“You know what’s weird? I miss Cam. I see him even more than when I was working, but it’s all in service of the baby, you know?”
“How about I babysit for you one evening? I can watch Owen and you two can go out.”
“Maybe,” she says. “I left Owen with my mom for an afternoon, and it didn’t go well.”
“Just think about it. I’ll take him anytime.”
“Does that mean you’re staying?”
“Nice try. Good night, Whit.”
“?’Night, Baby.”
She hangs up before I can scold her.
I drag myself out of bed and slump down to the kitchen for a glass of water. As I reach for the switch, I notice a warm yellow glow through the trees—a light is on in Cabin 20.
I creep over to the window. Will’s curtains aren’t drawn and I can see clear into the living room, but only enough to glimpse the fireplace and coffee table. I lean over the sink to get a better look and laugh at myself—this used to be one of the spots Whitney and I would spy from. I have regressed.
When a figure suddenly appears, it takes me by such surprise, I let out a yelp.
Will raises his hand, but I don’t mimic the gesture. He knows this is my house, I realize. He knows it’s me in the window. We stand there, looking at the shape of each other.
My breaths come fast and shallow. I’m trying to decide whether I should march over and demand answers, but then he moves out of view and his cabin goes dark.
I return to bed, heart pounding as though I sprinted up the stairs.
It’s been a long time since the question of what happened to Will Baxter kept me up at night.
Why didn’t he meet me nine years ago like we planned? Why leave me waiting, wondering?
I turn the pillow over, pressing my cheek against the cool side, a whole new set of questions swirling.
Why, after all this time, did he come here last summer? How did he end up talking with my mother? Was he hoping to see me?
It’s that final thought that has me lying awake until the chickadees begin to chatter outside my window.
* * *
—
I must fall back to sleep in the early morning, because I dream of driving down the highway in my mother’s car. It’s night and I don’t see the deer until it’s leaping in front of me. A huge, graceful whitetail. I have no time to swerve, yet I’m not hurt. I topple out of the front seat to see if the animal is injured, but it’s not a deer lying bloody on the road—it’s Will.
I wake with a jolt. It’s light out now, and the chickadees have been joined in their dawn bird song by finches, vireos, and a cawing crow.
By the time I’ve scrubbed, shaved, and shampooed, I’m still rattled. I haven’t dreamed about the accident before. Most of my dreams about Mom are the same warped flashback. I walk into the kitchen and find her wearing an apron—the one with the red apples on it. She’s mixing pancake batter, which means it must be Sunday. Sundays are Mom’s day off, and sometimes we stay in our pajamas until noon. Mom lets me finish stirring the batter while she melts butter in the cast-iron pan. She tries to make a pancake in the shape of a fern, but it looks like a regular pancake. She tells me to set the table, so I lay out the cutlery and a bottle of maple syrup, then take a seat to wait for her to finish. But Mom doesn’t stop cooking. She makes pancake after pancake, and I never get to the part of the dream where she sits down and we eat together.
I throw on a robe and trudge downstairs. Mom isn’t in the kitchen wearing her apron with the red apples on it.
Before I make coffee, I call Reggie, the resort’s longtime accountant. He began leaving messages about a week after the funeral, gentle prods that he was available and that we should meet sooner rather than later. He picks up on the second ring and agrees to meet, even though it’s Sunday.
I pop a green disc into the coffee machine. It’s one of those pod contraptions, same as the guest rooms have. I watch as the brown liquid comes out, too hot and too weak, thinking about how it’s typical of my mother not to get herself a decent coffee maker. She didn’t bother redecorating the house, either. She treated this place as little more than a landing pad—it’s pretty much the same as when my grandparents lived here with us. Only the sunroom has been given a face-lift. I don’t spend any time in it, though. I’m still not at peace with the memories it stirs up.
Despite her disinterest in home decor, Mom’s imprint is everywhere, little hints of the person she was beyond her job. The framed black-and-white photos from the trip she took to Europe just before I was born. The bookshelves, stuffed with Louise Penny novels and paperback mysteries and nineteenth-century British classics.
I’m about to take my first, unsatisfying sip of coffee when I hear a knock. I can tell who it is from the rhythm of the tap, tap, tap. Peter’s had the same knock forever.
I step onto the porch, not worried that I’m still in my robe. I’ve known Peter my entire life. My grandparents hired him right out of culinary school—let him stay at the house his first year working here. My bedroom was his. Mom was still in high school then.
Nothing about Peter says baker except perhaps for the softness that’s crept in over time. Everything else—the thick fingers, the salt-and-pepper beard, his propensity for plaid and aversion to overt displays of emotion—says retired lumberjack, not creator of sugared pansies and master of sourdough.
“Jamie get you into the dining room last night?” he asks by way of greeting. His voice is gentle, the kind that makes you lean in and listen, but right now my attention is set on the three shoeboxes he’s holding. One orange, one red, one black. I haven’t seen them for years, but I know exactly what’s inside. I look up at Peter, unsteady.
“Where did you get those? I thought she threw them out,” I say. It’s something I’ve always felt guilty about. The fire was my fault, not hers.
“She gave them to me for safekeeping,” he says. “Figured she’d want you to have them.”
“I’m not sure about that.”
Peter sets the boxes on the rattan love seat. “They belong with you. And you might want to read them again one day. You’re older now—older than Maggie was when she wrote them.”
I could argue, but I learned a long time ago that Peter is always right. “Have you read them?”
“No. I figured they were private and that there’d be stuff in there I didn’t want to know.”
I nod. I used to wish I’d never read them.
“I thought about it,” he continues. “I thought it might be like hearing her again.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because Maggie would kill me. She wouldn’t want me knowing what was going through her mind back then.”
“But you were best friends,” I say, though I know secrets are a key ingredient in close friendships.
“Sometimes.” What does he mean he and Mom were sometimes best friends? He’s about to say something else, but then he shakes his head.
“I should get going,” he says.
Over his shoulder, I see a golf cart pull up to the cabin beside Will’s. The resort has a small fleet of carts that deliver luggage and room service. Years ago, Mom had them re-covered in peppy green and white striped tops. There’s a rip in this one. It’s something I noticed last week—all the golf cart covers should have been replaced a few seasons ago. I watch a young woman in a hunter green Brookbanks polo and khakis take a silver domed tray from the back.
“Did Mom say anything to you about hiring a consultant?” I ask Peter before he leaves.
“She mentioned bringing someone in a while back, yeah. I’d forgotten with everything.” Peter’s memory is usually infallible, but he’s not himself these days. He’s so quiet, I’m not sure anyone else would notice, but he’s slightly off. Whenever I’ve visited him in the pastry kitchen, there’s been no music playing—only eerie silence. His sarcastic sense of humor—it’s like it left with her.
“Maggie said he was overqualified,” Peter says. “Think she was pretty pleased about the deal they struck up.”
Before he goes, Peter gives my shoulder a pat. I watch him set off back down the walkway, then I turn my gaze to Cabin 20.
* * *