Meeting Miss Mystic (30 page)

“When I first found Zoë on the datin’ website, there’d been another picture up of her smilin’ face, but I only saw it once before she took it down. You never saw it at all. When she walked into the Prairie Dawn with you on Saturday, I recognized her right away, but couldn’t place her immediately. I knew her, I just didn’t know from where. And then I watched her face as you talked about Miss Mystic. She squirmed in her seat and—I don’t know. I knew. I just knew it was her. I mean, she looks worlds different. The dark hair, dark eyes, the scar—”

“Her eyes are brown now. Did she lose her eye color in the accident too?” he asked acidly. “This is insane, Maggie.”

“They’re contacts,” Maggie told him. “She showed them to me.”

Paul’s jaw dropped, staring at Maggie, trying to process all of this information.

“She
showed
you her contacts? What the hell are you talking about?”

“I confronted her at the Prairie Dawn on Saturday night. When I gave her the scone, right before she left…I told her that I knew who she was. I was angry and suspicious of her, just like you are now. You knew somethin’ was up between us because I upset her and then I watched you chase after her, and I just—” She shrugged, looking like she might cry. “You already liked her. Zoë. I couldn’t tell you who she was because I was afraid you wouldn’t give her a chance.”

“And why should I?” he muttered.

Maggie ignored him. “I needed to be sure she wasn’t playin’ games with you or settin’ you up for a fall, so I went to her room at the Mountain View.”

“Wow,” he deadpanned. “Good thing I didn’t take a fall.”

Maggie shook her head, glancing up at him with sad eyes.

“I did what I thought was best,” she whispered. “There’s no guidebook for this situation.”

“You don’t say.” He clenched his jaw. “Keep going.”

“I asked her the same questions you’re askin’ me…why her hair and eyes were dark. The scar on her face. She told me about the accident. Told me she’d filled out that web profile a week before the accident and forgot to take it down. She said that when I wrote to her…Oh, Paul.” Maggie shook her head, looking away from him. Finally she composed herself and looked him right in the eyes when she continued. “She said it was like the sun comin’ out after two years of darkness. That you were just so wonderful. She said she tried to tell you several times that she wasn’t the same girl she’d been in the picture, but she couldn’t do it. She said she couldn’t risk losin’ you.”

He winced, exhaling, not even realizing he’d been holding his breath as Maggie was speaking. Her words felt like hope to him, like possibility and hope, but he pushed them away. He needed his anger right now. He needed to protect himself.

“It made her happy.
You
made her happy. So, she just pretended to be the girl in the picture. The girl she was before the accident. But when you told her you were comin’ for a visit, she panicked. She decided she should come out here and try to tell you the truth. But then she met you and she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t bear to hurt you or have you…reject her.”

Paul tented his hands in front of him and bent his head, resting his forehead on his hands.

“She’s in love with you,” Maggie said softly, and Paul’s eyes whipped up to lock onto hers. “She loves you. I asked her three times and she said yes every time. She was tellin’ the truth.”

He’d be lying if he said the words didn’t matter. They mattered. They were everything to him. But he only had a moment to enjoy them before his wary disappointment returned with crushing force. He scoffed bitterly.

“Telling the
truth
, Maggie? That’s a laugh.”

“Paul,” Maggie started, shaking her head. “Look in your heart. She’s the same person. Holly. Zoë. It’s just a name. Who she is, the woman who loves you, the woman you fell for…is
her
.”

He felt his anger slip away again until he was defenseless, emotionally naked, laid out and flayed open. Hopeful. Hurt. Longing. Oozing.

Hurt won. It didn’t matter that she told Maggie that she loved him because whatever she felt for him couldn’t be real if it was built on lies and deception. Not to mention, she’d told Maggie, not him. She hadn’t even trusted him enough to tell him the truth after meeting him. And it hurt so badly, he felt like his heart might stop beating and he’d just die. Right there on that beat-up picnic table.

“My mind is…blown. I just feel so—”
Sad. So fucking sad.

Maggie reached out and touched his arm. “I’m sorry.”

“For not telling me? For finding her in the first place? For knowing who she was three days before I did? For what, Maggie?”
What a fucking mess.

“For all of it.”

“It’s not your fault,” he said, covering her hand with his gently. “She deceived you too.”

“I don’t think that was her intention. I think it just…happened.”

“Lies don’t just happen. She knew what she was doing.” He shook his head back and forth, biting on his lower lip. “You know the weird thing? I was so worried that I was going to hurt one of them. Holly or Zoë. It never occurred to me I’d be the one taking a fall.”

“I think you’re lookin’ at it all wrong,” said Maggie gently.

“How’s that? What other way is there?”

“We all lie. In little ways. Sometimes in big ways. Sometimes outright. Sometimes,” she shrugged, moving her hands to her stomach, where they lay still, one over the other, “by omission. Think of what she’s been through. Think of why she did it. Maybe she felt you wouldn’t want her if she told you the truth. If you knew, she’d hurt you emotionally the way the accident had hurt her nephew physically. If you knew she lied about her life. If you knew she wasn’t sunny and perfect anymore. If you found out she wasn’t a teacher. You set the bar so high. She thought she’d lose you.”

“So, this is my fault?”

“No. Of course not. But give her a chance. Try to see it through her eyes.”

“Her brown eyes?”

“Her blue eyes. Her
real
eyes,” said Maggie gently. “Don’t you see? They’re still there. They’re just hidin’. She just wanted to get to know you.”

“That’s the problem, though, isn’t it? She got to know
me
, but I never got to know
her
. I have no idea who she is. She lied to me from the beginning. There’s nothing else to say.”

“She’s not perfect. Sometimes you have to hold things back. To protect yourself. To protect someone else,” Maggie said softly, intensely, more to herself than Paul.

“Well,
I
certainly wasn’t the one she protected,” said Paul, standing up and pulling his legs out from under the table.

“Are you so sure about that?”

“Yeah, I am. Because I’ve never hurt this badly in my life.”

Maggie’s face was unspeakably sad as she looked up at her friend. “She loves you, Paul. I’m sure of it.”

Paul winced. “
Who
loves me? I don’t even know who
she
is.”

Then he turned, walking away, leaving Maggie alone at the weather-beaten picnic table overlooking the rushing river.

Chapter 17

Zoë had opted to sit shotgun beside Nils in the van, but the beauty of Yellowstone blurred into a watercolor of blues, browns and greens as she stared out the window, biting on her nails, worry making her stomach roll around until she felt sick.

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 for her. 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…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 agony, looking 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. Would be a good idea for all of you ladies 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 found it impossible not to grin. They’d been hell on the older Mr. Lindstrom at every tourist stop, hanging on his every word, batting their eyelashes, holding onto 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, ladies. 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 from 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 hands 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, draw, 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 amongst themselves and dispersing towards 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 as she looked around. “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.”

Mr. Lindstrom was shaking his head and Zoë was pretty sure he hadn’t heard Nils. He 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?”