Chapter Seven
Wednesday
ANNIE WOKE DISORIENTED, in a strange bed. A confused moment passed before the events of the previous day came back to her in a staggering rush. She groaned into her pillow. Oh God, the house.
Her house was missing a wall.
The temptation to stay in bed and in complete denial was overwhelming. Except, the contractor was coming this morning. With another groan, Annie threw off the covers.
She grabbed her phone from the nightstand to check the weather. Local weather—clear all day. Rupert, however, had been upgraded to a category 2 hurricane, heading north to Cuba.
Annie said a prayer for the people affected by Rupert, then pushed herself out of bed and opened the window that faced the courtyard and the weeping willow. She did a few stretches and breathing exercises. She kept her eyes on the tree, determined to put herself into a positive frame of mind to start her day.
“The hurricane is turning away. There is no structural damage to the house. It’s going to be an easy fix. I’m going to have a great day.”
Some days her morning affirmations were more elaborate, but this was all she had in her today. She cleaned up, dressed, then hurried down the hallway.
Her stomach growled. Too bad she’d overslept. She had an appointment with Dr. Ambrose, the psychiatrist on staff, at eight.
Could she cancel?
Normally, she would have fed her animals by now and let the llamas and the donkey out to graze. She had a ton of stuff to do today.
Or was that just an excuse to cancel because she didn’t want to see Dan? She had conflicted feelings that she wanted to unconflict first.
All the therapists and counselors were in therapy themselves. They took on various emotional burdens from patients that needed to be dealt with. Trouble happened when problems were allowed to pile up and be internalized.
Annie had gone to some dark places with her patients. She had to cleanse herself on a regular basis to wash away that darkness, to be ready for the next session and the next. So, fine, Dan wasn’t optional.
“Here she comes.” Dan Ambrose had his door open and waved her in.
The staff psychiatrist was forty-two and kept in shape, although he didn’t have that warrior body most of the patients at Hope Hill did. He didn’t look military; he looked like an academic. Which he was. He gave classes at West Chester University now and then, a class or two every couple of semesters—Psych 101 and Abnormal Psychology. When he’d had the flu this past summer, Annie had helped him grade papers. He was handsome in a soft, good-looking professor kind of way, with dark-blond hair, brown eyes, and a pleasant face.
He reached for the bulky, knitted sweater on the back of his chair and pulled it on. “I sit too much,” he said on a sigh. “My circulation isn’t what it used to be. I’m always cold lately. Shouldn’t I be too young for this?” He gave a self-depreciating chuckle.
Annie closed the door behind her and slid into the large leather armchair that faced the desk. The chair had been bought with well-built soldiers in mind. She felt like Alice in Wonderland after taking the pill that made her shrink.
“I hear you had a rough day yesterday,” Dan said.
“Not as rough as it could have been. I got a room here.”
“Good.” Dan flashed a warm smile.
They’d gone out together a few times. Actually, she’d thought they were consulting over dinner. Right up until Dan had tried to kiss her. Could have knocked her over with a feather. She’d extricated herself, but things had been awkward for a week or so after that. She had no idea what he’d been thinking. Dating a coworker was as big a taboo as dating a patient. Technically, she was his patient. They had sessions.
Maybe Dan liked her because they had psychology in common, and other things too. She’d been raised by a single mother; he’d been raised by a single father. They often talked about that. But their similar pasts and interests wouldn’t be enough basis for a romantic relationship, even under different circumstances. She’d never felt any attraction toward him.
“So how is the house?” he asked.
“I’ll let you know after I talk with the contractor.”
“If there’s anything you need, just let me know.”
“Thanks.”
Dan held her gaze for a moment to make sure that she really was all right, and then he glanced at his notebook. “You started with a new patient this week. How is that going?”
How long do you have?
Annie didn’t want to talk to Dan about Cole, but she had to. She felt an unexpected attraction to him that wasn’t entirely patient-appropriate. Normally, when she looked at a patient, she didn’t allow attraction as an option. But when she’d first met Cole, she hadn’t known that she would soon be working with him.
She settled back in her chair and gave the abridged version of their initial meeting, then talked about Cole going with her to the midnight feeding.
With any other patient, she wouldn’t have done it. But Cole did have that possible tendency to self-harm, which still worried her. And he had a marked resistance to therapy. Spending extra time with him could work. Being away from the facility might help him let his guard down. If she could build credibility with him, that would increase the chances for a successful treatment outcome exponentially.
Dan kept his voice carefully neutral when he asked, “Do you think it’s smart to see him outside of therapy?”
“I think he needs normalcy. They all do. And I think being around animals is therapeutic.”
“We have the cats for that.”
She bit back a smile. “The skunks did alarm him.”
He watched her as he steepled his hands. “Are you getting attached to this man?”
“No.” A slight attraction did not equal attachment. “I like him.” She could admit that much. “I don’t know why.” She slumped in the chair. “He’s not a fan of ecotherapy. Only signed up for more sessions because he liked the idea of art therapy even less.” And he needed the minimum required therapy hours to be able to stay at Hope Hill.
Dan tapped his steepled fingers together as he evaluated her revelations. But instead of warning her to be careful with Cole, he moved on. “How are you doing with Trevor?”
Trev. Annie switched gears. “I wish I could see him more.”
“Maybe soon. I do think you and I will have to do the lion’s share. No offense to Milo, but Trevor isn’t going to improve from having needles stuck in his ass.” He waved his hand as if trying to erase that last word. “Sorry. I’m tired. I’ve been working too much.”
Dan was somewhat of a professional snob. Out of all the people at Hope Hill, he considered only Annie as his almost equal, because she had a degree in psychology. He was unfailingly polite to the other staff members and supported their therapies, but he believed them to be the icing on the cake. Annie was pretty sure that Dan thought he did all the real work.
“What are you working on? Another article?” she asked, because she didn’t want to argue about Milo, who was an excellent acupuncturist.
“The History of Medieval Medical Practices.” Dan was proud, to the point of vanity, of his publication record.
He cleared his throat. “Back to Trevor. He’s not making much progress with me. I’m worried about him.”
That put Annie on alert. Dan wasn’t prone to worry. “I’ll pay extra attention to him at our next session.”
They talked about Trevor for another few minutes, then about her other patients, and then, at the end, about her continued troubles with Joey.
After the session, Annie grabbed a granola bar and a cup of tea from the cafeteria before heading out. Time for the morning feeding, finally. Time to let the grazing animals loose in the backyard. Esmeralda the donkey, especially, didn’t like to be cooped up in the garage.
Her phone rang. Annie took the call as she walked.
“How are you?” Kelly asked. “I’m so sorry for what happened. I’m going to help you pay for it. Want me to come over to help clean up?”
“Let’s wait with that until I find out if it’s safe to go in. Thanks for offering. I’m not mad at you. I swear.”
“I’m mad at myself. Home reno looks a lot easier on TV.” Kelly did sound miserable. “Listen, I just listed a house for a client. When it sells and I get the commission, I’m going to give you the money.”
“You have your own mortgage. You have alimony to pay.”
“Loser exes. What’s wrong with them? Has Joey stopped stalking you?”
Annie glanced at her phone. “No texts so far today.”
“It’s early yet.” Kelly called out a greeting that came through the line faintly, as if she’d put the phone down for a second. Then she said, “I’m at the agency. People just came in. I have to hang up. Are you going to be OK?”
“I will be one hundred percent better than OK.” Annie raised her voice a notch so the universe could hear her.
“Let me know when you find out more about the damage,” Kelly said before they hung up.
Cole was leaning against Annie’s car in the parking lot, as if he’d been waiting for a while. And maybe thinking about bench-pressing the Prius out of boredom. Seriously, he probably could have. One-handed.
He pushed away from the trunk as she reached him. “I thought I’d go with you and help. I have a couple of hours.” He jerked his head toward the silver pickup next to the Prius. “We could take my ride today.”
“If you have a car, why were you walking to the gas station the other day?”
“Just rented it this morning. When I came here, I flew into Philly from Chicago and had the shuttle bring me out here from the airport. I didn’t want to drive through Philly one-handed. Out here, it’s no big deal. There’s no real traffic.”
She eyed the pickup. The truck definitely fit him better than her Prius.
“Ram 1500 HFE,” he said, as if the words actually had meaning. “Highest gas mileage in its class. I figured I couldn’t get you into it otherwise. EcoDiesel three-point-zero liter, V-6, two hundred forty horsepower, intercooled turbo engine.”
He looked so pleased with himself that she didn’t have the heart to say no. He was reaching out to another person. He was venturing out into the civilian world. He was taking interest in something other than his dark memories. All of that supported recovery.
So she said, “I only understood half of that, but OK. Maybe we could pick up a couple of bales of hay.”
He didn’t exactly smile at her. But the way he looked at that moment, she could almost imagine him having a twin brother who might have smiled. Once. She could almost imagine what a smile might look like on Cole’s face.
He opened the passenger side door for her, glancing at the Prius. “How do you usually bring home all the hay and feed?”
“They deliver. But as long as you have this monster, I wouldn’t mind skipping the delivery fee.”
As she stepped between his car and hers, she caught sight of her employee ID card on her driver’s seat, so she grabbed that and put it back into her purse. Must have fallen out last night. Then she climbed up into the pickup.
“Big, right?” His voice dripped with manly satisfaction.
“As far as environmental impact goes? Might as well set the Redwood National Park on fire.”
“I don’t think the National Park Service would agree.” He sniffed toward her cup. “That doesn’t smell like coffee.”
“Herbal tea. Hibiscus pomegranate.”
He shook his head as he started the engine. “That’s not normal. You know that, right?”
“Considering the effect caffeine has on the nervous system, everyone should—”
He raised his index finger between them. “If you bad-mouth coffee, I don’t think we can be friends.”
She watched him as he drove out of the parking lot.
Friends. Is that what they were becoming?
Not really.
He was her patient. In a few weeks, he would be gone. He shouldn’t need a lot more time in intensive therapy than that. What the staff did at Hope Hill worked.
Annie liked seeing patients getting better and stretching their wings, flying away. And she’d be happy for Cole when he did the same. If she felt a pang of something else at the thought of him leaving, she shoved the knowledge away.
“Might as well stop by the feed store on the way over.” She gave him directions. Best to just focus on the work.
At the store, she picked out what she needed and asked for help with loading the truck. While she was chatting with Maddie at the counter, the woman’s eyes rounded as she openly ogled Cole through the window. She was forty, newly single, and definitely enjoying the freedom to look.
Annie turned, her gaze snared by the sight of Cole tossing fifty-pound feedbags into the back of the truck one-handed. And when Maddie sighed, Annie might have echoed her.
Then she snapped out of it and ran. If he hurt himself, the physical therapist was going to strangle her.
“Cole!” But because she was behind him, he couldn’t hear her, so she had to tap his shoulder.
“What?” he turned, his gaze immediately snapping to her mouth. He wasn’t even breathing hard.
“Don’t hurt yourself.” As soon as the words were out, she knew she shouldn’t have said them.
A hard look came into his eyes. “I’m not useless.”
“That’s not what I meant. Obviously, you’re stronger one-handed than I am with two. But you’re still recovering.”
“No.”
“No what?”
“I’m not recovering.” The words came out clipped. “I’ll never be recovered. My right arm will never regain full movement.”
Her heart fluttered and maybe bled a little. But the last thing he’d want was her pity.
So she said, “Let’s not pretend you can’t do twice what normal men can, with one arm tied behind your back. Honestly. To be frank, this kind of petty whining is completely unappealing. Also unbecoming a Navy SEAL.”
She passed him and put the milk for the skunks into the cab. When, from the corner of her eye, she saw him shaking his head and going back to work, she got into the cab without offering to help.
A couple of minutes passed before he slid behind the wheel next to her. “Don’t think I don’t know you’re trying to manipulate my emotions with some kind of therapist ninja tricks.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m an ecotherapist. Ninja therapy is a completely different branch. I could never do that. I don’t even like wearing black.”
The tight set of his mouth softened again. He didn’t look quite as lighthearted as earlier, but he wasn’t back to full resistance either. Annie relaxed into her seat.
Recovery had two components: physical and psychological. As far as she was concerned, the latter was more important. She was always fully conscious of that during a therapy session. In a session, she would never tell anyone they couldn’t do something, like she had just done to Cole. She’d slipped. Cole was out here, in her real life, and it threw her off.
The patients at Hope Hill weren’t locked up. Annie ran into them in town all the time, chatted, even had coffee with a few. But they hadn’t hung around her like Cole, hadn’t gone home with her.
He was more intense, more take-charge than the others. He didn’t exactly ask. He went ahead and did what he wanted. Maybe the need to dominate was a Navy SEAL thing. Would those qualities help or hinder him in his recovery? She hoped for the former.
“Did you always live in Broslin?” he asked.
“Lived here as a kid, moved away, then moved back recently.”
“Big family?”
“One grandfather and one cousin.”
“How do they feel about the nature-therapy thing?”
She grinned. “You make it sound like I’m a pole dancer.”
His gaze sharpened. A hungry-bear look came into his eyes, and it sent a shiver of awareness down her spine.
“Ecotherapy is a legitimate branch of therapy, based on scientific study,” she rushed to say as they stopped at a red light. “Paoli Hospital is not that far from here, up on Route 30. They did one of the early studies there. The ward where their gallbladder patients recover has an odd arrangement. Half the rooms have windows that look at a brick wall, and the other half look at a courtyard with trees. The patients in the rooms that look to the courtyard were able to go home a day early, on average. They needed one dose of heavy drugs postsurgery to deal with pain. The brick-wall patients needed four.”
He didn’t say anything. Looked thoughtful. At least he was no longer laughing at the concept.
“Japan and Germany have done a bunch of similar studies,” she added. “Nature therapy has been long accepted and used there. In Japan, they call it shinrin-yoku, forest bathing.” And because Cole didn’t stop her, she kept going.
By the time they reached her house, the contractor’s truck waited by the curb, next to the dumpster. As Cole pulled into the driveway, Ed Sanders came around the back.
The contractor was in his midfifties, in good shape, hair that sexy salt-and-pepper gray. He wore his trademark overalls stamped with the red company logo designed by his wife. He lifted a calloused hand in greeting. “Hey there.”
After Annie introduced the two men, Ed fitted her with a hardhat from the back of his truck and took her around back, leaving Cole to unload the feed bags. Nothing she could say to him would stop him anyway.
“How bad is it?” She eyed the blue tarp tacked to where the bathroom wall used to be.
“Not good.” Ed looked upset on her behalf. “You ought to look up whoever inspected this house when you bought it and ask for your money back.”
“The thought had crossed my mind. The house isn’t going to collapse, is it?”
“Not from this damage, but let me look inside before I give you a definitive answer.”
She had the keys, so she let him in the back door, into the kitchen that also stood in shambles.
He walked through, making sympathetic noises. “Natalie saw the show. She said it was something.”
Natalie, his wife, was a soft-spoken, lanky black woman who ran the Broslin Ballet School. She was about five years older than Annie, always impeccably put together, graceful, and kind. She donated free dance lessons to foster kids.
Back in July, Natalie had Annie bring two orphaned baby goats over to the dance school so the girls could copy the goat kids’ frolicking for two hours as a movement lesson. Annie had never laughed so hard in her life. She had a feeling neither had some of the girls. She had the video on her animal-sanctuary website. That single video had received twice as many clicks as all her other posts put together.
Ed thought Natalie hung the moon and the stars. That Annie still believed in true love was at least half due to the two of them.
Ed scratched his neck. “So I take it Kelly’s crew ain’t coming back to fix this mess?”
Annie winced. “They aren’t really a crew. They were picked more for decoration. Kelly pulled them together for the show.”
“Were they insured and bonded?”
Annie looked down at her shoes. “I feel pretty stupid.”
Ed patted her arm in a fatherly gesture. “You were helping your cousin.”
“She was helping me too. Can’t blame her for not knowing the bathroom studs were rotten. I live here, and I didn’t know it either.”
They walked back to the bathroom, to the worst of the damage. Every time she looked at that blue tarp, she wanted to cry.
Ed tapped around and shone his flashlight into the walls and partially open ceiling. He hemmed and hawed, but then finally said the words Annie most wanted to hear. “Good news is, the house definitely isn’t gonna collapse.”
But before Annie could sink into sweet relief, Ed added, “Bad news is, I’m booked a couple of months out. I’ll ask the crew and see how many guys can come over after the regular hours.” He frowned.
“But?”
“They can still only put in an hour or two a day. Construction’s hard work. They’re pretty tired by the time I’m done with them. And they’ll want overtime.”
While that sounded reasonable, it also sounded expensive. And slow. So much for a quick fix.
She must have looked as discouraged as she felt, because Ed said, “You could ask someone else. I won’t be offended.”
“I’d rather wait for you.” She wanted someone she trusted.
“I’ll send out someone with some plywood, tomorrow the latest. He’ll seal up the hole, so at least the house will be secure. Then I’ll make sure someone comes by to clean up the construction rubble inside. I saw you have a construction container already, so at least we don’t have to wait for that.”
“You have a roundabout estimate?”
“I’ll work one up by tomorrow. Then I’ll see if I can squeeze you in the schedule somehow. If you’re sure Kelly’s crew won’t come back.”
“I’m sure. Her guys looked traumatized.” Rob, the one who’d knocked out the wall, had called twice to apologize. “And I think Kelly lost confidence.”
“She’ll bounce back. That girl always does. Shame about her husband.”
Annie couldn’t deny Kelly’s resilience. She wanted their relationship to be less strained, but she wasn’t sure how to overwrite the past.
“I called the insurance company yesterday,” she told Ed. “They’re sending a claims adjuster next week.”
“We shouldn’t do anything until they see everything and take pictures.” Ed began walking out. “Give me a call after they leave. Think about how you want to fix up things, how much budget you can get together. See how much the insurance gives you, then call the TV station and Kelly. They should take responsibility.”
“I’ll contact the TV station.” Although, as far as she knew, the tiny local station was always strapped financially. And Annie definitely wasn’t going to sue her own cousin.
Ed left with an encouraging smile and a friendly wave. Annie headed to the garage, not surprised to see Cole’s shiny new truck in the driveway already unloaded.
She went in search of him.
He wasn’t in the garage. Weird. He hadn’t been in the house, so where was he?
Finally, as she went around the front, she saw him by the road. She could see the tight set of his mouth even from thirty feet away. Now what? Then she saw what he was looking at, and her breath caught.
Could I, please, catch a break?
A ten-foot section of her fence was down past the garage, posts and wire fencing lying on the ground, demolished.
Cole must have seen her from the corner of his eye, because he turned toward her.
“When did this happen?” she asked.
He raised an eyebrow.
She was moving too fast, nearly running, so he couldn’t read her lips. She slowed down as she neared. “When did this happen?”
“Sometime after we left last night.” He ran a hand over his bald head, his wide shoulders stiff as he considered the mess. “I would have seen this kind of damage as we drove away. It’s a big fricking hole.”
She didn’t grind her teeth, but only because she couldn’t afford the dentist. “Someone went off the road. Did they leave a note?”
“Not here.”
She checked her phone. Nobody had sent her a text or left a message while she’d been talking with Ed. If a neighbor had done this, they might have. “I’m going to check the mailbox.”
Whoever had run over her fence had better step up to the plate and accept responsibility—pay for the repairs. She had to have the fence fixed. The llamas, along with Esmeralda the donkey, and sometimes even Dorothy the pig, spent most of their day outside. It would be bad enough when the weather turned cold and they had to be cooped up inside.
She searched through her mailbox and groaned when she found nothing but junk mail and bills. She put them in Cole’s pickup. She’d look through them at Hope Hill.
By the time she returned to Cole, he was standing on the shoulder of the road, among her small field of colorful whirligigs. His expression was closed, his body even tenser than when she’d left him.
Then she saw the small lump in the grass next to him, and she tensed too.
Not again. She moved forward with dread.
The fully grown fox lay motionless, eyes glazed over, limbs frozen in death. His beautiful autumn-red fur ruffled in the slight breeze.
Annie’s throat tightened. Her heart clenched. She hated seeing an animal hurt. She hated seeing one dead. What people felt for the loss of a beloved pet, she felt for every deer, woodchuck, and raccoon she saw by the side of the road. She’d always been that way. She couldn’t even stand it when people ran over the worms on the asphalt after a rain.
“I hate this stupid curve in the road.” Misery and frustration thickened her voice. “You have no idea how many animals get hit here.”
“Is that why you have all these?” Cole jerked his head toward the slowly clattering whirligigs.
“Yes. To scare animals away from crossing the road here where people can’t see them as they drive around the curve.”
Cole watched her with that expressionless gaze of his, probably thinking she was a nutjob for being this upset over a stray fox and for trying to stop animals from getting run over. But when he opened his mouth, he didn’t bring up her weirdness.
Instead, he said, “Whoever hit your fence didn’t lose control of their car. They hit the fence on purpose.”
She glanced between him and the fence as she processed his words.
“No skid marks on the road,” he pointed out. “No skid marks on the shoulder. No skid marks on the grass.” He watched her. “Your stalker ex?”
Her mind, too, immediately jumped to Joey, but she rejected the idea just as fast. “Joey wouldn’t do this. Nobody would do something like this on purpose. Why would they?”
She wanted agreement from Cole, but Cole wasn’t done yet.
“The fox wasn’t hit here.” He toed the animal with his boot and turned the stiff body, making Annie’s stomach lurch. “No blood on the ground. No blood on the road. No blood on the shoulder. Somebody hit this fox somewhere else, or found the carcass on the side of the road, and brought it here.”
She blinked at him and shivered. She rubbed her arms, frowning in her effort to understand. Someone brought her a dead animal? For what possible purpose?
“You say this happens a lot,” Cole said in a careful tone. “How often?”
She had to think. “Once a week? Sometimes more than once.”
“Since when?”
“It started a couple of months ago. Around the time when they broke ground on that new development on Victoria Circle. I figured the noise was scaring animals this way. I started finding—” She flinched. “When I come out in the morning.”
“Do they do construction at night?”
What? “No.”
Then she caught his meaning. Oh. She always found the broken little bodies in the morning. The animals were hit at night. But they wouldn’t be running from the construction noises at night.
She felt stupid for not having thought of that before. Yet she still wasn’t ready to concede. “That doesn’t mean someone is bringing them here.”
The maliciousness of the idea raised goose bumps on her arms. She had a hard time believing anyone would do that. There had to be another explanation.
Cole kept watching her. “You drive around town an average amount?”
She nodded.
“Do you see roadkill always in the same spot, this often?”
She thought about it. “Roadkill yes, but here and there, not concentrated like this. It’s the country. We have animals all over. You see roadkill every day. But not in the same place.”
She had trouble comprehending what that meant. After all the grief and worry and heartbreak she’d felt because she hadn’t been able to save these animals . . . someone had done that to her on purpose.
Who would do something like this?
She still didn’t want to accept the possibility. “I don’t think—”
Irritation flashed across Cole’s face as he took her by the shoulders. A shoulder and an elbow, actually, since his injured arm didn’t have full range of motion and couldn’t reach all the way up.
He fairly towered over her, and her breath caught. He really was as big as a bear.
He flashed a dark scowl. He was standing too close, his gaze too heated, his tone clipped when he said, “You can’t brush this off.”
She tried to shrug his hands off, but he was unmovable. “Stop trying to scare me.”
“Stop pretending, dammit! Denial can be as lethal as a hand grenade.” He growled the words.