Nori was stunned to see a hole in the center of her loft window.

She felt a chill run down her spine, and headed down to her kitchen to call Steve.

“Steve, someone threw something through my window. The window’s broken.”

“I’ll be right there.”

She sat at her kitchen table and tried to think of a reasonable explanation for all of this. She could not stop shivering despite the warmth of this sunny morning. Because she was remembering other things she should have taken note of doors left unlocked when she knew she had locked them, windows closed when she knew she had left them open. What was going on?

In a few minutes, Steve was there. She went outside, down her porch steps and across the flagstone path and ended up in his arms. Steve was here. She was safe now.

MILLS & BOON

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

LINDA HALL

When people ask award-winning author Linda Hall when it was that she got the “bug” for writing, she answers that she was probably born with a pencil in her hand. Linda has always loved reading and would read far into the night, way past when she was supposed to turn her lights out. She still enjoys reading and probably reads a novel a week.

She also loved to write, and drove her childhood friends crazy wanting to spend summer afternoons making up group stories. She’s carried that love into adulthood with twelve novels.

Linda has been married for thirty-five years to a wonderful and supportive husband who reads everything she writes and who is always her first editor. The Halls have two children and three grandchildren.

Growing up in New Jersey, her love of the ocean was nurtured during many trips to the shore. When she’s not writing, she and her husband enjoy sailing the St. John River system and the coast of Maine in their twenty-eight-foot sailboat, Gypsy Rover II.

Linda loves to hear from her readers and can be contacted at Linda@writerhall.com. She invites her readers to her Web site which includes her blog and pictures of her sailboat: http://writerhall.com.

Storm Warning
Linda Hall

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Lord, You have been our dwelling place throughout all generations.

—Psalms 90:1

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

EPILOGUE

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

ONE

The storm took her by surprise. Somehow, lost in a long and elaborate daydream on this sunny, glorious day, Nori Edwards hadn’t seen the sky blackening behind her. She was paddling across the silky water of Whisper Lake, oblivious. It should have been a clue when a sudden gust of wind whipped her hair across her cheek. It wasn’t. She merely sighed, stopped, braced the paddle on the top of her kayak, and wound her hair more securely back into its ponytail, and kept crossing the bay from Twin Peaks Island.

The distant rumbling of thunder concerned her only slightly. In the two weeks she’d lived here, she’d experienced only one brief five-minute thundershower. The thunder was nothing to worry about, she thought. She’d be home and dry in the lodge at Trail’s End before any serious rain fell. If it even fell at all. She was strong and her arms easily fell into the rhythm of her strokes.

She had taken a little time off from the backbreaking work of unpacking, cleaning, clearing brush, sweeping out cabins and unpacking in her lodge, for a relaxing paddle out on the lake. She’d gotten in the habit of doing this, heading out on the lake for an hour or two each afternoon.

When she’d bought this property, known as Trail’s End, she’d been assured by the real estate agent that people from Whisper Lake Crossing would be lining up to work for her on the cleanup and repairs.

What he hadn’t told her was that every worker, every contractor, every builder, tradesman and handyman from Bangor to Portland was working on the northern Maine highway infrastructure.

Maybe she was going to have to take her search further afield and put an ad in the Shawnigan Sentinel. The town of Shawnigan was nine miles farther down the lake and much bigger than Whisper Lake Crossing.

On the first day she’d walked through the place, she had fallen under its spell. She’d stood on the wide wooden porch and taken in the deep, green smell of the pines, the gently lapping lake. The sun shimmered on it and turned it almost golden. But it was when the agent took her up to the loft that there was no turning back. Log lined, with wide, high, sunlit walls, a massive brick fireplace and cathedral ceilings, it offered a stunning view of Whisper Lake. It would be the perfect orientation for her art studio.

She had stood at the windows and looked out on the lake and thought, I want this place. I have a good feeling about this place. This place can finally be a home for me and my family.

She would buy it. She and her daughters would live in the lodge. They would rent out the cabins. This would be a good place to start a new business, a good place to start over, a good place to paint again.

But that dream would never be realized unless she got some help.

It was getting cooler. She rested from her paddling and zipped her nylon windbreaker to her neck. It was the beginning of June and it was still chilly enough for a sweatshirt underneath. It wasn’t the howling wind, two-foot waves and claps of thunder that finally caught her attention—it was the sudden, curious quiet. She stopped, felt a ripple of unease.

The sky to her right was blackening. The distant droning of motorboats was gone. The trees had stilled. Even the birds had stopped their chirping. This sunny, pleasant afternoon on the lake had gone slate-gray and silent. She looked around her. She was farther from home than she realized, farther than she wanted to be. Kayaks should hug the shoreline, not go right out in the middle of the lake. Yet here she was, between the island and the shore.

She located her dock on the hazy horizon and started pushing toward it. She smelled the rain before she actually felt it. Heavy, humid, brassy, it caught in her nostrils. She choked, felt exposed out here, a tiny low-slung boat on a massive body of water.

Thick dollops of water fell here and there. And then the wind started. At first it merely ruffled the lake around her. Gradually, it increased into a snarl.

And then all at once it was bearing down on her and she found herself paddling directly into it. She seemed to be getting nowhere. She zagged a little to the right. Maybe she would have a better chance at the wind if she didn’t face it square on.

It’s not like she hadn’t been warned about the lake. That was a constant theme around Whisper Lake Crossing.

“Whisper Lake,” said a woman named Alma whom she’d met at Marlene’s Café. “You bought them cottages out there? Them Trail’s End cabins? Well, all I can say is mind the lake. She got a mind of her own, she does.” And then the woman had gone off shaking her head and muttering, “Bad place, bad place.”

Pete and Peach were next. Those two old men seemed to be everywhere; holding court at Marlene’s Café, the Chinese restaurant, the post office, Earl’s Gas and Convenience.

“So you’re the one,” Pete had said as he pointed at her about a week ago at the post office.

“The one what?” she’d responded.

“The one who finally bought the place out there. None of us thought anyone would.” He spit on the ground before he looked up at some place directly over her right shoulder and said, “Be careful of the lake, then.”

The wind whorled around her now, strong and fierce. Rain slashed at her cheeks. No doubt now, she was getting wet, and not just from overhead. Frothy white waves churned over her boat.

She paddled more furiously, wondering if she was making any headway at all, wondering if her new little lake kayak could withstand a thunderstorm of this magnitude.

God, please help me, she breathed.

All around her was sound—crashing rain, slashing lightning, growling thunder, howling wind. The lake was foamy white and no longer snarled; it yelped and snapped at her like a pack of wolves. She opened her mouth in her exertion and tasted cold rain on her tongue. It became harder to breathe.

Her muscles burned as she pulled, pushed, pulled, pushed through the waves. One huge wave rolled right over her small kayak from bow to stern. Would she tip over? What would she do if she lost her paddle? Her bare fingers were cold and cramped and hurting. If only she had worn gloves. She was wearing her personal flotation device, but what help would that be in this cold, cold lake? Plus, nobody would miss her for days. Her daughters were far away at a Christian camp for the summer. And no one else would miss her. She had no one else. Hot tears mingled with icy rain.

The trees along the shore were thrashing crazily, as if the very ground they were standing on had been shaken by a giant hand. Lightning seemed to strike not more than a couple feet away from her on the water. The fine hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, and not for the first time she felt her skin prickle.

She began to pray. She hadn’t prayed in a long time and so this surprised her.

The lake was the color of bronze and sky turned into the kind of deep blue-black that nightmares are made of. She could barely make out the shore and ended up paddling off course for a little while before lightning lit up the sky enough for her to see her dock. Just up ahead. Beyond that, her lodge. And home. And warmth. And safety.

Dear God, she prayed, please help me. Don’t let me be hit by lightning. I need to be there for my daughters. It was bad enough to lose their father. They can’t lose me, too.

There was her dock. She was making progress. Just a little bit, but she was going to make it. A little more paddling. A few more strokes. Keep going. She could see her big wraparound porch and she remembered that she had left all her windows open on this day that had started out so sun filled, so fine. She counted strokes to keep her mind occupied.

Ahead of her and a little to the right it looked like a whirlpool was forming. Could this be possible? She skirted around the eddy as best she could and thought about waterspouts. She knew those tornadoes made of water could be deadly.

Another flash of lightning lit up something else. Or someone. A person? Standing astride at the end of her dock covered in a green hooded raincoat and wearing black boots. It was a person, a man, and he was waving toward her.

His hands were cupped around his mouth and he was yelling something that was immediately swallowed up by the storm. She paddled toward him, new hope surging through her.

When she was close enough she saw that he was a big man. A mountain of a man. Water streamed off the brim of his hat like a waterfall. She couldn’t see his face.

Miraculously, she surfed on a big wave and foundered only feet from the dock.

“Here!” he called on the wind. “Reach your paddle toward me!”

She did so. He lunged at it with rain-soaked hands. He missed and she thought he would fall into the water beside her.

She prayed her dock would hold. It was one of the things most in need of repair. Constructed of old gray boards with many missing slats, it was somehow anchored to the bottom of the lake with only two stanchions remaining at the end.

She called. “I’ll try to get closer.”

“Don’t let go your end!” he said.

“I won’t,” she yelled, but not much strength remained in her arms.

She tried again. This time he grabbed it, held on hard and pulled the kayak toward the dock with brute force. When she was abeam the dock, another problem presented itself. “I don’t know if I can get out,” she yelled up at him. “The wind is blowing me into the boards.”

As best she could she reached forward and pulled the rubber apron that encircled her waist and unfastened it from the rim of the cockpit. The entire bottom of the kayak sloshed with water. She was totally soaked through.

He said, “I’ll grab hold of you. I’ll hold you. I won’t let you go.”

The next time the kayak pitched toward the dock he reached out and grabbed onto her PFD and held fast. She hoped nothing would rip. He bent down, reached under her arms and brought her up onto the dock beside him. She held on to him while he grabbed the kayak’s line and shoved the boat hard up toward the shore. He took the paddle and threw it up onto the beach, as well. He was amazingly strong.

“Let’s get out of the rain,” he yelled over the wind.

She merely nodded.

“Careful now, careful there,” he said, taking her arm. “The dock is slippery. It’s not all that sturdy. Hold on to me. There. I’ve got you.”

His voice was gentle for so large a man. And when her feet wouldn’t work, when she shivered so much that she slipped on the slick, wet dock, he lifted her up into his arms and carried her. He didn’t put her down until they were up on her porch. “Let’s get you in and dried off. You’re freezing.”

She was, but she was also strangely warmed by his closeness.

Before they went inside, she looked up into the face of her rescuer and mouthed, Thank you.

Who was this man who had appeared out of nowhere?

The sound of the storm had changed. The lightning and thunder had moved on a bit, but the rain was coming straight down and steady, and so heavy she could barely see the lake.

She was still wearing her PFD and the weight of it added to her cold. She took them off and hung them on a hook just outside her door.

She slipped off her sneakers at the same time and left them there, too. She padded off to the kitchen in wet, bare feet, leaving tracks on the hardwood.

“You can leave your wet things here. Follow me into the kitchen. I’ll get you a towel.”

Her teeth actually chattered as she retrieved a large towel from a hall closet and handed it to the man who had saved her from the storm. “Here,” she said. He took off his wide-brimmed oilskin hat and ran the towel over his head. His hair was pale in color and fell well below his ears. Without his hat he looked younger. She guessed him close to her own age of thirty-eight, or not much older.

She was suddenly conscious of her own drenched clothes. “I’ll just be a minute,” she said to him. “Make yourself at home.”

She closed her bedroom door behind her. Make yourself at home? Who was this man she had just encouraged to make himself at home in her house? In her room she quickly shed her wet clothes and donned jeans and a big, comfy sweatshirt. She ran a towel over her hair and pulled it back into a ponytail. Her daughters were encouraging her to grow it. It wasn’t quite long enough for a full ponytail, but she kept trying.

When she emerged, he was kneeling in front of the hearth laying in wood for a fire. He had taken off his oilskin jacket and underneath he wore a gray long-sleeved cotton T-shirt and khaki trousers. He had pushed up the sleeves of his shirt and she could see his forearms were all muscle. No wonder he’d had no trouble lifting her out of the water like he did.

Pieces of his hair fell forward over his eyes when he smiled up at her. His eyes were deep and very blue. He said, “I wondered if you’d mind if I made a fire. Warm the place up a bit.”

“Mind? That’s wonderful,” she said. Somehow it seemed perfectly natural that this stranger should be making a fire in her fireplace. She stood there for a moment while he silently lit a match to the newspaper and kindling. When he rose she said, “Now, is there something I can help you with? You drove out here because…?”

“Pretty lucky that I was out here. You were sort of struggling a bit. I’m glad I could come along and help. I was all set to get my canoe down if need be.”

She looked out of the window. Another truck was parked right next to her own truck. On his, a long green canoe was upside down over the cab. The two trucks, side by side, looked like a matched set. A dog’s head peered out of the truck window.

“You have a dog,” Nori said.

A slow smile began on his face. “His name is Chester.”

“He looks like he’s jumping all over your truck.”

“That’s Chester.”

She looked up at him. Here they were, talking about dogs, and she didn’t even know who he was or why he was in her living room.

“Your name is?”

“Oh, sorry.” He moved toward her. “I’m Steve Baylor. And you’re Nori.”

“You know who I am?”

She redid her ponytail more securely in the elastic.

“The rumor around town is that you’re looking for a handyman. I’ve come to apply for the job. That is, if you haven’t already got someone else lined up.”

“Well,” she said, and moved an errant wisp of hair out of her face. “I am looking for someone.”

“I’m your man, then.” He opened his arms wide and grinned deeply. He had a very expressive mouth that went up more on the right side than the left when he smiled.

“And you drove all the way out here in the middle of a storm because you want to work here?”

His expression became serious. “I was going to call you. Marlene from the café told me about the job. I was just canoeing the Kettle Stream and saw someone out on the lake and I thought I better go see. I was hoping it wasn’t you. You want to avoid thunderstorms on the lake if you can at all help it.”

She nodded. “I’ve been told that before.”

He said, “This lake can blow up into a frenzy and then be completely calm in the space of twenty minutes.”

She looked out at the lake. The downpour was unrelenting, but the lake looked remarkably calmer.

“So then, Steve, what are your qualifications?” She tried to keep her tone businesslike, yet the memory of being held in his gentle arms was still fresh in her mind.

“I’m strong,” he said immediately. “I’m a carpenter and cabinetmaker. I’m a good organizer. I can put in a good day’s work.”

Nori clasped her hands in front of her. Someone like him was who she needed. “Would you like a hot drink? Something to warm you up? I could make coffee. We can talk more then.”

“Coffee would be great.”

“Follow me,” she offered. “Don’t mind the mess. I’ve been here two weeks and I’ve been concentrating more on clearing a path to the beach and unearthing places to park.”

“That’s the sort of thing I could help with.”

“I think I need a whole crew.”

“My thoughts exactly. I know a bunch of young people—from the church actually—who I could round up.”

As they entered the kitchen she tried to see the place through his eyes—boxes leaning against walls, coffee mugs and plates stacked and balanced precariously on counters, piles of papers and books next to the coffeemaker, dirty dishes in sink, her laptop and more papers on the small table. She wanted all new cupboards and countertops. And a new sink while she was at it, and a dishwasher. Actually, she wanted an entirely new kitchen. She was reluctant, therefore, to unpack a lot into cupboards that eventually would be torn down.

The fire was already warming up the place and it felt good. She got a tin of coffee from her pantry, measured fresh grounds into her coffeepot, poured water into the reservoir and switched it on. He said nothing while she did this, and she didn’t know whether she should be talking or not. He seemed to be a quiet man, a nice man, but the silence was beginning to make her uncomfortable. She began talking, her back still to him. “I want to start with this kitchen. Since I plan to live here, this is where I want to begin—”

“For the summer?”

She turned around to face him. “Excuse me?”

“You plan to live here for the summer?”

“Year-round,” she said.

“Year-round?”

“Yes, year-round. This lodge is fully winterized. Maybe not the cabins, but the lodge, certainly. The real estate agent told me the road is plowed regularly. And the place is quiet. That’s what I’m looking for. A quiet place to live year-round.” A place to call home, she wanted to add.

Steve said, “He told you they plow the road?”

“Yes. He did.”

“Well, I don’t know where he gets his information….”

“I’ll hire someone then,” she said quickly, turning away, her face becoming hot.

A few moments later he said, “Pretty isolated out here.”

“I’ll manage.”

“I’m sure you will. You strike me as a strong woman.”

Thankfully her back was still to him. She didn’t know what her face would reveal with that comment.

As she got a couple of mugs from the counter, she heard a loud crash behind her. She jumped and turned, put a hand to her mouth.

“The chair,” he said rather sheepishly. “I’m sorry.”

Steve was on his backside on the floor, his left leg caught in a broken chair leg, his right stuck out in front of him. He had sat on a wooden rocking chair and gone right through it. It was a chair that had been here when she moved in.

She put a hand to her mouth and started to giggle. She couldn’t help it. He managed to disentangle himself and hoist himself up. He was laughing, too.

She said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t laugh. Are you okay?”

“Only my dignity is tarnished,” he said, rising. “And this chair. Sometimes I don’t know my own strength.”

“I should’ve told you that chair might be questionable,” she said. “I brought it in here because I was trying to figure out what to do with it. You didn’t break anything that wasn’t broken before.”

He picked up the broken front leg and ran his hands over it quietly for a while. Finally, he said, “Can I take the pieces of this chair with me? I might be able to do something with it.”

“Be my guest. I wasn’t sure it was worth fixing. It’s kind of plain.”

“This chair? This is a great old chair. It looks like an antique Shaker rocking chair. Their chairs were plain because their lifestyle was plain. I’d love the chance to be able to work on it.”

“You sure know your chairs,” Nori said, pouring coffee into two mugs.

“I love carpentry.”

They sat down at the table across from each other and she spread out her lists and Internet printouts on the table in front of her.

“I’ve looked at some new cupboards online and found out that a company can deliver them from Bangor. I’ll just need someone to bring them out here and install them. Can you do that?” From her stack of papers and home repair and decorating books, she unearthed pictures she had printed from the Web of the kitchen cupboards she was looking at.

He picked up her printed sheet and looked at it for several minutes, frowning before he put it back down on the table. “You don’t want those things. They’re factory mass-produced. Not for this grand old place. I’m a cabinetmaker. I could make you cupboards. Nice ones. From scratch.”

“Great. Okay, well.” She felt a jittery jangle of nerves. She knew the price of handcrafted cupboards. Her budget only had so much in it. “But we’ll need to talk price.” She added quickly, “I also have to order new appliances—dishwasher, fridge, stove, one with two ovens and a separate warming oven. And I’ve got my budget down to the penny.”

“What’s wrong with that stove?” Steve pointed at the stove up against the wall.

She stared at him. “That’s a wood stove.”

“Yeah? So? It’s a classic.”

“I know it’s a classic. And it’ll stay there. I just don’t think I’ll be using it to actually cook things.”

“No,” he said. “You gotta use it. It’ll really warm up the place, too.”

“Well, even if I use that as a stove, I still want a new, proper, energy-efficient oven. And dishwasher. This washing dishes by hand is for the birds.”

Before she had even finished talking Steve was up and examining the cupboard next to the sink. It was empty inside. He closed it, opened it again. She watched in silence while he ran his fingers over the wood as if reading Braille.

He turned. “I can fix you up with brand-new cupboards. We can look at woods. I would recommend something dark. I think that would fit in with the decor of the rest of this old kitchen.”

He went on. “If you’re going to run a guesthouse and retreat center you’ll want the best. Nothing prefab for here.”

She furrowed her brow and looked at him. “How did you know I plan to open a retreat center?”

“A little birdie told me.” And then he chuckled deeply. “Actually, Marlene may have mentioned that.”

“Oh. Right.” Marlene at Marlene’s Café was one of the few people she’d gotten to know. Nori didn’t have Internet access at Trail’s End yet, so took advantage of the free Wi-Fi at Marlene’s Café at least once a day.

While Steve and Nori drank their coffee, she went over the rest of her list and pictures. Next was a tour of the lodge. Steve had a lot of good ideas. When she asked him how he had learned so much about interior design he told her it was the influence of his parents. “My dad did the carpentry work and my mother did the designing.”

“So, you worked with your father?”

He didn’t answer her question and the tiniest of frowns settled between his eyes.

After they’d gone through every room in the lodge, they decided to take a look at the cabins since the rain had lessened.

The sun began to glisten through wet tree branches as the two of them headed outside.

“Why don’t you get your dog?” she said.

After Steve let Chester out of his truck, Nori commented on what a remarkably well-trained pooch Chester was.

“He’s had a bit of police training.”

“Wow. That must be interesting.”

“It is,” he added.

Beyond them the lake lapped gently against the shore. It was hard to believe that an hour before it had been a maelstrom.

About an hour later, she and Steve and Chester ended up back in the kitchen going over numbers and ideas. At the end of another pot of coffee and some cookies she had bought at the bakery in town, they came up with a workable plan. Steve would head into Shawnigan tomorrow and look at woods for her cupboards. He had promised her that he could do it for her budgeted amount. Then he would organize work crews. “You’ll like the kids from the church,” he said.

“I’ve met Selena, Marlene’s daughter. Does she go to church? She’s the only young person I know. She seems a bit quiet, though,” Nori said.

“All the kids around here are a bit quiet,” he said.

She thought that was an odd statement, but didn’t pursue it. Instead, she asked, “Are you from around here. Steve? You don’t have the accent.”

“I’m a transplant. Been here three years.”

“Where did you come from?”

“Boston.”

They both noticed the smoke at the same time, but Steve got to the fireplace first.

“Sometimes that fireplace smokes.” Nori was close behind him. She knelt down beside him and watched him work on the flue.

“Do you think the chimney works properly?”

He fiddled with the knob. “It’s the flue. It wasn’t opened all the way. It was a bit stuck. I think I got it. But I would get it cleaned. That’s part of the problem.”

“I’ll do that.”

“I could give you names.”

“Please.”

Their faces were at the same level and he was so close she could catch the scent of him. He smelled like the out-of-doors—canoeing and camping.

He said, “Who split all this wood?”

“I did.”

He looked at her and raised one eyebrow. “I’m impressed.”

“I’m used to hard work.” Nori looked away from him. The truth was, she wasn’t. Splitting a few logs had taken her hours and she had the blisters to prove it.

The fire was burning nicely now. He said, “I’m glad someone’s taken over this place,” he said. “It’s too good a place to let go.”

There was something so tender in his gaze that she found herself backing away lest she be drawn too closely into those deep eyes. Standing, they were face-to-face with her framed photos on the mantel. There were pictures of her daughters, several of her late husband, Marty, one with the girls draped on either side of him, smiles all over everyone’s faces.

“My daughters,” Nori said by way of explanation. “They’re twins. Sixteen. They’re working in a church camp this summer. That’s their father…”

He looked at the picture for a while without saying anything. “I have an eight-year-old son myself. Jeffrey. He lives with his mother down South.”

“I’m sorry,” Nori said, finding her voice again.

He looked back at the pictures of Daphne and Rachel. “Your daughters are very pretty. You said they’re at a church camp?”

She laughed a bit at that. “Yes, a church camp. I haven’t been to church in a while, but my daughters never lost the faith their mother did.”

Nori hadn’t been to church since her husband’s funeral. Sometimes she wondered if God had forgotten all about her. He had looked the other way when that drunk had barreled into her young, strong husband, out for an early morning jog. It felt to her that God’s back had been turned on her ever since.

“I’m sorry that you lost your faith.” His words sounded genuine. He paused before he said, “I just found mine. I’m still finding mine. I still have a lot to work out. Not in God’s love to me, but in my own life.”

It was an odd sort of moment. She’d had the idea that Steve might be someone she could talk to, that he was a listening sort of man, that he would somehow understand everything she had gone through and why it was that she had lost her faith. But then he had stiffened and his face darkened.

They said goodbye and she stood on her porch and watched until his truck was out of sight.

As she made her way back inside something felt curious. She was sure she’d left all the windows open when she went kayaking. Had Steve shut them all? When would he have had time to do that?

TWO

Nori Edwards was nothing like he expected. Steve leaned against the gas pump at Earl’s Gas and Convenience and filled his truck. From Marlene and her husband, Roy, he’d heard a lot about the woman who had bought Trail’s End, but he hadn’t met her until today. Everyone in town had a comment or two about “that woman who bought Trail’s End.”

The place had a history, he knew. Five years ago Earl had bought Trail’s End from the couple who had run it for fifteen years. They were tired of the upkeep. Earl wanted to winterize the cabins and turn it into a winter rental place.

Shortly after he bought it, Earl fell off a cabin he was roofing and broke a leg and injured his back. It had turned into something that was chronic. He put Trail’s End up for sale shortly after he realized his back wouldn’t get better.

Yes, the place had a history.

There was nothing wrong with Trail’s End. The workmanship in the lodge was exquisite. The location was superb. The view was magnificent. Trail’s End had a lot going for it.

It was something else.

It was all about what had gone on out there two years ago. Steve frowned as he hung the gas nozzle back up and went inside to pay.

He plunked his credit card down on the counter. “Chase around?”

Joe, who’d been out of high school for two years, was a year older than his brother Chase. The sons mostly ran the place, now that their father, Earl, was laid up. Chase worked here part-time, but did a lot of other jobs in town.

Joe leaned his long body into the counter and cracked his gum. “Haven’t seen him. Why?”

“I may have some work.”

Joe picked up the credit card and regarded him with his small eyes. “What kind of work?”

“What I have is general work—heavy lifting, clearing brush, groundwork, digging, drywall, lots of hammering and nailing. If you see Chase let him know I’m looking for him, will ya?”

“I think he went out shooting.” He rubbed the side of his thin nose with the end of a pencil. He was staring at Steve.

Steve shook his head. He was not pleased that Joe and Chase kept guns. Steve used to own guns. He didn’t anymore.

Joe said, “That work you’re talking about, that’s up at them cottages, right? Them ghost cottages.”

Ghost cottages. Steve put his credit card back into his wallet and said, “They aren’t ghost cottages.”

He wished Joe and Chase would get back into the church—all the kids for that matter. Many of them had this idea that Trail’s End was cursed, inhabited by ghosts, and that serial killers roamed the forest behind the lodge and cabins. There was nothing that he or the pastor in their church could do to shake that. And it all went back to two years ago when a girl, one of their group, had disappeared from that very place. Or so it was thought.

“How was it out there? What’s that lady like in real life?” Joe asked.

Steve tried for a deadpan. “Yes, Joe, I’m here to report that I was out there. She was howling at the moon. Already all the cottages are burning, and sacrifices are being offered.”

At this, Joe’s reptilian eyes went as wide as Steve had ever seen them. He rubbed at a spot beside his nose. “You kidding me, right?”

“No, I’m not kidding. It really happened. Of course I’m kidding.”

Steve signed the credit card slip, slapped the countertop with his hand and said, “Just let Chase know I’m looking for him, will ya?”

Back in his truck, Steve tore open some candy and withdrew a few pieces of licorice. “Hey, Chester, whaddya think? You think everyone around here is nuts?”

His dog, who’d been sitting on the front seat, wagged his tail and came over for an ear scratch.

“Back,” Steve ordered.

Chester immediately obeyed and jumped into the backseat.

Steve had a couple more stops to make before home, where he and Chester would go for a long run along the lake. On the way out to find Connolly, another recent high school graduate who had worked for Steve in the past, he thought about the cottages. He knew they weren’t haunted, but he also knew that “something” had happened out there, something that so terrified the kids in the town that many of them wanted nothing to do with Trail’s End. The mere mention of Trail’s End around Selena or Chase made them clam up and turn away. And Nori had bought the place with no knowledge of any of this, as far as he could tell.

He thought about her. He had noticed her wedding ring right away Where was her husband? Her eyes had seemed so sad when she talked about her daughters and their “father.”

She hadn’t said “my husband,” she had said, “their father.” Obviously, she and her husband were estranged. Maybe this was a trial separation. Perhaps they were trying to work things out. And then another thought—maybe her husband was, even now, in Iraq or Afghanistan. He knew from experience that some military wives didn’t like to talk about deployments. Maybe this accounted for the sadness in her eyes.

God, he prayed. Help me to be her friend.

And then there was the matter of her faith. Her daughters went to church. She didn’t. She had lost her faith, she said. Did that have to do with the estrangement?

For someone to have found the faith and then deliberately move away from it was something Steve couldn’t understand. When he found God it was like a whole new place opened up in his life, a place he had walled off and protected for so many years. Years lived emotionally distant from his wife and son.

But by the time he found God, it was too late. His wife had left him and taken their son and gone to Florida.

He used to blame his former job for wrecking his marriage. Steve had been a part of an elite corps of the military. It wasn’t until finding his way to faith in God that he realized it was him, and not his job.

He remembered pleading with his ex-wife, Julie, not to leave and take their son to Florida with her. “How can you leave? How can you take Jeffrey so far from me?” he had demanded, crying. It was the first time he had actually wept real tears in a decade. He had seen so much in the military. He had walled off so much of his life. It was like all of his emotions up to that point had been cauterized.

Julie had flipped her blond hair behind her ears and retorted, “And that matters to you all of a sudden? You’re never here anyway. You haven’t been here for any of Jeffrey’s moments. Not Jeffrey’s soccer games, not Jeffrey’s school plays, not the first time Jeffrey rode a two-wheeler, not Jeffrey’s music recitals—do you even know what instrument Jeffrey plays? You’ve been too busy out saving the world from terrorists.”

After Julie had announced that she was also in love with somebody else, Steve had taken the ferry across to Vinalhaven, Maine. Halfway across, he’d removed his wedding ring from his finger and thrown it as far as he could into the choppy ocean. That was three years ago.

He still felt he would never be the kind of man any woman could love. He had so much to learn, so far to go.

It was quite ironic. Two months after Julie left, he did just what she wanted. He separated from the military, escaped to Whisper Lake Crossing and went back to the quiet pursuit of cabinetmaking. He loved it. Whenever Alec, the local sheriff who also happened to be his friend, would offer him full-time police work he always had the same response; “Full time? Not interested.” Occasionally, Steve helped with something that really caught his fancy—like the disappearance of the girl from church and her boyfriend.

That was the last time Steve had been out to Trail’s End. They had been out there looking for any sign of two teenagers. They had to satisfy their curiosity by just walking the grounds. Earl refused to let them search the place, and because the evidence was so flimsy, Alec had never been able to get a search warrant.

He quickly found the small house where Connolly lived with his parents and four siblings. When he told Connolly’s mother the nature of the work, she pushed her glasses up on her nose, shook her head and said, “No. I don’t think he’ll want to work out there.”

“Come on, Rita, tell him about the job at least. I took the job out there and she needs help.”

“I’ll tell him. That’s all I can promise. If he doesn’t want to go, I won’t be forcing him. You know those kids are still traumatized.”

Steve got back into his truck and drove down the driveway to Flower Cottage, where his friend Bette and her son Ralph lived. The white house with the flower baskets under each window came into view. As always, the place looked pristine. It reminded Steve of a quaint little English country cottage. Not that he would know what a quaint little English country cottage looked like.

Bette and her thirty-year-old son, Ralph, had emigrated from England forty years ago and Bette had brought with her, her English accent and her country garden ways. Ralph was a bit slow and simple, yet capable of a good day’s work. Rumor had it that when Ralph was about five, Bette’s husband went back to England. He just couldn’t take the responsibility of a mentally disabled son. No one had heard from him since and Bette never talked about him.

Steve parked his truck next to Bette’s Volvo and as he and Chester got out, Boris, their springer spaniel, ran over, tail wagging and tongue flapping. Steve had a certain affection for the old dog. Despite the male name, Boris was Chester’s mother. The two dogs took off down the expanse of lawn that Bette still referred to as a “garden” even though she’d been in Maine for years.

Bette and Ralph were out back piling dry weeds into a wheelbarrow. Bette waved when she saw Steve, and came toward him, pulling off garden gloves.

“Hello, Steven. How lovely that you’re here.”

He smiled and said hello. It was like this little place on the planet was infused with peace. Coming here was like coming home. Bette had become almost a mother to him.

“Are you staying for supper?” she asked. “I’ve got a chicken in the Slow-Cooker.”

“Didn’t come for that express purpose, but I’ll never refuse an offer of a meal here. I came about work.”

By this time, Ralph had appeared, wearing a grass-stained pair of khakis and a baseball cap.

“Hey, buddy,” Steve said. “How’s it going?”

“Good. Good. Good. Working hard. Working here. Lots to do.”

“You want to work with me for a while?”

Bette’s eyes lit up. “Really, Steve? You have a job for Ralph?”

Steve nodded and grinned, and then to Ralph he said, “But it’s hard work. You up for a bit of hard work?”

“Yes, Steve. I can do hard work. I can.”

Ralph was a big man with a big heart. Steve had used him before on work projects.

“The work is up at Trail’s End, for someone named Nori Edwards.”

Ralph dropped the handles of the wheelbarrow, and it clanked down onto the flagstones. He frowned and shook his head. “No. No. Can’t go there. Not there. No. Not over there. Mum. No.”

“Ralph,” Bette said. “It’s okay. Nothing out there can hurt you.”

But the young man was shaking his head over and over. “Can’t go there. Can’t go there. Can’t go…” He kept repeating it over and over.

Bette put her arm around her son. “You’ve been listening to Earl’s boys. They put all sorts of silly things into your head. There is nothing to be afraid of there.”

Yet Ralph’s eyes were wide. “But there is…there is…”

Bette, her arm still around her big son, smiled up at Steve. “He’ll come. We’ll talk about it over tea.”

Lately, Nori always had the feeling that she was forgetting something. She would walk out of a store and when she got to the door she would make a point of turning and looking back to make sure she hadn’t left anything on the counter. Or when she got out of her car she would mentally count the items she was carrying—bag over shoulder, sunglasses on head, keys in hand, cell phone in pocket. Even when she counted, even when she looked back, she still felt as though she was leaving something important behind.

It didn’t used to be like this. Marty always told her that she was the most organized person he knew. She had to be. When you were married to the most head-in-the-clouds individual on the planet, one had to compensate. Marty, her sensitive, artist husband, could be so into a painting that he would lose track of everything—time, appointments, meals. She was the one in the family who made sure the girls got to piano lessons and gymnastics on time. She was the one who would make sure they had regular family meal times and that Marty was called in, precisely at six, from whatever piece of art he was working on. She made him see the importance of that.

When Nori complained that she had to do all the thinking around the place, all the organizing, all the setting down of schedules, Marty would take her in his arms and call her his primary color, the color from which all other colors got their hues; that without her, there was no color at all.

The color thing wasn’t entirely true. If she had been the primary color, then Marty had been the palette where the colors were mixed and made usable, because when he’d died her whole world had faded into a kind of pale, soupy, grayish monochrome.

“Ma’am?” Nori turned in the doorway of Malloy’s Mercantile. Back at the cash register, the checkout girl was waving Nori’s plastic bag of purchases. “Don’t forget your bag.”

Nori retraced her steps and made an effort to smile as she took the proffered bag. As she walked away she made some comment about forgetting her head if it wasn’t attached.

She had purchased a package of flimsy, cheap towels that might make good rags, plus a six-pack of heavy, wool work socks. In her former life, Nori never wore this kind of footwear. Her city socks were mostly light trouser ones that she wore underneath dress pants. Sometimes at home she would put on funky socks with flowers or diamond patterns. After a few weeks of blisters here at Whisper Lake though, she decided she needed something heavier inside her work boots.

Before she reached her truck she stopped and counted, just in case. One—Malloy’s Mercantile bag, two—shoulder bag, three—sunglasses, four—cell phone. Keys? In pocket. She threw the plastic shopping bag on the passenger seat and grabbed her backpack, which contained her laptop, closed the truck door, aimed the remote and locked it, and off she went to Marlene’s Café.

Grief and stress, she told herself. What had everyone told her? Don’t make any major life changes for a year? Well, maybe in her case eighteen months wasn’t long enough. Stress and grief were making her forget things. Like packages.

Stress and grief were turning her into a loony woman, a crazy sleepwalker. She was nowhere near over mourning Marty. She should have realized that because sometime during the night she had sleepwalked herself into her kitchen and opened up her cupboard doors and left them that way.

This morning when she woke, she had felt marvelous. She’d had a long night of uninterrupted dreamless sleep. It was rare for her to sleep that soundly and for so long. Maybe it was knowing that she finally had someone who would work for her that allowed her to rest. The sun was shining and the day was promising to be lovely and warm. Today, she would face her fears of the storm and go back out in the kayak. Today, she might even mount the steps into her loft and get out her paints.

Nori was a muralist. Essentially, she painted what people told her to, which was mostly humongous scenes of old country towns on the sides of buildings. It was her work and she loved it. Yet since Marty died, she hadn’t touched a paintbrush. She just couldn’t bring herself to. It was like that part of her—the artist part—had died with him.

But today, with the sun streaming into her window and leaving ribbons of gold on her walls, it would be different. She would paint. Today would be the day when she would get back to being an artist. It had been too long.

After she had woken up this morning, she had gone into her kitchen. The cupboards next to the sink were wide-open and the cups she and Steve had drunk coffee in yesterday were up on the shelf. She had stared, perplexed. She hadn’t remembered putting them there. She had left them in the sink. Hadn’t she? And how had she left the cupboard door open?

She was always fastidious about keeping her cupboards closed. Marty was the one who was forever leaving them open and when she would complain, he would take her in his arms, dance around the kitchen and say, “Ah, my little Elnora.” And he would push her hair off her face and plant a kiss on her mouth.

She would playfully push him away and say, “You know, that’s not going to get you anywhere, and don’t call me Elnora. That’s my grandmother’s name. My name is Nori.” And she would one by one close the cupboards, making a point of doing so.

When she went to close the cupboards, something way in the back caught her eye. A bit of color. She reached for it. It was a tiny bell. It looked to be a cream-colored china bell with a decorative hand-painted purple flower on one side.

She rang it. It had a pretty tinkling sound. Had this been in here the whole time? And how was it that she hadn’t seen it before? Or maybe she hadn’t looked in the farthest reaches of her cupboard. That had to be it.

She told herself that she was still so disorganized from her unpacking, it could’ve been here the whole time and she wouldn’t have seen it.

She experimented with the cupboard door. She closed it hard and it bounced back open. There. That’s all that was. The latches were broken. Steve’s new cupboards would be a great improvement.

She had taken the bell into the living room and placed it on the mantel. Off the kitchen there was a large room that was loaded with boxes of antiques, junk, dressers and trunks. That’s where the Shaker rocker had come from. Perhaps there were more bells like this in that room.

Pushing thoughts of the cupboard doors out of her mind, she entered Marlene’s café. Selena was her waitress this morning. She was a tall, thin, pretty girl with long, straight, brown hair. Yet, despite her innate prettiness, she always seemed hollow eyed and haunted, as if she bore the cares of the world. Nori had been told that Selena had graduated from high school last year, but wanted some time off before she decided what she wanted to do with her life.

“Hello, Mrs. Edwards,” the girl said. “Would you like a menu?”

“Just coffee would be great.”

“I’ll get you some milk.”

“Thanks.” Nori preferred milk to cream in her coffee and a lot of restaurants only served cream. But Nori had been coming here so often that they knew her preferences.

A few minutes later Selena returned with a little pitcher. Nori’s laptop was already open.

Her first e-mail was from her daughter Daphne. Even though Daphne and Rachel were identical twins, they were miles apart in temperament. Daphne was vocal and articulate. She typically wrote long e-mails, detailing everything they did at camp—from waking in the morning until the lights went out at night. Nori read it eagerly. Daphne went on about the new friends they had made, the awesome worship band, and the cute guy who played drums. Nori wrote long, chatty, happy-faced e-mails to her daughters at camp.

You’ll love it here. It’s so beautiful…

You wouldn’t believe the mouse droppings I’ve had to clean out…

And the bugs! I’ve never seen such big spiders…

And you should see the guy I’ve hired to work on the place. He’s huge! You know your Uncle Phil? He’s even bigger than Uncle Phil…

She paused, her fingers on the keyboard, and allowed herself to think about Steve for a while.

What idiocy had been a part of her brain when she said her daughters could go off and work June and July at a Christian camp? She thought back to their mother-daughter times, holding on to one another all night that first night after Marty died. Then more recently, watching videos, eating popcorn, shopping and all the things they did. Just the three of them. She missed them so much now.

She was finishing up reading her last e-mail when Marlene came and took a seat across from her and asked her how everything was going.

“You will be happy to know that I finally got someone to work out at Trail’s End for me,” Nori said. “I think you know him.”

“Great!” Marlene placed her hands flat on the table. “Steve Baylor?”

She nodded.

Marlene cheered. “Well, I’m glad he finally took my advice. Roy and I told him to come see you. Now we can take you off the prayer line.”

Prayer line? “He seems like a nice guy,” Nori said.

“He is. A very nice guy. He’s had a bit of a hard go of things, though.”

Despite herself, Nori was interested.

Marlene continued, “We get the story at church sometimes. He has a son he never sees. We sometimes pray for him in our small group.”

“He told me about him.”

Marlene folded her hands. Her fingernails were long and red. She wore a lot of rings. “Well, I’m glad he opened up. The Steven Baylor I know is a bit reticent. It’s hard for him to open up to people.”

“Maybe I caught him in a mood.” Nori pulled a chunk of hair away from her face for a moment and remembered Steve’s face as they had knelt close together beside her fireplace. “Has his son ever been here?” Nori wondered.

Marlene said, “Just once that I remember. Jeffrey is a cute little gaffer. You should see him. Big. Like Steve. Big for his age.”

“It’s sad they don’t get to see each other more often.”

“It is. I feel so sorry for the little tyke. And for Steve. Steve came to the Crossing after his divorce three years ago and went into business for himself.”

“What did he do before that?”

“I don’t know exactly. Government work is what he says. I presume he was some sort of carpenter for the government. He and Alec are friends. Sometimes he works with Alec. Steve must be some sort of auxiliary police officer here.”

“Who’s Alec?” Nori asked.

“He’s the sheriff. You haven’t met him, I guess.”

Nori shook her head.

“You will.”

While they talked, her e-mail icon flashed. “Oh,” Nori said, clicking on the icon. “I just got some pictures of Daphne and Rachel. Here, let me show you my girls.” She moved her computer screen around the table so Marlene could see.

“My goodness, your daughters are such pretty things.” She said it loudly. “Selena!” Everything about Marlene was big, from her blond curls to her voice to her mannerisms. “Selena, come, sweetie, and have look at the pictures of Daphne and Rachel.”

The way she said Daphne and Rachel cheered Nori. It was like she was referring to old friends, kids already a part of the community. This would be a good place for her girls, she was sure of it.

But Selena didn’t come over. Instead, she kept her back turned to her mother and put a new coffee filter into the commercial coffeemaker.

Marlene’s face was blank as she watched her daughter for a moment. Nori didn’t know what she would do if one of her daughters blatantly ignored her like that, but Marlene simply turned back to Nori and said quietly, “I try to excuse Selena. The kids here have all been through a bit of a bad patch.”

“What happened?” Nori asked.

Marlene lowered her voice.

“About a year ago one of the very popular girls went missing. It’s been hard on all of them. Especially Selena. She and Heather were close.”

“Went missing?” Nori took a sip of her coffee. “What do you mean?”

“Disappeared. Gone. Heather was a sweet girl. She was quite active in the church youth group. Poor Heather, as sometimes happens, she got in with the wrong crowd. Phyllis, that’s Heather’s mother, and I used to have long talks. Anyway, she got herself some boyfriend from Bangor and the two disappeared. No one’s seen or heard from them since. Phyllis has never lost hope that her daughter is alive somewhere, but I think Alec—” she lowered her voice to practically a whisper “—believes they both came to foul play.” She paused, letting her words sink in.

Nori said. “That’s horrible! Both of them?” She had no idea that something like this could happen in so lovely a place.

Marlene nodded, then glanced back at Selena’s stiff back.

The bell over the door at Marlene’s Café jingled as a few more customers entered.

“Well,” Marlene said, raising her bulk out of the chair. “Duty calls. That’s why I try to give Selena the benefit of the doubt every now and then.”

A few minutes later, Nori closed her laptop and got up to leave. As she exited the café she glanced up at Selena, who was leaning into the counter. “Have a nice day, Selena,” she said.

But the girl merely hugged a stack of menus into her chest and looked at Nori with dark and frightened eyes as if she was hiding some deep and dreadful secret.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.