Chapter 7
IF I concentrated, I could follow one ceiling fan blade around and around. I kept losing it, though, and had to start over. I threw the covers off and spread out. It was a muggy, sticky night, ticking with energy. I could almost feel the hairs on my arm move. Not unusual, but I was tired of staring at that damn fan with its whisper that always sounded like voices to me. At the bookshelves holding books that hadn’t moved in twenty years. At the design on the far wall made from the faint nightlight. At the ninety-two plastic slats of the window blinds, the three bottom ones bent.
The clock glared at me with its stupid blue numbers. To think I’d almost bought one of those clocks that shoot the display up on the ceiling. I would have been homicidal.
I needed sleep. I needed peace. I needed sex. Probably sex would get me the other two, so I thought about that. Because if it was just the release, the shower massage and some dirty thoughts would join me in that little party and take care of that. But I had the feeling that was too much of a quick fix. I needed the real thing. The full treatment. I needed a warm, hard body.
“Okay,” I said to the fan as I swung my legs all the way out of the covers. “I’m officially frustrated now.”
Which brought my thoughts to Jason, completely unbidden. I pushed them away and thought about his scowl and grunts and his dented freshly birthed car instead. But then, there were those aviators and those green eyes—
“Oh my God, really?” I slapped a hand over my face.
Was I really that hard up that one fifteen-minute session of civility with Castro had me humping my pillow?
I looked at the extra pillow.
And then I got up.
It’s no secret you two have the hots for each other. Oh, Alex. The “hots” was an understatement. That man could make me sweat from fifty yards away. But there was history there, too. Years of in-depth conversations and friendship. And who the hell was I kidding? His smile could reduce me to goo. I would bet that he could have had any woman he wanted before he got married. Married. Funny that I never thought of him as married. He didn’t wear a wedding ring. I never gave much thought to Alex’s personal life when I was younger. About him being someone’s husband and father.
That made my heart lurch. He had a daughter, too. I wondered if it was hard for him to see me with one, now. They all died together, that’s all I knew. For as much as Alex knew about me, he was very private about himself.
“How sad is it that my hottest fantasy is with a dead man?” I looked around. “And that I’m talking to myself?”
It was a pity party, I admit it. Sleep deprivation brought on by worry brought on by Riley’s new networking—plus the fact that I kind of wanted to see my boss naked and trying to hide the fact that I’d always wanted to see Alex naked—piled up on me.
I flicked the lamp on and flopped into Alex’s chair. It would have been a good night for him to show up. Keep me company. Then again, no. I’d have probably broken all the rules and jumped him and given us both seizures or something.
Antsy, I got back up and snagged the stack of clean clothes still on the dresser. A corner of color in the closet caught my eye and I moved some boxes aside to see my baby box nestled back there.
I called it my baby box. My dad always called it that—it had my mom’s scrapbook and my first everythings. And my favorite, most precious possession. A picture taken of my mother and me. In that very room, right after I was born. Both of us all messy and exhausted, our heads close together. My dad said the aneurysm burst about an hour later. He wasn’t in the room, he’d left for just a few minutes and came back to find her still holding me. And gone.
I sat cross-legged on the bed, my faded orange-and-red fabric-wrapped box in front of me. I lifted the lid, browned on the edges from time and handling, and peered inside at my treasures. My mom’s love in a box. Dad told me that she always took pictures, even when she was young. That she was a born photographer but didn’t have those options.
I pulled out her scrapbook she made when she was pregnant, the plain cardboard covered in mosaic tile so that it weighed a ton. When I was little, I thought it was jeweled. But back then, I thought everything about her was magical because she was such a mystery to me.
I opened the book, careful not to crack the worn spine. Faded photos with colored paper accents, her little remarks and funny sayings written randomly everywhere. Arrows and hearts and smiley faces. She and my dad and their beagle, Bevo, grinning as they pointed at her flat belly, with a bubble cloud drawn to the left that said puppy in the oven. A list of possible name considerations on another page, with scratch outs and scribbles to the side. Samantha was clearly a contender, as it had four stars and a bubble drawn to it that said, Nate’s. Danielle had three stars and a mine next to it. Several pages in was Christmas, my mom holding a decorated stocking next to her tiny baby bulge.
This was how I knew my mother. How I learned about her. Through all her quips and quirky comments that were never intended to be studied and analyzed so that even the handwriting was committed to memory. I used to wish for some new nuance of information, some snippet of photo to jump out at me, something new. I felt that same old feeling as I looked through it all now. Hoping that my wiser adult eyes would glean something not seen before.
I needed something new. I needed my mom to jump out of the book and tell me what to do. How to do it. I wanted my picture to do its magic. Something like—
“Where the hell is my picture?”
I turned the page back to the one of all the shots of my room done up in black-and-white checks and stuffed animals, and then back to the one afterward of my dad holding me at the funeral, in front of all the flowers. It wasn’t there. I touched the yellow spot on the page where it had once been.
I set the book on the bed and dug in the box, rooting through finger paintings and brightly colored lumps of clay that were supposed to resemble something. I thumbed through cards and many other loose photos that never made it into the scrapbook because Dad did good just to get them into the box.
But it wasn’t in there.
I closed my eyes and listened to the whisper of the fan above me and played my old game of pretending it was my mother talking to me. Where is it, Mom?
I got up and pulled the other boxes out of the closet till the floor was cleared. Nothing. I felt gypped. Like my mother had left. Again.
“This is silly,” I mumbled.
I shoved all the boxes back in and just stood there, too wound up to get back into bed. My gaze fell on a drawing among the mess on the bedspread. Of me and my dad on a dock, him with his blue hat. And my anxiety started to melt.
I picked up the drawing, with its ceiling-flat blue sky and blue choppy water around a brown dock with fish swimming in a see-through bucket. Red-mouthed smiles on both of us as a huge fish with an identical smile hung from my fishing line waiting to nestle in my dad’s net.
I walked down the hall to Riley’s room, careful to sidestep the creaky spot just before her door, and peeked inside. Covers were inside out and wrangled around her like something you’d see come out of a swamp, but she slept like an angel. I wondered if she’d look through her old drawings one day and feel that same sense of love and security.
My luck, it would be the one she made of being bought at a grocery store.
DAD and Bo were already coffee’d and gone by the time I dragged my dead ass downstairs the next morning. I tried to leave myself a mental note to ask him about the picture later. I probably needed to write it on a wall or something. In permanent magic marker. My brain wasn’t on its best game.
The shop door did its jingle when I entered and I gave it a little finger wave. And then stopped when I saw Jason at the counter.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” he said, glancing up, then back down at a notepad. “How was dessert?”
“Um. Fine.” I lifted the counter and joined him. “Since when are you here this early? Where’s Marg?”
“On vacation.”
“What?”
“For two weeks.”
Two weeks of full days with Jason Miller. That must have shown on my face, because he looked almost giddy.
“That a problem?”
I recovered quickly. “No, of course not.”
He chuckled. “Of course not.”
I looked at him curiously. Weird turn of personality.
“Okay. So—I’ll get on the tide reports then.” I turned to the coffeepot and stopped. “You didn’t make coffee?”
“Don’t drink coffee.”
I rubbed my eyes. “God.”
He laughed softly again from behind me and I shook my head as I pulled out a filter and the Folgers and numbly went through the motions.
“I take it you missed your morning fix?”
“This is my morning fix—most days. I can sleep later if I don’t stop to worry about coffee.”
“And today was a sleep-in kind of day?”
“Huh?”
He gestured to my white T-shirt and gray sweats, topped off with a ponytail and no makeup. I made an irritated sound and went back to the coffeepot.
“Haven’t slept much lately. Wardrobe wasn’t a priority.”
“Did you get confirmation from Hank on his booking this morning?”
My hand stopped mid-scoop. Hank had a booking? I called somebody. Didn’t I call somebody? It was a couple of days ago.
“Um—no. I’ll check in a second.” I stared at the scoop still in my hand, unable to remember how many I’d done. “Oh, what the hell,” I mumbled, throwing in another two. Wouldn’t bother anyone but me anyway.
I turned to pull the tour schedules out of the drawer but Jason was in the way. Standing there in his tight blue jeans and black pullover T-shirt. Jesus, I was hard up. He looked up from his pad and I pointed.
“Need to get in there.”
His eyebrows shot up, and I realized where I pointed.
“The—the drawer. The schedules are in the drawer.”
He looked down. Then back at me and stepped aside. “Sorry.”
I yanked the drawer open so he had to move a little farther and stared at the day’s schedule in dismay. Had I called Hank? Crap. I snatched up the phone and dialed his number.
“Yello.”
“Hey, Hank, it’s Dani.”
“Sugar, it’s a bit early, don’t you think?” he drawled.
I watched the slow drip of the coffee and closed my eyes. It was too much.
“I know, I’m sorry, but I need to check that you’re lined out for a half day’er this morning.”
“This morning?” There was a shuffle as the phone slipped. “Sweetheart, I got nothing today but whatever’s on ESPN.”
Crap.
“Well, you have a booking—looks like from a couple of weeks ago.” I peered closer at the information. “Looks like two kids and an adult at eight o’clock.”
“Sweetheart, my boat battery’s on charge and I got no time to charter anything on this short notice. Call Jiminy.”
I hung up and cursed the day, my life, and the zit I felt growing on my nose.
“Problem?”
I scrolled to Jiminy’s number with one hand as I maneuvered the coffeepot with the other.
“Not if Jiminy comes through for me.”
“He’s out of town.”
I set the phone and the creamer container down together with a thud.
“Bob?”
He picked up the sheet. “With two little girls on board?”
I blinked. “Is he gonna eat them?”
“He’s a little crude, Dani. He pees off the side of the boat no matter who’s around. Doesn’t matter. He’s out on a bait run anyway.”
Jason set the sheet aside and pulled out a bait catalog, as I stared him down. He finally bent to my psychic ability and turned.
“What?”
I downed three big gulps of coffee for bravery. “Who else can we get?”
He smirked. “I was told we have you.”
Another swig and then I chuckled. Tried to appear nonchalant. “That’s really kinda just a—theory.”
He flipped a page. “Well, theory or not, you’re all we’ve got. Should’ve called Hank ahead of time.”
I laughed nervously. “No—see, I know and I’m sorry, but you don’t understand.”
“Don’t understand what?”
The coffee sat like acid in my stomach. “The—the boat—doing a tour by myself. I can’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t drive the boat. I mean, technically, yeah, get me out in the middle of the river and I can probably steer it. But—getting out there—” I licked my dry lips and tried to breathe normally. “Launching and docking? No. Trolling? Not a chance in hell.”
He stared at me. “Marg told me you were backup.”
“Well, my guess is none of us thought it’d really come up.”
His jaw twitched as he turned and leaned against the counter.
“Well, my guess is you better figure out how to pull this bluff off.”
I felt a fine sheen of sweat pop out and I laughed. “Seriously, come on. If Hank can’t put a charter together this fast, what am I supposed to do? We have to cancel.”
“They’ll be here in an hour. It’s too late for that.”
I peered closer at him. “Why are you so calm?”
One side of his mouth drew up. “What do you mean?”
“You should be panicked, too. You’re all calm and—pleasant.”
He chuckled and averted his gaze. “My son turns ten today, I guess it’s a good day.”
“Oh. Well, that’s cool.” I put aside my misery for a micro-minute. “Doing anything special?”
A shadow passed through his expression and I instantly regretted the question. Of course he wouldn’t be.
Jason shrugged. “He probably is. I already had my time with him, sort of. Doesn’t matter, though. Still a good day.”
I set my cup down as he walked into the back, and in walked Blaine Wilson with Matty Sims. Lovely. I pulled out every drawer I could get my hands on, tugging maps from everywhere. Shit. I was so screwed.
“I’ll be damned, my wife wasn’t shittin’ me,” Matty said slowly. A little too slowly.
I attempted a courteous smile through my pending panic, four different maps clutched close. Surely two little girls wouldn’t be that hard to buffalo. If I could just get the dad to drive the damn boat.
Matty sauntered to the counter, Blaine tagging behind like his pet ferret. He nodded at the maps.
“Whatcha got going here?”
The fumes that emanated off him pushed me back a step.
“Arranging a fishing tour,” I tossed back as I snatched a couple of Jiminy’s extra hats from an upper shelf. “Can I help you?”
Matty leaned forward on the counter. “You do tours? I’d go on one of your tours.” His speech was slow and drawly and matched his foggy eyes. Still, he grinned like he’d said something fabulous.
I set down the hats and put a finger under my nose. “Wow, Matty, that’s some powerful—breakfast—you had.”
His grin turned into something snarkier. “Well now, didn’t you just turn out all cocky?”
“Can I help you with something?” I didn’t have time for all that. I didn’t have time for anything.
“Came for some deer corn, but I don’t know—” he slurred. He dragged his eyes around and then back to me. Head to toe. “What else you got?”
I looked at Blaine, who turned his smirk away. I grabbed a nearby pad, refusing to be baited.
“How much corn you need?”
Matty ran a finger down my neck and I swatted it away.
“How. Much. Corn.” I stared him down with everything I had.
For about two seconds, we were back at school with me cornered under the stairwell. His body pressing mine against the tile. Same breath. Then I was back. His arrogant sneer was so repulsive, I almost felt sorry for Shelby. Almost.
“A little strange on the side might be fun, don’t you think?” he said, his voice raspy. The look on his face said he thought it was sexy.
I felt the familiar prickle on the back of my neck and I almost groaned. Please don’t be you, Alex. Not now.
“And you always were that.”
My head pounded on no caffeine, and an old lady in the corner caught my attention. She wore a blue T-shirt and black stretchy pants on her frail frame, black slip-on tennies on her feet. She had salt-and-pepper hair and was really unremarkable in appearance except for the mischievous twinkle in her blue eyes that hinted at trouble. She winked at me. Great. Another dead winker.
I slugged back more coffee. The old lady came to stand next to Blaine, close enough to make him fidget. It was hard to keep a straight face.
“Corn?”
“Aw, come on.” He dropped his voice. “Bet it’d be freaky with you. You still freaky, Dani?”
I blinked and put the pen down, leaning into his stinky breath.
“You still dick-less, Matty?”
Blaine snickered and moved like there were ants in his shoes. The old lady followed him, so that every place he landed, he had to instantly shuffle again.
Matty puffed up like a blowfish. “You’re just jealous, freak show, because you never got you a piece.”
I nearly upchucked my coffee. “A piece? Really?”
The old lady walked up close to him and whispered something in his ear that made him quickly grab his crotch and then relax again. I laughed.
“You know what? I think I’ll let Shelby have all your pieces, okay?”
“Coach Sims!”
Matty whirled wobbily around to greet the voice with a car salesman grin and a shaky hand. A boy of about twelve rattled on to Matty about football while the dad stood proudly by him and held the hands of two younger girls.
Two little girls. Crap.
I turned to grab all my papers, and was about to go look for Jason to ask questions, when he walked through the hall entryway.
“Oh hey,” I said, “I think they’re here. Early.”
“Got it under control?”
“Do I look under control?”
One of the maps slipped free, and he bent to pick it up. As he handed it to me, he leaned to look past me at the group by the door.
“They don’t look too scary.”
“I want to throw up.”
He laughed. A genuine laugh, which I noted as the second one I’d seen in two days.
“You’ll be fine.”
“No. I won’t. I’m gonna make an ass out of myself and then follow that up with probably killing us all.” I pulled out their paperwork for the dad to sign. “But hey, if you’re good with that, then what the hell.”
My pen clattered to the floor, shattering what was left of my composure.
“Shit.”
I squatted to pick it up, and suddenly the old lady was squatted in front of me, directly between me and Jason. Her skin was deeply etched and kinda saggy, but her light blue eyes could have been that of a twenty-year-old.
“Just watch,” she said in a soft, muted voice.
I opened my mouth but then looked up at Jason by the counter, and I rose, carefully stepping to the side so as not to touch her.
“So what boat do I take?”
Jason shook his head as you would to a child that just wears you out and opened a cabinet with keys dangling from hooks.
“This one is already out and docked,” he said as he pressed the key into my hand. “No launching required. Just go in reverse first.”
I stared at the key and wished for another life.
“And since when do we call customers ‘dick-less’?”
That brought my head back up, and heat rose up my neck. But irritation won over embarrassment.
“Since he wanted to get in my pants and I’ve seen what’s in his.”
The corner of his mouth twitched into an almost smile. “Oh?”
“And not in a fun way.”
“Oh.”
“He’s just an older drunker version of what he was twenty years ago.”
“Shelby’s fortunate.”
I just raised my eyebrows at that. I didn’t have the fortitude to get into a Shelby discussion.
“Okay.” I rubbed at my face and felt lost. “He needs deer corn. I’m gonna go—deal with this. If you hear a loud bang, or we don’t come back tonight, send out a search party.”
“I’ll take care of the corn,” he said. A knocking noise came from the bait room, and Jason frowned his way back that direction.
The girls’ names were Celeste and Carole. Eight-year-old twins, but not the wear-the-same-clothes-and-fool-the-teacher kind. The brother left for some kind of practice, while Daddy-O and the rugrats were left with me, all signed in and donned with Jiminy’s caps. Celeste didn’t look impressed with the hat idea. She appeared to be the potential high-maintenance future cheerleader. Carole, however, promised to follow a more library-aide-slash-valedictorian route.
Celeste kept taking her hat off and tucking her hair behind her ears and replacing it. She had a neon pink rod and reel. Carole brandished a blue one. They were ready to go.
Okay. I downed two more cups of coffee before I remembered I would be out on the water for four hours. Four hours. Crap.
“Okay, let’s head down to the dock,” I called with enthusiasm. Hoping I fooled the dad. I carried the tackle box full of lures and Jiminy’s notebook of laminated fish pictures and notations. I would cheat my way through.
I watched the water approach, watched the boat bob gently, and felt the familiar buzz of anxiety fill my body. The sound of distant wind sang in my ears, and I shook my head clear of it. Then, as we reached the boat, the unexpected happened. I heard it. That unmistakable sound of body functions start to churn, reroute, and spew. I pivoted just in time to see little Carole pull a Linda Blair and blow forth half her body weight in vomit.
I jumped back. Celeste screamed. The dad cursed. Poor little Carole just turned green at the sight of what she’d done all over the dock, and did it again. Thankfully, she missed the boat. And the old lady sitting in it. She winked at me again.
The dad apologized and I turned the whole stinky crying procession around, with promises to reschedule when Carole felt better, and to please keep the hats. I breathed a sigh of relief and told them I’d meet them there in a moment.
When they were out of earshot, I turned back to her.
“What did you do?”
“No offense, but I’d rather my grandkids not be run up on a sandbar or impaled with each other’s hooks.”
She finished with a gravelly cough. First time I’d ever heard a spirit cough. Kinda figured that went by the wayside with that whole death thing.
“Your grandkids?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I began to laugh. “Oh, that’s just priceless.”
“They can come back another time,” she said. “Maybe I will, too. This looks like fun.”
“You made her throw up?”
She shrugged and her eyes lit up again. “You learn things.” She got up slowly. “And now she’ll go home and be allowed to curl up in bed and read all day.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What she really wanted.” She shrugged again and smiled. I pointed a finger. “You’re good.”
“You’re welcome.”
I laughed nervously. “That, too. I was petrified, thank you.”
We walked back up the dock, and I was careful to face forward like I’d long trained myself to do.
“By the way, what did you say in Matty Sims’s ear?”
She chuckled and coughed again. “I told him his penis was out.”
“And he heard you?”
“Nah, just gives him the idea.”
“Man, where were you when I was in high school?”
“Breathing.”
THE back door was open as I walked back up, and the banging noises I’d heard earlier were noticeably louder.
“I’m back,” I said, peeking in. “Holy crap.”
“Can you hand me that wrench?” he said, his voice strained from what appeared to be a nearly upside down position he was in.
I followed his finger to a rusty tool on the floor in front of the minnow vat. A floor now evenly covered in about a half inch of water. I handed him the dripping wrench and gingerly spattered my way around him. He had the cover off the water pump by then, and the motor made sounds like a giant card caught in a wheel spoke.
“What happened?”
“A hose ruptured, I think. There’s some electrical tape up front in the drawer. Go get it so I can wrap it before it completely pops.”
“That’s making the noise?”
“No, that’s making the mess.”
I smirked behind his head. As I turned, the noise stopped. “Hey, you fixed it?”
“Temporarily,” he said with a grunt as he tightened something a little more.
He was still on his knees in the water, and his jeans soaked it up. His hair stood out on end. It dawned on me that I’d never seen him messy.
“Hmm.”
“This thing needs to be replaced, but for now all I have are Band-Aids.”
“It’s pretty old.”
“It’s ancient,” he said, blowing out a breath. “And if I turn it off, it may not come back on, so can you please go get that tape before I prune up?”
The question barely crossed his lips when it happened. The hose burst under the pressure and whipped out, catching him across the side of his neck before he could duck.
“Jason!”
He fell sideways and attempted to grab the wildly gyrating hose as it blew fish water like a power washer.
“Crap!” I lunged and tried to grab it, too, but it sliced across my legs and arms faster than I could move. “Ow! Shit!”
Jason scrambled for it and his angle hit the hose so that water spewed directly up my nose at two hundred psi. I half screamed, half choked as I fell backward onto my ass with a splash. The burn made my eyes water and I coughed as I groped blindly.
“I got it,” he yelled, but it slipped past him and walloped me upside the head.
“Ack! Geez!”
Suddenly it hit my hand at just the right millisecond, and I wrapped my fingers around it. Not a great moment, because the power pulled me with it. Right into Jason. We went down like dominoes, me on top of him, nose to runny nose.