Chapter 23
Carrie
“We need bags of plaster, a few buckets, and a hawk and trowel,”
Matthieu says, tapping the end of a pencil against his mouth as he studies his small notebook. He’s in the passenger seat while I drive, and hot air from the engine is warming our faces and feet. As the road straightens out, I tune the radio to a station that doesn’t play dance music on repeat.
“Lengths of skirting?”
I ask, glancing over at him. His face is all serious, pinched in concentration, and my blood heats just looking at him. I pull air down into my lungs and drag my gaze back to the road as I tell myself to stop checking him out. He’s working with me on the cottage, that’s all. He liked Ivy, and he’s got some time this winter. He might have held my hand as we watched that bird—his touch sending flutters of lightning through my veins every time I think about it—but there was nothing in it. Nothing. Just two people sharing a moment on a mountain. And in his search for answers about his brother, he’s still stuck in the past. This is not the time for either of us.
“Carrie?”
I dart a look at him and see that he’s turned his whole body toward mine, a small smile tugging at his mouth. “Wh-what?”
“I asked you twice if we could put it on the roof rack. You seem . . . distracted?”
I mumble something about concentrating on the road and out of the corner of my eye catch him turning back to his notebook, his smile growing slightly. He is a distraction, plain and simple. But the thing is . . . I kind of like being distracted by him.
“Take the next left, the builders’ merchant is next to a coffee shop and a tractor dealership,”
Matthieu says, pocketing the pencil and notebook.
“Do you want to place the order,”
I ask, “and I’ll pick up a couple of coffees? I fancy one that doesn’t require stirring in granules and a kettle.”
He chuckles. “Sure. I’ll have mine black, if that’s okay.”
I pull into the car park in front of the builders’ merchant, a squat building with stacks of blocks outside on pallets. The tractor dealership is surrounded by large, expensive farm equipment and the coffee shop is huddled in next to it.
“The Pit Stop. Cute,”
I murmur, hopping out of the car. Snow has been shoveled away and piled up in the corners, and with the sun at full strength in a deep bowl of blue above us, I see it’s already melting slightly. There’s still snow and frost everywhere, coating the fields and hedges for miles around us, and the mountains, the looming backdrop, are capped in white.
I turn my back to them, call over my shoulder to Matthieu, “See you in a few,”
and make a beeline for the terra-cotta brick building with the fogged-up display window. A bell jangles over the blue door to mark my entrance. Once inside, I find a whole display wall of ticking cuckoo clocks and, on the other side, a long counter accommodating a shuffle of men in lumberjack shirts. They’re taking coffee from a woman with thick plaited red hair, while a skinny man who moves like a spider brews cup after cup of coffee with a big, silver coffee machine.
There are a few tables, but most of them are empty. The customers seem to favor standing up while they talk, taking great gulps out of large takeaway cups or mugs. I go to the back of the line, eyeing the display of cakes and doughnuts on top of the counter. I haven’t had a treat in . . . weeks? Not since Halloween, when I bought a couple of black-iced spider cakes from the bakery in Woodsmoke and inhaled them in my car. The doughnuts are pistachio cream, and when I get to the front of the line I order two with coffees to go.
“You want them in one bag?”
the woman asks.
“Two bags, please.”
I hope Matthieu likes doughnuts.
I collect my order, leave the sweet-scented café, and cross the car park to my car, balancing it all in my hands. Matthieu isn’t by the car, so I place the doughnuts on the dashboard and carry our coffees to the builders’ merchants. When I push inside the door, I don’t see him. The list of things we need is on the counter, in that little notebook he carries, yet there’s no sign of him. I breathe in the scent of new wood as I look around the space. The floor is concrete, and the space behind the counter is filled with racks and racks of items like packs of screws, lengths of piping, safety hats, and a stack of brochures.
“Hello?”
I call out, wondering if Matthieu is off in the recesses of the building, looking at lengths of skirting board. I place the coffees on the counter and walk toward the back of the building, along walkways filled floor to ceiling with timber, sheets of plywood, insulation board, skirting . . . “Hello? Anyone here?”
A distant voice calls back, and I retreat along the walkways back to the counter, hoping I’m easier to spot there. A sudden shadow dims the space, and I look out of the window to see clouds swirling over the sun. The first flurries hit just a moment later.
“Sorry, stacking up an order,”
says a woman my age with brown frizzy hair and black dungarees as she marches over. She blinks at me and grins. “You’ve got a list there? I can check what’s in stock?”
“Oh, brill—yes, thanks . . .”
I say as she pulls the notebook toward her, tapping on a tablet and frowning. “Was there a man in here? He must have left the notebook on the counter? Dark hair? Tall?”
The woman looks up, tapping her chin with a finger. “No one that looks like that today, I don’t think,”
she says. “Unless he’s looking around the warehouse?”
“Maybe.”
I shrug, reaching for my coffee.
The woman finds everything I need and rings it up, and I hand over my bank card for her to scan. Then we wrestle the lengths of skirting out together, and she helps me strap them to the roof rack. I pile everything else in the boot, eyeing the flurries settling on the road. It’ll turn icy soon, and there’s no grit down. I need to get back soon.
“Thanks for your help,”
I say to her, and she waves, already running to get back inside the warm warehouse.
“Hey, sorry, I had to grab something.”
I hear Matthieu’s voice behind me, turn, and find him leaning against the car. He has a wild look to him, hair disheveled, eyes sharp and watchful. I blink, wondering what it is about him. Why he looks like Matthieu but somehow . . . different. Like he did the first time I saw him, leaving the field by Ivy’s cottage for the mountain trail.
I pass his coffee to him. “It’ll be cold, but still caffeinated.”
“Thanks.”
He smiles and shivers. “Shall we get going?”
“Sure.”
I hand him his notebook and place the doughnuts on the backseat without thinking.
It’s not until later, after Matthieu leaves for the mountain trail, that I find them. And realize he never told me what he had to grab, or where he disappeared to before the frost re-formed.