Remember to Forget (29 page)

B
y nine o’clock the inn was eerily quiet. All the guests had checked out, and Bart and Wren had gone off to church. Main Street outside the windows was like a ghost town—every window bearing a Closed sign, and not a car in sight on the street.

Nothing had changed about her room with its cheery blue and white prints and sunshine streaming in her window, but Maggie was overcome with loneliness. She felt it even more than in the apartment in New York. Here in Clayburn, Kansas—instead of the usual city traffic and the wail of sirens that was background music to her solitude—the only sounds were the twittering of birds outside her window. Even though Bart and Wren had done their best to coax her into attending church with them this morning, she felt somehow abandoned by them. As much as it terrified her to think of setting foot inside a church building, she almost wished she’d accepted their invitation.

She wondered if Trevor was in church right now. She felt certain he was. And it struck her that, for him, she might just be persuaded to darken the door.

M
onday morning dragged on forever with more than the usual wrenches in the works of the print shop. It seemed to Trevor that a hundred little jobs had popped up overnight. He might have been happy for the work, except that none of it was big-ticket stuff, and most of it was mere busywork—collating a printed-in-office manual for a manufacturing firm in Salina, corrections on a poster Mason had fouled up in the press, and other odds and ends of the business.

Trevor was anxious to be done with his day here and get to the inn. He felt like a high-school kid, worrying that Meg might have finished
her part of the painting and quit for the day. But he didn’t want to miss her. Besides being a big help to him, she made the hours fly by. And the laughter they shared seemed to extend into his evening, keeping his emotional metabolism burning long after he’d left her presence.

He remembered that she’d planned to continue her job search this morning, and he hoped it would take her the better part of the day. But then she might be too tired to paint tonight.

He couldn’t quit thinking about her. Wondering what her story was. He was certain now that she wasn’t being up front with him—or with anybody in Clayburn for that matter. But she’d been hurt. She’d admitted that much, and he was willing to give her an out while she healed. He’d spent the last two years in similar shoes. He knew all too well how painful the healing process could be. Yet, though Meg admitted to lying, he didn’t think of her as a liar. He sensed that Meg’s stories served to make her feel safe. To protect her from whatever it was that threatened her. He found himself fiercely protective whenever he thought about whoever or whatever had caused her to run away from wherever home was.

Finally the clock in the front office ticked to four, and he extricated himself from the pressroom and drove across the street to park in front of Wren’s. He hauled his toolbox out of the back and headed inside.

Meg was already on a ladder in the dining room. She was wearing his flannel shirt, sleeves rolled up, and her hair was tucked into a navy bandana he recognized as Bart’s. She had her back to him, and the wall she was painting was two-thirds finished.

“Hey you. You’re making some serious progress there.”

She twisted on the ladder to face him, and her pleased smile reminded him why he’d been looking forward to this job all day. “I hope you don’t mind if I took over your job.”

“No problem.” He grabbed a paintbrush and started trimming in the corner of the wall adjacent to the one she was working on.

Wren appeared in the doorway. “How’s it going in here? Do you two
need to take a snack break? I baked cookies this morning.”

“I just got here,” Trevor said. “But Meg’s apparently been here for a while. I guess, if forced, I could take a snack break for her sake.”

Wren affected a chastening, motherly glare. “Watch it, buster.”

He winked at Meg and dipped his paintbrush in the can, laughing with her.

Wren steepled her hands beneath her chin and turned 360 degrees, surveying the room. “It’s looking great in here.”

“Did Meg talk to you about the border, Wren?”

Meg’s paint roller stilled. She looked from him to Wren and shook her head. “Not yet.”

“What’s this?” Curiosity sparked in Wren’s eyes.

“Meg suggested instead of wallpaper, you might like a hand-painted border—something similar to stenciling.”

Wren’s eyes narrowed.

“Who would do the painting?”

Trevor studied the misgiving in her expression. Did she think he was suggesting Jack could do the painting? He hastened to put her mind at ease. “Meg worked for a graphic-arts firm. She’s done this type of thing before.”

“Well, I’ve only tried stenciling once,” Meg demurred. “But I was thinking of doing this freehand. I did some sketches last night, and I think they turned out pretty nice.”

Wren’s face softened. “Well, let’s see them.”

“I don’t want you to feel obligated. They’re only sketches. Bart gave me some colored pens from the front desk, but they’re not exactly the colors I was thinking would look best in here, so you’ll have to use your imagination.”

Trevor moved to take the paint roller from her hand. “Go get them. Let’s take a look.”

She climbed down and practically ran through the lobby to her room.

Wren eyed him. “You put her up to this, didn’t you, Mr. Ashlock? You never did like the idea of me putting up wallpaper.”

He held up a hand in defense. “It was the idea of
me
putting up wallpaper that I wasn’t crazy about.”

Wren chuckled.

“But this was Meg’s idea . . . honest.” He gave a guilty shrug. “I might have encouraged her a little.”

Meg returned with several sheets of copy paper. She spread them out on the lone table that remained in the room after they’d moved the others to the lobby for Saturday’s guests. Her face was lit up with joy. Her hands flew over the paper as she showed Wren what she had in mind.

Trevor was relieved to see she had real talent. The simple, scrolled floral design she proposed fit the inn’s quaint architecture perfectly. And her craftsmanship was meticulous.

Wren looked from the papers to the archway, squinting. “I like it. I like it a lot. How long do you think it would take to finish?”

Meg rested her chin on her fist, thinking. “Probably three or four days. I’ll need to let the paint dry on a couple of different layers before I can finish. And it’ll depend on how many hours Mr. Linder can give me.”

Wren gave Trevor a look that said, “Do something!”

He cleared his throat. “You’re going to work for him for sure?”

Meg smiled. “I talked to him after lunch, and he wants me to start first thing in the morning. It’s a good thing. I bombed out everywhere else I went. But that’s why I wanted to get as much done here as I could this afternoon.”

Wren gathered Meg’s sketches and tamped them into a neat sheaf. “Why don’t you take these back to your room so they don’t get ruined? I love your idea, and I’d like to commission you to do the work.”

Trevor tensed. Money was tight for the Johannsens, especially with business slower than it had been in years. He’d been hesitant to even accept the remodeling job until he realized Bart and Wren were
determined to have it done. At least he could charge them a more reasonable rate than the exorbitant amount Buddy Rollenmeyer up at the lumberyard had quoted.

Wren went on, her hand on Meg’s arm. “I don’t know what you charge for a job like this, but you’ll stay here for free until it’s finished.”

Meg’s eyes grew round. “Really? Oh, that’s wonderful!” She gave Wren a spontaneous hug, then backed away, seeming embarrassed by the show of affection. “The room will be more than enough pay, Wren. I can’t thank you enough.”

“You already have. You tuck those drawings safely away now.”

As soon as Meg was out of earshot, Wren turned to Trevor, her voice wobbly. “I feel like I need to say something to her, Trevor. Jack is . . . well, he’s just Jack. But for Bart’s sake, I don’t want to go into all the . . . well, you know. Still, I don’t feel right letting Meg get involved in that mess.” Wren nodded in the general direction of Jack’s gallery.

“Have you said anything to Jack?”

He was sorry the minute the words were out. Of course she hadn’t. As far as he knew, Jack hadn’t darkened Wren’s door for almost two years. Wren could have blamed him—Trevor—for that. Jack probably
did
blame him. But Trevor had made his peace with his place in Bart and Wren’s lives long ago, and he wouldn’t rehash that now.

“I’m sorry, Wren. You do what you think is right. But maybe this will be a good thing. Meg seems rather worldly wise.”

“She’s been hurt. She hasn’t talked to me about it, but I see the signs. I know she needs a job—heaven knows I wish Bart and I could give her one—but I don’t want her to be hurt again.”

He shook his head slowly. “I know. I know.”

He didn’t want to see Meg get hurt either. But there was enough trouble between Wren and Jack, and this situation wasn’t going to make it any better. And Jack—well, he’d been hurting for a long time, and he didn’t seem ready to find any relief for it.

Trevor huffed out a sigh. He’d faulted Meg for being evasive about
her past, for hiding behind what he suspected were flat-out lies. But the truth was, he and Wren harbored their own secrets. Innocently, each lovingly protecting the other—and Jack. But Meg would walk into a potential catastrophe if they didn’t clue her in and soon.

An old heaviness invaded his heart. He was glad Amy would never know all the sorrow that had seeped into the world because her car had just happened to be on that particular stretch of highway at the wrong time.

Had Wren and Trevor been wise to her lies all along?

Chapter Thirty-Two

W
hen Maggie walked back into the dining room, an awkward silence pervaded the room. Trevor was suddenly preoccupied with putting a third coat of paint on the corner he’d been trimming, and Wren darted over to the kitchenette and started swabbing already-spotless countertops.

Maggie looked from one to the other, but both refused to make eye contact. They’d been talking about her, that much was obvious.

Had she said something earlier that gave her away? Or had Wren and Trevor been wise to her lies all along? She suspected as much. She’d tripped up too many times. Even though, since Trevor had brought her back from the bus stop, she’d tried to make her lies ones of omission only, she’d become too practiced at the art of falsehood. Maybe Wren had
decided she couldn’t trust her living and working under the inn’s roof.

Wren hurriedly gathered linens from pegs in the kitchen—towels Maggie knew were clean that morning—and backed from the room. “I have laundry to do,” she said. “You two holler if you need anything.”

No mention of the snack she’d offered a few minutes ago.

“So . . . what was that all about?” She felt brave because Trevor’s back was to her. “My ears were itching.”

“Huh?”

She shrugged. “Just an old wives’ tale. If your ears itch, someone must be talking about you.”