What the Heart Needs (23 page)

They stood in front of an old wooden town sign, painted white with blue and silver bold script lettering. Stars Landing.

Elliott was never one to think to think much about childhoods. He never had much of one himself. But there was Hannah, a happy, fingerpaint-covered kid with two proud looking parents. He wondered what she had been like. A girly girl or a tomboy. Someone who spent her days inside with books and crafts or ran out with the kids in the neighboorhood building forts and chasing balls. He could see her as both honestly. She had the brain of someone who read a lot. And from the looks of her father, it was an inherited trait. But there was a wild-child, hippy, carefree look to her mother that spoke of outdoors and community.

He shook his mind from his reverie and grabbed the papers from the printer tray. He told Sally to cancel his plans that he was going to be out of the office for the rest of the day. And, despite his better judgement, he drove to the home address on her employment forms.

It was a dated red-front brick building in a neighborhood just sketchy enough for him to be more aware of his surroundings but not bad enough for him to worry about his car or check for his wallet. The front door had buzzers and he tried hers twice before he realized the front door wasn’t even locked. It wasn’t exactly the safest place for a single, attractive woman to live.

Her apartment was a few floors up in the middle of a hallway. He knocked rapidly on her door, listening for any sounds of life inside. But there was nothing. No movement. No television. Nothing. She wasn’t there.

To his right a door opened and a elderly woman with salt-and-pepper hair and keen blue eyes popped her head into the hallway. “You looking for her,” she asked, her face pinched in concern. “Who are ya? I know she don’t have a boyfriend.”

Elliott tried to offer a less cross face, his lip hinting upward at the side. Just enough to look friendly but not seem like he was putting on a show. “No. I’m her employer,” he supplied and noticed the woman’s wariness ease a bit. “I got a note that she wasn’t going to be back for two weeks but she left no reason why. I was concerned.”

“Ah,” the woman said, stepping into the hall halfway in her lavender colored sweatpants and white sweatshirt. A small gold cross hung from her neck. “Yeah it was weird. She’s usually so quiet. But as soon as she got in last night, all I heard was noise. And then I heard her door open real early this morning. I was up, I don’t really sleep much anymore. And so I got up and looked out and there she was in the hallway with a few bags and a couple cups of coffee. Looked like she was going on a roadtrip somewhere.”

“Hmm,” Elliott said, trying to sound nonchalant. “that’s odd. Alright, well thanks for your time. If she comes back, please tell her to give me a call,” he said, automatically reaching for a business card and handing it to her. “I just want to make sure she’s alright.”

But he wasn’t going to wait for the nosey neighbor to phone him and tell him she had finally returned home. He needed to find her. He needed to set things straight. To get all this stuff off his mind, to get her out of his mind, so he could focus.

Without giving it much thought, he packed a bag, told Sally to cancel his plans for the next week and got in his car.

He didn’t have much to go on. But a quick internet search of Stars Landing gave him the general location of a very small town in rural Pennsylvania. Chances were her parents still lived there. He couldn’t imagine why one would live in a small town their whole lives and then move in their forties or fifties.

It had been well after five when he finally got onto the road. And he was in for many long, grueling hours of bright headlights ahead of him. He hit traffic as soon as he crossed over into Jersey and was stuck in bumper-to-bumper until almost eight o’clock at night.

By the time his GPS told him he needed to take a right and then a left and he would be at his destination, it was deep in the dark hours of morning. He cursed, rubbing his sleep-deprived eyes and following the instructions. Then he saw it. The same white sign with blue and silver writing.

Welcome to Stars Landing.

He worried, perhaps a bit too late, what the hell he was thinking. He should have found a hotel in one of the busier towns he had passed through. He certainly wouldn’t be finding Hannah at that hour. What were the chances that a town like this had a place open that he could stay at?

He had been driving through hills and fields for hours before even pulling into Hannah’s hometown. He hadn’t been prepared for how small of a town this was. It was straight out of 1930’s rural America. There was a main street which, he noticed with a laugh, was called Main Street. On each side were a few small mom-and-pop businesses. A diner, small market, book store, bar, and others. All long dark, making the town look eery and abandoned.

He wasn’t used to finding things closed. Everywhere he frequented he could find convenience stores and restaurants open all night.

He drove a few moments, passing old historic buildings, perfectly upkept. A library. A museum. Small town things in these grand old structures. Then he saw a light ahead, down a bit from all the other places, settled grandly on a corner. An inn. With the lights on.

Elliott parked his car, but left his bags, expecting to find a locked door. The building was falling into slight disrepair, but it was gorgeous, an old Victorian house with wrap around porches on both levels. It’s white paint was chipping as was the green paint on all the shutters. There were window boxes overflowing with white and red flowers under every single window.

Elliott turned the door and found it unlocked and it opened with a chime of a bell. He stepped into the main entrance, met immediately by a large wood staircase in front of him and a sitting room to his left decorated with faded chaise lounges and captains chairs. A fire was still burning in the fireplace. To his right was a reception area, a large boxed-shaped area, open only slightly on one side for employees to walk in and out. The desk was large and a deep polished wood. On it was the usual fax machine and computer, landline phone and paperwork. On the wall behind was a rack with keys and a section of cubby holes full of various items, clothing, mail.

He stood at reception, listening to a clock somewhere ticking. Then he heard scrambling down the hall next to the staircase. From the sounds of it, from the kitchen. “Hold on, hold on… I’m coming. Shit,” a female voice cursed and it was followed by a crashing sound.

Then she burst into the hallway, all frantic energy. She was probably around Hannah’s age with deep auburn colored hair pulled back into a neat poneytail. She had a sharp face, catlike almost with a thin, straight nose, small lips, and piercing ice blue eyes. She had the frame you typically saw in fashion magazines, tall and willowy, without much feminine curve at all. She wore skinny-legged light blue jeans and a lightweight white sweater. Keys jingled from a hook at her hip as she scurried behind the desk, a huge cup of coffee overflowing and spilling down her hand.

“Ouch, damn it,” she said, shaking her hand and wiping it against the her leg. Up close, Elliott noticed a very light flecking of freckles over the bridge of her nose and how impossibly red even her eyelashes were.

She settled her papers and finally looked up at him with a fake, knee-jerk hospitality smile. But the smile faltered slightly as she looked at him and was replaced with a genuine, female appreciative smile. “Well then. I’m sorry for all the cursing. It’s been one of those nights. Anyway. Hello. Welcome. My name is Emily. What can I help you with?”

Elliott reached into his pocket for his wallet. She had a slightly deeper voice. Husky one could call it, though feminine. He could practically feel her energy buzzing like a beehive from across the desk. “I need a room,” he said, placing his credit card on the desk.

One of Emily’s perfectly arched red eyebrows rose in a way that suggest “well duh”. Instead, she smiled her fake forced smile again and reached for the card. “Of course Mr… Michaels,” There was a flicker of something in her eyes, recognition quickly pushed away. “Any preferences of room type? Front view of the town. Back view of the woods…”

“Just a king size bed,” he clarified as she typed away at the computer.

“Right,” she said, not looking up. “and do you know how long you would like to stay to pay up front or would you like to pay when you checkout?”

“I don’t know how long I’ll be in town.”

“Alright, pay at check-out. So what are you doing in historic Stars Landing?” she asked in a confident, rehersed way, the way people do when they have said something over and over again for years.

“Business,” he said, not entirely lying.

One of Emily’s brows quirked and her lip turned up on one side as if she were repressing the urge to call him on his bull. There was no business to be had in Stars Landing.

“Right, well,” she said, hitting one last button on the computer and turning to take a key off a peg on the wall behind her. “you are going to be in room six,” she came back from around the counter and looked toward the floor next to him. “Would you like to run and grab your luggage?”

“I’ll get it later,” he said, noting how surly his voice sounded. From the infuriatingly false smile on her face again, she noted it as well.

“Alright then, well right this way,” she said, taking up the steps in a long, legged pace.

They came to a landing, a space with cherry blossom wallpaper and four closed doors. Rooms, he assumed. They turned a corner and she put the key into a white door with a red six painted on it. She opened the door and stood in the entrance, an arm outstretched for him to enter. Once he stepped inside, she surprised him by following him in. She switched on a light on the nightstand, brightening the dark room. The walls were deep blue with gold fleur-de-lis. The bedspread was the same blue with white sheets peeking out.

“This is your closet,” she said, opening the door and pulling a string to brighten the small white closet with ironing board and wooden hangers. “And through here,” she said opening another door and flicking the light on, “is the bathoom. Fresh towels are on the counter as are basic personal care products. If you need more of anything, just pick up the phone and hit the number one and I’ll bring them right up.” She made the speech as she slowly made her way back to the hallway door. “Alright I will leave you be to settle in. Have a great stay,” she said, closing the door before he could even respond.

Because she knew all she would get would be his coolness. She wasn’t going to put up with that. He felt a smile pulling at his lips. He respected that.

He got his bags and showered and got into bed, restless, wondering what the hell his next move was. Was he just going to mosey around the town hoping to bump into her? Even if she was in Stars Landing… was that likely? He could seek out her parents. It seemed like the place she was most likely to stay.

He fell to sleep, uneasy though the bed was comfortable and the world outside was shockingly quiet.

--

He woke up and dressed, wishing suddenly that he packed something other than a suit. He was sure to stick out like a sore thumb in a small town wearing a three-piece designer suit. But it was all he had so he dressed as usual and made his way down the staircase, the inn abuzz with noise in complete contrast to the quiet from the night before.

Elliott walked toward the dining room, hoping he could grab a cup of coffee to-go and be on his way. He hadn’t expected such a crowd. The inn couldn’t possibly have held more than eight rooms, but there was at least thirty people in the dining room. A few of the tables, tourists certainly, gabbed excitedly. The other tables, locals he assumed, fell quiet seeing him standing in the doorway.

Like a sore thumb, he thought wryly.

From the corner of the room, he spotted Emily, her hair in another neat poneytail and dressed in black slacks and a tight black wrap shirt which highlighted her slightness all the more. “Take a seat, Mr. Michaels,” she yelled across the dining room. “someone will be right with you.”

Elliott struggled with the urge to just turn and leave. He didn’t want to sit down. He wanted a to-go coffee. But the interested gaze of all the diners kept him from bolting and he took a seat at a small table meant for two with a floral tablecloth.

A moment later, a young male waitor, everything about him pressed and pristine put down a coffee cup for him and poured it without him having asked. He pulled a menu out of nowhere and placed it in front of him. “Just let me know whenever you are ready,” he said, efficient, not chatty or overly friendly. He belonged in a prissy hotel in Paris, not a small town inn. But Elliott appreciated the lack of familiarity. He didn’t need to make friends with all the locals.

He ended up ordering a big breakfast of eggs scrambled hard, bacon, and hash browns, finding he was actually quite famished. He had four cups of coffee and left an obnoxiously large tip to the young waitor who took it with a “thank you” that he assumed he used whether he was left fifty cents or the fifty dollars Elliott left him. But before he left, he noticed the young man had given him a to-go cup of coffee without having been asked. It always paid to be generous with anyone in the service industry.

Stars Landing was a flurry of activity as he walked down the main street. People walked in and out of stores with bags, groups stood on the sidewalks or even in the streets talking, all laughs and smiles. Happy, small town people.

He had expected a lot of stares and while he did get a lot of curious looks, he also got dozens of pleasant “hellos” like he belonged there, like he wasn’t some suit-wearing outsider on their turf for unknown reasons.

He had just passed the diner, the big windows full of families having breakfast, despite it being a weekday. He saw a gas station with a mechanic shop he had missed the night before, thankful because he was low on feul.

“Excuse me, handsome,” a voice called out excitedly. He kept walking, not registering it was being directed at him. “Take it easy on an lady, I aint no spring chicken anymore,” she called, closer this time and Elliott stopped, realizing she was speaking to him. He turned to find a middle aged woman with a slighty heavy build and a long black braid down her back. Her face was unusually wrinkle free, the skin naturally tight and a rich, deep brown. “There ya go. Good.”