Meghan planted her hands on her hips, glaring at the man who was cradling Polly way too close. Her chest heaved and she tasted bile in her throat. She was furious, but she was also afraid. Anything could have happened to Polly. Anything.
“Look, I wasn’t...”
“Do you know how old she is?” she demanded, even though the question wasn’t really relevant. Polly was twenty-four, even if she didn’t act like it. Even if she would never actually be an adult.
The man’s face paled but he didn’t release Polly, who had wrapped herself around him and was smiling up at Meghan as if they were all having a grand old time.
“Meghan,” she chirruped. “I’ve made a new friend.”
Meghan gritted her teeth, torn between rage and tears. Oh Polly, she wanted to cry. If you only knew.
“I think you have the wrong idea about what’s going on here,” he said quietly, but she heard an edge of anger in his voice that made her more furious.
“You think so, huh? I come in here and see you pawing my sister, your hands everywhere...”
“Meghan, don’t shout,” Polly said.
“Let go of her,” Meghan commanded, and the man tried to extract himself from Polly’s winding grip.
“Gladly,” he muttered. Two spots of color had appeared on each chiseled cheekbone, but the skin around his mouth was white. Meghan had the jolting sensation that this stranger was just as pissed off as she was. He was a good-looking stranger, that was for sure. Dirty blond hair streaked with both lighter blond and brown and hazel eyes. Chiseled cheekbones and a body to match. Polly had picked well—or not, depending on how you looked at it.
The man was trying to put Polly on the ground, but her sister was resisting. When Polly got something into her head, she didn’t let go of it easily. Meghan felt a flicker of uncertainty, a cringing of shame. Maybe this man hadn’t actually targeted her sister. Knowing Polly, her sister had targeted him. And then she’d gone and jumped to all sorts of conclusions.
“I like him,” Polly said, confirming Meghan’s suspicions, and she closed her eyes briefly, sent a prayer heavenward, asking for strength.
Meghan snapped her eyes open and saw the stranger staring at her, a frown settled between his brows. She felt something flip inside her at that narrowed look, and she turned to give her sister a careful smile. “I see that, Poll, but you don’t know him. You remember what I said about strangers?”
Polly pouted but her grip had loosened enough for the man to finally fully extract himself and stand up. He flung a twenty-dollar bill onto the bar, sending a pointed glare toward the hunched backs of a couple of barflies who clearly hadn’t wanted to get involved in an out-of-towner’s dispute.
“Nice knowing you,” the man muttered, and started walking towards the door. Polly let out a whine of dismay and Meghan grabbed her sister’s arm.
“Come on, Polly. Let’s go.” The man disappeared out into the night, and Meghan considered going after him to apologize. But she couldn’t deal with Polly and some stranger, and so she chose her sister.
“How did you know I was here?” Polly asked as Meghan marched toward the door.
“Your supervisor texted me and told me you were going out with some friends.” Which had sent the alarm bells inside her head pealing.
“I was just having fun,” Polly protested. “And that man was so nice. Tami said I should say hi to him.”
Meghan stopped in front of the door, her whole body tensing. “Oh, Tami did, did she?” No doubt she thought it would be funny to watch Polly make a fool of herself. No doubt the girls fell over themselves laughing when they dolled Polly up in this ho-bag get-up.
Fury beating in her blood, Meghan arrowed a glare at the gaggle of girls in the corner, who giggled nervously in response. “You should know better,” she told them in a hard voice. “Shame on you.”
One girl, probably Tami, ducked her head. “We wouldn’t have let anything bad happen to her. We just wanted to see...”
Rage spiked through Meghan, making it difficult to speak. “She’s not your plaything,” she finally ground out. “She’s not your social experiment. She’s a person, just like you, like anyone, who deserves respect and kindness and—and decency.” The girls all hung their heads, avoiding meeting her eyes, and choking down her anger, Meghan stomped outside, bringing Polly with her.
“You weren’t very nice, Meghan,” Polly said in a small voice.
The wind funneling down Watertown’s main street was bitter, bringing tears to Meghan’s eyes. “Those girls weren’t very nice, Polly,” she said, although she knew her sister wouldn’t understand.
Polly’s lip wobbled. “But they’re my friends.”
“Some friends,” Meghan muttered before she could keep herself from it, and Polly yanked her hand from hers.
“Don’t say that!” she shouted. “You shouldn’t talk that way about my friends.” She wrapped her arms around herself, rocking back and forth.
“Oh, Poll.” Meghan bit her lip, willing her own anger back. “I’m sorry. They are your friends, and I shouldn’t say that about them. But...” She took a deep breath, trying to navigate these treacherous waters while having no idea how deep they could get. “Sometimes friends make mistakes. They don’t do nice things. That’s all.” And she’d call Polly’s supervisor tomorrow, make sure this didn’t happen again. Polly loved her job bagging groceries, and Meghan didn’t want her sister to lose her independence. But she could have got into a whole lot of trouble tonight. Just the thought of it made Meghan’s stomach clench.
Meghan pulled her sister into a quick, wordless hug. “I love you, Polly,” she whispered, and Polly clung to her.
“I’m sorry, Meghan.”
Meghan knew Polly probably didn’t understand what to be sorry for, but she appreciated the sentiment all the same. “Let’s go home,” she said. “When we get back I’ll make you a cheese and pickle sandwich.”
“And a Coke?” Polly asked, her eyes brightening, her expression alert and hopeful.
“And a Coke,” Meghan promised. Her sister had the same thing for dinner every single night, without exception.
“Okay.”
Meghan shepherded Polly toward the truck, breathing a sigh of relief when she finally had her sister safely buckled.
A drizzly, needling sleet was starting to fall as Meghan pulled away from the curb. As she headed for the highway, she saw a man walking down the sidewalk, shoulders hunched and head tucked low against the sleet. It was the man from the bar, with his fancy puffa parka and top-of-the-line hiking boots. Meghan started to slow down so she could apologize for yelling at him, but then she realized he could have done anything to Polly; maybe he just hadn’t gotten the chance. Her mouth in a firm line, she kept driving.
Quinn woke up with the fading wisps of a dream drifting like smoke through his mind. He’d been back in the hotel, but not as it was, dirty and derelict, but as it once had been. Pure white snow had been piled like cotton candy outside the windows that were framed with sumptuous crimson velvet drapes. A huge Christmas tree twinkling with a million colored lights graced the large drawing room, by a roaring fire.
But beyond those physical details, the dream held something more: poignant, deeply felt emotion, a sense of childhood wonder and profound joy. He lay there, the weak, wintry sun filtering through his hotel room’s mustard-yellow curtains, blinking in the early morning gloom and trying to hold onto that elusive feeling. He couldn’t ever remember feeling that way. That happy.
The dream was already receding like a dawn mist, retreating to the foggy corners of his mind as he came more fully awake. More recent memories took place of those distant, half-forgotten ones—the bar last night, the young woman plopping herself in his lap, and her sister storming into the bar, everything about her blazing.
That woman had been a far more appealing proposition than the one he’d had in his lap. Long, wavy dark hair, bright blue eyes, and a curvy, athletic figure, or so he suspected underneath the parka and jeans.
Not, of course, that Quinn had any intention of complicating his stay in Creighton Falls with a fling or anything like it. Besides, he’d never see her again. Thankfully.
The dream was well and truly forgotten now, and that sense of wonder he’d held onto for a few precious seconds had dissipated, leaving him flat.
He needed to go back to Creighton Falls, go through the hotel again. Bring in professionals to assess what the major repair work would be before they could put it on the market. Then he could get back to the business of living instead of wandering through the forgotten town as if he were a ghost. Sighing, Quinn rolled out of bed.
Thirty minutes later he’d had a cup of black coffee and a couple of fried eggs in the hotel’s restaurant and was heading north on Highway 81, the road bordered by trees on either side, falling away to farm fields patched with snow as he took the exit for Creighton Falls.
He drove slowly into the town, taking a little more time to examine the buildings than he had before, from the faded beauty of the Victorian houses on the outskirts to the shuttered storefronts by the green, the junky play equipment half-hidden by the snow, the peeling paint on the gazebo. He could see the bones of something beautiful in this town, hidden beneath dirty snow and rotting wood. He could imagine it as it might have been, a dozen or a hundred years ago, freshly painted and bustling with life.
None of it stirred any memory in him, though, and after parking the car in the lot behind the hotel, he paused for a moment, taking in the town, breathing in the cold, fresh air, and wondering if he really had lived here once, and whether the Christmas tree in his dream had been fantasy or memory.
In the distance, behind the row of storefronts, Quinn saw the glint of sun on ice, and knew it was the St. Lawrence River. He averted his eyes, felt an uncomfortable tightening in his chest. He’d avoid the river.
Someone came out of the diner across the green, an elderly man in a red plaid coat and baggy overalls. He paused in front of the door, squinting toward Quinn, and then he ambled down the street. Quinn went into the hotel.
The damp, musty air smelled just as old and unlived in as he remembered, and the hotel didn’t look any better in the bright morning sun than it had in yesterday afternoon’s oncoming twilight. It needed, Quinn reflected, a lot of work. Maybe more than he even realized. Peel back the rotting floorboards, strip the peeling wallpaper, and he might find something worse and more expensive to fix. But there was only one way to find out.
He went through the downstairs of the hotel again, more slowly this time, making notes on everything he noticed. They’d have to get rid of most of the furniture, strip the walls and repair the floors. He flipped a few switches but the electricity had been turned off long ago. He did find the valve for the water in a room in back of the kitchen and turned it on. Checked the sink and after a few seconds, when pipes clanked and creaked in protest, a few rusty drops of water dribbled out of the faucet. He turned it off again and headed outside.
The morning’s clouds had been burned off by a wintry sun that gilded everything in gold. The air felt clean and fresh and with a sense of purpose buoying his step, Quinn went in search of the town’s library, and some reliable Internet access.
He’d seen the sign for the library pointing down the green, the opposite direction from the highway. He walked past a couple of houses, a quaint, shuttered ice cream parlor that looked to be open only in the summer months, and a sign for a boat launch that pointed down a dirt road to the river. Then he found the library, a one-story, shingled building that was open only two days a week, and today was fortunately one of them. Quinn headed inside.
The librarian, a granny type who looked avidly curious to see a stranger strolling into her domain, immediately asked if she could help.
Quinn glanced around the tiny room, noting the shelf of well-thumbed paperback romances, a new fiction section which included all of four books, and a couple of battered armchairs where a few elderly people were reading the newspapers, rustling the pages ostentatiously as he spoke to the woman at the desk.
“Do you have a computer?”
“Oh, yes. We have two,” she said proudly, and Quinn suppressed a smile. There was something strangely endearing about this shabby town.
The woman helped him to log onto the Internet which moved at a creaking pace—broadband hadn’t come to this part of the state yet—and Quinn typed in the search engine for building contractors in the area.
Five minutes later, the page of results loaded, and within another half hour he’d managed to get names and numbers. He thanked the woman for her time and she leaned forward, clearly overcome by curiosity.
“You’re a Freeman, aren’t you, dear?”
Quinn tensed in surprise before he found a smile. “As a matter of fact, I am.”
The woman nodded, clearly pleased to have her suspicions confirmed. “So which one are you? You don’t look old enough to be Adam...”
It was unsettling to have this stranger so familiar with his family. “I’m Quinn.”
“The baby. Oh...” She put one hand to her mouth, her eyes wide and dark with sympathy, and Quinn had to keep himself from recoiling. Did everyone in this town know him, his history? Seemed they did.
“Anyway.” His smile was getting harder to keep on his face and his cheeks ached. “Nice to meet you,” he said, even though they hadn’t actually met, and he strode out of the library.
He walked back to the hotel, and when his phone finally registered reception by the town green he made a couple of calls. He left a message for the local plumber, arranged for an electrician to come out, and then called a building contractor, who sounded as curious as the librarian.
“You thinking of renovating that old place?”
“Just getting it ready for sale,” Quinn answered, and heard an audible sigh of disappointment.
“Shame. It was so beautiful once. But you’ll remember, of course.”
“Actually, I don’t,” Quinn answered pleasantly. “See you tomorrow.”
He disconnected the call and shoved his phone into his pocket, staring at the empty green. On its far side a few customers were in the diner, which seemed to be the one place of activity in Creighton Falls’ minuscule downtown. Maybe he’d have dinner there tonight. On second thought, he decided he preferred the relative anonymity of Watertown. He didn’t think he could stomach more people shooting him curious glances, asking him who he was, remembering when he couldn’t.
Quinn headed back to the hotel for another look, grimacing as the close air hit him in the face. What the hell was he doing here? He should head back to Watertown now, spend the afternoon in the comparative comfort of his hotel room, and then show up here when the contractor came back. Why torture himself by staying in the place any longer than necessary?
Quinn didn’t know the answer to that question, wasn’t sure if he wanted to. Something about this old place drew him, made him want to walk its rooms in search of what—? Memories? Answers? A way to explain the lapse in himself, make him understand the two decades since then? Some part of him wanted Creighton Falls to hold answers to questions he hadn’t even realized he’d needed to ask.
Why can’t I remember? What actually happened out there on the ice? Were we a happy family once, a normal family?
Did he really want to know the answers to those questions? He stood in the front hall, trying to imagine what it would have looked like twenty-two years ago, bustling with guests and staff. He ran a hand along the length of the stair banister, only to have it come away covered with slimy dirt.
Swearing under his breath, he went to the sink in the kitchen and turned the water on, waiting for the rust-colored water to run clear. He’d just put his slimed hands under the freezing water when a snapping sound came from somewhere below him, and the next thing Quinn knew a waterfall was cascading around his ankles.
“Damn it.” He turned the taps off, but the water kept coming from below. Quinn wrenched open the cabinet under the sink, and saw a pipe leaking like a geyser. He hurried back to where he’d found the water valve, but the damned thing was stuck, and he was afraid of twisting it too hard and breaking the whole thing off. He knew this was just the first of many problems the hotel would offer him, but his inability to deal with it infuriated him. He hated feeling useless, unneeded. It was what had driven him away from home, kept him traveling the world. And now with every second he tried to figure out what to do, the room became even more flooded.
He yanked his cell from his back pocket and scrolled down for the plumber’s number. Thankfully someone answered this time.
“O’Reilly Plumbing,” a woman’s voice answered on the second ring, her voice brisk and business-like.
“I need an emergency call out immediately,” Quinn said. “A pipe has bust and the valve to turn it off is stuck fast.”
“Where are you?”
“The Creighton Falls Hotel.”
There was a tiny pause, and then the woman answered, “I’ll be there in five minutes.”
True to her word, a pickup truck pulled up next to Quinn’s BMW just under five minutes later, as twilight was beginning to fall over the green. A woman climbed out of the cab. Quinn waited by the kitchen door; the room was now ankle-deep in rust-colored water.
The woman grabbed a toolbox from the back of her truck and strode towards him. It wasn’t until she’d stepped into the kitchen light that Quinn actually made out her face, and realized who it was. The gorgeous and furious woman from the bar last night.