“How do you know?”
“It wasn’t a secret, Dad. She showed me some of her work. It was pretty good.”
But clearly it had been a secret, at least to their father. Kyle watched the truth dawn across his face. He looked away and for the first time felt sympathy for his old man.
Still, the bruises from the fight at the hospital lay fresh on him. He drew in a long breath. “Dad, I’m thinking that in order for you to help Mom get her memory back, you might want to learn who the woman you lost was.”
Lee lay in bed, staring at the exposed beams of her ceiling, the morning sun having already flushed through her room. Derek had left over an hour ago for school, and she’d done the practical thing on a frozen, below-zero morning, after she’d stoked the woodstove and lit a fire.
She’d returned to the heat of her bed.
At first, after Clay passed, she’d hated lingering in their double bed—had even slept downstairs on the sofa for a few weeks. But she liked the view from their loft, overlooking the lake, split by a trio of birch and the shaggy outline of black pine. Here, too, she felt less alone, although she’d long ago washed Clay’s smell from the sheets and started to sleep in the middle of the bed.
She closed her eyes, remembering Eli’s hand on hers. I don’t know what I would do without you.
Something dangerous had moved inside her then. An emotion she shouldn’t linger on, an urge that frightened her. She’d smiled, then bid him good night and escaped the truck.
But the emotion remained, settled in her chest.
I don’t know what I would do without you either, Eli.
He’d become a part of their lives, as natural as breathing, over the past three years. Listening, caring for her, reminding her that she wasn’t alone.
She’d wanted to invite him in.
Banging on the door outside jerked her upright, and a residue of pain speared down her arm. She groaned, then climbed out of bed, slid her feet into slippers. She’d already changed into her yoga pants and a T-shirt, but that had seemed suitable sleepwear, too.
“Lee!” More banging and then the door opened as she descended the stairs.
Eli barged inside and stood on the mat, snow sloughing off his boots. He seemed lit up, his eyes dark. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
She folded her arms over her chest. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about Noelle’s painting studio at the art colony. She’s been renting one for two years. Did you know that? Because I sure didn’t.”
The way he looked at her—half-pleading, half-angry, mostly hurt—stripped away the indignation she should feel at his accusation. She schooled her voice. “No, Eli, I didn’t.”
He turned away and ran a hand through his hair. Breathed out. “Can you come with me?”
The tremor in his voice could make her say yes to anything. “Of course. Let me get my boots.”
While he radiated fumes of frustration downstairs, she cleaned up, pulling her hair back in a ponytail, throwing on just enough mascara to recognize herself. Then she pulled on her parka, her UGGs, and tromped outside behind him.
He opened the door for her and helped her into the truck. Probably because she’d groaned as she put on her coat. Even in his distress, he had a way of watching out for others. She liked that about Eli Hueston.
He climbed behind the wheel, started up his truck. “She was sleeping on Kelsey’s bed this morning.”
Lee shot him a look. “Do you think she remembers anything?”
“I don’t know. I left her there, wrote her a note.” He backed out of the driveway and turned onto the highway toward town.
“What happened, Eli?”
His knuckles blanched on the steering wheel. “Kirby seems to know about some art studio his mother rented. Apparently—” he glanced at her, his eyebrows up—“she has been painting.”
Oh. “No wonder she kept asking.”
“Do you think she knew that, deep inside?”
Lee shook her head. “I don’t know.” She touched his arm. “Really, I had no idea.”
He glanced at her before he took one hand off the wheel and wove his fingers into hers. Sighed. “I believe you.”
The art colony had purchased the old Baptist church in town decades ago and since then added on two wings. Lee herself had taken a pottery class there from Liza Beaumont, their local potter, a few years ago.
Eli parked outside and held on to her elbow as they walked in.
“I’m fine, Eli—”
“I don’t want you to fall.” He said it with a touch of heat in his voice.
They found the director, a slim, tall brunette in a smock and clogs. She looked at Eli with some surprise when he asked to see Noelle’s studio.
“We keep the studios private, Eli. She might not be ready to—”
“Let me in the room, Jane. Right now.”
She swallowed and bit her lip. “Fine. But I’m going to let Noelle know—”
“I promise you, she won’t care.”
Lee followed him up the stairs, her heart aching for him. When she’d gone through Clay’s life after his death, she had discovered a few online gambling accounts—nothing with real money, but he’d logged sufficient time on them for her to wonder if he would have ever put them in jeopardy. It had rocked her world enough to erase it from her mind, to focus on the man she knew.
Thankfully, Clay had never hidden a private room from her. She had the sense of prying into Noelle’s journal as they stood before a tiny door.
“I don’t have a key,” Jane said.
Eli held the ring out to Jane. “These are Noelle’s.”
Jane picked through the keys, surfaced with a silver one, and inserted it in the door. “What’s going on, Eli?”
“I’m not sure,” he said as he pushed past her.
“It’s okay,” Lee assured Jane.
Eli was standing in the middle of the room, completely still. Lee followed him in and closed the door behind her.
The studio measured about ten feet square, with a two-paned window overlooking the town of Deep Haven, the harbor with the lighthouse, a frozen skating pond. A blue armchair with tiny peach flowers sat near another window, a sketchpad on the ottoman before it. In the middle of the studio, a large easel held an unfinished watercolor. She recognized the background features as Artist’s Point, the craggy breakwater that protected the lee side of the harbor. An unfinished section of white contained a pencil sketch, the forms of two girls sitting on the beach, one with a guitar.
Her heart expanded in her throat, lodging there.
Eli had moved over to a stack of paintings, some large, others on smaller frames. Most of them featured landscapes or close-ups of rocks, fence posts. One was a detailed watercolor of a pair of red Converse tennis shoes. It seemed she’d seen that picture before.
“These are watercolors of Kelsey’s photography.” He held up a photo of a pine tree, the perspective from the base to the top, as if Kelsey had stood hugging it, looking up. The next picture showed a coffee cup set on a bloodred maple leaf, perched on the grainy wood of a green picnic table.
Photographs hung by clothespins from a piece of yarn that extended across the far wall.
“Kirby said she was getting better. That she was trying to heal.” Eli turned to her, his eyes wide. “She was trying to recapture Kelsey.”
“I thought you emptied the house of Kelsey’s things.”
“I did. But maybe she already had these.” He went over to examine the photos. “She was really talented.”
“Kelsey?”
Eli drew in a breath. “Noelle.” He shook his head. “What is this? Why didn’t she tell me that she was painting? Did she think I wouldn’t care, wouldn’t listen?”
Oh, Eli. Lee set down a painting of Kirby’s rusty Neon. “Maybe she just couldn’t let you in.” She bit her lip, hating the way he flinched.
He sat on the chair. Sank his head into his hands.
She couldn’t help walkin
g over, sitting on the ottoman across from him. Taking his hands from his face. “Everyone grieves in their own way. This didn’t mean she was betraying you.”
“No,” he said, his eyes red-rimmed. “It means I betrayed her. Kyle was right—I didn’t even know her.”
“That’s not true. You just went through so much, Eli. We all did.”
He met her eyes, searching. Swallowed.
And then, just like that, he kissed her.
She didn’t expect it, hadn’t ever contemplated it—not really. His kiss was urgent and desperate, and she knew it was wrong. But she hadn’t been kissed in so long, and the feelings of a man desiring her, needing her, flooded through Lee.
She touched his face, felt the bristles of his overnight whiskers, and kissed him back. She kissed him because, oh, he had a strength about him that she longed for.
And then, as abruptly as he’d leaned forward, Eli jerked away, his breath harsh in his lungs. “Oh . . . Lee, I’m so sorry.” He held his hands up as if pushing her from him, even though she hadn’t moved, then got up and stalked across the room.
“It’s okay, Eli—”
“It’s not okay! What was I thinking?” He let out a word she’d never heard him use. “I’m not that guy—I don’t cheat on my wife.”
“Eli, she doesn’t know you. It can hardly be called cheating when the woman can’t even remember your vows.”
Lee wanted to clamp her hand over her mouth, take the words back, but as they lay out there in the silence, she realized the truth.
She didn’t want Noelle to retrieve her memory. Never. Because then Eli wouldn’t have to stay with her, would he?
The thought must have flashed across her face because his jaw tightened, and he shook his head a long time before the words came out. “I’m not leaving Noelle for you.”
His words slapped her, but she managed to find her feet. “Uh, you kissed me, Eli. I didn’t start this. And I never asked you to leave Noelle.” But inside, she could hear her own indictments. “You need to take a good look at your life. Your wife, even before she lost her memory, was sneaking around, keeping things from you. What else was she hiding, do you think?”
His eyes widened, and she could only imagine what might be scrolling through his mind.
“And frankly, you cheated on her long before you kissed me.”
“I never—”
“Stop lying to yourself, Eli. You spend nearly every day at my house, helping me. Listening to me, being my friend. And when you weren’t at my house, you were fishing or hunting or snowmobiling. You didn’t want to be in that marriage because if you did, you would have shown up.”
He flinched, but Lee didn’t care. She whirled around, nearly knocking over a painting. She righted it and turned back to him. “You’d better figure out what you want because guess what—I do remember. I remember everything. And I’m not so sure I’d want you anyway.”
She didn’t slow down to see if her words landed. She just ran down the steps—ignoring Jane, who lifted her gaze from her desk—and outside, where the crisp air froze her tears to her face. Oh, she was an idiot. Such, such an idiot.
And she hadn’t driven. Or brought her keys so she could hike to the school and take Derek’s car home.
How she hated being at life’s mercy. Hated the fact that other people’s choices could destroy her own.
Emma had been right to leave this town, to kick off the snow and find a new life.
“Lee?”
She didn’t turn. “Take me home.”
Eli said nothing but held out his arm for her.
She ignored it. She could manage just fine on her own, thank you very much.
Eli dug his fingers into the steering wheel as he drove up the slick road toward his ice house.
He just had to get somewhere to clear his head, figure out how to erase the feel of Lee in his arms, or reel back time to that moment when he’d lost his mind.
Lee had been sitting there, the compassion in her expression almost too much for him to bear. And he’d simply reacted.
He needed someone who needed him.
But even as he kissed her, even as he’d thirsted for a way to hide from the reality of his fractured marriage, he knew Lee couldn’t slake it. And when he’d pulled away, seen the surprise—the hope—in her eyes, he knew he’d pitched headfirst into a place he didn’t want to go.
He wouldn’t be a cheater. Even if his wife couldn’t remember him.
Eli slowed his truck as it bounced over the rough road.
What hurt worse, however, were Lee’s words, sandpaper on his ego. You didn’t want to be in that marriage because if you did, you would have shown up.
What did Lee expect of him? His daughter had died. Been murdered. And frankly, he wasn’t sure that the entire thing wasn’t his fault. Of course he’d been distant.
Besides, Noelle had hardly shown up either.
The paintings, though—they had the power to undo him. He’d thought he’d been doing them all a favor by taking away reminders of Kelsey. Of course he planned on returning everything someday.
When they were healed.
But maybe Noelle had figured out her own way to heal.
He stopped the truck at the landing. There in the middle of the lake, his silver ice house glinted like a trophy in the sunlight. He backed the truck up to a snowbank, opened the back, and drove the snowmobile off it.
He should have stopped off at home, put on his gear, but . . . well, he couldn’t look at Noelle. Even if she didn’t know him, didn’t care, he couldn’t bear to see her beautiful eyes, beginning to trust a man who had so abominably failed her.
He gunned the sled out onto the snow, not caring how the particles hit his face. He shouldn’t be driving without a helmet, but then again, he shouldn’t be doing a lot of things.
Like kissing Lee Nelson.
He drove faster, catching some air as he hit a drift, liking the speed, the buzzing of the machine against the crisp blue silence of the day.
He reached the ice house. Icicles hung off the roof, long spears that could dissect a man. Inside, he could light a fire, make it cozy.
Camp out here for a few days.
A week.
Maybe even until the end of the month, until they made him drag it off the ice at the end of February.
He closed his eyes, now stiff with flakes in his lashes.
You’d better figure out what you want because guess what—I do remember. I remember everything. And I’m not so sure I’d want you anyway.
He’d blown it big with Noelle—and with Lee, who deserved better than to have him show up on her doorstep at all hours of the night.
Honestly, he should be surprised that the kiss hadn’t happened sooner. He’d been harboring feelings for Lee for a good long time. Just never wanted to admit it.
He banged his hand on the handgrip. She hadn’t spoken to him the entire ride home, had gotten out of the car and slammed the door.
He hadn’t missed her grimace as pain shot through her body. He should probably swing by later, see if she needed a ride to the doctor.
No. Wait. He shouldn’t.
He gunned the sled, zipped out again onto the lake, and opened it up, leaning into each turn. The snow plumed up behind him, and he opened his mouth to let out a cry that the motor easily ate.
Round and around—he wore a path, then cut through the middle around the ice house.
Back when they’d first married, he would take Noelle on long snowmobile rides, her arms tight around him as they cut through deer paths in the forest. She knew how to hang on, to move with him, and for Christmas that first year, he’d given her a snowmobile helmet.
He had no idea where it might be now. Probably in the basement with the other unused equipment in their life—tents, snowshoes, skis, bicycles, her tackle box and fishing pole. Before they had children, Noelle had been the kind of wife who joined him in his outdoor pursuits. How many times had she sat in the bow of the boat, rain
plinking on her hat, her line deep in the lake, waiting for a nibble? Or even after Kyle was born, she’d hiked out to the woods early in the morning, leaving Kyle with a sitter, and sat with him in a deer stand. He thought she might alert Bambi to his demise, but she’d stayed quiet as he made his shot.
Noelle had learned to hunt, to fish, to camp. She’d joined his life.
And he’d learned . . . ?
He slowed the machine, turned off the motor, put his feet down on the snow. They crunched in the crisp white field as he leaned back on the seat—built for two—and stared at the sky. Faint cirrus clouds looked watercolored upon a blue canvas.
After Kelsey’s death, he’d filled his life with all the things that made him feel safe. But he’d done it alone. No, he hadn’t exactly invited Noelle into his life, so she’d had to create her own. Reconstruct the one she’d loved.
When he closed his eyes, he heard Kyle’s soft voice with its lethal accuracy. Dad, I’m thinking that in order for you to help Mom get her memory back, you might want to learn who the woman you lost was.
It didn’t matter if she didn’t remember their vows, their life. Because he did. And hadn’t he been out on this very lake a week ago, asking God to help him be the husband she needed? How to love her?
He mashed the heels of his hands against his eyes, found them wet.
He’d been about to give up.
In fact—he sat up, the realization ringing through him—he’d been about to give his heart to Lee. He shook his head, hating the man he’d nearly become.
He spoke aloud, letting his voice puff out in the cold as if seeing the words form before him added power to them. “God, I want to do the right thing. Help me want to do the right thing. Even if she doesn’t ever know me, help me be her husband. Even if . . . even if she never remembers me.”
It was time for Eli Hueston to show up.
Emma always knew that Deep Haven had a lethal ability to woo travelers to the north. Something about the fairyland forest with its frosted trees, the lure of the lake as it murmured mystery from the depths, the footprints of foxes and deer in the snow, the low-flying eagles along the highway. The town could lure someone close with its song, make her forget the reasons she’d fled, and entangle her forever.
The Shadow of Your Smile Page 13
