Hiders

by Meg Collett

  “Fine,” Violet huffed and threw down the ax. “You want to repay me? Okay. Wonderful. I’ll have a list for you tomorrow of things you can do around the property, but they won’t be easy, I promise you. If you look at the list and think you can’t do even one of the tasks, then you’ll have to leave and consider the debt repaid.”

  “The tasks will be humanly possible?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can do them in the evenings and weekends?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sold. See you tomorrow, Violet.”

  Mission accomplished, he dusted off his hands. She watched him walk back to his truck, her glare pinned to his back. It wasn’t the best place to look because she couldn’t help but notice his shoulders, the stretch of material, and the way his hips rolled as he walked. He waved without looking back and pulled himself into his truck. It rumbled to life as she heaved a shuddering breath, her cheeks hot with rage.

  It had never occurred to her how much she relied on people giving her space or outright running away from her at first sight. She’d never had to argue with someone about why they should leave her property.

  Arie Mendoza would be a problem. She could smell it in the air, along with the spicy, slightly familiar cologne he’d left behind. She waved a hand in front of her face. Her sensitive nose tingled from the smell.

  Oh, he would pay. He would take one look at her list tomorrow and give up.

  Then she would never have to see him again.

  3

  Arie returned the next evening.

  The days were getting shorter, and a pre-dusk nip hung in the air, making the edges of leaves curl and color. Violet hunched deeper into her long-sleeved flannel shirt as she watched the man ease down from his truck, his eyes picking her out easily. She waited, silent, while he crossed the yard to her chopping block and stack of wood.

  Shirt stiff with sweat and boots coated in orange clay dirt, he’d clearly come straight from work. After the reality show, Hale and Cade Cooper of Cooper Bros. Contracting had hired him on to help them. The work suited him, but a fine layer of dust and grime covered his face, making it look more weathered than it really was. He must have been out in the sun today, because the tops of his cheekbones were burnished bronze, even though he wore a faded University of Georgia ball cap pulled low over his eyes.

  “Your hands are swollen,” he said by way of greeting.

  “And you came back.”

  The corner of his mouth hitched up. It wasn’t a kind sort of smile, but a rueful one, suggesting she hadn’t pushed him away hard enough. “Do you have my list?”

  Her stomach flipped. She really hadn’t expected him to come back; she’d told herself that same thing countless times last night while she sat up working on the list, thinking with a pen between her lips and reading her list of tasks by the soft light of a stained-glass lamp. Even after she’d finished, her fingertips stained black with ink, she couldn’t fall asleep for thinking about him and wondering how it would feel to have him here every evening. To have someone here with her. The prospect of experiencing the quiet easiness of another nearby had had her too giddy to sleep.

  Seeing him standing in front of her, his truck parked in the drive, was a sort of magic in itself.

  A dangerous sort. One she shouldn’t feel.

  She reached into her back pocket for the precisely folded piece of paper and handed it to him.

  He opened it silently. His eyes scanned the page. Then he laughed.

  “Are you serious?”

  Violet squared her shoulders and prayed her voice didn’t betray her disappointment. She’d expected to be relieved when he walked away, not sad. “I said if you couldn’t do them, you could leave. You don’t have to pay me back.”

  They stood off against each other again. He frowned, seeing she was serious, and looked back over the list. “These are crazy.”

  She turned away from him, away from that word. She sat another piece of wood on the block.

  She sensed the moment he recognized his mistake. He shifted around so he was once again straight in front of her. She had to look up at him; he wasn’t the sort to be easily ignored. “Give all the birds in the old lighthouse a new home? Clean the gargoyles’ teeth? Pick all the red flowers from the field by the cliff? Pluck the lighthouse’s whiskers?”

  He only named four, but she was particularly proud of those, as well as the other eight on the list.

  He waited for her to say something. She picked up her ax, and he sighed loudly through his nose. “Violet. Let me chop the wood. Any idiot can pick flowers for you. I want to help.”

  He reached for the ax but she jerked away, her eyes flashing to his. “My father taught me how to chop wood once he was too sick to do it. I’ve chopped wood for this house since I was twelve.”

  He drew his hand back quickly. “You were twelve?” The words horrified him. “Violet . . .”

  “And I had to pick those red flowers in that same field every summer and fall while my grandmother was alive. She hated red and she hated me. So don’t act like you can’t pick some flowers. Everything on that list is there for a reason, and if you can’t respect them or this house or me, then you can fuck off.”

  His eyes widened. Her foul language hadn’t shocked him, though it had shocked her; her grandmother would be so ashamed. He simply hadn’t expected it from her, and judging from the hint of a smile on his lips, he liked it.

  “You’re right,” he said earnestly. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “I’m not crazy.”

  He nodded, but he’d somehow gleaned too much from her words, the ones she hadn’t thought through well enough. He’d picked up on every layer of pain she thought she’d hidden too far down for anyone to notice. But she sensed he now knew the pride she took in the woodcutting, and how much she resented those red flowers. Though it was a stupid task, she found herself out there every year, picking the red wildflowers as if her grandmother was still alive to command her to pluck them all from the ground.

  She doubted he’d guessed that she laid those damn red flowers on her grandmother’s grave every year. A heap of red, just for Beatrice Relend.

  “Which one do you want me to start with first?”

  Her heart pumped deep in her chest with anger, but he was still standing there and he’d sounded sorry enough. She sucked in her cheeks and held her breath to calm herself down. When she exhaled, she felt a little calmer.

  “The birds,” she said. “They need a place to roost before it gets too cold.”

  “Okay.” He double-checked the list and carefully folded it as it had been. Returning it to his shirt pocket, he said, “I’m assuming you want me to build birdhouses for them?”

  She lifted her chin.

  “Do you happen to know how many?”

  His carefully phrased question sent the first little sliver of guilt through her belly, but she tamped it down. He’d wanted this. “I can show you.”

  His grin was sudden and heart-rattling. “Sounds perfect. Let’s go.”

  She opened her mouth, closed it, and thought it through, but she couldn’t come up with a reason for him to go alone. She sat aside her ax. As she walked past him, she quickly smoothed down the front of her shirt and ran her hand down her ponytail to capture the fine hairs dancing about. She kept up her long strides, determined not to let him see her nervous.

  Because, really, being nervous right now was simply ridiculous. He was just a man—and an annoying one at that. She didn’t care what he thought about her or her list. Or her house. Or the lighthouse. But her stomach roiled sickly with nerves, and her torn-up palms were sweaty.

  “Your relatives built this lighthouse?”

  She almost jumped at the sound of his voice, so lost in her own head she was. She licked her dry lips and slowed so he could fall into step beside her, though she didn’t look his way. “They didn’t build it, but they were the first watchers to tend it. At that time, the lighthouse was the only
building on the island, and they were the only people here because the bridge hadn’t been built yet. The house came later, in the early nineteen hundreds.”

  He glanced back at it as they walked, the distance allowing for a more encompassing assessment, and she glimpsed the flat set of Arie’s mouth. He scanned the foundation, the sloping support beams, and the slight sway in the roof. Her shoulders stiffened, but she kept her mouth shut.

  Instead of criticizing it as she’d expected, he said, “I bet she was a stunning sight from a boat.”

  The tension in her shoulders unwound. “After the lighthouse was moved to the other side of the island, my family always kept a light on in the attic. On clear nights, you can see it from a few miles out at sea.”

  “You still do that?” There was a touch of approval in his voice.

  “I do.”

  They reached the top of the hill where the lighthouse sat. It was a distance away, marooned in a field of wildflowers—most of them red.

  Arie groaned. “Is this the field you mentioned on the list?”

  Violet couldn’t resist the smirk tugging at her lips. “It is. You’ll get to that item later.” She paused, then added, “If you last that long.”

  Arie barked out a laugh. “Just show me these birds.”

  They closed the distance to the lighthouse, accompanied by the sound of the tall grass swishing against the tops of their legs. Over the cliff edge to their left, the ocean crashed against the jagged rocks far below, spewing a fantasia of ocean foam into the air.

  Arie took it all in, and Violet tried to imagine what he was thinking. He inhaled deeply, possibly noting the difference in the air up here from the way it blew around the bluffs. His eyes swept along the craggy cliff edge that encompassed this part of the island. It wasn’t suitable for beachfront property, and thus less appealing to most people, but Arie was perfectly suited to it. Or, at least, Violet thought he might be. She pictured him up here with his dark eyes and slow-to-smile face. There wasn’t any sand to impede him, and he could stand out and look over at the water. She imagined them, together, up here—

  “Son of a bitch.”

  Violet freefell out of her daydream and focused on Arie, who’d pressed his face against an unbroken window of the lighthouse. He was peering up into the shadowy heights.

  “There’s a thousand birds in there!”

  “Five.”

  He turned around and shielded his eyes to look at her. She purposefully kept the sun at her back to protect her eyes. “What?”

  “Probably closer to five hundred,” she said as she walked over.

  “Fantastic.”

  Ignoring his sarcasm, she pulled a large key ring from her pocket and selected an old iron one with an elaborate fretwork. She quickly worked through the lock and the two deadbolts with their own shinier, newer keys.

  “Trouble with vandalism?” Arie asked as she moved through the locks.

  “Yes.” She pushed the door open. High up above their heads, numerous birds squawked down at them and flapped their large wings.

  “That’s a smell and a half.” Arie moved back from the door.

  “You’ll need to wear a ventilation mask to work in here,” she said, but even as she spoke, she moved a few steps inside and looked up. Birds fluttered about, making their nests from whatever scraps they could find, readying for winter. The sun sent light prisms through what little glass remained up top and cast tired, dirty rainbows along the tubular walls.

  “Is this state property?”

  Violet moved back outside before she bothered the birds too much. “A private preserve. My family has owned the land since the lighthouse was built, but my parents worked with the Georgia state government to get the land around the lighthouse protected.”

  He stepped around her and poked his head through the door to look around. For a long moment, he was silent, and Violet thought he might be ready to back out, to leave and not come back. She was braced for the words as he tugged the door shut and did up all the locks.

  He faced her. “How many birdhouses are you thinking?”

  “We can start with a hundred.”

  His mouth twitched. “Okay. I’ll need to pick up supplies for the birdhouses. Hale normally has some scrap lumber lying around on the job sites I can use. What do you want me to do this evening?”

  “Fourth item on the list,” she said, having already thought this part through. The planning lent her voice a confidence she didn’t exactly feel.

  Arie pulled his list back out of his pocket and scanned down the lines until he hit number four. He looked up at her after reading it, his eyebrows spiking toward the bill of his hat. “Pluck the lighthouse’s whiskers?”

  She nodded. “And mind the plaster. I don’t want it chipped.

  “You’ll have to show me this one too.”

  She double-checked the locks and continued around the building’s curve.

  “Tell me again how a building can have whiskers.”

  “Easily.” She pointed up, and Arie followed the line of her finger. She didn’t bother looking up at the top; it was just a blur this late in the day and with her eyes so tired. “See those dead vines that poke out and grow everywhere? Whiskers.”

  Arie cocked his head, still studying the lighthouse. “Okay. Fine. They look like whiskers. How do you come up with this stuff?”

  He turned around and leveled his gaze on her, dropping his hand from his eyes.

  “Overactive imagination, I presume. Plus, I have a lot of time on my hands.”

  “I can’t tell if you’re joking.”

  “Probably best not to laugh then. Just in case.”

  “Yeah.” He drew out the word, still studying her so closely that she felt itchy in her flannel. “You’re making a joke. I see the difference now.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “If I tell you, you’ll stop doing it and I’ll be confused again.”

  She hadn’t thought of that. She’d been genuinely interested. After years of knowing each other and working together, only Maggie could distinguish her dry jokes. The thought of Arie paying such close attention to her that he’d already picked up on her little tells worried her. And if she was being completely honest, it excited her a fraction as well.

  “Fine,” she said. “How will you get them down?”

  The vines had been there for years, clinging to the plaster with a logic defying death grip. The lighthouse looked like Rapunzel’s forgotten castle.

  “Can you just pull them?”

  Before she could say, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he tugged on a thicker piece of vine at eye level as he peered up, checking to see if it would come loose. It did. In a million little pieces. Straight into his mouth.

  He spun around as the vine and hundreds of its friends rained dust down, puffing around him like a giant mummy had sneezed. He spat on the ground and swiped at his mouth and eyes. After a minute of solid gagging, he removed his hat and smacked it across his knee to rid it of the debris. Only then did he raise his eyes to hers.

  “Be careful,” she deadpanned.

  “Ha.” He shook out his shirt. “Ha.”

  “You caught another joke.”

  “Right.”

  She crossed her arms and stared at him. “So, how are you going to do it?”

  “Eating them worked pretty good the first time. Might just stick to that.”

  “And for the ones all the way up at the top?”

  “You could just call them a toupee and let them grow out some more.”

  She stared at him. “Oh,” she finally said. “That was a joke. Interesting.”

  His mouth pulled down. “Interesting?”

  “I think your jokes are even drier than mine. I’ll need some time to adjust.”

  “I see. Until then, I think I have an idea. Wait here.”

  He hiked back toward his truck, his gait sweeping along, the only sign of his disability being the slight hitch in his hip as he took a
step. But even then, it added a gracefulness to him.

  After a couple of minutes, she wondered how long he intended to leave her waiting. The sun was setting and the light was weak. Her head ached and her eyes felt like they’d been scooped out with dull spoons. If she held her hand up in front of her face at arm’s length, she could barely distinguish the shapes of her fingers, even with her contacts in.

  Right as she was about to return to the house, Arie came back over the knoll between her and the red wildflower field. He carried a long handheld piece of equipment. She couldn’t discern what it was until he was a few feet away from her, staring at her and clearly waiting for a comment on his smart thinking. He had no idea she simply couldn’t see it until now.

  “A leaf blower?” she said.

  “How easily does that plaster come off?”

  She considered the building, her fingers going to the worn paint and the delicate plaster beneath. When the lighthouse was built, the plaster exterior had been done by hand. She didn’t want to ruin the beautiful, painstaking work in a few seconds just to remove some pesky whiskers.

  “I tried using water pressure last year and knocked a good chunk off before I realized what would happen,” she said.

  He nodded confidently. “That probably had a lot of force behind it. I’ll start in one spot and see, but I think this should work. Once I get to the higher spots, I’ll have to turn up the power, but it should be so far away that the plaster will be fine.”

  She bit her lip as she considered the delicate building next to her and the mean diesel-fueled machine he held. She’d been sick to her stomach for weeks after damaging the building last year, but if he thought it would work . . .

  “You can trust me, Violet,” he said.

  The tenderness in his voice did her in. She nodded.

  With a ripping pull, he cranked the machine to life and she backed away, her hands on her ears to hold her brain inside her skull. The racket was deafening as he pointed the nozzle at a small section near the base of the lighthouse.