She remembered everything in the car and nothing after until the dreams came. Nothing lucid until she’d woken in the hospital with her arm in a cast and monitors hooked to what felt like every part of her, and she was still holding on to the dreams.
“It’s strange,” Monica said. “I feel strange. But I’ll be okay. Tell me about Val. How’s Robin?”
“She’s fine. They’re both fine. Robin had a weird scare earlier, but it was just a reaction to being unconscious I think. Something like that. She’s resting now that I managed to see her and tell her about the rest of you girls. Mark took Emma home. I told him Eddie and I would keep an eye on you girls and call if he needed to come back.”
“Do you know how long they’re going to keep us?”
“Oh, sweetie.” Marie put her arms around Monica. “You three drove into a lake and nearly drowned! Don’t be in such a hurry to leave. Let them take care of you for a while.”
* * *
Robin drifted in and out of sleep. She could hear voices in the background, but they were mostly nurses. The television was off. She slept for hours, glad to finally have some quiet. The curtains were drawn, and the room was dark when her eyes flickered open.
She saw him sitting in the corner of the room, perched in one of the chairs next to her napping father. Was she dreaming? Was she imagining things? Was this another hallucination, like Dr. Patel had said she could expect?
It was the man from the lake, she was certain of it. His hair was dark, and Robin had the same feeling as the first time she’d seen him. He was familiar. She’d seen him before.
Nothing about the man frightened her. He didn’t speak. He didn’t fidget. He was reading a book. What book? She couldn’t see. Why was he reading? Where did he even get a book?
The man looked up, caught her eye, and smiled.
The cold spilled over her, but it was familiar now, like a gust of fresh air in an overheated room. Robin closed her eyes and slept.
Chapter 5
Two weeks later
“I swear, no one ever closes a door or turns off a light switch in this house except me.” Grace Lewis’s voice cut through the shop and landed exactly as Robin knew her mom had intended—square on her daughter’s shoulders.
Robin instinctively looked up to see what she’d forgotten. There was one light on in the storeroom, the one she was working under.
Robin’s mother—the previous owner of Glimmer Lake Curios—walked into her daughter’s office, a converted galley kitchen with a bathroom attached.
“Hi, Mom.” Robin looked up, but she didn’t stand.
“Why was the door standing open to God and everyone?” Grace asked.
“I don’t know. I shut it. Do you want coffee?”
“You shut it? So it was the fairies?”
“Ha ha.” She pointed to the counter. “There’s coffee made if you want some.”
It was a long-standing family joke that Robin had seen “fairies” when she was young. In reality, Robin had a normal childhood imagination that her mother had done her best to stamp out by the time Robin entered first grade.
“The door keeps blowing open.” Robin paged through new auction catalogs. “I think there’s something wrong with the latch.”
“It doesn’t feel loose.” Grace unwound her delicate silk scarf and walked to the coffee maker.
“I know, but it keeps blowing open, so I think it must be something with the hardware.” She shrugged. “It’s an old house.”
“It is.” Grace poured herself a cup and sat across from Robin. “How was yesterday?”
“It was fine. I was exhausted by the end of the day, but I managed. And I slept really well last night.”
“That’s good. It was a Sunday.”
“And it’s the fall.” Sunday had been the first weekend day that Robin had watched the shop by herself since the accident. She was surprised at how exhausted she’d been, but in the middle of the fall season the shop didn’t get too crazy. By the time snow fell, she’d better be back to one hundred percent. “I’m sure I’ll be myself in a couple of weeks.”
“Good. You know I don’t mind helping out, but I worry about missing sales,” Grace said. It was Tuesday morning, and the new pieces her mother had picked up at a Sacramento auction house would be coming in.
“If you want to go back to buying only, I can find someone else to—”
“No, no!” Grace waved a hand. “I’m fine.”
You hate working in the shop. Robin thought it. She didn’t dare say it.
As Grace had gotten older, she’d grown worse and worse about customer service, especially when new people moved into town and didn’t realize who Grace Russell Lewis was. Daughter of Gordon Russell, owner of the largest lumber mill in the mountains and founder of Glimmer Lake, Grace was nothing if not proud of her family and her town. She was short with customers from the city and could be incredibly judgmental.
“Did the woman on Saturday come back?” Grace sipped her coffee. “She had… interesting ideas.”
“Nope. Never came back.”
“That’s a shame.”
You definitely do not think that.
The customer had proposed staining the gold birch of a Depression-era desk with a darker color. The look on Grace’s face had suggested the woman wanted to murder puppies.
“Don’t worry.” Robin sipped her tea. “You scared her off.”
“I suspect…” Grace raised another eyebrow. “…that the prices scared her off more than I did.”
“Mom, really?”
“Did she look like a serious customer to you?”
And that was why Robin was desperate to feel like herself again. She had to get her mom out of the shop. Grace had been driving customers away with her passive aggression, veiled insults, and dismissive attitude. Sure, Robin liked the original finish on the desk the woman had been looking at, but if it didn’t match her house, it didn’t match. She’d much rather a sell a piece—especially one that had been sitting in the store for six months—than keep it because she had philosophical differences with a buyer about furniture finishes.
Better for Grace to go back to buying, where she could charm auctioneers and find the best bargains for the store.
“I don’t think you need to be here today,” Robin said. “Nothing much going on except the shipment, and Brent said he could help me move stuff.”
Brent Russell was her neighbor at Suffolk Realty next door. He was also her second or third cousin and was great about helping her move big pieces.
“Brent?” Grace frowned. “Is he strong enough for that?”
“Brent? Of course he is, Mom.”
“Are you sure?” She leaned forward. “He’s just not the same since Easton left him.”
“What?”
Grace raised her carefully groomed eyebrows meaningfully.
“I honestly don’t know what your eyebrows mean right now.”
Grace whispered dramatically, as if Brent could hear through the walls and across the parking lot, “He’s put on a lot of weight.”
Robin closed her eyes, determined to get her mother out of the shop before Brent came over to help. “How’s Grandma today? Did you go by already?”
Robin’s grandmother, Helen Russell, was still living in Russell House, the home where she’d raised her children, but it was beginning to look more and more like a bad idea for her to live alone.
“I’m going to have to fire the maids,” Grace said.
“What? Why?”
“They’re lazy. And Mother can’t see well enough to spot the dirt anymore.”
“Shoot.” Robin hadn’t had a great feeling about the new cleaning service, but since Carla, her grandmother’s longtime housekeeper, had retired, it had been one service after another, none of which understood how to clean an old home as large as Grandma Helen’s.
“I think it’s time for her to move,” Robin said. “She’s ninety-five, Mom.”
“I know how old my moth
er is,” Grace said. “Where do you think she’s going to go? Is she going to move in with you and Mark?”
“I mean…” The thought hadn’t occurred to her, but it wasn’t out of the question. “If she wants to, we can manage. Emma will be gone in the fall, and Austin’s room is empty.”
“And on the second floor,” Grace said. “Mother would hate living with you or me. She’s too independent, and she’ll never leave Russell House. It’s her home.”
“What about Partridge Valley?”
Grace looked offended. “Russell women do not move into old-folks’ homes, Robin.”
“It’s a retirement community. Val’s grandmother loved living there.”
“Absolutely not.” Grace rose. “We just need to find some live-in help.”
Her grandmother was rolling in money, so it wasn’t out of the question. “Should we ask Uncle Raymond what he thinks?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Grace’s eyes were scorching in their disapproval.
“It was just a suggestion. She’s his mother too.”
Robin wished her mother had a better relationship with her Uncle Raymond, but that bridge had burned long ago, and Robin had never been sure why. Uncle Raymond had never gotten along with her grandfather, who’d been a hard, unforgiving, and judgmental man with exacting standards for everyone in the family.
Not unlike his daughter.
Robin sighed and stood, ready to face the shop and the day.
In the weeks since the accident, Robin had been trying to be more focused on her family, which meant more time with her mother and father. Mark and Emma were still in their own worlds. Austin had called a couple of times, but the conversations hadn’t gone well. Robin felt out of sorts, discombobulated, and she wasn’t sleeping well.
They were raising her car this week, and Robin was hoping that something about seeing it and settling the insurance mess would allow her to move on. Plus she really needed a new car. She was tired of borrowing Mark’s truck or asking for rides, but she also couldn’t decide what sort of car she wanted.
The world around her seemed like it was covered in gauze some days. Nothing was clear or urgent. It was difficult to concentrate, and she often lost track of time.
Both Val and Monica seemed fine. They still texted regularly, and they talked on the phone. They’d been busy, but everything seemed normal. Why was it so much harder for Robin to get back to her life?
She was still haunted by the face of their rescuer. Despite fleeting glimpses on the edge of sleep that she put down to posttraumatic hallucinations, she hadn’t seen him. No one had seen him. Val and Monica had no idea what she was talking about. She’d stopped bringing it up because she was starting to feel crazy. None of the police had seen anyone matching her description at the scene. No one appeared at the hospital, ready to take credit for saving three women from drowning.
Nothing.
She had to move on. She didn’t have a choice.
After an hour of prodding, Robin convinced Grace that she was fine and didn’t need any help. No doubt the lack of customers helped her argument. It was a Tuesday morning in the middle of fall; Robin wasn’t expecting much.
She filled out online orders and texted Brent when she heard the delivery truck arrive.
“Okay,” Brent huffed as they moved the midcentury desk. “Where are we putting this beauty?”
Robin pointed at the corner. “Right there.”
“Where there is already a dresser.” Brent’s face fell. “Are we stacking them now?”
Robin smiled. “No, we’re moving that one out and waiting for Monica to come pick it up.”
Brent cleared his throat and shuffled adorably. “Oh. Monica?”
Her cousin had had a crush on Monica when she’d still been Monica Morales and the prettiest girl water-skiing on the lake.
“How’s she doing?” Brent asked. “I mean, with the accident and all.”
“She’s fine. I think her cast is coming off next week.”
“That’s good.”
“Jake is driving her, but can you hang around to help us move the dresser into her truck? Or are you busy?”
“I’ll be around.”
“Thanks.” She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. “I’m sure she’ll appreciate it.”
“No problem.”
They finished rearranging the new pieces, moved the old dresser to the loading area in the back, then Robin redecorated the street-facing window with bold fall decorations and waited for Jake and Monica to arrive.
Mark called her halfway through the morning. “You busy?”
“I have a few minutes.”
“How are you feeling?”
Mark had been unusually attentive in the past two weeks. He’d been paying extra attention to her, though he was still leaving the bed before she woke. But he’d call to check in on her and was making dinner more.
“I talked to Austin this morning while you were walking.”
Robin just barely kept from rolling her eyes. “What’s going on?”
She hadn’t been able to walk up and down hills with her newly sore knee, so Mark had pulled his old treadmill out of the garage and cleaned it so she could walk. It was better than nothing, but Robin missed her morning air.
“He’s taking an art class this fall to fulfill his fine arts requirement,” Mark said. “And he’s doing really well.”
“That’s good.” She sketched on the edge of a notebook. “He never took art in high school.”
“Not once. But he’s doing it there, and I guess he’s doing really well.”
“Drawing?”
“Sculpture.”
“Really?” She shrugged. “That’s cool.”
“He was talking this morning about…”
Robin’s stomach dropped. She knew what was coming.
“…changing majors,” Mark finished. “To fine arts.”
Robin took a deep breath. “Are you kidding me, Mark?”
“Okay, I know it’s another change, but this time—”
“This time he’s moving from his third major in two years to another major. Only this one isn’t kinesiology or business, both of which could theoretically result in a job if he actually followed through on them. This time he wants an art degree?”
“Hey, you have an art degree,” Mark said.
“And I’m working in an antique shop!” Robin stood, nearly overcome with anger at her son. “And I took class after class in high school. And before that, I did summer programs. I drew relentlessly. I taught myself how to paint from library books. He takes one art class—”
“You know what?” Mark said. “Don’t yell at me about it. Yell at your kid.” He hung up the phone and Robin was still fuming.
She picked up her phone and nearly dialed Austin’s number; then she thought twice. She needed to calm down. She needed to cool down.
She went back to her desk and flipped a page in her notebook before she closed her eyes and put her head in her hands.
Everything about her life felt like it was dangling on the edge of a cliff. Like her car was balancing precariously over Glimmer Lake, ready to fall in and sink to the bottom if she couldn’t pull it back in time.
That’s where she lived now, balanced on the edge, ready for the last little weight that would make her topple over and into the depths.
Her phone buzzed. It was Mark.
I’m sorry I yelled. I have my doubts too.
Robin didn’t know what to text back, so she didn’t text anything. A few minutes later, another text came through.
The sheriff called and they’re pulling the car up today. They said the crane was free a day early.
She felt her sigh of relief on the inside, as if seeing her car would finally put a ghost to rest. Move her past this hideous chapter of life.
She texted back: I’ll let Monica and Val know.
He gave her a thumbs-up emoji.
She went back to sketching, not even thinking about what
she was drawing. She was thinking about Austin as a little boy. He’d loved drawing with her but had quickly become distracted by any shiny new thing. Had she missed natural artistic ability?
Had Austin played with clay? He’d loved his LEGOs, but what did that mean? Every kid loved LEGOs.
She sketched and sketched, not realizing what her hand was doing. By the time she looked up, she realized that once again, she’d sketched a portrait of the man who had rescued them from the lake.
Dark hair. Dark, deep-set eyes. Heavy eyebrows and high cheekbones.
He was handsome, she realized. Rough, but handsome.
Why was he rough? How did she know that?
His hands had looked work worn. He’d had blisters and a cut on his knuckle.
Robin was staring at the sketch on her desk when the bell over the door rang.
Monica walked in with a bright smile. “Hey!”
Robin put down her pencil and walked over, wrapping her arms around her friend. “You’re here.”
Monica hugged her back. “You okay?”
“Just… having a day.” She released her friend. “Austin is changing majors.”
“Again?”
“To art.”
Monica let out a cackling laugh. “Oh, I bet you love that.”
Robin raised her hands in surrender. “You know… I think I just give up with that kid. Tell me what to do, mother of three grown boys.”
“Honestly?”
“Honestly.”
“Ignore him.” She raised a finger. “As long as he’s making good grades in school, keep helping him with tuition, but he should be paying some of it.”
“He is.”
“Good.” Monica shrugged. “Then ignore him. It’s his life. You can’t figure it out for him anymore. You and Austin have always been too close in personality. Let it go.”
Robin took a deep breath. “I’ll try.”
“Good place to start.”
“How are you feeling?”
Monica shrugged. “Eh. I’m okay. I haven’t been sleeping well.”
Footsteps came from the back, and Jake walked through the door with Brent. “You didn’t mention the sleep thing, Mom.”
Suddenly Psychic: Glimmer Lake Book One Page 5
