Always on My Mind

by Susan May Warren

  “I think I hate you,” Casper said, smiling.

  “Of course you do,” Darek said as he closed the door behind him.

  Casper stared at the food. He could go for a hamburger. Fries. But here he was, eating leftovers.

  Fine. Clearly he couldn’t shake free of Raina. So, yeah, maybe he’d pray for her. Be a true friend, somehow.

  Maybe, in fact, that’s what he should have been doing all along.

  Darek had spent nearly the entirety of Valentine’s Day helping other people find romance. He’d tucked guests into ten of the twelve cabins—a triumph, especially given the slick roads and frigid temperatures that had the northland in an icy lockdown.

  But by the looks of the couples who’d arrived for the weekend special he’d advertised, the temperatures outside wouldn’t put a damper on the heat inside.

  He had his own romance heating up in his head as he drove to Deep Haven. Next year, he’d simply walk across the expanse of the resort to go home, but he still had to finish hanging Sheetrock, painting, and laying the floor of their new home. And with the resort’s doors open and all the winter maintenance, he had his hands full keeping the place running.

  Yeah, he could use some help. Should have probably taken Casper up on his offer to help him check in the last guest.

  But he couldn’t get past the worry that Casper would let something drop and . . . then a seventy-five-year-old legacy would disappear.

  Not that Casper would forget something, but . . .

  Casper might forget something. Darek could admit that he didn’t completely trust his kid brother not to drop the ball. A deposit. Or freshly delivered firewood. Or even checking on the unoccupied cabins during the deep freeze.

  Poor guy was lovesick. But so was Darek.

  He pulled up to his two-bedroom rental house, the outside light shining over the icy steps. But he was surprised at the dark windows—he expected at least the kitchen lights to be blazing.

  Oh no, was he supposed to bring home dinner? Or . . . roses! He’d completely forgotten anything for Ivy. No chocolates, roses, dinner—

  She’d probably gone to bed, heartbroken. He eased the door open, listened.

  No light cascaded down the hallway. Even for Ivy, 9 p.m. was early to turn in for the night.

  He toed off his boots, trod down the hallway, and softly opened the door. In the shadows, the bed appeared unoccupied. He flicked on the light.

  Empty.

  Across the hall, he opened Tiger’s door. Again, empty.

  Huh. He headed back to the kitchen and turned on the light.

  His heart fell. Rose petals were scattered over the kitchen table, a note tented on top. He reached for it and read Ivy’s invitation to join her for dinner.

  Reservation at 8 p.m.

  So he was only an hour late. He could still make it. Tugging his boots back on, he returned to his truck. Pulling out his cell phone, he went to text her, but discovered it had died. Shoot—she’d probably tried to contact him.

  Some Valentine’s Day. He plugged in the phone, but it was too dead to power on, so he put the truck into drive and headed out of town to a tiny Irish restaurant down the shore.

  His amazing wife knew how he loved bangers and mash.

  The ten-minute drive didn’t allow enough time for the phone to charge, and his heart fell even further when he reached Mulligan’s and searched for her car. Inside, the hostess told him she’d left over thirty minutes ago.

  He sat in the lot, willing his phone to power up.

  When it did, he found three voice messages waiting. The first had come earlier in the evening, as Ivy waited at the restaurant. The next informed him that she loved him but was going home.

  The last, however, took his breath from his chest.

  “Darek, I hit a deer and slid off the road somewhere before County Road 13, and the car won’t move. I’m stuck. I know you’re busy at work, but if you could come and get me, that would be . . . great.”

  The call ended and he noted the time. Over an hour ago.

  He hit his speed dial, but the phone went immediately to Ivy’s voice mail.

  He put the truck in drive, his heart thundering in his ears. “Hang on, honey.”

  He drove slowly with his high beams on. Along this part of the road, the highway dropped off to the lake below, and farther, past County Road 13, Cutaway Creek had claimed a number of lives over the years.

  Please, God.

  He slowed, spying tracks tunneling off the highway as if the driver had spun out. The car had cut a jagged swath through the snow. As he slowed to a stop, he forced himself to breathe.

  No wonder no one saw it. She’d rammed the back of her car into the bank, snow encasing it, the front end smashed, her lights obliterated, the hood crumpled where the deer landed.

  Please, don’t let the deer have hit the windshield.

  He spied the animal then, not ten feet away, a bloodied mass on the highway, and his heart tore in two. She’d dismantled the deer—which only meant that it could have dismantled her.

  He replayed Ivy’s message in his head even as he got out, scrambling down the hill. I know you’re busy at work—

  “Ivy!” He fought the snow, slogging toward her in the scar she’d made, his headlights cutting away the shadows. “Ivy!”

  He saw her then, sitting in the car, eyes closed. “Ivy!” He banged on her door, struggled to open it.

  She opened her eyes with a start, reached over, and unlocked the door, helping him push it open. “Darek!”

  He muscled his way past the door and the snowbank and dropped to his knees. “Are you okay?”

  The air bag had deployed, now lying in a crumpled sack on her lap. She shivered, her face pale. “I’m sorry about the car.”

  “Are you kidding me? Sorry? Baby—oh, my.” He unhooked her seat belt and pulled her to himself, shaking. “Shh. Just . . .” He closed his eyes. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

  “Darek, I’m fine.” She pushed away from him. “Cold, but you found me.”

  He put his hand on her stomach. “And the baby—?”

  “Moving around. Fine.” She pressed her gloved hands to his cheeks. “I’m so sorry. I wanted to surprise you. You’ve been working so hard, and I thought if I made reservations and left a note . . . I should have figured out that you’d have to work late.” Not a hint of rancor or blame in her voice.

  He sat back, leaned against the door, feeling nauseous. The noise that came out of him sounded more pained than relieved.

  She shouldn’t have been out alone tonight. Why hadn’t he listened to her suggestion to ask Casper to fill in? He might have spared his brother the agony of seeing the woman he should forget out with another man.

  And he could have treated his wife to the Valentine’s Day she deserved.

  How could it be that after everything he’d survived, everything he’d learned since Felicity died, he could possibly repeat his mistakes? But yeah, he was going to blow this again. Clearly he didn’t have the faintest grasp on how to be a father, husband, and owner of his own business.

  Ivy turned to him, grabbing his jacket. “Listen to me. I’m fine. Tiger is spending the night at his grandparents’ house. It’s just us. Let’s get the car out of the ditch and go home. We can still have a beautiful Valentine’s Day.”

  He stared at her, wordless. Then, “The car is totaled. The deer annihilated it.”

  “Oh no.” She put her mitten to her mouth. “Do you think the deer is dead?”

  This was why he loved her. He took her hand. Gave her a sad nod. “I’m so sorry.” He got up and began to lift her from the seat.

  And that’s when she cried out.

  “What is it?”

  “Oh, ah . . .” She pressed her hand into her side, and her expression made him swoop her up into his arms.

  “Hang on, baby.”

  Raina walked into his dream like she belonged there, her footsteps along the rocky shoreline leaving divots as the pebbles spi
lled out behind her. The late-afternoon sun, a simmering ember across the horizon, caressed Casper’s skin, nourishing, as he walked beside her.

  Her fingers laced through his, curled tight, and between them, their hands swung as if strolling down an uncharted beach at twilight was something to treasure, a rare and uncluttered moment.

  Perhaps it was. Because instead of chasing the dream away, Casper leaned into it—the heat of summer on her tanned skin, the silky whisper of her hair on his shoulder as the wind caught it. Her hair was down, captured away from her face with a backward baseball cap—his—and she wore a marmalade sundress that showed off her long, tanned legs and turned her skin to a dark cocoa, almost edible.

  The sense of her beside him could turn him weak, and now it only lured him further into the dream, his heart a live ember in his chest.

  Then she laughed, sprinkling the dream like fairy dust, as if he’d said something right, and warmth bloomed through every cell in his body.

  Oh, he loved her. That unblemished thought wound around him, and he let it take him, drank it in.

  She clasped her other hand over theirs and leaned close to him, turning slightly. Her beautiful brown eyes bore a gold shine to them, bright and free of the shadow that would come.

  “Is that what you want? To be a treasure hunter?”

  “I’d like to find something precious, yes. Maybe Blackbeard’s treasure. Or a lost artifact from the Crusades.”

  She hadn’t laughed at him, not even a hint of the quiet ridicule he often felt from his family. She could hold him captive with her gaze, the way her eyes danced in the sunset, the waves against the shore, whispering.

  “Mostly I just want to find the things hidden, the treasure that no one sees or doesn’t think to look for.”

  “So Indiana Jones is a better description.” She nodded, a smile lifting the corner of her mouth. “That seems about right—you already have the leather jacket, the motorcycle . . .”

  “The pretty girl.” He turned on the beach, took her beautiful face in his hands. He ran his thumbs over her cheekbones, then dropped them to her shoulders, delicate yet strong, her skin warm under his touch. “What I want to know is, how did I get so lucky as to find you?”

  She leaned in, her lips a fraction from his, so close he could nearly taste them. Just lean down and brush them with his, a stolen, dangerous touch. “Because if anyone can find a lost treasure, it’s you.”

  Then she kissed him. Sweetly, her lips on his top lip, then bottom. As he curled his hand around the back of her neck, pulling her to himself, she melted into him, letting him deepen the kiss.

  The feel of her in his arms again could take him under. She smelled of vanilla and jasmine, of summer and freedom and hope, and as he kissed her, he began to drink her in.

  Thirsty.

  He could hear his own breath start to shudder, and that’s when the dream began to splinter.

  Casper held on tighter, his kiss almost fierce, possessive, as he felt her slip away, as the sun dissolved from the sky, as the taste of her turned to ash in his mouth.

  And just like that, she vanished.

  No.

  Raina—oh. His heart thundered in his chest, and he opened his eyes to a darkened room, tasting salt on his lips. He touched his face, soggy, and wanted to be disgusted with himself.

  He released a shaky breath, then ran a hand through his hair and threw off the covers, letting the bracing chill yank him further from the treacherous grip of the dream.

  Sitting up, he put his feet on the cold floor, relishing the jolt, then got up and walked to the window. His entire body trembled, the power of the dream still inside him, and he ground his jaw against the terrible ache in his chest that nearly brought more tears.

  He hung his hands on the windowsill, leaned his forehead against the cool glass, hoping to sear away the images. The taste of her that still lingered like a poison on his tongue.

  “Why, Lord? Why can’t I get her out of my brain? Why is this so hard?” He’d had other girlfriends, women who’d walked into his life and back out, but no one had stayed, hung on, Velcroed to his heart like Raina.

  He couldn’t place it. Jealousy? Maybe, but he’d forgiven her of her behavior with Owen, even if it was before she met him. Regret—yeah, but he didn’t blame himself for fleeing, either.

  “I want to forget her, be free of her. I do. But it’s like You put her in my mind, in my heart, and . . . why won’t You take her out?” He lowered his voice, and it emerged through the broken glass in his chest. “Please.”

  He listened for a moment, then stepped back and headed down to the kitchen. He found a glass, filled it with water, drank it halfway down as he moved to the sliding-glass door that overlooked Evergreen Lake. A silvery moon in a perfect sky puddled light over the expanse, turning the snow to diamonds.

  His brother’s voice seemed to rise from the shadows. The thing about light is that it doesn’t come from us. It’s God in us that provides the light to the world. So if you want to be light to her, you’d better make sure that light is shining in you first.

  Maybe Casper couldn’t let Raina go because he’d seen a better, stronger, more capable version of himself in her eyes.

  And then he’d run, doing everything he could think of to fill up the empty places she left behind. Travel, adventure, even coming home to start over despite the brutal, beautiful memories.

  Maybe it wasn’t so much that he couldn’t escape Raina, but rather that he’d never really let God in to heal that void.

  If he took a long, hard look, he’d been filling himself up with everything but God. Raina, yeah, but also his quest for adventure and the need to find something—be something beyond Casper, the middle son, the one standing in the shadows. The second choice.

  If he wanted to escape the engulfing darkness of this hurt, he had to reach out for the light.

  And only then could he be the light that Raina needed. Not his light—God’s.

  He rested his forehead on the glass, closed his eyes. “Help me, Lord. Make me Yours. Fill this terrible longing with Yourself—with truth and hope and . . . love. Real love. Not the desperate, hopeless, deceitful love that tempts me to believe I can have her back, but the love that means it when I pray for her. The love that sets me free.”

  He looked up at the moon, glistening in the sky. “Be light in my life, Lord. Show me the truth. Illuminate my path. Ignite the man You want me to be.”

  Casper closed his eyes and stood just breathing in the quiet pool of moonlight.

  “DAD!”

  Darek sat at the kitchen table, the computer open, his QuickBooks file up, a stack of bills littering the table. Outside, icicles hung like daggers from the roof, the sun turning the snow brittle and sharp beneath the frozen, white sky.

  Not technically a snow day, but the school feared sending kids outside in negative-windchill conditions. In his day, his mother would have bundled them up and tossed them outside to wreak havoc in the yard instead of her living room.

  He picked up the electric bill, studying it. How did it double last month? Maybe from the endless hours burning the wick to get cabin three back to working order. He looked at the number, then plugged it into the QuickBooks account, along with the kilowatts used.

  “Dad!”

  Housekeeping too? How could he have higher housekeeping expenditures than two years ago? Except, yeah, they hadn’t been open in January back then. Still, he’d have to call the service, see if they’d work out a deal.

  “Dad!” Two grimy hands clamped Darek’s face, turning him. Tiger peered at him with wide brown eyes, his hair a curly mop. Darek realized his son was still wearing his Spider-Man pajamas despite it being long after lunchtime. “The macaroni is boiling over!”

  Maca—? “Oh no!” Darek launched himself out of his chair, sending it spinning, but not before Ivy hustled into the kitchen.

  “I got it!” She reached the stove, turned off the heat, moved the pan off the burner.

 
“No, you don’t. Get back in bed.” Darek crossed the kitchen and intercepted her at the sink, taking the rag from her hand. The gesture seemed a little too rough, so he softened his voice. “Please.”

  She could take him apart with a look, despite being dwarfed by his height. She swam in one of his flannel shirts, with the exception of her basketball tummy. With her red hair in a simple ponytail, no makeup on her beautiful face, her green eyes were luminous. If he stopped long enough, they could tear him away from the raucous mess of his worry into a place where he could believe everything would be fine. Better than fine.

  Yeah, moments like this, he thanked God she hadn’t walked away from him the thousands of times he deserved it. “Babe, you should be in bed . . .”

  “I’m fine, Darek. The doctor said two days of bed rest. It’s been four, and you should be back at work.”

  “He said at least two days, maybe a week.”

  “I’m fine. And I know you’re worried about the resort.”

  He wiped the water from the stove and dropped the sodden, steamy rag in the sink. Then he guided his wife to a kitchen chair. “I’m not worried—”

  “You’ve called Casper eight—no, fifteen—times a day over the past four days. He’s had to take off work so I could lie in bed and watch reruns of Doctor Who.”

  “At least you got caught up. What do you think of the new doctor?”

  She gave him another dismantling look, and he sighed, crouched in front of her. “Listen, you might feel just fine, but I’m not taking any chances. It could have been worse, Ivy. Much worse.” His throat tightened with the sudden rush of what-ifs. “You’re staying in bed at least another day. And I’m not going anywhere. Who else is going to take care of you?”

  “I can, Dad!” Tiger had climbed atop the table and now leaped off it, landing like a monkey on Darek’s back. Darek grunted, the force knocking him to his knees, into Ivy. He caught himself—barely—on the edge of the chair.

  “Tiger!” He grabbed his son, pulled him off. “You could have landed on Mom. And hurt the baby.”

  Tiger scrambled to his feet, then stared at his father, wide-eyed. All at once, he took off, running down the hall. Slammed his door.