Fix You (18 page)

             
He held her gaze a moment, thinking…she-didn’t-know-what, his expression hard to read. “How’s your foot?” he asked again in an insistent, but gentle voice. She was so used to coldness and snapping…she didn’t know what to make of the way he spoke to her most of the time.

             
“It hurts,” she admitted, voice quiet with embarrassment. “I can’t believe I did that.”

             
“I can’t believe you took it so well,” he countered, and her irritation spiked.

             
She had not taken it well, she didn’t think; she should have been more careful in the first place. When she didn’t return his smile – and was this guy serious? Did he think he was charming or something? – he turned back to his task again.

             
“I picked something up for you at lunch. It’s in your room.”

             
Jess didn’t like the thought of him in her room – with her things, her clothes and her bed and all her benign little personal items. She watched his profile as he stapled, searching for some sign of contrition, but he gave her none. Stifling a half a dozen rude questions about his sense of propriety, she reminded herself that he’d already been in her room – Saturday, while she’d done her hair and makeup and explained her charts to him – and she hadn’t booted him out then; he probably thought he had free rein. She thumped toward the open door of her bedroom, very aware of how loud her irregular steps sounded in the empty kitchen, and went to her bed, toward the plastic shopping bag sitting on top of her mint comforter.

             
The steel toe, steel shank Timberland work boots she unwrapped were a practical gift. There was nothing inappropriate or suggestive about a pair of boots that, after today, she obviously needed. But she knew they hadn’t been cheap, and she knew she detested the thought of a man buying her gifts. Dylan had provided her with all manner of superficial things – and then he’d taken them all away, along with his love, loyalty and affection. Gifts were not to be trusted. Gifts were
bribes
.

             
Suddenly, she was
furious
.

             
Snatching the boots up by their laces, she hobbled to the door and propped a shoulder against it, glaring a hole through Chris’s wide shoulders. “How much did you spend on these?” she asked, and the words came out with even more bite than she’d intended.

             
He didn’t improve her mood when he gave her the slow-turn, raised-eyebrow move, like he couldn’t believe she was asking him such a thing. His eyes moved over her face. “It doesn’t matter,” he said dismissively.

             
Jess ground her teeth together. “How much?”

             
“Five bucks,” he lied, and put his back to her again.

             
“I know what you’re doing.”

             
“Insulating your kitchen?” he guessed.

             
“Being a
stupid man
.” Her hands shook, her skin feeling feverish with angry energy. “If you think that you can buy me food and buy me shoes - ”

             
“Oh, wow,” Jo’s voice cut her off. She stepped into the kitchen and took a slow turn. “You work fast,” she said to Chris.

             
Yes he does
, Jess thought with an inward snarl.

             
He turned to Jo, and as Jess watched, he launched into the same explanation he’d given her only moments before, sans the imploring gazes and smiles. With friendly, peppy, tomboy Jo, he was all business. But with her own businesslike self, he was a flirtatious idiot.

             
Bastard
.

             
Jess went back to her bed, boxed up the boots, put them back in the shopping bag, and carried them out to Chris who was still talking about drywall with Jo. “Here,” she interrupted them, thrusting the bag between them. “I can’t accept these. Take them back, please.”

             
His eyes went to the offered bag, then to her face, and for once, he wasn’t smiling. All the amused tolerance that normally sparkled in his eyes was gone, replaced by something harder and sharper that reminded her, suddenly, that he was a military man, and not a soft civilian. “Why?” His voice hadn’t changed, but everything else about him had, and her indignation started to fade, replaced by caution. “So you can step on a nail next?”

             
Jo smothered a chuckle with her hand and Jess gave her sister a sharp look; Jo’s bright eyes revealed she’d figured out what was going on. Apparently, it was hilarious.

             
Jess turned back to Chris, putting on her bravest, haughtiest face. “I don’t accept gifts,” she said. “I’ll buy myself some boots.”

             
She thought, for a moment – as a muscle in his jaw ticked – that he meant to yell at her. But he was calm as he said, “I’ll put them on your invoice.”

             
She wasn’t sure if she’d expected more of a fight…or if she’d wanted more of one. Either way, she’d won, so she had to be fair about it. She gave a sharp nod. “Fine.”

             
She had turned away from him, feeling dissatisfied with her victory, when he said, “Put them on,” in a tone that was an order.

             
Jess spun as best she could with her lame foot, saw Jo’s shocked, silent laughter; saw his unsmiling, authoritative gaze glued to her.

             
She decided she hated Chris Haley.

**

              Chris left at five-thirty, the kitchen ready for electrical and drywall the next day. They made dinner, Jo burning everything she touched but insisting she wanted to help. Tam came home. They ate, all five of them, at the tiny table in the cottage. Jess spent an hour working on letters and numbers with Tyler, then tucked him into bed with a story, a kiss, and a promise that the shifting groans and creak of the massive house were not caused by monsters or ghosts of any kind. Then she took two Tylenol for her foot, picked up a half-empty bottle of Pinot and went to sit on the back steps in the blessed, cooling dark of night.

             
Her punctured foot still throbbed, beating with her pulse, looking small inside its bandage now that she’d changed into flip-flops. She wiggled her red-polished toes and sighed, let the day’s tension go bleeding out of her body. Without the rigid structure of tense muscles and squared shoulders, she was just a jumble of churning emotions, and that was a terrible feeling.

             
She uncorked the wine and took a long pull straight from the bottle, catching stray drops off her chin with the back of her hand.

             
The house – this great, injured, monster of a house – was too big a burden. When she added her contractor into the mix, it became even heavier. All she’d wanted was a fresh start. A sense of accomplishment. A retreat from the pretend life she’d lived for so long. Why was Chris trying to make that so difficult? Why couldn’t he just –

             
A rustling sound drew her attention. Breath catching, she glanced out across the shadowed back lawn. Moonlight hit the glass surface of the lake and it shone like ice; but between the water and the step where she sat, a long stretch of overgrown yard and encroaching tree line provided cover for whatever had disturbed the night.

             
It was most likely a fox. Or a raccoon. Or a rabbit. It could have been any number of wild animals – anything from a deer to a coyote. It probably –

             
She heard it again, louder this time. Closer. Somewhere off to her right, just beyond the reach of the glowing panels of light the cottage windows threw across the grass.

             
It’s just an animal
, she told herself, eyes straining through the dark, trying to catch a reassuring glimpse of fur. But her pulse accelerated, a wild thumping in her ears, as whatever it was started to move, tracking toward the lake with slow, steady, rustling footfalls. It sounded larger than a possum or raccoon. A branch snapped and she
knew
it was larger than that. She’d convinced herself it was a deer when it slid between her and her view of the vivid blue surface of the lake. Jess stifled a gasp.

             
Its silhouette was limned by the glowing water behind it.

It
was a man.

             
Ignoring her poor abused foot, Jess bolted up off the steps and scrambled into the kitchen, slamming the door and locking it behind her. She clutched the wine bottle to her chest, shaking, and watched through the window panes of the door as the man slipped out of sight again.

             
Oh my God. Oh my God…

             
Flip-flops loud on the hardwood, uneven footsteps echoing against bare walls, she walked through her empty, shadowed haunted house to the front door to check that it was locked. It was. But the fine hairs on the back of her neck would not lie flat.

             
Hands on the window panes, the room black and terrifying around her, she peered out at her front yard, at the shadows dancing across the moon-silvered grass, and searched for ghosts that weren’t there.

13

             
J
ess made the mistake of telling her sister about their backyard creeper the next morning at breakfast.

             
They were at the dilapidated old picnic table beside the cottage with the kids, waiting on Ellie and Chris to arrive before the day could begin, both of them dressed for work, Jess sipping coffee while everyone else dug into Eggos.

             
Jo paused in the act of drizzling more syrup onto her plate, big eyes going saucer wide. “Excuse me?” she asked. “There was a – and you didn’t come tell us? Or call us? Or - ”

             
“What would you have done?” Jess asked. “Sicced Tam and a flashlight on him?”

             
“Well,
yes
!”

             
“It was probably just some drunk stumbling home,” Jess reasoned, though she hadn’t been able to fall asleep for hours the night before, staring at the ceiling and listening, psyching herself out.

             
“Stumbling home from where?” Jo scoffed. “An imaginary lakeside bar?”

             
“It could have been a kid,” Jess said, feeling braver in the warm morning sunlight. She took a sip of coffee. “Some teenager slinking around looking for stuff to steal.”

             
Jo rolled her eyes.

             
“Was it the boogeyman, Mama?” Tyler asked. He’d barely touched his breakfast, and with sudden horror, Jess realized she’d completely forgotten how inappropriate it was to bring this up in front of her six-year-old. She was the worst mother ever.

             
“No, baby,” she soothed, while inwardly she flayed herself. She reached up to smooth a stubborn lock of his short dark hair. “It was just a regular man. He was probably lost.”

             
Tyler wasn’t at all convinced, and stared at her.

             
She sighed. “Go wash up before Aunt Ellie gets here,” she said gently, and he was so shaken by the prospect of boogeymen that he obeyed without a fuss, heading toward the main house.

             
“I’m telling Tam,” Jo announced when he was out of earshot.

             
“Don’t,” Jess said over the rim of her mug, and her sister’s brows shot up.

             
“Remember when, once upon a time, you told me I needed to tell him about my stalker? Remember how I didn’t? Remember how that turned out?”

             
There was no arguing with that.

             
“Like I said: I’m telling Tam.”

             
“Telling me what?” The man in question had materialized behind his wife, his approach unheard, and now looked expectantly between them. Jess couldn’t get used to him in a suit and tie; she found him much more attractive this way – fitted navy jacket and slacks and red tie – but he didn’t look like himself.

             
“Jess saw some guy creeping around back there last night,” Jo said with a wave toward the back of the property.

             
Jess looked at Tam, watched the fire that flared in his blue eyes, then watched it cool a fraction as he reminded himself that his father was dead; whatever she’d seen, it wasn’t, in his estimation, as frightening as Hank Wales. She’d seen him intense – had seen him murderous – but that look hadn’t ever been turned on her.

             
“Where exactly,” he asked, voice now tight, “did you see him?”