Virtually Mine (The Lindstroms Book 5)

by Katy Paige

  She had awakened a little later this morning and had been rushing around packing her bag, finally making it down to the front porch swing to wait for Nils at 7:25 a.m. when the innkeeper peeked out the front door, telling her Paul was on the phone. Without thinking, without modulating her voice, she picked up the phone and answered “Paul? It’s me.” just as she always did when he called her at home.

  She cringed as soon as the words left her mouth, balling her free hand into a fist when he stuttered the name “H-Holly?” into the phone. He had recognized her voice right away, and even though she asserted that she was Zoë in a lower voice, she couldn’t be sure if she’d covered the blunder or not. Her face flamed as she’d tried to smooth over things, but her heart was beating like crazy and she’d been so anxious to get off the phone she’d almost hung up on him when Nils pulled up.

  As the van pulled off Stone Street, she glanced in the side-view mirror and saw him race out of his front door like he wanted to catch her before she left. She didn’t know if that was a good sign or a bad sign, but something told her it was probably…bad.

  A sick feeling poured over her and her fingers trembled as she unscrewed the bottle of water wedged between her thighs. Oh, my God. What if he knows?

  After last night’s What if you didn’t have to choose? conversation, he could easily put it all together, and she wouldn’t be there to explain or try to make him see things her way. He’d have two full days to stew about it until she returned to Gardiner. By then, he’d probably hate her guts permanently and never want to speak to her again.

  Panicking, she picked up her cell and turned it back on, hoping for a signal so she could text him, so she could at least tell him she loved him. No signal. Not a single bar. Short of walking back to Gardiner and speaking to him face-to-face, she was out of luck.

  Her eyes burned with tears, and she curled up into a tighter ball on the seat, grateful that Nils was so quiet and the ladies in the back of the van were so loud. No one seemed to notice the girl sitting in the front seat, in silent agony, staring blankly out the window.

  ***

  Nils pulled the fifteen-passenger van into an assigned parking space at the Grant Village Campground after telling Zoë and the other twelve ladies that he and Mr. Lindstrom would be setting up the tents before starting a campfire and cooking their dinner—franks and beans, a typical trail meal—over an open fire.

  “There’s bathrooms that way and the camp store back over there,” said Nils looking over his shoulder at the ladies populating the van. “Would be a good idea for all of you to find a green stick to roast your hotdogs. Feel free to take some pictures, but you don’t want to wander off too far into the woods. Remember what we told you all earlier today. There’s plenty of wildlife here, even in the campground, and we’d hate to have to save you from an angry bison or bear.”

  “Wouldn’t mind if your father had to save me!” tittered one of the old ladies.

  Zoë grinned.

  They’d been hell on the older Mr. Lindstrom at every tourist stop, hanging on his every word, batting their eyelashes, holding on to his arm, asking him to be in their photos. Zoë wondered the last time the quiet, older gentleman had received so much feminine attention and whether or not it was actually welcome, despite his polite response to it.

  At the moment, he was driving the supply and luggage van, and Zoë was fairly sure he was taking the long way to the campsite, hoping the dozen horny old ladies had dispersed by the time he arrived.

  “Very funny,” said Nils, humoring the giggling ladies. “Now, please heed my warning. We want you all back in one piece for franks and beans.”

  “I’d like to sample your father’s frank and beans,” said one older woman in the back row , and they all exploded into varying degrees of cackles and giggles.

  Nils glanced at Zoë, his face sour, shaking his head in disbelief and disgust.

  “Well, you’ll have to take that up with him, ma’am.”

  “Don’t you worry, sonny! I plan to!”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Zoë snorted indelicately beside Nils, hurrying to cover her mouth with her hand as her quiet laughter got the better of her. If someone had told her at eight this morning that she’d be laughing by five this evening, she’d have said it was impossible.

  What had started as a doomed, terrible day in her head had—almost impossibly—improved. The ladies heckling Carl Lindstrom had distracted her from her phone call with Paul and the wonders of Yellowstone were harder to ignore than she would have believed. Every time they stopped, there was something else to behold and admire, her artist’s mind wishing she had more time to stay and paint, to draw, to try to capture the stark, complex beauty of the hot springs, the bubbling jets of geyser steam, the lush beauty of Hayden Valley.

  “Your bags will be moved into your tents as my father and I finish setting them up and we’d like to ask that you’re all back to the campsite for dinner at six-thirty.”

  “If we’re not, will your father give out spankings?”

  Nils’s face whipped to Zoë’s, mouth open, eyes wide, as the ladies chortled behind them. Zoë shrugged, trying not to laugh. Nils blew out an exasperated breath and shook his head, opening his door and leaving the van without a word. He opened the main doors on the side of the van and Zoë waited as the ladies filed out, chirping and chatting among themselves and dispersing toward the bathrooms, camp store and other communal buildings afforded by the large campsite.

  Finally he opened her door too. She shifted in her seat to face him.

  “You don’t need to open my door.”

  “Thought you could help me.”

  “Put up tents?” she asked, raising her eyebrows. “I don’t know the first thing—”

  “Just hold the stakes for me,” he said easily, offering her his hand. “And if you feel like it, maybe tell me why you been so quiet today.”

  This surprised her. Maybe he could listen to her and she could listen to him.

  She put her hand in Nils’s tan, weathered mitt of a hand gratefully and let him help her down. Her leg was stiff after so many hours riding between stops.

  Mr. Lindstrom pulled up in his van and rolled down the window. “They mostly gone?”

  Zoë’s lips tilted up in a smile. “Coast is clear.”

  Mr. Lindstrom parked his van next to the passenger van and joined Nils and Zoë.

  “I’m not one to say a bad word about ladies…but they are a rowdy bunch, I tell you.”

  “Pop, me and Zoë’ll handle the tents if you want to get started on the fire.”

  Zoë was pretty sure he hadn’t heard Nils. Mr. Lindstrom looked a little stunned…and maybe a little nervous too. “I mean, one of them grabbed my…my backside. Pinched the dang thing.”

  “We’re home on Thursday, Pop. Gotta hang in there for another day or two. Fire?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll tend to the fire. Zoë, you’re helping out with the tents? Don’t you want to go to the store or look around a bit? Can’t be fun for you to help Nils put up the tents. Did you say you were an artist? Why don’t you do some art or something?”

  Zoë smiled at the white-haired man. He was good-looking for his age and in good shape. No wonder the older ladies were in such a tizzy over him! He looked weathered and strong like a cowboy who’d seen and done it all, his light blue eyes holding Zoë’s with warmth and kindness.

  “No, sir,” she said, smiling at him. “I don’t mind helping a little.”

  “Well, get to it then, Nils.” He shivered, looking toward the store with wide eyes. “I think I’ll go get lost in the woods and find some wood. Don’t tell ‘em where I went, now.”

  Zoë pretended to lock her lips and throw away the key.

  Nils, who’d started unpacking his father’s van as Zoë chatted with Mr. Lindstrom, handed her an armful of stakes and she followed behind him as he spread out a clear plastic tarp and then opened up a royal blue nylon bag and shook out a tent over the groundcover.


  “So?” he asked, busy putting poles together, not looking at her. “You want to talk?”

  She stood off to the side, awkwardly holding a couple dozen dirty plastic stakes in her arms.

  “I didn’t—I mean, I wouldn’t have figured you for the sort who offers to let a woman spill her guts. No offense.” She bit her lip, hoping she hadn’t hurt his feelings.

  “None taken. Stake.”

  She handed him one and the hammer made a pleasing pinging noise as he pounded it into the ground.

  “You don’t have to talk, but I know that sometimes you gals get things stuck in your heads and it’s just better for everyone if they just come on out already,” he said, then added softly, “I had a mother and I have a sister and…”

  He was a little bit old-fashioned and she found it didn’t bother her at all.

  “A Maggie,” she blurted out. “You have a Maggie, too.”

  Nils looked up at her, one eyebrow cocked up. “Stake.”

  She handed him one and he hit it into the ground again, only harder and louder than the one before.

  “We’re talking about you, not me,” he finally answered, looking up at her.

  “You and Maggie are together, right?” Paul had kept Zoë updated on Nils and Maggie’s on-again-off-again romance which currently was “on,” as far as she knew, though Nils didn’t look very happy when Zoë mentioned Maggie, which she found odd.

  He sighed. “Stake. Let’s just worry about you.”

  She watched him silently as he wove the poles into the slit on either side of the tent and in a matter of minutes, a tight, taut, bright blue tent had been erected.

  She followed him to the next patch of waiting grass, watched as he took a bright orange nylon tent out of its bag, spreading it out on the ground over a clear plastic tarp like the other one.

  She wondered how in the world to begin.

  Well, Zoë. At the beginning.

  “I met a man. On the internet.”

  “Okay. Stake.”

  She handed him one.

  “About a month ago. And he’s…amazing. He’s the most wonderful person I’ve ever met. In my whole life. I didn’t mean to find him…really, he found me. Or his friend did. She answered an ad I forgot that I’d ever placed. She told me all about him and he sounded so…”

  “Stake.”

  “…well, wonderful that I started writing to him. But, the picture I had posted with the ad? It was how I looked two years ago. I was blonde and thin and I didn’t have any tattoos. And my life doesn’t match the profile anymore either. At that time, I was a middle school teacher. I had a different life. In a lot of ways, I was a different person.”

  She sighed, getting lost in her thoughts for a second, thinking about the framed picture sitting in Paul’s bedside table. How many nights had he fallen asleep looking at that old picture of her? How important was it to him that she look like the picture?

  “Stake,” Nils said, drawing her back to their conversation.

  She handed one over.

  “He liked the picture so much…well, I didn’t have the heart to tell him how much I’d changed in the two years since that photo was taken. And I sort of liked being that girl again. That girl was so young and hopeful.”

  “And you’re so old and washed up,” he muttered sarcastically. “Stake.”

  She shrugged as he took it out of her outstretched hand.

  “I don’t feel young and hopeful.”

  “Neither do I,” he grunted, grabbing another clear tarp from the back of the van and shouldering a bright yellow nylon bag.

  “Should I keep—?”

  “Yeah, go on.” He shook out the bright yellow material, lining it up over the clear groundcover.

  “Anyway, I made a mistake. A big one. I lied about who I was. I lied about what I looked like. I just pretended that’s what I still looked like. Worse, I pretended that’s what my life still looked like.”

  “Stake. What does your life really look like?” He looked up at her, his face void of judgment.

  She tossed him a stake and he caught it in one hand, the other hand swinging the hammer by his side as he looked into her eyes.

  “Messy.” She swallowed down the lump in her throat. “I was in a bad accident. I hurt myself—my face and my leg. I hurt my nephew; he lost his legs. I quit my job and took a job as a web developer. I hide in a little office all day. I got dark brown contacts, cut my hair and dyed it black because that’s how I thought I should look. That’s how I felt. Dark. Bad. See this?” She turned her back to him and pointed to her left shoulder under the spaghetti strap of her tank top. “That’s the date of the accident. And this one?” She tapped on her right shoulder. “In honor of my nephew Brandon, my little lamb, who will never be the same.”

  She turned to look at Nils. His blue eyes seared into hers for a moment before he threw the hammer on the ground and tugged at the corner of his T-shirt. He raised it, showing off a set of abs that should make any woman weep, but did little for Zoë but pique her curiosity. He pointed to a small tattoo on his left pec, over his heart. She stepped toward him and looked at it more closely.

  Two small crosses sat over his heart, side by side, with the year written underneath in Roman numerals. Ten years ago.

  She looked up at his serious, troubled eyes as he lowered his shirt slowly.

  “Stake,” he said quietly, deep sadness and profound sympathy etched into his features. She handed him one and he turned his back to her, picking up the hammer and whacking the stake into the ground with a merciless force.

  “What does yours mean?” she whispered, knowing it was bad, knowing it was heartbreaking, wondering if it had anything to do with his on again/off again relationship with Maggie.

  “So, here you are two years later. You meet a man from Montana over the internet.”

  He wasn’t going to tell her anything. Okay.

  “Well, he told me he was coming for Christmas and I came up with a plan. I would grow out my hair, dye it back to blonde, lose some weight, get my old job back, get clear contacts, finish my last facial surgery and by the time—”

  “Paul got back east, you’d be Holly again, right?” He stared at her, eyebrows raised.

  “Right,” she murmured. “You knew? When did you know?”

  “I knew when you filled out the forms in our office yesterday. Zoë Flannigan. Everyone who knows Paul knows the name Holly Flannigan because he won’t shut the hell up about you. I put two and two together and…”

  He leaned down and hammered in the last stake, the bright yellow tent joining the neat line beside the royal blue and sunset orange.

  “I’m a terrible person.”

  “Nah. But, you’re making a mistake.”

  Nils headed back to the van and returned with another tarp and a bright green nylon bag. Zoë counted the stakes in her arms. They were halfway done.

  “What do you mean?” she asked, watching as the wind picked up the thick nylon for a moment. She placed her foot on a corner to keep it in place.

  “You can’t go back. Not when something like that happens. Your accident. Oh, sure, you could color your hair and get your old job back. But you’re a different person. You say you were pretending to be someone else all the while you were getting to know him, but that’s impossible. An accident like that? It changes you. Forever. You can’t go back. You are who you are.”

  Tears pricked and burned her eyes as they welled.

  “Then it’s over. There’s no point. He’s lost to me. He wants the girl in the picture.”

  “Stake.”

  She threw him one.

  “Don’t kill me now,” he grumbled.

  “Sorry,” she sobbed, letting the stakes fall to the ground, her shoulders shaking.

  Nils stood up, but he didn’t approach her or touch her or otherwise move to comfort her.

  “Hey, now,” he said gently. “I think you’re looking at this all wrong.”

  “What do you m
ean?”

  “Paul fell in love with you. With whomever you are now. That’s who he talked to and emailed with. That’s who he got to know. You think you were pretending to be someone else, but it’s impossible. Who you are still shines through. And he’s in love with you. Not with a picture. Not with your job. Not with your blonde hair. Not with your blue eyes, which, by the way, you still have. It doesn’t matter what name you used. It doesn’t matter you have two little tattoos on your shoulders. The terrible thing that happened to you is part of who you are. You. The girl Paul loves is standing right here.” Nils pointed a thick, tan finger at her. “And he’ll get good and mad at you because you lied to him. But the reason he can’t stay away from you now that you’re here? Because you’re the girl he loves. Packaging don’t matter. His heart knows yours.”

  Tears coursed down Zoë’s face as she stared at Nils, and her heart, which had been so heavy—so terribly, unbearably heavy for weeks—felt something it hadn’t felt in a very long time:

  Hope.

  She launched herself toward him and he caught her in his arms, patting her back awkwardly. “There, there. You remind me of my lillesøster, Jenny. Trying so hard to be brave on the outside when you’re just a mess of crazy feelings on the inside.”

  When she leaned back to look up at him, he gave her a sour look. “You cried all over my shirt.”

  A small giggle burst up from her throat and she snuffled with an unladylike snort. She’d cried all over two or three of Paul’s shirts and he’d never said a word. Do you hear me complaining? It made her smile, remembering.

  “Go back and tell him the truth. Let him get mad and yell and stomp around a little. Then he’ll come to his senses. He’ll know it’s you he loved all the while. Paul’s sturdy like that.” He gave her a grim smile then turned back to his work. “I’m just about done. Why don’t you go explore the campground a little?”

  “I’ll be back for franks and beans,” she said, giving him a small smile as she brushed her hands on her jeans, turning toward the camp store where she saw several of the ladies making their return to camp.