Brenda bustled out, wheeling an overnight bag. “Take care and keep in touch, okay? You have my email. My cell number is in Irene’s address book next to the phone. Call me any time.”
“I will.” Carly hugged her and waited until Brenda had driven off in her rental car. Before she could head inside, a red Mini packed to the roof with overflowing boxes pulled out of the parking spot Brenda had vacated.
The door opened and a tall young man unfolded his thin limbs and emerged. In his midtwenties, he had dark blond hair neatly combed from a side part and wore thick glasses. His blue cardigan looked hand-knit and the pocket protector in his cotton shirt bulged with pens, a small ruler and a calculator.
He pulled a piece of paper from his back pocket and consulted it, looking up at the house.
“Can I help you?” Carly asked.
He wiped his palms on his pants and approached the open gate in the picket fence. “I’m Taylor Greene. It’s April 30. I’m a day early. I hope that’s okay.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
He adjusted his glasses and squinted at her. “Are you Irene Grant?”
“No, I’m her niece, Carly. Irene passed last week.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” He made as if to drag his hand through his hair then carefully patted it instead. “The thing is, I rented a room in her house.” He gestured to his car. “I’ve brought all my stuff, ready to move in.”
Carly’s headache returned, tiny hammer blows to her right temple. “I’m afraid that’s not possible. I had no idea she’d rented out a room or I would have contacted you to let you know it’s no longer available.”
Behind his thick lenses panic flashed in his eyes. “You don’t understand. I really need this.”
“The room isn’t available,” Carly repeated. “I don’t know what’s happening to the house but I imagine it will be sold.”
“I have a rental agreement,” he insisted. “I viewed the listing online and deposited the first month’s rent directly into her bank account.”
How could he not understand? Her aunt was dead. “I’ll return your money, of course.” Carly turned her palms out. “I wish I could help you but—”
“She was so kind and welcoming.” Taylor’s tone hovered between hope and despair. Behind his thick glasses his eyes beseeched. “Breakfast and dinner were included.”
“I’ll talk to her bank manager tomorrow and arrange a repayment,” Carly said. “You must see it’s impossible.”
“Please don’t say that. I’m doing my PhD and starting a new phase of my research tomorrow. I’ve booked the telescope. If I miss my slot I won’t get another chance for months. I don’t have time to look for another place to rent.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Anyway, I can’t go back.”
“Back where?”
“H-home.” His voice cracked.
Carly had a strong urge to run inside and lock the door. She didn’t want to know, didn’t want to feel sympathy for him. All too easily she got entangled in people’s lives and tried to help them.
“Did your marriage end?” she asked reluctantly. “Did you break up with your girlfriend?”
His fair skin suffused with color from his collar to his hairline. “I still live at home. My father left my mother for another woman last year. Since then I’ve been all my mom’s got.” He broke off to take an asthma puffer from his pocket, sucking in a couple of deep pulls. “If I go back now I may not have the guts to leave again.” He stood there, arms slack at his side, resignedly awaiting her verdict.
Carly sighed. “You’d better come inside and we’ll talk about it.”
Taylor followed her into the house, craning his neck to glance around as she led him straight to the kitchen. “It’s even nicer than it looked online.”
“Have a seat,” Carly said. “Do you want a cup of coffee, or a beer?”
“A beer sounds great.” He sat at the table. “That’s something I should buy for myself, though, right?”
“If you were staying, yes.” She handed him a beer from the fridge and crossed her arms. “You say you’re doing a PhD. What’s your thesis topic?”
“Astrophysics,” Taylor said, “Pulsar activity.”
“Pulsars. What are those exactly?”
Behind his glasses, Taylor’s eyes glowed. “When a star explodes it leaves behind pieces no bigger than a grain of salt. Yet each grain weighs more than the sum total of every human being on Earth.”
“I didn’t know that.” Drawn in despite herself, Carly sank into a chair.
“The tiny grains emit pulses of light that travel clear across the universe.” Taylor waved raw-boned, big-knuckled hands as he warmed to his subject. “I’m hoping to pick up pulsars from trillions of light-years away.”
The scientific details meant little to Carly but she was impressed with the way Taylor lit up like a supernova when he spoke of his research. If only the clients she dealt with had that kind of excitement for their profession, her job would be so much more rewarding. Most of the people she interviewed had pat answers to standard questions. Many claimed to have passion, but it was clear they only said that because they thought it was expected. Taylor was the real deal.
“Can you show me the agreement between you and my aunt?” she asked Taylor.
“Sure.” He pulled out his phone and scrolled through emails until he came to the simple contract. It was as he’d said. Irene had agreed to give him room and board for the summer term. “I have a copy printed out and signed by both parties in my files but that’s in the car. Do you want to see that, too?”
“Yes,” Carly said. “I’ll have to show it to my aunt’s lawyer when I meet with him this week, see what he says.”
“Does that mean I can stay?” he asked hopefully.
Carly hesitated. Everything in her screamed that she was making a mistake not turning him away now but he seemed so needy and she was a sucker for strays, always had been.
“For now,” she said. “I don’t know what the lawyer will say but it’s quite possible that whoever inherits this house will sell it. You’d better prepare yourself to find other accommodation as soon as possible.”
“Okay.” He shook her hand with big pumps. When he smiled, he was quite good-looking in a geeky sort of way. “Thanks, thanks very much. I’ll bring my stuff in.”
Carly watched his loping stride as he eagerly headed back to his car. Great. This was all she needed on top of everything else.
CHAPTER FIVE
FINN DROVE SLOWLY down the main drag of Fairhaven, keeping his eye out for Rufus’s red-gold coat and the fringed tail that waved like a flag. The town had changed since he’d lived here. The Mexican restaurant was still there and the secondhand bookstore. But alongside the historic buildings there were trendy stores selling eco-this and organic that. The Alaska ferry and a cruise ship were in port and shoals of tourists roamed the streets.
It took all of three minutes to drive through town and then he was heading south on Chuckanut Drive. Now that his pulse had finally slowed and his breathing was even, he tried to put the incident at the café into perspective. Maybe sixty people witnessed today. What exactly had they seen? A guy declining an invitation to get onstage. Big deal. They didn’t know he’d broken out in a cold sweat or that his heart rate had shot to two hundred plus beats per minute.
Get over yourself, Farrell. Nobody ever died from embarrassment. He might be well known in songwriting circles but hardly anyone outside that world had heard of him. And that was just fine.
But it bothered him that Carly had witnessed his humiliation—again. He cared about what she thought of him. Twelve years on the shame of that concert still burned hot and bright, the pain still raw.
He slowed as he passed the mudflats at the mouth of Chuckanut Creek and came to Teddy Bear Cove
. Irene used to walk Rufus here but the pebbled shoreline was empty. It didn’t seem likely the dog would have gone this far overnight. At the end of Chuckanut he looped back to Fairhaven along the freeway.
Taking the off-ramp back into town, Finn turned down a side road where the houses were smaller and the cars older. The Mustang’s engine rumbled as he cruised through the quiet, familiar streets. Slowing, he pulled to a stop outside the house where he’d grown up, gray stucco with an asphalt tile roof. The trim had been painted a cream color and the gravel driveway was paved. His parents were doing better since he’d left. Well, sure, they had more money to spend now that they weren’t paying for his musical tuition.
He saw the house as if with X-ray vision. The small bedroom he and his big brother Joe had shared, their walls covered with posters of rock bands and hot cars. The living room and the upright piano his mom had bought secondhand. She’d been his first teacher, showing him the scales and how to play simple tunes. There was the kitchen where the family had sat around the table playing board games in the evenings. And the backyard, scene of extended family gatherings with aunts, uncles and a mess of younger cousins.
A man with close-cropped gray hair and glasses, dressed in jeans and an old sweatshirt, came through the carport pushing a lawn mower. It took Finn a moment to recognize with shock that it was his dad, Ron Farrell. Twelve years had wrought big changes—the gray hair, creased forehead, a mouth bracketed by deep grooves. The signs of aging brought home just how long Finn had been away and how much of his parents’ lives he’d missed. He knew some things from talking to his brother but that wasn’t the same as spending time together, or hearing about the day-to-day stuff. He ached for that lost time.
His father was about to start the mower when he noticed the Mustang idling at his curb. “Can I help you?” Then his head jerked as he recognized his son. “Finn.”
Finn turned off the engine and got out of the car, searching his father’s face for signs of welcome but finding only a wariness that increased his sense of isolation. Awkwardly, he went in for a brief man hug. “Good to see you, Dad. It’s been so long.”
“I guess you’re in Fairhaven for Irene’s funeral.” Pain flashed in Bob’s eyes as if at the thought Finn wouldn’t have come to town to visit them. “Your mom and I were both working and couldn’t make it.”
“I missed it too but went to the reception.” Had he subconsciously skipped the funeral to avoid possibly running into his parents? He glanced at the house. “Is Mom home?”
“She’s at the store. Won’t be long.” Bob hesitated. “Can you stay? I’ll put a pot of coffee on.”
For a moment Finn imagined setting aside the past and making a fresh start. And then he remembered the last time he’d spoken to his mother, Nora, on her sixtieth birthday. Her stilted surprise that he’d called, her terse, cool replies to his queries about the family. He’d heard the party going on in the background and cut the call short to let her get back to her guests. What if when she saw him, she rejected him in person, told him she wasn’t interested in reconciling?
“Sorry, Dad, I can’t.” He slid back into the car. “I was just passing.”
Bob’s mouth drew down and he took off his glasses to rub them on the hem of his sweatshirt. “Your mom will be disappointed.”
“Will she?” Finn asked. When his father didn’t reply, he started the engine. “Thought so.”
Estrangement was better than another fight. Nora hadn’t cared about what he wanted, only about raising a prodigy. The bitter accusations and recriminations that had flown between the two of them in the weeks before the concert had escalated into a massive fight just before he’d walked onstage. He’d sat down at the piano shaken and scattered, not focused the way he needed to be. No wonder he hadn’t been able to play or even remember the piece. His brain had been a seething mess of fury and righteous indignation. The emotional repercussions stayed with him for days and weeks—years—afterward.
She’d never forgiven him for making a fool out of himself and her. It was as if she thought he’d choked on purpose to thwart her ambitions for him. As for him, his anger and resentment simmered undiluted. If he was stubbornly unforgiving it was because he’d gotten that trait from her.
Coming by the house had been a mistake. Nostalgia was insidious. It sucked you in and wrapped its tentacles around you, trapping you in a rose-tinted past colored by wishful thinking and stained with broken dreams.
Finn drove to Dingo and Marla’s house a few blocks away. They weren’t back yet from the café so he grabbed his guitar from the backseat and sat on their front steps. A couple of little girls played hopscotch on the driveway of the house next door, their high-pitched laughter carrying in the still spring air.
Finn strummed a chord and then picked out notes, pausing now and then to write down the melody in his notebook. When Dingo’s van pulled into the driveway some time later Finn stood and stretched, surprised to see by his watch that he’d whiled away nearly two hours.
Marla emerged from the van and went to the backseat to bring Tyler out. The little boy’s head flopped on her shoulder, his eyes shut and his small fingers curled into a fist. She walked carefully up the steps with him in her arms. “This is going to ruin his night’s sleep but we’ll have a quiet dinner hour.”
Dingo transferred his guitar case to his other hand and clapped Finn on the shoulder. “Beer?”
“Sure.” He followed his friend into the kitchen. “Uh, sorry about earlier at the café.”
“No, that was my bad,” Dingo said. “I was so stoked to see you that I completely forgot about Irene for a moment.” He grabbed a couple of bottles of craft brew from the fridge and handed one to Finn. “Are you okay? Marla and I were worried.”
“I’m fine.” Finn said. “It’s good to see you again. Been too long as usual.” In leaving town he’d also lost the tight friendship he’d shared with Dingo. They kept in touch and Dingo had visited him in LA a couple of times but it wasn’t the same. Dingo didn’t even know about Finn’s “problem.”
“Marla would have come after you but we could see you were with someone,” Dingo said.
Finn twisted off the cap on his beer. “Irene’s niece, Carly.”
“Ah, I thought she looked familiar.” He winked at Finn. “Hot.”
Finn shook his head. “Don’t even go there.”
Dingo got out a large pot and filled it with water. Then he pulled a package of pasta from the cupboard and a container from the fridge. “Chicken cacciatore leftovers. Hope that’s okay.”
“Better than okay. Marla’s a great cook.” Finn tossed his beer cap in the bin. “Anything I can do?”
Dingo squinted at him over the neck of the bottle. “You could fill in with the band next Saturday night at the bar.”
Finn laughed uneasily. “I meant, like set the table.”
“I’m serious,” Dingo said. “We’re short a lead singer. Rudy had to pull out because he took a job on night shift. We’ve got gigs lined up.”
Finn walked over to the sliding doors that opened onto wooden decking and the backyard with a toddler pool and sandpit. “I’ll probably have left town by then.”
Dingo dumped the penne into the pot of boiling water. He went quiet a moment, stirring with a wooden spoon. “I was actually hoping you would join the band for a while. We landed a gig as a warm-up act at the RockAround in Seattle.”
Finn turned around, eyebrows raised. “Congratulations, that’s awesome. You’re hitting the big time.”
Dingo didn’t smile. “It’s taken us a lot of years to get this far. We’re lucky to have the opportunity but we’ll blow it without a good lead.”
“Can’t Rudy hang in there?” Finn said. “This could be the start of better times.”
“They’ve got a baby on the way and his wife has preeclampsia,” Dingo explained. “She’s confined to bed and can’t
work. No one is more bummed than he is.”
Finn felt like the biggest jerk on the planet but there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t get anywhere near a stage without feeling anxious. A gig at the RockAround would probably bring on a full-blown panic attack. That wouldn’t do Dingo and his band any good at all.
“Sixties rock isn’t my shtick anyway,” he said. “It wouldn’t work out.”
“You love sixties music and you know it.” Dingo pointed the spoon at him. “Not only do you rock the keyboard, you’ve got a voice, man. A once-in-a-generation voice.”
Finn went to the cupboard and took down bowls. Dingo had worked hard for years with his band, playing high school reunions, weddings, any venue they could get. They were good. They deserved the opportunity to be heard on a bigger stage.
“Don’t say no before you’ve had a chance to think about it,” Dingo said. “Do me that much of a favor, please.”
No amount of thinking would make a difference. Even with the best will in the world he wasn’t capable of getting on a stage and singing in front of hundreds of people. The last time he’d tried to perform he’d frozen in front of a packed house at a bar in West Hollywood.
“The truth is,” Finn said, “I have performance anxiety.”
Dingo laughed knowingly. “Give me a break.”
Finn rolled his eyes. “Not that kind.”
“You mean singing, playing? Are you kidding me?” Dingo frowned, his head tilted. “Mate, I had no idea. We’ve jammed together.”
“Yeah, but I don’t play in public,” Finn said. “Not even in a café.”
People didn’t get it. They heard him play among friends and didn’t understand that it wasn’t the same as performing in public. Even if he could rehearse with Dingo’s band he would still choke up on the big stage. He couldn’t risk messing up Dingo’s big chance.
“Wow.” Dingo scratched his beard scruff. “Have you, I don’t know, seen anyone about this?”
“Years ago.” Finn shrugged. “Didn’t do any good.”
Harlequin Superromance May 2018 Box Set Page 81
