Chapter Seven
“Well, what do you know?” Zee said. “I couldn’t believe it when my brother told me you were here and actually working.”
Jamie, who had gone still when she’d begun to speak, slowly straightened from the pile of debris he’d been stacking more neatly beside Millie’s house. He’d worked up a sweat in the late spring heat, and his T-shirt was damp with it. Damp and clingy, she noted sourly. Even needing another ten pounds on him, the guy was built. Damn him.
“It’s been known to happen,” he said, and she knew he must have worked at the neutral tone. She tried to match it.
“You’re going to need a shower.”
“True got the power turned on, and the well pump still works, so I’m good.” He grimaced. “As soon as I clean the bathroom a little.”
“I brought the things you told True you wanted. He’s kind of busy at the moment.”
“I know. Deck and Kelsey’s wedding.”
“Have you seen them yet?” He and Declan had quite hit it off when they’d all banded together to be Hope’s backup in L.A., discovering that each was a fan of the other’s work.
He shook his head. “But I talked to Deck a while ago.”
“So they know you’re here.”
“Yes.”
“But you don’t want anyone else to.”
“Not yet. If I can help it.”
“Why?” She was genuinely curious.
“People get weird,” he said with a wry grimace. “And I need some time.”
Alone.
He didn’t say the word, but she heard it as clearly as if he had. “I see.” She tried to stop herself from going on, but couldn’t. “Tell me, if you hadn’t needed True, would I even know you were here?”
He drew back sharply. “Zee—”
“Never mind. Sorry. Swore I wasn’t going there.” She looked around the neglected property, at the debris he’d stacked. Held up one of the shopping bags. “What’s with the sleeping bag?”
He let her change the subject. “Temporary solution. Until I get things into shape.” His mouth quirked wryly. “Well, True and I. When he’s got time.”
She hesitated, drew in a breath, then asked, “So…you’re staying for a while?”
“Isn’t that what you wanted me to do? Take care of Millie’s place?”
“Me? How about her? She loved this place, and you enough to leave it to you. How could you not see to it?”
“I am.”
“Finally. Nearly three years after she died.”
He was starting to look harassed now. “I didn’t realize there was a set timetable.”
“I just don’t understand how—” She heard her own voice rising, knew she was slipping the leash she’d been determined to keep tight. How could he still do this to her, after all this time? “Never mind,” she said again, and then asked the question she didn’t want to ask but—for some reason she didn’t want to acknowledge—needed to know the answer to. “Cleaning it up to sell?”
He looked suddenly weary again, and she remembered the hollow-eyed man who’d gotten off that plane. “If all you’re going to do is snipe at me, just drop the stuff and go, will you?”
She blinked. “That was a simple question.”
“Born of your conviction that I hate it here.”
“You don’t love it. Not like I do.” Not like you say you do, in your music. Music that still managed to pull at her heart, even knowing it was a lie. She pulled herself away from the thoughts before she voiced them.
“What the hell do you want from me, Zee? What do you expect me to do?”
“The same thing I’ve always expected. Not to forget where you came from.”
“I could never forget that.”
“Only how to get here?” He let out a long breath. She took one in. And said for the third time, “I’m sorry. You’re hurting over your friend. I shouldn’t be chewing on you right now.”
“But you reserve the right to tear into me later, is that it?”
He sounded more exasperated than angry, so she risked a small smile. “Something like that.”
He looked at her for a long moment, something softer coming into his eyes. “We always did know how to push each other’s buttons, didn’t we?”
“Yes. Yes, we did.” She gestured with the two bags she held and half turned toward the house. “I’ll just set these inside.”
“Leave the sleeping bag out here, thanks.”
She stopped. Glanced back at him. “Is the house so bad you have to sleep outside?”
She was on the verge of telling him to come back to their place, despite the fact that she’d be on edge the entire time, when he blasted that thought right out of her head.
“I’m going to sleep in the tree house.”
She froze. “What?”
He gave a one-shouldered shrug. As if it meant nothing. “It’s actually in better shape, and it cleaned up fast, so I’ll sleep there for a while. And hope the bugs don’t carry me off.”
She stared at him. He was going to sleep in the tree house. That blessed tree house, where they had first given in to hormones and attraction running hot. After everything, he was going to sleep up there. As if there were no memories at all attached to it.
“Bugs,” she muttered. “That’s what you’re thinking about?”
“It’s one of my favorite places.” She was sure her emotions must be showing in her face. And a moment later she knew it, because he said softly, “And that’s the difference, Zee. You hate the memories from that tree house. I treasure them.”
Those memories were about to swamp her, and it put an edge back in her voice. “I don’t hate them,” she said. “I’m just surprised they matter to you at all.”
“Zinnia Rose Mahan, you have no idea what matters to me anymore.”
She blinked at his use of her full name. “You’re probably right. How could I, when I don’t even know who you are anymore?”
“That’s okay,” he said, suddenly sounding unutterably weary. “Neither do I.”
He picked up the sack with the sleeping bag, turned around and headed for the big post oak, leaving her staring after him.
When she got back home, True was in the office labeling some receipts, a habit he’d developed a bit late in the career neither of them had quite realized they had until well into it. That had resulted in a ton of confused paperwork, but it had also resulted in him hiring Hope to straighten it out, and look where that had ended.
It occurred to her to wonder why she’d ended up dropping Jamie’s stuff off when her brother was here instead of out at Deck and Kelsey’s place, but she let that go in favor of a more pressing question.
“You’ll be helping him, right?” she said without preamble.
True lifted a brow at her. “When I can, yes. Why?”
“Just want to be sure he won’t always be alone out there.”
“Why?” her brother repeated. “He’s a big boy, he can take care of himself.”
“Can he?” she asked. “He’s really off balance right now, hurting, and like you said, rattled.”
“Thought you were going to chew on him a bit and bring him back to reality.”
I did. Even though I didn’t mean to.
“His friend did just die. It’s obvious it’s really shaken him.” She tossed down the handful of receipts he’d just given her. “But maybe that’s not a bad thing. I’ve always been afraid he’d follow that same path.”
True’s brow furrowed. “Jamie? I think you’re underestimating him a bit.”
“I think you’re underestimating the pull and power of that world he’s living in now. I’d hate to see him end up the same way, even if I am mad at him half the time.”
“Anger,” True said in his most careful tone, “is still caring.”
She watched her brother go, his last words echoing in her head. She supposed he was right. You didn’t get angry if you didn’t care. But it wasn’t love. Not anymore.
You hate the memories from that tree house. I treasure them.
She would have sworn on her life he meant those words. It had been in his voice, in his eyes when he’d said them.
But if it were really true, in the way it should be true—the way she’d once so wanted them to be true—Jamie Templeton would have come back home a long time ago.
And back to her.
*
This was the farthest of far cries from his canyon house in L.A., Jamie thought as he lay staring up at the rough-hewn roof of the tree house. He shifted slightly, grateful True had thought of the air mattress he hadn’t. But then that was True. Tell him what you wanted the result to be, and he’d give you a plan and a list of materials off the top of his head and he’d be right down to the last nail.
He was on top of the sleeping bag, risking whatever bugs might make it up here and through the holes in the screens, because the heat of the day had lingered into twilight. He thought in a while he might actually try to sleep, even after last night, when he’d crashed so hard at True’s that he hadn’t quite been able to believe what time it was when he’d finally awakened.
He almost regretted it, because now his brain was rested enough to run wild. It naturally went to last week, to the hours spent waiting to hear what he’d already known in his gut—Derek was dead. From there to his colliding reactions, horror that it had happened, almost overpowered by the guilt he felt for not noticing in time just how out of it the guy was, and for feeling awful, but not quite as bad as he thought he should, not as bad as he would have had it been one of the others. Logic argued that he’d known them for years and Derek for only a few months, but logic didn’t always play into emotion.
From there he’d let his mind loose, and it was doing its usual bounce around from one thing to another, yet shying away from the big, looming thing. He looked at the planks of the tree house roof and remembered True helping him one summer. Not building it—he’d wanted to do that himself—but making suggestions he’d been, even at fifteen, smart enough to heed.
He’d have to redo some of the screening; there were a couple of rips here and there. The rolls of fine mesh had been True’s idea, too, in case he wanted to be out here at the height of mosquito season. He’d already repaired rungs of the rope ladder, which True had also wisely suggested he make from nylon rather than natural fiber; it had endured where the other would likely be rotted by now.
“Just be careful,” he’d said. “It’s pretty elastic so if it breaks, the snapback could do some damage.”
The warning had only added spice to the adventure.
His mind slid then into wondering if True and Hope were planning on having kids. True would make a great dad. Hadn’t he already practically raised two, him and Zee?
No, not going back to Zee, brain. Especially not here.
He shifted position, his arm nudging the guitar, still in the case that lay beside him.
Oh, no. Definitely not going there, either.
He wasn’t even sure why he’d brought the thing up here, except it had felt wrong to leave it in the house alone. His mouth twisted wryly. He was thinking as if it were still alive, still that willing, wonderful partner, helping him make those emotions into music. As if it were still that instrument that had led him from this very tree house to the bright lights and thin air of success.
Something caught his eye, something on the edge of his vision. He sat up to look through the mesh. A tiny flash of light. Then another.
He’d been gone so long it took him a moment.
Fireflies.
The moment he realized the air seemed full of them, flitting, circling, dashing, painting the air with their golden lights. The gift of spring rains, Aunt Millie had called them. She had loved these shows, and would watch as long as they lasted. He’d made up a song for her about them, one that had made her laugh and sing along with him. That had been the first time he’d really felt not whole, but mended, since the crash that had taken his parents.
Thank you, Aunt Millie.
For what, sweetie?
For everything.
You’ve given me much more than you’ve taken, so I should be thanking you.
Pain tightened his chest. He stared at the darting lights, aching with the memories, all of them, his parents, Aunt Millie, now Derek…and the part of himself that was now gone just as completely. Maybe he’d had to come back here, to where it began, to finally face it.
Once, he would have reached for the guitar, to make up some darting, buoyant tune that matched the flight of those little specks of light. But that was pointless now. A useless thought. Because he knew all the speculation that the death of his friend was the beginning of something, of a reassessment, a reorienting, and that he would be back after a suitable period, was wrong.
Derek’s death hadn’t been the beginning. It had been the culmination of a process that had begun some time ago. The process he’d at last admitted to, sitting on the floor of an emergency room waiting area, and only finally faced at the funeral.
Derek’s death, aside from the heartbreak of it, didn’t mark the start of anything.
It marked the end.
It marked Jamie Templeton’s final admission of the truth.
The music was gone.