Kelsey smiled for the first time since she had come out of the time portal. She had been quiet and distant ever since, but Melanie was reluctant to ask her what she had seen. Since Melanie had sworn that she would no longer go into her mom’s past herself, it seemed like it would be compromising her resolution or even encouraging her sister’s actions, so she tried to keep quiet. The only question she had allowed herself was inquiring how long Kelsey had been inside the time portal because, to Melanie, it had been only five minutes. Kelsey had confusedly replied that she couldn’t be sure, but it had definitely been longer—an hour or more—which confirmed Melanie’s theory. The correlation of time between the two worlds was totally unpredictable, which made the closet seem even more volatile to her. What if Kelsey goes inside again and disappears for days? What if she never comes back?
“Hi!” Kelsey greeted Everett. “It’s weird seeing you outside of our basement.”
Everett laughed. It sounded nasally, like someone with a severe upper respiratory infection. “I do feel like I spend about eighty percent of my life in basements,” he agreed. “Thankfully they let me out sometimes so I can work on my tan.” He cupped his hand around his mouth and stage-whispered to Kelsey, “But I bet your sister wishes I weren’t taking the holiday off tomorrow and would finish the job for her already.”
Melanie had been thinking something along those very lines only a moment ago. She rolled her eyes at him in mock exasperation. “As long as you have it finished by next Monday.” She had meant to sound pseudostern, but she worried she had come across as real stern instead. “Is your uncle here? You said he has a fishing cabin nearby, right?”
“Yeah, over on Clover Trail. But it’s my cousin’s graduation party this weekend, so I’ve got the place to myself. All three hundred square feet of it. He’s been letting me stay there while I work on your basement so I don’t have to drive back and forth to Arbor Creek.”
They got in line for the brats and hamburgers, and Everett regaled them with stories of Bailey and Bella, his golden retrievers who were from the same litter. The dogs had been a Christmas present for him and his younger sister from his parents, but they were so inseparable that when Everett left home and took Bailey, Bella insisted on coming along too. As Everett told it, the pair was a tag team of mischief-makers, devouring a whole pound of raw bacon off the kitchen counter one time and pulling all the stuffing from a futon mattress another. Kelsey countered with a story about Sprocket eating her phone charger and barfing it up on her bed. Melanie had to grudgingly admit to herself that Everett and Kelsey had at least one thing in common, but she wasn’t too keen on how he kept checking out any young woman who walked by in a pair of short shorts.
“You can just barely see your house from here,” Everett said, squinting across the lake.
Melanie followed his gaze, and sure enough, she saw the century-old Montclare family Victorian. Its white façade glowed golden in the setting sun. From their vantage point, it looked like an idyllic little dollhouse. “There it is,” she said softly.
“There’s some really good fishing over on your side of the lake,” he said, gesturing to the northeast end. “Uncle Mick and I catch northern pike as big as my arm, a ton of white bass, and some of the best walleye pike you’ve ever tasted.” He bit into his hamburger, chewed briefly, and continued talking. “Nothing like the bullheads over on this side. Filthy bottom-feeders.”
Kelsey caught Melanie’s eye, and her look was heavy with meaning, but Melanie wasn’t sure what meaning. Is Kelsey trying to draw my attention to the house’s beauty and alluding to the fact that she doesn’t want to sell it? Is she as bored with Everett’s recitation of fish as I am? Or is she trying to convey that she’s falling for him? Melanie wondered if Kelsey wanted her to make an excuse and leave the two of them alone.
As she finished eating her corn on the cob, she wished Ben were there with them. They had talked earlier in the week, and he had offered to fly to Wisconsin to spend the holiday weekend with her, but something had made her turn him down. She was aching to see him: his messy blond hair that was always in need of a trim, his puppy-dog brown eyes, the dorky T-shirts he wore on the weekends that had things like “All those years in school, and now I’m a drug dealer” printed on them. He was probably sporting a beard since she had been gone for two weeks. She preferred him clean-shaven, but he hated shaving, so he always let it go whenever they were apart.
She knew that as soon as she saw him, as soon as they embraced, everything would come rushing back, and she wasn’t quite ready to pick up that yoke just yet. Maybe a few more weeks apart, and she would be strong enough to shoulder it again. Focusing on the lake house and her mom and Kelsey seemed like the more manageable dilemma for the time being.
“That lady keeps staring at us,” Kelsey said. “On your right. With the stroller.”
Melanie tried to turn casually. Two women stood near a stroller—two blondes, one probably in her midthirties, the other in her sixties, so mother and daughter, maybe. The older woman was holding the hand of a little boy wearing blue-and-white-striped swim trunks and a T-shirt with a red star on it.
“I bet that’s our new neighbor,” Melanie said. “The wife.”
“The zucchini-bread hater?” Kelsey asked scornfully. “I thought they wouldn’t deign to come to the cookout.” She bent forward to fill Everett in.
“Hush up. They’re coming over here.”
“Hi! It’s Melanie, right?” The younger woman parked the stroller in front of their table. It was one of those fancy ones with the click-in infant carrier, a detachable canvas sunshade, and large, rubbery all-terrain wheels. “You dropped off that zucchini bread earlier today, right? I just wanted to tell you thanks again. It was delicious! We really enjoyed it, didn’t we, Noah?”
The little boy took a step back and hugged his grandma’s leg. He looked about two or three years old and was round-eyed and chubby cheeked—a Raphael cherub.
“You’re very welcome,” Melanie said, shooting Kelsey and Everett a dirty look as they stifled laughter. She considered asking if the woman and her family were just there for the weekend or were planning to stay the summer, but Nicholas’s comment about “prying” neighbors still stung, so she pursed her lips and let an awkward silence ensue.
“Sorry, I should introduce myself. I’m Jess, and this is my mother-in-law, Marie. You’ve already met Noah, and this...” She paused to flip back the stroller sunshade and reveal a tiny sleeping baby. “Is Gracie.”
“Nice to meet you,” Melanie breathed, hardly able to take her eyes off the baby girl. She still had the wrinkled, pinkish face of a newborn, and her rosebud lips were puckered in a pout. Melanie just knew that if she picked the baby up and held her against her chest, Gracie would be warm and sweet smelling, like a fresh loaf of bread. “How old?”
“Noah’s two and a half, and Gracie just turned five weeks old. Nicholas thinks I’m crazy that I wanted to bring her here—he’s a total germophobe—but Gracie and I didn’t want to miss the fun, did we, peanut?” She cast an adoring glance at her infant daughter then flipped the sunshade back down.
“I’m Kelsey, Melanie’s sister,” Kelsey thrust in. “And this is our friend Everett.” They seemed to have scooted closer together on the bench. Kelsey’s bare shoulder touched Everett’s tan arm.
The neighbors exchanged friendly pleasantries about where they were from and what they did for a living. They lived in Middleton. Jess was a web designer, and Marie was an art therapist. Nicholas, ironically, was also a pharmacist like Ben. Noah gradually became less shy and detached himself from his grandmother’s leg. He started to make a little game of running to the edge of the pavement, scooping up a handful of sand, letting it rain down, then darting back to the adults.
“Ha!” he laughed like a little maniac. “Ha-ha!”
“Your house has been in your family for a long time, hasn’t it?” Marie, who had the husky voice of a long-time smoker, asked. “I wonder if Lavinia would re
member your family. She grew up here, you know. Her family came every summer.”
Melanie and Kelsey turned to stare at each other.
“Lavinia Fletcher?” Melanie asked. She wanted to ask how they knew her, if she still owned the house, and if she was staying there with them. Prying, prying, prying, Nicholas’s voice rebuked her.
Marie smiled, delighted. “That’s the one. Not a very common name, is it?”
Noah dashed toward them with a fistful of sand and deposited it on his mother’s sandal.
“Noah! That’s not very nice,” Jess admonished him. “Now Mommy’s foot is all dirty.”
“She was friends with our mom, Christine Kingstad,” Melanie said loudly over the little boy’s whining.
“Hmm... I’ll have to ask her,” Marie said, but she looked distracted as she crouched down to hold her grandson’s hand. “What do you think, Jess? Time to feed the troops? Is the brat stand just over that way? It was so nice meeting you all. I’m sure we’ll be seeing you around.”
Disappointed, Melanie gave them a little wave and sat back down. She wished that Everett would leave so that she and her sister could discuss the new development in private. Is Mrs. Fletcher still living right next door? Perhaps they could talk to her. And ask her what exactly, Melanie wasn’t quite sure, but the opportunity felt momentous.
Kelsey, however, seemed unimpressed by the bombshell. She was smiling up at Everett as he pointed out something on the lake to her. And Melanie thought meanly, Oh. That was why Kelsey had risked blowing off work to come to Lake Indigo. Kelsey wasn’t there for Melanie. She wasn’t even there for their mom. She was there for a boy—another handsome, charming, stupidly superficial boy. Melanie tried not to let the splinter of hurt pierce her heart too deeply.
Chapter Fourteen
Kelsey followed Everett up the three short steps to his uncle’s fishing cabin. He hadn’t been lying when he said it wasn’t much more than a glorified shed—brown-painted clapboard, green shingles, and a pair of what looked like moose antlers.
“Watch your step,” he said, taking her gently by the wrist and guiding her inside. His hand on her skin felt like warm sunshine. She wanted to lean into him like a cat and nuzzle her face against his chest. “I apologize in advance for the smell. Uncle Mick is self-conscious about the place stinking like fish, so he goes a little overboard on the air freshener.”
A wave of lilacs, roses, and lilies overwhelmed her when she stepped inside. Just beneath the flowery potpourri was a sour, fishy note.
“It’s okay. Eau de fish bouquet just so happens to be my favorite scent.”
Everett hesitated a beat before rasping out a laugh. “You’re funny. Can I get you something to drink? I’ve got beer, water, orange juice, and more beer. A beer, perhaps?”
“I’d love a beer.”
“Good choice.”
He cracked open two cans and carried them over to where she was perched on a blue velour couch. The whole cabin appeared to be one room. It had a small kitchenette with a plastic tablecloth-covered table and two wooden chairs, a blue velour armchair that matched the couch, an old tube television, and two twin beds with plaid quilts. A faded print of a howling wolf was framed on the wall. Melanie would think the cabin was dingy and tacky, and it was, Kelsey had to admit, but it had something sweetly masculine about it, too, the stripped-down functionality of it. A broom and flyswatter hung from nails next to the door. A handwritten sign above the sink read, Don’t clean your fish here! Use table out back, please!
“So you guys are putting your house on the market as soon as I’m finished?” Everett asked, arranging himself next to her in a way that made her pulse flutter and her cheeks feel hot.
Kelsey nodded. “It’s a good time to sell, I guess. My mom left it to us in her will, and we can’t really afford to keep it without renting it out or something.”
“I’m sorry,” he said and sipped his beer. “I didn’t know your mom had passed away.”
She tried to wave his sympathy away, as if her mom’s death were something firmly planted in the past that she had come to terms with ages ago. “It’s been four years,” she said. It somehow felt like both no time at all and an eternity since that fateful afternoon.
“How did she die?”
God, she didn’t want to talk about that. Is he genuinely interested, or is he just trying to get into my pants? She would let him into her pants with no demonstration of his empathetic, sensitive-guy listening skills required.
“It was a pulmonary embolism,” she said, hoping to shut down that line of inquiry. “A blood clot in her lung.”
“That’s awful,” he said, his sexy black hair flopping into his eye.
She reached out to brush it back. “It was,” she agreed. Pieces of her mom’s conversation with Vinnie were still ricocheting around her skull, making it hard to think straight. She wished Everett had offered her something a little stronger than beer.
He’ll never know the real you. Not like I do.
How can you say that, Vin? I don’t even know the real me.
Did Mom ever find peace with her “real” self? Or did she perform the version of herself she thought people liked best and expected of her until the day she died? The thought made Kelsey horribly depressed.
“You and your sister seem so different,” Everett said, shifting his weight so that their thighs touched briefly.
That was another topic she decidedly did not want to talk about at the moment. He was on a roll. When Kelsey had asked Melanie if she could feed and walk Sprocket because she might not be coming home, Melanie had coolly replied in the affirmative and walked away. She didn’t need to say anything else. The judgment was plain on her holier-than-thou face. Everything that Kelsey did—still going into the time portal to “spy” on their mom, going home with an almost stranger—was clearly beneath her.
“My dad calls her Melanie the General because she can be so bossy,” she offered just to see Everett’s dimples pop into view. They were slightly asymmetrical. The right one was deeper than the left, but Kelsey wanted to kiss them both all the same.
“My sister and I are really different too.” He leaned back against the sofa. “Laura’s at the University of Wisconsin, at the top of her class, studying molecules or microbiology or something.”
“That’s where Melanie went too. She’s a biology professor now at this prestigious little liberal arts college in Ohio.” She frowned. “Hey, where are your dogs? I was looking forward to meeting them.”
“Back at my place in Arbor Creek. They’re too high-energy to be here alone when I’m working.” He tentatively touched one of her curls and gave it a little tug to watch it spring back upward. “I really like your hair.”
“Thanks.” The image of her dad toying with her mom’s curls in front of the bonfire came back to her. They’d seemed so in love. But it was all a ruse, at least on her mom’s part. She tried to focus on Everett’s fingertips lightly brushing her hair, only centimeters away from the sensitive skin of her earlobe and neck, but something was niggling at her. “Someone’s watching them?” she asked.
“Yeah, of course.” His fingers traced an invisible trail down her brow and along her cheek to her jawline.
“Like coming in and walking them every day?” she persisted, not sure why. Why can’t I just shut up and let him kiss me? It was clear he wanted to. His face was so close she could see the specks of black stubble above his lip.
He faltered for a second. “Yes. Please don’t worry about Bailey and Bella. Trust me—they’re in good hands.” He put one palm on each of her cheeks and pulled her face to his.
He was a good kisser—slow and deliberate. But she couldn’t enjoy herself and sink into the moment because she had a sudden premonition of how it would end. She was pretty sure he had a live-in girlfriend based on the way he had answered her questions about who was taking care of the dogs. She had seen the signs before—in Tristan, in Neil, in Eamon—but in the past, it had somehow seemed easier
to ignore them.
“Give me one second,” she said, nimbly extricating herself from his embrace. “Do you have a bathroom I can use?”
The bathroom was tiny and even more flowery smelling than the rest of the cabin. She practically gagged at the sickly-sweet stench. It had a grimy sink and toilet, a narrow shower stall, and no hand soap, and the only towel was damp, crumpled up, and lying on the floor. But that was fine because Kelsey didn’t really need to use the bathroom. She shut the toilet seat and sat down.
She was freaking out that there were only flirtations and soft kisses and subterfuge, that real love didn’t exist. It hadn’t existed for her parents, and even Melanie and Ben’s marriage seemed to be on shaky ground lately because of the miscarriage. She couldn’t believe Ben hadn’t visited once in the time that Melanie had been staying in Lake Indigo, when normally they were joined at the hip. A shared tragedy was supposed to bring people closer together, not render them apart. Those two couples were her models for loving, committed relationships, and if she didn’t have those, she didn’t have anything to cling to when her love life was a bleak, pathetic mess.
She remembered what her dad had said in his toast at Melanie’s wedding. “No marriage is perfect because nobody is perfect. The closest you can get to a perfect marriage is by choosing your partner and choosing love over and over again. Every day.” But presumably he hadn’t known his wife hadn’t felt the same way, that she had secretly chosen someone else over him.
Kelsey wiped her eyes furiously. It was stupid that she was even considering going back out to Everett and continuing their kiss. He was cute and sexy, but he wasn’t very quick-witted, and his laugh was terrible, and there was a ninety-nine percent chance he already had a girlfriend. She didn’t know if staying and rolling around with him on the blue velour couch would boost her spirits or depress her even further.
Versions of Her Page 17
