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Emmett tossed their water bottles into the empty trash can and then grabbed several old containers from the cabinets to throw away. He considered running scalding-hot water into the sink to wash the piles of plates and cutlery but decided against it and tossed it all into the trash. No amount of dish soap or hot water could bring those things back to life.
“Dad, we’re fixing this place up to sell it, remember? You’re coming to live in Cincinnati, near me.” He was careful not to say “with me.” The doctors had been clear. Though his father was in the early stages, he needed more care than Emmett could give on his own. And patients like Gibson would grab on to any chance to stay in their homes. Emmett had failed his father so far; he wasn’t going to fail at this. Gibson would come to Cincinnati and get the care he needed.
“Your mother loves the island, you know she won’t move.”
Emmett took a breath and closed his eyes. His mother was buried in Toledo in one of the plots she and Gibson had picked out years before. “Dad, Mom isn’t here anymore. She’s gone.”
Gibson gestured dismissively and began adding more things to the trash. “She’s just gone to get groceries. She’ll be back in a while. She was going to bake shortbread cookies for you but forgot we were out of vanilla.” He cleared one corner of the kitchen table and started on another, tossing things willy-nilly into the big trash can along with Emmett.
Emmett reached for his father’s hands; stilled them. “Dad, let me do this, okay? I’ll make sure everything that is thrown out needs to be trashed. Why don’t you rest?”
“I don’t need to rest. I’m healthy as a horse.” He pounded once on his chest as if that would sway Emmett. Maybe he really thought it would.
Maybe he didn’t remember why Emmett was here in the first place.
“Dad, we’re selling the house, remember? We talked to the doctor about it last week. You’re moving into that nice apartment that’s just down the road from my house.”
Gibson was quiet for a long moment. “You’re here to renovate the house. Our house.”
“Yeah, I am, Dad. And then we have to sell it. You can’t stay up here on your own and my work is in Cincinnati so you’re coming to live with me.” Emmett winced. “Near me, at that nice apartment.”
“I don’t think your mom will like living in an apartment. She likes to have room to move.”
“Do you remember the bird room? With all the parrots and cockatiels?” Emmett led Gibson to the table, cleared another space and they sat. “And there was that nice walking path around the pond, remember? We saw that big, Great Dane when we walked around it last time.”
“His name was Percy. And the parrot wouldn’t repeat anything we said.”
Emmett smiled. “That’s right. The nurse said he was shy, remember? And you said once you got acquainted, everything would be all right.”
“But your mom didn’t see the place. I’m not sure she’ll like it. Maybe we should just do the painting and things here.” Gibson clasped his hands, twisting them around. “We could take her down in a few weeks, when she’s ready.”
“Dad, Mom isn’t here. She died several years ago.”
Gibson’s brow furrowed. “Mary Margaret is at the store, getting vanilla for snickerdoodles. Emmett’s coming home.”
It had been shortbreads a few minutes before but Emmett didn’t correct his father. He looked away and squeezed the bridge of his nose. Oh, God, it was happening.
“Dad, do you remember visiting Cincinnati?”
Gibson pushed away from the table and stalked to the kitchen sink. “’Course I remember Cincinnati. Terrible football team, pretty good at baseball, though, depending on the year. My son, Emmett, lives there. Mary Margaret and I go down every few weeks because he’s too busy to come up here. You went to school with him, didn’t you?”
Emmett rose from the table and began stacking old magazines and junk mail into piles. When the pile looked ready to topple, he pushed it into the trash can and started another. “I’m Emmett, Dad. I’m here to help you get the house ready to sell.”
But Gibson kept talking, as though Emmett hadn’t said a word. “You know, it’s summer and Emmett doesn’t like coming back here. But I’m hoping he makes it this year. Big party planned for July. Reunion, you know.”
Emmett thought about the invitation he’d left on his office desk before coming home. He planned to be off Gulliver by the time the reunion came along. Off the island and back in Cincinnati where the only thing people knew about him was that he was good at restoring old houses.
“Dad, do you still read these tabloids?” He picked a few issues from the floor, dated last summer.
“I never read that trash. Mary Margaret, she likes those celebrity stories. Likes to stay on top of Hollywood,” he said, his voice lilting into a laugh. “Hey, do you think that’s what’s holding her up? You think she’s reading the magazine in the store because she’s tired of me ribbing her about it? We’ll have to tell Emmett that when he gets here.”
Emmett gave up. He couldn’t say those words—Mom is dead—one more time. He couldn’t. Mary Margaret Deal was very much alive in this house. Emmett shook his head. Even if he could say it, Gibson very obviously couldn’t believe his wife was gone. Maybe that was why his father was having such a hard time letting go, because he could still feel her here.
No, Gibson’s inability to let go had nothing to do with the magazines stacked around the house or the sewing room that probably still had whatever project on the sewing table Mom had been working on before she died years before. He couldn’t let go because that was part of who he was. Determined. Particular. Obstinately convinced he was right until the last leg of whatever crusade he was on crumbled.
He’d been the last man standing in the quest to save the old school all those years ago. The first to defend Emmett when the rest of the town went on the attack.
The doctor said Gibson was living in a world that was more comfortable for him; Mary Margaret always made things comfortable. Maybe it was okay for Emmett to just let this one illusion stand.
“Could be, she always liked the pictures best,” he said as he pulled one full trash bag from the can and replaced it with another. He started filling that one up, too. “Did you know they’re talking about rehabbing the old school? Well, maybe. They were actually talking about tearing it down, but I volunteered to have a look.”
He kept talking about the school, about the Reds and Indians. About anything he could think of as Gibson stared out the window. Emmett cleared the kitchen table of junk and filled another bag with trash, hating the sound of his voice but more afraid of the silence if he stopped talking. Mentally he tacked another week on to his plans to stay on the island. It would take at least that long to get the junk cleared out so the real work could begin. He’d need more supplies, which meant another ferry ride to the mainland. Might as well unpack the truck and reload it for the landfill. Once most of the junk was cleared away he would call the cleaning crew to start working on the inside of the house.
Emmett tied up a third bag of trash and started on a fourth, this time pulling crusty pots from the stovetop and putting them into the bag. He would do all of this and he wouldn’t complain, not once.
“Hey.” Gibson turned away from the window. “Emmett, I didn’t hear you come in, boy. You’re early.”
“It’s almost noon.”
Gibson grabbed another bottle of water from the fridge. “I didn’t figure you’d get here much before five, what with traffic and coming up from Cincy. I didn’t get to the store before you got here, so we’ll have to eat at Gulliver’s Diner tonight. They still do that prime rib you like.”
Why was it suddenly easier to breathe? His father was back. “Sure, Dad, that sounds great. And we’ll stop by the grocery to get a few essentials after.”
“It’s good to have you home, boy.” Gibson looked around with sadness in his eyes. Where there was confusion before, now Emmett was certain Gibson saw what he did: a cluttered, messy house in need of repair. No ghosts. No memories that seem more real than the present. “I don’t want to leave this place.”
“I know, Dad.”
“Mary Margaret and I had a lot of good memories here.”
“I remember.” Emmett swallowed. This was the man he remembered. A little thinner and more vulnerable than he had ever seen him, but this was the Gibson he remembered.
This was his dad.
“I don’t, sometimes. Sometimes, all I know are the memories.” Gibson squeezed his hands together, looking around the room as if he might find the one thing that would keep him here.
“That’s why you’re coming to Cincinnati, so the doctors can help you.”
Gibson sighed. “You shouldn’t have to deal with this, boy. It isn’t fair.”
Emmett agreed. Losing his mother had been hard. Watching his father fade away...he didn’t know how he could deal with that, too. “Who said life was fair, right?”
“Emmett.” Gibson shook his head. “Life is what you make of it.”
Up until a month before Emmett had thought he’d been making a pretty good life. Since they’d met with his father’s doctors, he wasn’t so sure the choices he’d made were anything but selfish.
He didn’t know if the trustees would call about the school, but if they did he would answer. Why he’d ever offered to do an estimate on the building he couldn’t explain. Just that there had been a look in Jaime’s eyes, a determination to the set of her shoulders and her fisted hands, that he’d had to encourage. He owed her at least that much.
CHAPTER THREE
THE NEXT MORNING Jaime paced her office and one question kept repeating over and over.
What was Emmett Deal doing back on Gulliver? While she waited for a clerk in the Historic Registrar’s Office in Columbus to pick up the phone, she pulled at the collar of her fitted navy T and this time her nail bumped along the scar that ran from her collarbone to the top of her breast. She shivered and blew out a breath before busying her hands with the pens and markers in the tree-trunk coffee mug on her desk.
It didn’t matter why he was back. It didn’t matter that he had the absolute worst timing of any human who’d walked the face of the earth. What mattered was getting through the next six weeks and getting her life back to normal. Quiet and so boring that she faded into the background and people forgot about Pittsburgh. No more reading through the accomplishments of her former classmates and realizing she didn’t like the life she’d been perfectly happy with just a month before. No more wishing she’d made different choices all those years ago. Wondering if was too late to make those changes now.
Jaime ran her index finger under the crew neck of her T, trying to scratch the itch that normally didn’t make itself known until the first tourist-filled ferry docked at the pier. Her life might not be as big as some of those on the reunion questionnaires but it was hers, built from the ashes of a time when she’d been afraid to leave her own house. She had a challenging job at Gulliver Wines. Lived in a perfect little bungalow with water views. Had friends she could count on. She wasn’t jealous. She wasn’t sure what she was but it wasn’t jealous.
Calling the registrar’s office was step one. Going to the Deal house was step two and getting the renovation back on track step three.
The registrar’s secretary came back on the line and asked Jaime to leave a message. Screw it; she’d deal with the state paperwork later. After leaving the message she hung up the phone and willed her mind to focus. She composed a quick email to the registrar to underline the importance of the school, and to reiterate her request that he call. Then she made a list of local contractors she’d dealt with for the winery; once this project got its second start it was important for it to go smoothly. No more Luthers.
Maureen arrived with steaming containers of fresh fish and chips from a dockside restaurant a few minutes later and Jaime’s stomach growled as if on cue.
“I’m so glad you’re flexible. When the school called this morning I couldn’t tell them no.” Maureen rattled the containers before setting them on a side table and tossing her purse into an empty chair. “God, I love your office.”
Jaime looked around at the mostly white space. She’d framed a few pictures of the Marblehead Lighthouse a few years before, and her computer was new, but other than that it was just an office.
“It’s quiet. No seven-year-olds asking for another chapter of Junie B. Jones or another round of Heads Up, Seven Up.”
Jaime pushed the take-out container filled with deep-fried fish away and busied herself with the reunion file. “What are we going to do about this?”
“As de facto cochair of the reunion committee with you, I think we’re going to order cake and punch and call it good?” Maureen answered hopefully.
“Fine.” Jaime sighed and twirled her pencil in her hand. “We’ll start the dinner shifts at four on Friday and be fine. Winery tours on Saturday before the big party?”
“And that brings us to the school and the big party...but first we need a new estimate, right?”
Jaime narrowed her eyes at Maureen’s innocent expression. “New estimate?” Lord, why was she always surprised at how quickly the grapevine worked on Gulliver. Of course Maureen knew not only about the possible demo but also the new estimate.
And Emmett.
Maureen blinked. Jaime tapped her foot. Maureen rolled her eyes. “Fine, Rick called Clancy and you know my husband is a dear, sweet man who can’t keep anything to himself. Emmett’s back. The school is on the chopping block. You’re in the middle. You could have told me all this yourself, you know, instead of pacing around your office and fiddling with your shirt.”
Jaime dropped her hands to her sides. “It’s just an estimate, and then we get the project back on track and save the reunion.”
“Do you think Emmett was serious?”
“About saving the building? You know as well as I do that he loves old buildings. I’d say he was serious.”
“And how are you?”
“Why would I be anything but fine?” Jaime doodled on the corner of her desk blotter. “I’m not pining for the one who got away.”
“I only ask because there haven’t been very many since The One.”
Jaime made a face. “That’s only because most of the available men on the island are my dad’s age. Not interested.”
“One semiserious relationship that ended more than three years ago.”
“As I said most of the available men—”
“Clancy works with a couple of guys on the mainland—”
“Maybe after the reunion.” But preferably never. Jaime didn’t want to be fixed up. She didn’t want to be alone, either, but maybe that was for the best.
“Jaime, you can’t want to be single for the rest of your life. You don’t date locals. You don’t go to the mainland to meet new people.”
“I’m busy.” Her gaze snagged on the folder filled with the highlights of her former friends’ lives. She didn’t want to read about the big lives of her classmates. Didn’t want to argue with her father about the old school. Didn’t want to be alone but didn’t want the whole This Is Why I’m Disfigured conversation, either.
“You make time for the things that are important.”
“Right now the school is important...the reunion.”
“Maybe you and Emmett—”
She shook her head. “Not happening and not because he disappeared on prom night. He’s back but he won’t stay. I won’t leave.”
“How do you know he isn’t back for good?”
Jaime snorted. “Emmett Deal has a successful business, a television show and zero ties to Gulliver.”
“His dad is here.”
“He didn’t come back for his mother’s memorial service, Mo.”
“He attended the funeral services on the mainland. Besides, the ‘service’ here was more of an impromptu Remember When gathering.”
“Don’t defend him.”
“I’m not defending. I’m saying he was with Gibson at the actual funeral, and you know Gib goes down to Cincinnati a couple of times each year.”
“Whose side are you on?”
“Yours. You know that, I just... You keep telling me it’s been ten years. Maybe he’s ready to come home?”
Jaime swallowed. Thinking of Emmett as the aloof person he’d become after Pittsburgh was so much simpler than thinking of him as someone who missed home. “I don’t think Gibson being on the island is the huge draw you think it is,” she said, but her voice sounded breathy to her own ears.
Maureen plucked the phone from Jaime’s desk. “Then call him. We can’t do much more planning until we know the school will actually be available by reunion weekend.”
Jaime watched the handset as if it might reach over and bite her. Then reluctantly took it from Maureen’s hand and put it back.
“I might have better luck if I just show up.”
Ten minutes later Jaime turned her golf cart off the main island road onto the long drive to Emmett’s family home. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been here. Definitely before his mother had passed away.
The house came into view and she stopped abruptly. The pretty old Victorian looked...worse than the school. The front porch sagged, most of the paint had worn away and the lawn was not mowed. Gibson Deal had always been particular about the house; the sight of its disrepair didn’t make any sense.
But Emmett’s coming back suddenly did.
* * *
EMMETT WAS JUST getting ready to go to the dump when he spotted Jaime sitting in a red golf cart in the driveway. “Hi,” he said and tossed the keys onto the front seat of his truck. He walked to the golf cart. “The trustees didn’t call. I figured they won the argument.”
“Not yet.” She mumbled something else that sounded suspiciously like not ever and then smiled brightly at him. “I’m here to take you up on the offer of an estimate. We’ve already had one, but after Luther Thomas walked out on the job the trustees want to make sure there are no more surprises.”
“And if I have plans?” He raised an eyebrow at her.
“You don’t.” She waited a long moment and finally said, “Are you coming or do I also have to look for another estimate?”
“I haven’t been asked onto the project yet.”
“I just did.” She blew out a breath that made the curls at her forehead dance. Emmett bit back a smile. She was still so easy to rile up.
“No, you said you were here to take me up on my offer. But you didn’t actually ask me to give an estimate, and as part of my offer I did say the trustees should call if they wanted my help.”
“I’m as close as you’re getting to a trustee today so either get in or get out of my way.”
Emmett clicked his tongue against his teeth. Maybe he’d misjudged Jaime yesterday. She’d looked lost and forlorn in those baggy clothes and, despite the determination in her gaze, it was obvious she’d been about to cave to the trustees’ demands. This Jaime was different. She wore khaki pants and a fitted top and her manicured nails were tap-tap-tapping against the golf cart’s steering wheel. This Jaime was in charge. It was nice to see.
“I’m not in your way,” he said, making a flourish with his hands as he moved farther into the yard and away from what was left of the circular drive that led back to the lane.
“You know what I mean. Just get in the cart. Please?” she added almost as an afterthought.
He hadn’t actually called the trash barge. He could go to the school and then deal with the load of trash. “Fine, just let me get a couple of things,” he said.
A few minutes later he was in his dad’s golf cart with a pencil, level and a few other tools in a belt on the front seat and following Jaime to the school. Most islanders chose bicycles or golf carts to get around. The wind on his face felt good. He hadn’t been in a golf cart since he’d left.
He sighed as they turned into the school’s drive. The roof bowed in the middle, which didn’t bode well. One of the side windows was broken. The front door hung slightly askew. If the inside was as bad as the outside this was more than a surface remodel job. The city would need tens of thousands of dollars to fix it up. That didn’t give the other crew reason to walk out, but some guys took on jobs before knowing the full details.
Jaime led the way inside and his hand clenched across his clipboard as he watched her hips sway side to side. It was silly, really. He’d known he would see her sooner or later when he came back, and had tried to prepare himself for that by looking her up on the internet. He’d found a few pictures in the Gulliver’s Island weekly newsletter, and saw her profile on one of those professional social networks, but there were no personal social media pages. She pushed a flyaway strand of hair behind her ear. Nothing he’d found had prepared him for how much she had changed.
Or how much she had stayed the same.
Those brown eyes were still slightly too big for her face. Her bottom lip slightly too thin and her chin too determined. He hadn’t seen her smile yet, but he knew that would bring out a single dimple in her left cheek. And, if she were really amused, small flecks of gold would twinkle in her eyes.
Not that any of that mattered even a little bit. He was here for a few weeks to get his father ready for a move. That was it.
“Well,” she said as she pushed open the front door. “What do you think?”
He thought she looked good from the tips of her toes to the blond crown of her head. And that was so not what he should think. He wasn’t good for Jaime. That’s why he’d left Gulliver in the first place. It was why he hadn’t come back and why he needed to get off the island just as quickly as possible.
Why he should have kept his big mouth shut yesterday in the diner.
Why he should definitely, totally, not check out how her pants outlined the gentle curve of her hip. She moved away from him and for a split second he forgot not to look. His hand slipped off his clipboard and the clip snapped down on his finger. Emmett cursed violently.
“I think this place needs a lot of help,” he said, shaking his hand to dull the pain.
She clasped her hands in front of her. “Are you all right?”
“Old clipboard. Should have thrown it away years ago,” he lied. “Where should we start?”
Jaime led the way through the main room, pointing out where the other crew had started. As she talked about an open-floor-plan main room with display cases along one wall and high tables scattered throughout, the room seemed to take on new life. The broken-down walls disappeared and Emmett could almost see sunlight pouring through a newly hung stained-glass window onto to honey-colored wood floors. The room could serve multiple purposes from tourist attraction to rental hall.
“How did you get the trustees to sign off on a Cleveland crew?”
“They were available. And I was here to be the local lookout, to make sure they didn’t abscond with any nails or screws that were once sold at Island Hardware.”
Emmett chuckled. “No wonder the crew walked out.”
“I didn’t actually frisk them as they left.”
Emmett squatted to look at the warped floor. “Is that why you’re here now? To make sure I don’t steal a broken windowpane?”
“They wanted a local.” Her mouth twisted in apology.
“Local?”
“Someone who lives on the island. Has island interests at heart. You know the drill.”
Yeah, he knew the drill. He hated the drill of treating those who lived off Gulliver differently than those who resided on the island. People moved in and out of his neighborhood in Cincinnati all the time. His business, in fact, was based on people buying, selling and moving on to the next project. Still, it rankled that they didn’t think of him as local. His father still lived here, for God’s sake; had been the superintendent of schools until he’d retired a few years before.
And, again, none of this matters, he reminded himself as he made a notation on his paper. What the islanders thought of him was no longer his concern. He’d left; made something of himself. What a handful of strangers thought of the boy he’d been was so far off his radar it was barely a blip.