Red Door, her mother’s one and only perfume. “I’m glad it’s over.”
“Are you positive you don’t want to go to the lunch at Harbordale? I’m sure we could get somebody to cover down here.”
Cassie shook her head as a young woman approached the counter with a pair of sunglasses. “No. It’s fine. I don’t really want to go, but you and Dad should. Just let me go up and change, and I’ll come down and relieve you, okay?”
She wasn’t quite ready to deal with the rest of her employees, let alone customers, so she took the back staircase up to the top floor of the building where her apartment was. She barely got the door open before she was greeted by forty-one pounds of wiggling, wagging Australian Shepherd who let her know how displeased he was to be locked up at home rather than down in the store where he much preferred to be.
“Hey, Gordie,” Cassie said softly. She opened her arms, and he leapt into them without any further prompting, a trick she taught him when he was still a puppy. Cassie buried her face in his soft, tri-colored fur and held him tight. Sensing her emotions—something at which her dog was frighteningly adept—he remained still in her embrace, allowing her to hold him as long as she needed to.
When she felt better, she let him down, checked her messages (none), and headed into her bedroom—Gordie right behind her—suddenly needing nothing more than to get out of the little black dress as quickly as possible. With a relieved groan, she kicked off her modest heels wondering, not for the first time, why women insisted on wearing such uncomfortable footwear. Trying not to dwell on the morning’s activity of attending the funeral of a woman she’d loved and respected a great deal, she pulled off her dress and tossed it in a heap on the bed. Once in her wind pants and fleece pullover with The Sports Outfitter logo embroidered on the left chest, she felt like a normal human again. Stopping by the bathroom, she gave her teeth a quick brush, wiped off her mascara and its subtle black smudges left under her eyes, and pulled her dark hair into a ponytail.
“Better,” she said to her reflection, then gave one quick nod. “Okay, Gordie. Let’s go to work.”
Gordie had only a tiny nub of a tail, but his entire back end wiggled in happiness as he followed Cassie to the door and then down the steps. She kept a hand lightly on his fur as they descended, and though she felt a little better, she still couldn’t shake the fact that she would never see Caroline again. It still didn’t seem real.
Clearing her throat, she opened the door from the stairway to the shop, pasted on her happy business face, and greeted her customers.
***
If Emerson had thought she’d been bone tired two nights ago, she apparently didn’t understand the definition because she was pretty sure she was about to drop tonight. It wasn’t just the standing and the nodding and the small talk with people she didn’t know. It was her overstimulated brain. It was the ache in her cheeks from forcing herself to smile. It was the throbbing of her knee, which only happened when she overdid it or was on her feet for too long, usually in the wrong shoes. She wanted nothing more than to soak in a hot bathtub in a room filled with silence, a glass of wine in her hand, and that’s what she planned to do.
Consciously avoiding the rest of the cottage, she dropped her clutch, stepped out of her heels, and walked straight through the bedroom into the attached bathroom.
“Some things never change,” she said with fondness to the empty room as she easily located her mother’s stash of bubble bath and bath salts. Emerson got her love of soaking in the tub from her mother, who did so almost every night before bed without fail. As an athlete, Emerson found there was nothing quite as soothing to her aching muscles as a good soak. Choosing a lilac-scented bubble bath, she pushed the rubber stopper into the drain of the old-fashioned claw-foot tub and turned the tap on as hot as it would go.
Her clothes in a pile on the white tile floor, Emerson looked around the small room. She’d successfully avoided any close scrutiny of her mother’s living quarters over the past two days by concentrating on the events that lay ahead of her. But now those events were over, and there was nothing for Emerson to focus on except her departure, which was uncertain as of right now. There was paperwork to deal with, not to mention her mother’s possessions. There was no other family. Caroline had been an only chil
d, and her parents passed away long ago.
There was only Emerson.
The bathroom décor was simple and tasteful, a white base with purple accents. On the wall was a framed photograph of Clark Mountain, the biggest peak in the area, blanketed with an eerie fog. Must have been taken first thing in the morning, Emerson thought, having grown up seeing the mountaintop—affectionately dubbed Mount Hank—every morning on her way to school. Still, it was a soothingly calm shot, and it brought back all kinds of memories Emerson had no desire to handle at the moment.
Shaking her head free of recollections, she stepped gingerly into the tub, wincing at the heat of the water and was suddenly hit with a memory so vivid it was like watching it on a movie screen.
Caroline, light hair piled atop her head, lowered herself into a tub filled with steaming water and bubbles, sucking a breath in through her teeth as she did so.
“Mom, why do you make it so hot if you can’t even get in?” a young Emerson asked with a laugh as she set a clean towel and a glass of wine on the hamper within Caroline’s reach.
“It does me no good if it’s lukewarm. And it cools off very fast. You don’t want me soaking in a cold tub, do you?” Caroline slowly settled herself all the way in and exhaled with relief. Waving a hand, she said, “Shoo. Let me soak in peace.” Her eyes closed and a ghost of a smile played on her lips.
Emerson settled in now too. A glass of wine was also within her reach. Good wine. Her mother didn’t skimp on many things, and wine was no exception. She took a sip of the rich Zinfandel, let it coat her tongue before swallowing, and stretched her left leg, propping her heel out on the rim of the tub. For the first time in several hours, the throbbing of her knee seemed to ease. She should have taken her pills before she got in the water.
So many people…
That thought had run through her mind over and over again today. Her mother knew so many people. And so many people obviously loved her. The wake had felt like hours of nonstop mourners; people she didn’t know, people she vaguely remembered, people who expected her to know them. Hundreds of handshakes. Countless hugs, many often awkwardly unwanted. Too many “I’m so sorrys” to count. She closed her eyes, slipped a bit lower in the water, and tried her best to soak the day away. She sighed at what lay ahead. Even though her mother was now laid to rest and Emerson had handled all the niceties with a controlled charm, there were some tough decisions to be made.
The Inn.
The rental property.
Caroline’s possessions. Car, clothes, everything else.
All of it belonged to Emerson now. All of it. And the thing was, Emerson didn’t want it. Any of it. She wished she could simply slap a big For Sale sign out front and fly herself back to L.A. Get back to her life, her job, warm weather.
She reached for the wine glass again, noticing that the blinking green light on her smartphone hadn’t magically stopped blinking in the twenty minutes since she last looked at it. A too-large gulp of wine in her mouth, she set the glass down and picked up the phone.
Six missed calls, the screen told her. Four new messages.
With a growl of annoyance, she punched buttons and signed into her voicemail. She hated this age of electronics, of constant contact. Yes, it was convenient to be able to so easily find information or send an e-mail. But she hated that she could never get away, that she couldn’t just disappear, be out of touch, unreachable.
The first two messages were clients just checking on their orders. Emerson saved them to return later. The third was a weirdly cryptic message from her coworker, Brenda.
“Emmy, call me back as soon as you can. There’s some funky shit going down around here.” It was just like Brenda to blow something out of proportion and then leave a frantic message. Emerson shook her head and deleted the message. The fourth message was a hang-up from a restricted number. Emerson shrugged, tossed the phone aside, and revisited her glass of wine.
There was so much to do tomorrow, but she didn’t want to deal with any of it right now. Right now, she wanted to drink her wine, soak her muscles, and clear her head of all things that reminded her of one clear fact, the reason she was here.
“My mother is dead.” Her whisper seemed loud in the silent room. A lump formed and she swallowed it down. “My mother is dead.”
The air she pushed from her lungs created a channel through the bubbles closest to Emerson’s face. Another sip of wine and she closed her eyes as a profound sadness settled over her.
CHAPTER THREE
It took a couple days for Cassie to resemble her old self again, and by Monday morning, she was ready to get back to life. Mourning had its place, but she wasn’t the kind of person who could stay quietly solitary, crying alone in her apartment. She needed to get out, to share some conversation, offer some help, do something to keep her from feeling the pain of what she had lost.
Mary had to be having a difficult time. She’d held on to Cassie so tightly at the funeral. Caroline had been her best friend for years. Hell, they were more like sisters, and Cassie knew that running The Lakeshore Inn all by herself wouldn’t be an easy task for Mary even if she weren’t completely heartbroken. When she opened her eyes first thing that morning, Cassie made the decision to get a few quick things done in the store, leave it to her mother for a couple hours, and pay a visit to Mary, see what she could do to help.
Lake Henry was a very big tourist attraction, but the village itself was rather small, barely two miles square not including the water. The lake was an easy three-point-one miles around and had a lovely brick-paved sidewalk circling the perimeter. Cassie and Gordie walked it religiously.
The morning was sunny and beautiful with a definite scent of autumn in the crisp air. Cassie had donned her usual work uniform of jeans, a quarter-zip fleece—today’s was red—and a down vest. Her ponytail swung back and forth as she and Gordie walked down Main Street greeting locals and tourists alike.
A leash for Gordie wasn’t necessary—he would rarely leave his mistress’s side—but Cassie had found strangers to be much less wary and much more comfortable knowing he was tethered to her. He was a ridiculously friendly dog and wanted to say hello to everybody. The locals all knew and loved him, but there were a few tourists here and there who were not dog people (something Cassie would never understand), and they’d get a particular expression of anticipated fear when they saw his furry face with its mismatched eyes and no leash.
“Can I pet your dog?”
A child’s voice pulled Cassie’s attention downward to a girl of about six, holding her mother’s hand and waiting politely for an answer before reaching toward Gordie.
“Gordie, sit,” Cassie commanded, and her dog immediately did as he was told, though it was obvious from the excited tension in his body that it was all he could do to keep from bathing the little girl’s face with kisses. Cassie squatted down and said to the girl, “You sure can, and thank you for asking first.”
The sun glinted off perfect blonde ringlets as the girl tentatively reached one hand toward Gordie, the other holding tightly to her mother who smiled down at them.
“Is he blind?” the girl asked quietly, as if worried about insulting the dog. “In this eye?” She pointed to Gordie’s one blue eye.
Cassie grinned. “No, but lots of people think he is. It’s just that his mommy had brown eyes, and his daddy had blue eyes, so they each gave him one.”
The girl seemed to absorb this as she stroked Gordie’s soft head. Then she smiled widely and pronounced, “That’s cool.” After another moment, she thanked Cassie and placed a gentle kiss on Gordie’s head before continuing on her way with her mother, waving as she went.
“Bye,” Cassie called, then gave Gordie a gentle tug. “Good boy.”
It was strange to arrive at The Lakeshore Inn and momentarily forget that Caroline Rosberg would not be at the counter. Cassie went from smiling to almost hesitant in a mere millisecond and had to stop outside the office door and collect herself before proceed
ing in.
Mary stood behind the counter, her hands folded neatly in front of her, forearms on the counter, gaze focused somewhere out the window and over the water. She seemed to be much more in control than she’d been the last two times Cassie had seen her, but of course, she was far from her old, cheerful self.
“Morning, Mary,” Cassie said more quietly than she normally would. Mary jumped anyway, and pressed a hand to her chest. “Sorry,” Cassie added, holding her hands up in a placating gesture. “I was trying not to scare you.”
A smile crossed Mary’s face then, and Cassie returned it. “Hi there, Cassandra. How are you this morning?” Her eyes fell toward the floor and she saw Gordie. “And there’s my boy. Come here, handsome.” Gordie looked up at Cassie, who unclipped his leash.
“Go ahead. She’s going to spoil you, you know.”
Mary bent down to put her arms around the dog, and not for the first time, Cassie was so grateful for Gordie. He knew how to make just about anybody feel better. She followed the woman and dog behind the counter and back into the kitchen.
“How are you?” Cassie asked as she watched Mary give Gordie one of the all-natural treats she left in the kitchen specifically for him.
“Oh, you know,” Mary replied, her focus still on the dog. “It’s hard. There’s so much to do, and we’re completely booked for the next couple of months, and…” With a deep sigh, she lifted her arms out and let them drop back to her sides. “I can’t believe she’s gone.”
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