Page 9

CHAPTER NINE

R ather than turn toward the interstate, Garrett detoured into the center of Coventry and parked downtown.

“I know I’m new to the area,” Aspen said, “but this isn’t Plymouth.”

He gestured toward a thrift store. “You’ve got money to play with, but why waste it on brand-new furniture if you can find some used. This place usually has a decent selection.”

“Great idea.” Before she opened the passenger door, she flashed him a smile that had his heart doing a weird little flip.

He met her on the sidewalk. Though there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, the sun hadn’t warmed the air much, Aspen pulled up her hood for the thirty-second walk between his truck and the entrance. He could picture that wavy blond hair blowing in the wind as she surfed, but all bundled up like that, she was adorable.

She glanced his way. “What are you smiling about?”

“Nothing, nothing.”

He needed to remember that she was a client. And that he was spying on her. Which meant he could not get emotionally involved.

But he wasn’t truly spying. He was being a friend. If she decided to tell him something about her mother, he’d listen. And then he’d pray about what to do with the information.

If God told him not to tell his uncle, then he wouldn’t.

Even if the thought of denying the uncle who’d saved his life sent acid to his stomach.

He scooted ahead and held the door open for Aspen. Bells overhead announced their arrival as they stepped in. He pulled the door shut behind him. It was notorious for flying open at a gust of wind.

“Come on in. And make sure you got that door…” The woman’s voice faded as she looked up from behind a cash register. “Oh, hey, Garrett.”

“Hey, Trudy. This is Aspen. She’s looking for some furniture.” To Aspen he said, “Trudy goes to my church.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“Same,” The older woman said. “You two on a date?”

Did Aspen’s cheeks turn a little pink? Probably just a remnant of the cold.

“She’s a client,” Garrett said. “I’m helping her out.”

Trudy nodded, but she didn’t seem convinced. “What do you need?”

“Pretty much everything.” Aspen looked around, and he followed her gaze.

The place was nicer than other thrift stores he’d seen, with all the items neatly merchandised. Trudy not only employed people who were down on their luck, she also donated a portion of her profits—and a good deal of clothing and other items—to the local food bank. She’d opened the store to serve the poor, especially those who were too proud to take charity.

Racks of clothes filled the front half of the store. Household and decorative items were behind that, and way in the back, furniture. He’d bought a sofa and recliner here when he’d first moved into his condo.

“You know where to go.” Trudy turned back to her work. “Yell if you need help.”

Aspen grabbed a shopping cart and headed down an aisle.

“Not sure furniture will fit in that.”

But she beelined toward kitchen items. “It’s amazing the things you don’t think about.”

She wasn’t wrong. When he’d moved, Aunt Deborah had brought over everything she’d thought he might need and a whole bunch of stuff he’d still never used.

Aspen filled the basket with utensils and gadgets and dishcloths and plates and silverware and bowls…it went on and on.

While she shopped, she checked items off in an ever-present notebook. He’d thought she was finished when she said, “Oh!” and headed in another direction.

He took the first basket, which she’d already filled, to leave by the register and grabbed a second.

After she loaded it up, she looked up at him with a wide smile. “That’s almost everything I need besides furniture, food, and a few small appliances.”

He checked his watch. “Record time.”

“Ha. You wanna talk records, wait until you see the tally.”

A woman who could get that much shopping done in a half hour—and save money to boot.

She was getting more attractive by the minute.

“I’m gonna take this up front.” He wiggled the basket handle. “The furniture’s right…” But she’d already started heading that way.

When he returned, he found Aspen in front of a dingy brown sofa. An ugly, dingy brown sofa.

She glanced at him. “Is this too big?”

“Do you like it?” He hadn’t meant his incredulous tone.

“It’s dreadful, which probably accounts for the price.”

The giant yellow sticker—almost covering a pink sticker, and a blue sticker beneath—indicated it had been marked down more than once. He could see why. Not only was the color awful, but it was stained and… He bent toward it. “It smells.”

“But the price.”

He took her elbow and guided her toward a gently used off-white sectional. “What about this one?”

“It’s twice as much.”

Only because Trudy was practically paying someone to take the other off her hands. “I thought I was cheap.”

“I’m not cheap. I’m just trying to be wise, you know. I don’t want to make any crazy decisions.”

He studied the better sofa. No stains that he could see on the fabric. No tears. He turned over the dangling price tag. “This is an excellent brand. It’ll last for years, and it’ll look great in the space.”

“I’m not going to live here for years. I need to be rational.”

“Okay.” Hands on her shoulders, he shifted her back to the brown sofa. “Go lie down on that thing, rest your pretty hair against the fabric, take a deep breath—in through your nose—and then decide.”

She took a few steps toward it and stopped, giving him a sheepish look. “I see what you mean.”

He chuckled and yelled, “She’s taking the white sectional.”

Trudy called back, “Got it.”

He looked down at Aspen. “What else?”

“You’re satisfied with yourself, aren’t you?”

He wasn’t lying when he said, “This is the first time I’ve ever enjoyed shopping.”

She smiled and moved along.

It took a little time, but Aspen picked out a coffee table, an end table, an old entertainment center, and a couple of lamps. She also found two throw blankets for the sofa—light gray and dark blue—and some pillows to match.

“Because, you know, it’s cold, and I might want to snuggle up in front of the fire.” She said the words as if she had to justify her purchases.

“Good thinking.”

They were on their way to the front when he spied a display of winter gloves. He aimed her that direction. “The ones you have are as impractical as they are pretty.”

“I discovered that last night when my fingers nearly froze off.”

While he took her things to Trudy, who started ringing everything up, Aspen looked at her glove choices. When he returned, she lifted a pair. “These’ll work.”

He checked the tag. They were cheap for a reason. “You should get a better brand.”

“Is it that big of a deal?”

“Said the woman who wore a hood to walk from the car to the door.”

“It’s freezing out there.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay. I see your point.” She turned back to the display but seemed flummoxed.

He snatched a pair, checked the brand—Hamilton Clothiers—and held them out. “These.”

She slid them on, aiming a smile his way. “They’re really comfortable. And warm.”

“Which would be the point.”

“Wise guy.” She punched his shoulder, but between the puffy gloves and his flannel shirt, he barely felt it.

“Ow,” he deadpanned. “That’s not gonna leave a mark.”

Laughing, she headed toward Trudy, who he guessed had kept one eye on the whole exchange, definitely getting the wrong idea about him and Aspen.

Except it didn’t feel all that wrong. It felt right.

Which was, all things considered, very, very wrong.

Garrett glanced toward his passenger seat, where Aspen’s fingers were flying over her cell phone screen. He didn’t mind. She had no service at her house, and she had things to manage.

After hearing about her middle-of-the-night visitor, he’d wanted to stay by her side. Dumb, but the thought of somebody outside her house, watching… It raised a level of protectiveness in Garrett he hadn’t known he had.

Much as he wanted to ensure her safety, he hadn’t looked forward to spending an entire day with her, not because he didn’t enjoy her company—he did, too much. It was shopping itself he hated.

But shopping with Aspen had turned out to be a breeze. After he bought the alarm and floodlights at the hardware store, he took her to a discount super store, dreading it. He should have known better. She’d picked out a thousand dollars’ worth of furniture and household goods in less than an hour at Trudy’s. She proved just as fast, efficient, and cost-conscious at grocery shopping. She chose the few household items still on her list—including a small microwave, a toaster, and two cordless phones—in record time, then headed to the food, where she led him down the aisles, snatching this and that along the way, all the while laughing, smiling, sharing stories about her life in Kona—not to mention rejoicing at the prices as if it were unimaginable to be able to buy a pineapple for two dollars, less than half what she usually spent.

“Don’t they grow pineapples in Hawaii?”

She shrugged. “Don’t ask me to explain it. Just trust me.”

That he did. Despite Uncle Dean’s suspicions, he found Aspen open and honest.

They’d turned onto the highway back to Coventry by the time she set her phone down.

“Get everything taken care of?”

“There wasn’t much. My best friend lives in Nepal. She wanted to know how I was doing. We don’t get to talk much with the time difference, so I caught her up on what’s going on.”

“Nepal?”

“She and her husband are missionaries.”

“How’d you become friends with her?”

“They were in Kona for years. There’s a big missionary organization not far from where I lived, and Dad and I were involved a lot when I was in high school and college. Jaslynn and I have been friends since I was nineteen. They moved a few months before Dad died.”

“Must have been hard not having your best friend around.”

When Aspen didn’t say anything, he glanced her way to find her nodding. She looked out the opposite window into the dense snow-covered woods.

“What was he like, your dad? Or is it too hard to talk about him?”

“No, I like talking about him.” She faced Garrett again. “He was generous and funny and sweet. He worked a lot of hours, but when I was a kid, he always managed to be there for me. He owned a restaurant that was within walking distance of our apartment. Every day after school, he’d meet the bus and walk back to the restaurant with me. It was my favorite part of the day, just Dad and me catching up. While he worked, I’d do my homework, talk to the customers, clean off the tables. Even when I was old enough to stay home by myself, he preferred for me to be with him. And I did too.”

Garrett couldn’t imagine. His own father had commuted from their house just north of the Massachusetts border to Boston every day, leaving before Garrett woke up and returning after dinner. The little time they had together, Dad had spent lecturing Garrett about his grades or berating him about how he dressed or how he should choose better quality friends, as if the kids at his expensive private school weren’t good enough for him.

Garrett said, “Your dad sounds like a good man.”

“He was the best.”

Garrett detected emotion in her voice. He gave her a moment before asking, “How long ago did he die?”

“It was a year on Tuesday. I thought it would be symbolic or something, starting this journey to fulfill his final wish exactly a year after his death. It was stupid. I cried all day long and then had to get on a plane and travel. It’s no wonder I’m still so tired.”

“And it hasn’t exactly gotten easier this week.”

She sniffed beside him, blew out a breath, and said, “I’m fine. It’s fine.” Her voice was forced-cheerful.

“It’s okay to not be fine, you know.” He looked her way and caught her eyes. “It’s okay to grieve, and to be angry at your stupid nosy stalker guy. And Bart Bradley and all the rude people at The Patriot yesterday.”

“You remind me a little of him.” She let out a short laugh. “Not Bart.”

“Your dad? I’m flattered.”

“It’s just… you’re kind, and you anticipate people’s needs, like the way you got the house ready for me. And managed the phone and internet installation and brought over the furniture this morning.”

“The furniture was just taking up space in my aunt and uncle’s garage.”

“But you asked them for it and brought it. And most people don’t ask about my dad. I guess they think maybe it’ll be painful to talk about, or maybe they don’t want to deal with my emotions. Dad would have asked too. He had a way of drawing people out, getting them to share. Like you, he genuinely cared about people.”

Garrett caught her shrug and looked her way to find her cheeks were a little pink, and this definitely wasn’t the cold. She was blushing.

He might’ve been too.

“Would it be pushing my luck to ask what your father’s dying wish was?”

After he asked, he drove a good mile before she spoke.

“You heard me tell that guy at the restaurant yesterday that my mom’s been missing most of my life.”

Garrett hadn’t been trying to pry. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t do that, but maybe he’d asked the right question to get the information his uncle wanted.

He half wanted to change the subject before she could share, not wanting to be in the position of having to decide what to do with what she told him.

But the other half of him was too curious to interrupt.

“Dad told me that she was missing and probably dead. He always referred to her in the past tense. My mom had some mental problems, and because of that, he didn’t think she’d be able to disappear and never be found.”

Exactly what Uncle Dean had said.

“All my life, I’ve believed she was gone. But right before he died…he was having trouble breathing, and he didn’t have enough time to say everything he wanted to say before they put him on the vent. He said he wanted me to find her and do right by her. Whatever that means.”

“And you think she’s here, in Coventry?”

A moment or two passed before Aspen spoke, but she didn’t answer his question. “Dad was always frugal.”

How that was related, Garrett had no idea. “You get that from him, I guess.” He looked at her and caught her smile before returning his attention to the road.

“Even though, by the time he died, he owned five restaurants that were all doing really well, he and I always lived in apartments. We had everything we needed, don’t get me wrong. When I started managing the Kona restaurant, I saw how much money he was making in profit. It was significant. And the other restaurants did just as well. But I never questioned how we lived. I figured there were expenses I didn’t know about, maybe debt or something. And then I found out about the house here. Which he owns… owned outright.”

“But he didn’t own it for long,” Garrett said. “Didn’t he buy it a couple of years ago?”

She turned his way. “How did you?—?”

“When it came on the market, I tried to buy it. I thought it would make a good house to fix up and sell for profit. But your dad got it first. I mean, he bought it under the name of his company, so I didn’t know it was your dad. Not that I would have recognized his name.”

“So you’ve been thinking about redoing that place for a long time.”

He lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “I hadn’t seen the inside until Christiansen talked to me about working for you. Did your dad tell you why he bought it?”

“Nope.”

“Do you think it has something to do with your mother’s whereabouts?”

“It must, right? Why else would he buy a house in New Hampshire? In fact, a part of me…” Her voice trailed.

He waited a few beats before prompting her. “Part of you…?”

“I sort of hoped I’d get to the house and she’d be there. My mom. Cooking dinner or something. In my head, I knew that wasn’t going to happen. All my life, even though I knew she was dead, because there’s no proof, deep down, I guess I hoped… It’s stupid.”

He recalled Aspen’s reaction to the house when she first arrived. He’d thought her overwhelmed by how much work it would take to make it decent. Turned out, she’d been dealing with so much more.

Before he realized what he was doing, he reached across the console and laid his palm over her hand resting on her knee. “I’m sorry.” He squeezed and then brought his own back to the steering wheel. He shouldn’t have done that.

She said nothing for a long moment.

And then, as if nothing strange had happened, she continued. “I’m thinking maybe there’s something in that extra bedroom that’ll give me a clue about where she is.”

He’d seen everything in that room. “I don’t think so. The stuff from the attic is older. The rest of it is pretty new.”

“I’ll look through it anyway. I have to start somewhere.”

True, though he dreaded the disappointment when she discovered nothing helpful.

A few minutes later, he turned onto the mountain road that led back to her place.

“Would I be insane to go with your design for the house?” she asked. “Wouldn’t a wise person just do the bare bones and sell it?”

“Just the opposite. If you do that, you’re going to have to sell it for cheap. It’s a really nice house with a lot of potential. Why wouldn’t you want to profit on that?”

“What if the market shifts?”

“What if it does? It’s not going to be worth less than what you put into it. The economy would have to completely collapse for you to lose money. Even during the real estate downturn a decade ago, our housing prices held steady. There’s no bubble up here.”

“But it’s a risk.”

“A slight risk.” He needed to stop trying to convince her. It wasn’t his place to tell her what to do, and he had a vested interest in her choosing his design. “You should do what makes you comfortable.”

A moment passed before she said, “My father took risks. Every restaurant was a risk. He opened a second location in Kona, and it failed. But that didn’t stop him from trying again.”

Garrett nodded, though he was praying she’d choose his design over hers, for both their sakes.

“Okay. Okay, we’ll do your design.”

“You’re sure?” His heart pounded. “I really don’t mean to pressure you.”

“It’ll be beautiful, and if your real estate agent is right, I’ll make back every penny and more. It’s not like I need the proceeds immediately. I have the luxury of time. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that your plan seems like the best course of action.”

He barely resisted pumping a fist in victory. “I think that’s the right choice.”

“Good.” She lifted her phone. “I made a list of the rooms that need to be dealt with as soon as possible. At this point, the kitchen is the most pressing. If you could start there, I’d really appreciate it.”

“Uh… It doesn’t work that way. We’ll just have to?—”

“No, no. It needs to work that way. The kitchen is dingy and gross, and I really need it to be cleaned up if I’m going to live there. So start there, and then move on to…” She rattled off the list of the rooms in the order that she wanted him to do them.

“There are supplies that need to be purchased,” he said carefully. “And subcontractors to hire. Those things might not fit into your plan.”

“You’ll figure it out. I mean, there’s some wiggle room. If you’d rather do the office before the living room, that’s fine. And the bedrooms upstairs can be done in any order you want, as long as they’re done one at a time. And I’m going to help with the painting, so that’ll make it easier.”

Cheaper for her, but not easier for him. He’d planned to hire a professional to paint.

“If you want it done quickly?—”

“Speed isn’t the most important thing,” she said. “I have time.”

“My time matters too.”

“It won’t make that big of a difference.”

He loved the confidence in her voice, especially coupled with the fact that she had no idea what she was talking about.

Her plan wasn’t going to work, but he didn’t want her to change her mind about his design. Rather than argue further, he simply nodded, turning into the entrance to his condo complex.

“Where are we going?”

If he picked up a hint of nervousness in her voice, he figured it was about to get worse.

Remembering her reaction when he’d suggested it earlier, he sent a smile her way to soften the blow. “We’re here to get you a handgun.”