Infinite Harmony (15 page)

Ada was not in love.

She’d given it a lot of thought over the past few days, and on that one thing she felt very strongly. She was not in love with Joshua. She was still firmly in the love-is-a-plot-device camp. But dear sweet happy things, she liked him. A lot. More than a lot even. She liked him so much, her body practically vibrated with joy at the thought of him, which was often since she couldn’t seem to think of anything else.

“Ada.”

Her happy Joshua-tinted thoughts and journey out the door came to a screeching halt at the sound of her father’s voice. It had been three days since Marsden shared their most private moments with the world, or Timber First Baptist Church, which was pretty much the same thing to Ada. During the days that followed, her father had spoken to her so rarely, she could have counted the sentences on one hand. At first it was a blessing. She didn’t know what to say to him, and silence seemed preferable to a lecture. But then the silence had stretched on, and a sense of abandonment was creeping in.

“Yes, Daddy?” she said with equal parts relief and nerves. As much as she longed for things to return to normal, she feared what he might have to say.

“Do you have a minute?” He was sitting at the kitchen table, his Bible and various religious commentaries spread out in front of him as he worked on next Sunday’s message.

Ada looked at the grandfather clock swallowing the foyer. “Not much more than that,” she said, walking into the kitchen. “I’m supposed to be at work at four.” She debated on whether or not to take a seat at the table and decided standing was for the best. That way she could always turn around and run out the door quickly if things got too intense.

Reverend Jessup slid his reading glasses off his nose and laid them on top of his Bible as he massaged the indentation left by the nosepiece. “I hear you’ve already taken up with a new beau,” he said, cutting right to the chase in that weird, I-am-holier-than-you-because-I-use-Puritanical-words-like-beau way of his.

Ada stood in stunned silence. How could he know about Joshua? She’d seen him only twice since the day in her bedroom - the day he’d
kissed
her - and both of those times had been when she’d taken Kinsey to meet up with Angel somewhere. Kinsey had told Ada all the angst-ridden details of Angel’s long-suffering crush on Joshua, so Ada and Joshua kept their distance by an unspoken agreement, not wanting to traumatize the girl further, or fall victim to her ire.

At least, Ada hoped it was an unspoken agreement to spare Angel’s feelings keeping Joshua away. She supposed there could be other reasons, like being less than satisfied with their kissing experiment, but she chose to be an optimist.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ada lied, trying to keep her face neutral. “I’ve been grounded. Makes it kinda hard to start dating.” 

Some parents could have argued that internet relationships start up every five seconds, but since her parents had all of her account names and passwords and weren’t afraid to use them, there was no chance in Ada striking up a new relationship with someone online. If she had, she was sure her father wouldn’t have had to ask. There was no doubt her mother, whose entire life’s mission was reporting her children’s misdeeds to their father, had been stalking her online accounts since Saturday night. The only thing they let her keep private was her phone, which everyone who knew her knew. It was why it had been blowing up for the past few days while her social media accounts were as silent as her father’s condemnation.

“Mary England said she saw you with a boy at the drive-in the other night, and then again with the same boy at The Strip yesterday. Tall boy. Gangly. Big eyes.” He listed off Joshua’s features as if they were charges against him.

“Joshua?” She had to bite her tongue to not correct his assessment. Joshua wasn’t gangly, he was sinewy. And his eyes were big, but not in the dismissive way her father said it. They were like large brown orbs, the magic kind that could show you galaxies and faraway kingdoms if you looked close enough. “He’s a friend of the Donovans. Since they’re all weighed down with wedding stuff, he’s had to play chauffeur to Angel this week.”

Her explanation didn’t seem to alleviate any of her father’s concerns. If anything, it intensified them. For some reason, Reverend Jessup always disliked the older two Donovan siblings. He adored Angel like most adults tended to do, but he never had a kind word for her siblings. He used words like arrogant and reckless to describe them, but Ada thought it had more to do with the way neither of them appeared to give a crap what anyone, including her father, thought about them.

Reverend Jessup folded his hands together as if in prayer and then tucked them under his chin. “If he’s a friend of Jase and Scout Donovan, then he’s too old to be your friend, Ada.”

Ada smothered her giggle with a cough.

“Joshua is nineteen,” which was more or less true, “and it would be rude to ignore him. What am I supposed to do? Turn my nose up in the air when he talks to me?”

She tried to imagine how that would go. Anyone else would quickly label her a bitch and go on with their lives, but Joshua wouldn’t. Knowing him, he would just keep talking until she couldn’t take it anymore and talked back out of self-preservation.

A smile tickled the corners of her lips, and she quickly squashed it. When she was young, Ada thought her father could read minds. It took her years to realize it wasn’t her thoughts giving her away but her face. She spent hours staring at herself in the mirror, trying to learn how to school her expression for occasions when the absolute last thing she wanted was for her father to know what she was thinking. He didn’t need to know how every time she said Joshua’s name she remembered the way his body had felt under her roaming hands.

“Perhaps you should explain to this young man that you’re not interested in a relationship. It’s just as rude to lead someone on when you have no intention of getting involved.”

And just like that, he had her in a corner. Either she admitted to wanting to be involved with Joshua (which wasn’t going to happen), or she agreed to quit talking to him (which also wasn’t happening).

“I don’t think I need to make things awkward,” Ada said, grasping for a third option. “Joshua isn’t interested in dating me.” Which might have been true enough. It wasn’t like he’d ever asked her out on a date or anything. He’d merely told her he was falling in love with her against his will and then kissed her like he was trying to fuse their souls together with his lips and tongue. “We’re just killing time while Kinsey and Angel do their Kinsey and Angel thing.”

“That isn’t what your sister says.” Reverend Jessup leaned back in his chair, looking very much like a judge about to deliver a guilty verdict. “She says the boy is quite smitten with you. That he ‘follows you around like a love-sick puppy’ were her words.”

Ada opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Her brain was too busy coming up with ways to kill her sister and dispose of the body.

“I know I’ve kept you sheltered from people like this, but I can’t let you go on being so naive when it comes to boys, especially considering your reputation now,” her father continued. “When a boy knows that a girl has done what you’ve done, they assume certain things.” Ada’s murderous thoughts turned from her sister to her father. Or perhaps herself. “This Joshua person may seem like a nice guy who only wants to talk to you, but what he really wants is sex.”

Nope. No need to murder anyone. Ada was dying right then and there of humiliation and fury.

“That’s not fair.” She’d meant for it to be a bold, confident statement, but her throat was too clogged with the screams she was holding in. It came out as a strangled whisper instead.

Reverend Jessup raised his eyebrows. “To who? You? Or him?” He didn’t expect an answer, so Ada didn’t give one. She waited for him to continue with her fists clenched down to her side. “This is what happens when you make bad decisions, Ada. You pay the consequences. And in this instance, the consequences are boys will come to expect certain things from you. You can’t undo that now. All you can do is protect yourself.”

There were so many things she wanted to say to that, but she held them inside like she always did. The only purpose they could serve was to further upset her father and create an even bigger rift between them, and no matter what she might tell everyone else, she was dying. Not today or tomorrow, or probably even next year, but the odds were on her parents having to watch her slide off this mortal plane. Her illness had already put them through more than any parent should have to endure, and her death would destroy them. She knew it in the marrow of her being. She wasn’t going to add to their burden with her opinions that were so different from their own. She’d caused enough trouble by being born sick. There wasn’t any way to make up for it, but she tried by being the daughter they wanted instead of the person she was.

“I’ll pray for His guidance,” she finally said, a tear escaping at the pain the lie caused her heart. Her father interpreted it differently, however, and came to wrap his arms around her.

“I know you’ll find your way,” he murmured into her hair. “We all make missteps from time to time. But don’t worry. God knows your heart.”

By the time Ada extracted herself from her father’s well-meaning arms, she was running late for work. It was ten minutes past the time she was scheduled to start when she slid her timecard into the archaic machine. Jo made a few remarks about how her son would be in tears by the time she finally got to the daycare, but no one was there to write her up, so she considered it a win.

Since the entire resort was filled with wedding guests who had arrived days ago, there wasn’t a whole lot to be done. Ada ran a few daily reports and handled a phone call from a distraught woman with a strong Slavic accent who couldn’t figure out how to adjust the air conditioning in her room, but by 5:30 she was out of things to do. She had been watching clips of old Elton John concerts on YouTube for nearly four hours when her phone buzzed with an incoming message.

Ada’s hand hovered an inch over her phone. Most of the gossipy texts had stopped, but the unknown number with a mouth like a sailor and a strong dislike of Ada had sent a handful of messages over the past few days. Most of them just called her a variety of unflattering names, but there was the occasional threat thrown in to keep things interesting. She tried not to let them bother her, but it was one of those tasks which sounded much easier than it was in practice.

Curiosity finally got the best of her, and she flipped her phone over to see Joshua’s name. Her heart gave a little happy lurch as she read, “If you keep frowning like that you’re going to give yourself wrinkles.” She tried to pinpoint his location, but there wasn’t any place where someone could see her without her being able to see them.

“Where are you?” she typed back.

“My bed. Do you want to know what I’m wearing?” She had no more than read the message when an image file came through. It was a headless selfie of Joshua’s Dead Kennedys shirt and hibiscus-printed board shorts.

“Sexy,” she sent before adding, “Do YOU want to know what I’M wearing?”

She had to wait a few minutes for his reply, but when it came through it said, “No need. I’ve hacked into the surveillance videos. Save me one of those donuts. I’ll be over in 15.”

Ada looked at the package of powdered donuts she’d salvaged from the vending machine and then up at the video camera pointing directly down at her. She knew he was some sort of tech god, but he couldn’t really hack into the security system, could he?

She grabbed a piece of paper out of the copy machine, wrote “Good thing the desk is hiding the fact I’m naked from the waist down,” with a Sharpie, and flashed it at the camera. Five seconds later, she got a message saying, “Make that 5.”

Six and a half minutes later, the front door swung open.

“Miss Jessup, a pleasure,” Joshua said as he jumped up on the check-in counter.

Ada tried to push him back down onto the floor. “Get down,” she admonished. “You’re going to get me fired.”

Joshua leaned further over into the employees-only area, his gaze traveling down her body. “Khakis. You’re wearing khakis.” He slid off the counter with a pout. “You’re a tease, Ada Jessup. A lowdown, dirty, no good, rotten tease.”

She knew it was just playful banter, but it was so strikingly close to what her father had said earlier his words stung instead of amused.

“Serves you right,” she said a little too harshly. “What kind of weirdo stalker hacks into a security system to spy on someone? Not cool, Grandpa.”

“Grandpa?” Joshua slapped his hands over his chest and staggered back a few steps. “Ouch. Right through the heart.”

One corner of Ada’s mouth tugged upwards. She narrowed her eyes and tapped a finger against her chin as if in deep thought. “Grandpa Stalker,” she decided. “That’s your new sidekick name.”

Joshua ambled back toward her and leaned over the counter, propping himself up on his elbows. The neckline of his t-shirt hung down, and Ada found herself unable to tear her eyes away from the hollow place at the base of his throat. She wasn’t sure she’d ever noticed that particular part of a guy’s anatomy before. It was ridiculously attractive. It practically begged someone to put their lips there.

“First of all,” Joshua said, “I’m not old. I’ve merely been around for a while. And secondly, I wasn’t stalking.”

Ada did something with her forehead that she hoped resembled a single raised eyebrow. “What exactly do you call it?”

“Recon. I was simply looking to see if you were working tonight and got distracted by how darn cute you are.”

Unable to meet his eyes after a comment like that, Ada focused on his hands, which were splayed just inches in front of her on the counter. It was weird how different his man-hands were from hers. They were longer and wider. The knuckles were bigger, and blue veins bulged from the surface. Man hands. They were really quite ugly, or at least, they should have been. Ada found she was quite fond of man-hands.

“Unless you were distracted by how adorable the blurry mass on the screen you assumed was me based on size and hair color was, I’m not buying it,” she said. “I’ve seen security footage from this place before. Our cameras suck.”

Joshua nodded his agreement. “True. Your cameras are wretched, but my software isn’t. It takes all those blurry, pixelated images and turns them into crisp, HD works of art.” He leaned in. “I’m kind of a genius,” he whispered as if it was some big secret.

Ada knew she shouldn’t smile, it would only encourage his outrageous behavior and give him an even bigger head than he already had, but she couldn’t help it. There was something about him, something warm and full of energy, that filled her with joy, even when she thought there was nothing joyful left in the world.

“So you keep telling me,” she said. Of course, he’d shown her, too. There was now an app on her phone that measured her lung capacity anytime she spoke into the microphone. He’d downloaded it the other day while they played miniature golf with Kinsey and Angel. It wasn’t until he made her test it a few times that she realized he’d invented the app himself, and seemingly overnight. He might have been a little cocky, but there was a reason. He really was that good.

A large black SUV drove past the main lodge. Usually a car that big and expensive would have grabbed Ada’s attention and caused several minutes speculation on who it was and how they’d made that much money, but in the last week $80,000 vehicles had become commonplace at Serenity Shores. It seemed the Donovan-Cole wedding guests were keeping the Land Rover and Escalade dealerships afloat all by themselves. Joshua watched the vehicle drive by before pulling out his phone and tapping on the screen.

“Running the plates?” Ada asked.

The corners of Joshua’s mouth tugged up in a don’t-I-look-oh-so-innocent-grin. “Now, why on earth would I do something like that?”

Ada could only smile and shake her head in return. In truth, she had no idea why Joshua would be running the plates of a car entering the resort, but she didn’t doubt it was exactly what he was doing. She still didn’t buy into his werewolf story, but something was definitely up. Everyone who worked at the resort talked about it. Kathy was full of theories, her favorite involving the Russian mafia and a Mexican drug ring.

Of course, Ada wasn’t buying either of those theories either. How could she when Joshua was pointing out small proofs of God’s existence everywhere they went? He was completely serious about the whole being an angel thing, and she couldn’t imagine an angel committing horrible crimes.

The buzz of a vibrating phone snagged Ada’s attention, and her stomach gave a familiar lurch. Not for the first time, she thought about showing the messages to Joshua and asking him to figure out who was behind them. It would probably be easy for him. A few pressed buttons and a swipe of the screen, and he would say, “Ah. Here it is. The culprit was old Mr. Magoo, the factory owner, in a mask. No monsters here.” A few minutes, and it would be over. She could confront the asshat who had been terrorizing her for the past few days and sleep easier at night. Yet she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t stomach the idea of Joshua knowing someone was sending her such nasty texts. What if he thought she was being a silly, overdramatic girl for letting them upset her? What if he thought she deserved them?

No. He wouldn’t think that. Her father and the rest of Lake County might think of her as a horrible person, but not Joshua.

Still, though, she couldn’t pick up her phone and hand it over.

Her hand was inching toward her phone - curiosity finally starting to overtake fear - when Joshua finally pocketed his own phone and once again sprawled over the check-in desk. “So, I was thinking,” he said as she snatched her hand back like a kid reaching for the cookie jar. “There is this thing on Friday night. Like a music thing. And I know you like music—”

His thought was interrupted by the front door slamming open. It was like the sun had emerged from the middle of the night to prance into the lobby. Angel liked to play around with clothes and make-up, and from the looks of it, she’d spent hours carefully constructing her current look.

Ada had seen the yellow sundress the younger girl was wearing before, but it had hung to a respectable right-below-the-knee length at the time. The hemline was now hanging somewhere just below her butt cheeks. Part of the missing material was now serving duty as a headband, and another section had been used to re-cover the thong part of a pair of flip-flops.

Her make-up was so flawlessly applied the casual observer might think she wasn’t wearing much. They would probably also think she could legally order a beer. The slight tilt she’d given to her eyes, the chiseled illusion she’d given her cheekbones, and the berry-colored stain on her lips weren’t something you would normally associate with a middle school kid. Her eyes were the most spectacular of all. The way she’d blended the various shades of oranges and yellows looked like something out of a fashion magazine.

There was no mistaking the sway she tried to put into her step as she sauntered over to stand by Joshua. If Ada was being perfectly honest about the situation, the kid was better at the whole sexily-twitching-hips thing than she was. She wanted to be annoyed with her for being so obvious about trying to sway the attention of the boy Ada was very much interested in, and she was a little, but mostly she was just happy to see she’d come out of the glum defeated depression she’d been in for the past few days. Angel Donovan was a lot of things, but morose wasn’t normally one of them. The world didn’t seem quite right if Angel wasn’t loudly and expertly commanding the attention of everyone around her.

“Angela Sophia Donovan,” Joshua said, standing up so he could peer down his nose at her. It was a good thing she was leaning on the counter. Joshua was fairly tall, probably over six foot, but if Angel had been standing at her full height he wouldn’t have more than a couple of inches on her. “What in the hell do you think you’re doing here? You’re supposed to be in your parents’ cabin.”

“Ummm… Hello. You’re not the boss of me.”

Did younger siblings of the world pass that line down, one to the other, or was it an inherent part of their vernacular?

Joshua’s wide mouth constricted to a tiny slash. “Actually, I am. Scout assigned me to you.”

“Yeah. That really matters.” Angel executed a perfect eye roll, which finally made her look her real age. “Scout isn’t the boss of me either.”

“Scout is the boss of everyone. Including you.”

“I don’t turn furry, and I don’t have visions, so no, Scout is
not
the boss of me, thank you very much,” Angel said.

While she was talking, Angel quit leaning against the counter and jumped up to sit on the edge of it instead. The new position made her practically nonexistent skirt ride up even further. Joshua quickly averted his eyes, horror etched on his face.

“You need to go home and put on some pants,” he told her while looking at the ceiling.

Angel snorted. “You don’t get to tell me what to wear either.”

Joshua shot Ada a pleading look. “A little help here?”

“Sorry,” Ada said, “but the feminist living inside my heart says you have no right to tell a woman what she can and cannot wear.” His face crumbled, and because couldn’t bear disappointing him, she added, “But you’re going to have to get your butt off my counter, Angel.”

Angel made a whining noise, but slid down to the floor. It was a good thing Joshua decided to close his eyes for that part since Ada got a peek at a pair of Wonder Woman panties as Angel dismounted.

Once she was firmly planted on the ground with her dress back to rights, Joshua wheeled on her, his eyes hard. “I don’t care who you think is or isn’t the boss of you,” he said, his voice firm and not holding any of its usual teasing tone, “you’re not to walk around by yourself. It’s dangerous.”

“Dangerous. Riiiiight,” Angel said, flipping a strand of hair over her shoulder. “If anyone so much as looks at me wrong Scout is going rip their throat out.”

Ada wasn’t going to start believing in this werewolf nonsense. Really, she wasn’t. But not believing in it was making this conversation really difficult.

“You’re right. She will. But it won’t really matter if you’re already dead.” Joshua’s fists were balled at his sides. Veins bulged out from his arms. “There are bad guys in this world, munchkin, and some of them are walking around this resort with smiles on their faces while seeking out the Alphas’ weak spot.” His mouth turned up, the smile almost cruel. “Where exactly do you think they might find that weak spot?”