Always on My Mind (7 page)

“Nah, I’m good
 
—gotta leave room to clear the lot.” The man wore a baseball cap, a pair of shorts, and hiking boots. “Hey, Bro.”

Darek stared, taking in the sight of a tanned Casper, dressed, of course, like he belonged on some Caribbean island, with his hair curling out from under his hat. “Casper!” He reached out for a handshake, then pulled him into a hug. “What are you doing here?”

Casper stamped his feet, his hands returning to his sweatshirt pocket. “Freezing.”

“Yeah, well, have you ever heard of pants?”

Casper opened the truck cab and pulled out his duffel bag, a backpack. “I left them all here.” He headed to the house. “Mom and Dad inside?”

Darek followed him. “Nope
 
—they’re in Florida. What are you doing back?”

“Nice. Not ‘Hey, great to see you. I really missed you
 
—’”

“Great to see you. I really missed you. What are you doing here?”

Casper pushed open the entry door, and Darek followed him inside. The sweet smell of pumpkin curry soup rose up to welcome him, and the instant heat, the quiet eye inside the storm, had him aching to turn around, get in the truck, and go home.

Casper dropped his duffel and backpack on the floor as if he were arriving home from college for a weekend instead of suddenly appearing after his nearly six-month vanishing act.

“Casper, seriously, what are you doing home?”

Casper unlaced his boots, pulling them off. “Where did you say Mom and Dad were?”

Huh. Okay, fine. “Florida. And then they’re going to Europe to visit Amelia.”

Casper frowned. “Amelia’s still in Prague? I thought she was coming home for Christmas.”

“Were you paying any attention at all to her conversations this summer? Amelia’s in Prague taking photography classes and touring Europe for the entire year.”

Casper raised an eyebrow.

“Right. Okay. Well, she’s staying until June, Mom and Dad are going to Paris to renew their vows for Valentine’s Day, and I’m here, hoping our one and only reservation shows up tonight.”

Casper picked up his duffel bag. Made a face. “One reservation, huh?”

“Yeah. Listen, I gotta go out to check on the rest of the cabins. Then I’ll be back and . . . I’m going to be asking questions.”

Casper’s eyes narrowed. “It’s not exciting. My time was up, so here I am.”

But Darek recognized a lie in his words, the way Casper’s jaw tightened, the stress in his eyes.

“Light a fire. We still have to wait for the guests in cabin one to show up.”

“Darek, I have news for you
 
—”

“Don’t say it, Casper. Just don’t say it. They’ll be here.”

Casper stood over the stove, drawing in the fragrance of curry, cinnamon, onions. If he didn’t know better, he’d think that perhaps Grace had raced home to have one of his favorite meals waiting for him. He ladled some into a bowl and put it in the microwave to warm.

Something soothing to welcome him home. To quiet that hollow sense of failure that had dogged him as he traveled north, all eight hours of a normally five-hour trip.

It didn’t help that the lodge was empty, missing even the exuberant greeting of Butterscotch, the family dog. Grace had broken the news of Butter’s recent passing.

A reminder that life could never really be the same again.

It had taken four days of holing up at Max’s, licking his wounds and trying to find some wheels, for Casper to sort through his options: Return to Roatán to keep swabbing the decks and doing underwater grunt labor for Captain Fitz. Stick around in Minneapolis and try not to pick up the phone to call Raina or, worse, show up on her doorstep. Not that he would.

He couldn’t get past the mistake
 
—
her
mistake
 
—of giving up her child and how that irrevocable decision could tear so many people asunder.

Go away, Casper. You can’t fix this. No one can . . .

He still waged war with her in his mind. But her last words always won.
Just . . . please, leave me alone.

Absolutely. Which meant he had to steer clear of her. Until he figured out where to do that, he pointed his new-to-him truck north.

Harboring a secret that felt like a live ember in his chest.

Certainly Darek would have something he could build or repair
 
—didn’t the resort always need extra hands? Yeah, here he’d make himself useful, even if he had to fall in behind Darek’s shadow.

Here he’d somehow figure out a way to forget the fact that he’d wasted the last five months of his life.

He brought his duffel bag upstairs to the bedroom he’d shared with his brothers. Owen hadn’t slept in the bed under the dormer window for four years, at least. And Darek had moved out long before that. So Casper’s memories dated into his early teenage years, wrestling matches on the shag rug, trying to avoid knocking over one of Mom’s homemade rock lamps or busting a hole in the hand-me-down dressers. Owen’s posters of “Boo” Boogaard still hung on the wall, and Darek’s firefighting manuals were tucked into the bedside bookcase as if time had simply stopped.

Maybe, for Casper, it had. Because while everyone else in his family seemed to move forward
 
—Eden and Darek married, Grace engaged and opening her own business, Amelia finding adventure in Europe, and even Owen fleeing his past, certainly, but maybe joining up again with the Jude County Hotshots and finding a new place in the world
 
—only Casper seemed stuck.

And returning home as if he hadn’t anywhere else to run.

Except he didn’t, did he?

He dropped the duffel on the floor, his legs cold. He probably should have purchased pants in Minneapolis instead of borrowing from Max.

He dug out a pair of sweatpants from his dresser and returned to the kitchen. Stirred the soup and put it back in the microwave.

Outside, the snow hurtled against the sliding-glass door, an angry snarl of frigid temperatures that would scare off even the hardiest of tourists. And Darek knew it.

Casper moved over to the fireplace, where he built a small tent of kindling, newspaper, and his mother’s favorite waxed pinecones. He lit it and warmed his hands over the blaze. Then he added some hickory logs and closed the grate.

He returned to the microwave, retrieved the soup, and found a lone bagel in the freezer.

He thawed it, toasted it, added butter. Set the dinner on the counter and pulled up a high-top stool. Dug in.

The soup had a delicate hint of cinnamon, the sweet bite of yellow curry. Maybe Ivy made it. He dipped his bagel in it, took another bite.

Yeah, home. The perfect place to figure out how to cool off, how to live with the mistakes of others.

And his own. Because as he finished off one half of the bagel and savored the soup, he thought back to the night when he’d realized Raina had slept with Owen.

The night he’d spent driving around Minneapolis on his motorcycle, the need for speed kicking in, fueling his anger.

His jealousy.

It stirred to life in a blaze that erupted in a full-out brawl right there in Eden’s wedding reception venue.

Owen had left, angry and belligerent, and well, Casper fled too, the hurt pushing him beyond forgiveness.

Which left Raina pregnant and alone.

And now left him and Grace bearing her terrible secret. He
supposed he should be thankful that his parents
 
—especially his mother
 
—weren’t here to force it out of him. Just being around them, seeing their love for Tiger, would tear him in half.

He’d have to forget Raina. Forget the baby.

Stop trying to fix everything.

He was sopping up the remainder of his soup with his bagel when he heard the door open.

“Casper!” Darek poked his head into the house. “Turn the water off in cabin three! Hurry!”

Casper slid off the stool. “What?”

“Downstairs
 
—the water main to the cabins
 
—turn off cabin three!” He shut the door.

Casper raced downstairs to the half-finished basement. Long ago used as a rec room and storage space, it also housed the water main and electric breakers for the resort. He stepped into the chilly utility room, found the water main, and turned off the flow.

Then he ran upstairs, opened the closet, and found his dad’s Carhartt pants. He pulled them on, along with a pair of Sorels, then grabbed a hat and work gloves.

The cold could steal his breath with one swipe when he stepped outside. Snow pelted his face, knifed down his collar. The lamps lit a path to the cabins, and he crunched through the drifting snow as he ran toward cabin three, set off from the path, close to the lake.

The lights from the front windows streamed out over the deck, into the night, and he could hear yelling.

He scrambled up the stairs and threw open the door. “Darek?”

Oh no. Inside, water flooded the new wood laminate floor, the freshly laid Berber carpet, the source a waterfall cascading down the formerly pristine, ocher-painted walls.

“Up here!”

He didn’t bother with his boots, just slid across the floor to the pull-down attic stairs. “What can I do?”

“Did you shut off the water?”

“Yeah, but it has quite a way to travel from the house
 
—”

“Get me more towels!”

Towels. But Darek had emptied the bathroom, and the hall closet contained nothing, so Casper tromped into the bedroom and pulled off the blanket from the queen bed. He wadded it into a ball and climbed the stairs. “Here!”

A flashlight illuminated the attic space, bright and sharp, Darek straddling a pair of joists, wrapping a long pipe with towels. When he looked up, Casper handed him the blanket.

Darek took it, his jaw tight. “Thanks.”

The insulation seeped with water, and Casper could hear it trickling. “What happened?”

Darek turned to wrap the blanket around the pipe. “The pilot light went out, and I had to open the window to let out the propane and
 
—shoot, Casper, why didn’t you insulate this better?”

Huh? How was this his fault? “You’re putting this on me?”

Darek worked to wrap the pipe, his hands shaking. “I wish I could take off whenever I wanted. Search for treasure. I hope you struck it rich.”

Nice welcome home, Bro. “No.”

Darek finished wrapping the pipe. “Get me another blanket.”

Casper pursed his lips as he climbed down, ripped the next blanket off the bed. He handed that to Darek. “It’s not going to help. The insulation is already saturated. We’ll have to tear it all out, tear out the ceiling, the walls, put up new Sheetrock, replace the floor, the carpet
 
—”

“Shut. Up.” Darek raised his hand, not looking at him. “Just stop talking.”

Oh.

Darek was breathing hard, and now he leaned back. He wore a two-day beard, fatigue around his eyes. He looked at Casper, a chill in his expression.

And Casper got it. “This isn’t the first pipe broken, is it?”

Darek’s face hardened. “Cabin six.”

Oh. Now Casper really put the pieces together. “You
do
blame me.”

“I left on my honeymoon and asked you to finish insulating the pipes. I trusted you, Casper.”

His brother’s accusation felt like a blow to his Adam’s apple.

Darek climbed across the joists toward him. “It must be nice being a treasure hunter. At least then I’d have something to blame when I didn’t find gold.”

Casper stared at him, not sure how he should respond.

“How long are you sticking around?”

How long
 
—? “Why, is there a time limit?” Casper climbed down the stairs.

“I just want to know if we can count on you. I mean
 
—you get into a fistfight with Owen, then ditch everyone at the wedding, vanish for the better part of five months, and show up like everything’s fine?”

“Now? You want to have this conversation now?”

Darek followed him down the stairs. “I’m just saying, are you back, or is this another pit stop? You can’t have it both ways
 
—either you stick around or you don’t.”

“I don’t know, okay?” But as he watched Darek survey the damage, his face paling when he sank a foot into the pond that
used to be their carpet and the water pooled at the edges of the hand-tooled baseboards, a little heat went out of him. “I’m sticking around. At least until summer.”

Darek said nothing. He unwound his scarf, pulled off his hat, and tossed them onto the sofa. Sweat dribbled down the side of his face, his dark hair matted. “No lost treasure, huh?”

“No. I mean, yes, but
 
—it’s a long story.”

“Bummer. We could use a strike-it-rich moment right now.” His tone didn’t sound like he was kidding. He walked over to where a puddle formed on the floor from the ceiling drip. “Did you know that we’ve had the coldest winter on record so far, and it’s not even February yet?”

Casper went to the kitchen, pulled out a saucepan, handed it to him. “I swear to you I insulated those pipes, Darek. But it’s fifteen below outside
 
—pipes freeze at that temperature.”