Chapter 3
three
. . .
Aaron
The worst intruder I’d ever laid my eyes on was screaming.
I raised my eyebrows at the strange woman with strawberry-blonde curls twisting at her temples. She covered her parted lips with the palms of her hands. She dropped a pink plastic stylus on the floor.
“Oh my God,” she breathed.
“Who are you?” I was pretty sure I already asked. It didn’t matter.
A guy couldn’t even shower in his own house without someone walking in?
I’d locked the door. I did lock it, didn’t I?
I was sure I’d locked it. I double-checked. No. I’d triple-checked before climbing in the tub like some girl taking a bubble bath to calm her nerves. My nerves were not going to be calmed. Not when I no longer had a working shower head since I’d moved in five days ago, let alone peace of mind that someone wasn’t going to come barging in.
I had locked the door—all of the doors.
The real question was, how in the hell had this chick gotten into my house?
Putting a hand to her heart, the intruder shook her head once, as if to compose herself. Strands of hair caught on her chin before she brushed them away. “I’m sorry. I’m Poppy Owens. I’m from Home Haven. Our client …”
Not only was she a terrible intruder, but she also wasn’t the brightest bulb in the shed.
Great .
I guessed that explained why she wasn’t wearing shoes. The only thing she had on her feet were bright red socks that looked like something my grandmother would’ve knitted.
I blinked at them, remembering how my grandmother would wander the house in thick socks and slippers, refusing to turn up the heat, even when the snow got as high as the windows. I’d complain about it all the time when I was here through my last years of high school. She’d tell me to add another layer.
That was one thing I’d noticed was different since I’d gotten back here a week prior. Central air and heat had been installed at some point.
“Sarah.”
The name startled me out of my thoughts.
“Sarah?”
“The person who reached out to Home Haven. That’s her name. Sarah. I’m Poppy Owens, your home designer—or planner. Whichever you prefer. I’m here to make this house a home. Sarah sent me to help oversee final renovations and decorate the house for a picture-perfect holiday.” She waved her hand around the empty room as she delivered her informercial, her expression slowly falling as she took another step.
I took a step back. She stopped in her tracks.
Honestly, I’d barely noticed that the place wasn’t completely together when I got back to the house last night. I hadn’t realized until I tried to shower this morning that both bathrooms looked like someone had taken a sledgehammer to them. There was also no furniture anywhere, except for the mattress currently lying in the middle of the main bedroom.
“I thought the renovations on this place were supposed to be done this past week,” the woman asserted, voice soft, uncertain. “And Sarah didn’t say anyone would be here other than her. I swear I had no idea. I’m at the right address.”
This chick did not stop talking, did she?
“You said Sarah told you to be here,” I asked her once more.
“That’s correct.”
I was already reaching toward my back pocket. You know, where my phone would be had I not paraded into the hallway, wearing nothing but a towel. For a minute there, I was lucky I’d grabbed that.
I would’ve loved to see just how red her face would’ve turned. Already, a blush stained her cheeks up toward her forehead.
I pointed at where she stood, unmoving, hands clenched around her tablet like it was her firstborn. “Stay right there.”
The blonde bit down on her bottom lip but nodded.
Rolling my eyes, I headed down the hall and swiped my phone off the charger. In the process, I sent a few tissues and other misplaced pieces off the bedside table and to the floor.
What the hell was my sister thinking?
The phone rang twice.
Sarah answered, out of breath. “Hello?—”
“What do you think you’re doing, sending random strangers to my place?” I snapped.
“You’re …” Sarah paused before she scoffed, excusing someone around her. “What are you doing at home? You were supposed to be out of town until at least the fifteenth.”
“If you thought I was going to stay in some stupid rehab?—”
“Rejuvenation retreat. It’s basically a free vacation.”
“Vacation.” Now, I was the one about to scoff. I paced back and forth, ignoring the sharp pain that spread from my hip down to my knee.
“Phantom pains mostly,” the doctor had told me, though they felt real enough.
I tripped over my pulled-apart duffel bag and dirty clothes that hadn’t made it to the hamper and swore.
“Yes, a vacation gladly paid for you by your caring sister. Only you would turn down massages and mediation, Aaron.” Sarah sighed. “I pulled strings to get you in.”
I thought enough on my own. I didn’t need meditation time to contemplate my life.
“You’re supposed to be easing back into daily life.”
I wasn’t talking about this right now. Like I was some traumatized civilian.
“Why is there someone in my house?” I repeated slowly.
“I was about to call her back. Please tell me you didn’t scare the girl off. She sounded squirrelly on the phone.”
I was getting the same impression.
“She’s not a stranger. The place I hired came highly recommended. Her name is Poppy, I think? She’ll be overseeing the final touches of the place you’re apparently living in,” Sarah informed me.
Too little, too late.
“Final touches? This place needs a freaking overhaul with how it was left,” I told her.
Her highly recommended place was trying to pull a hack job here without anyone to look over the place.
“You’re kidding.” My sister dared to sound shocked.
“There are no showers. I had to give myself a sponge bath in the sink.”
“I’ll look into it.” Of course she would. “We need to get it ready for the holiday.”
I rubbed the space between my eyebrows. “The holiday?”
“Yes, Aaron, the time of year with lights and presents and Christmas cheer. That holiday .”
Every minute my sister remained on the phone, the more exasperated she sounded. I could always tell by the way she started to mutter to herself, thinking that the person she was frustrated with couldn’t hear her.
Luckily, I was skilled in ignoring it.
“You won’t come to our place?—”
“I’m not coming into the goddamn city.”
“So, we are coming to you to have a good ol’-fashioned Christmas in the mountains,” said Sarah. “That includes not getting lead poisoning from whatever is in the paint there from when it was built in the 1800s or whenever it was.”
“You plan on licking the walls, sis?” I asked. “The place is fine.”
“No, it’s not. It’s falling apart. It’s been falling apart for years. If my kids are coming, they’re going to have a nice Christmas there. It could be nice, and so, yes, I hired someone so that I wouldn’t have to deal with all the logistics. I have enough to deal with on my own. You weren’t supposed to be there to notice.”
My sister went on about how she couldn’t possibly plan the entire holiday now that she was back at work yada yada. I couldn’t fully understand, according to her. I never held down an eight to five job in a professional office or become a parent or even had a family other than her who called occasionally to bicker at me. So how could I? But, you know what? I didn’t want to. Mostly, because I was still hung up on what she said a minute ago. I wasn’t supposed to be here?
I agreed. However, that wasn’t the point.
Where else did anyone ever expect me to be?
After I’d spent more than a couple of tours overseas, you’d think they’d be glad that I was still answering the phone at all, let alone not completely biting my sister’s head off for hiring some fancy home firm to make the one place I had left to look like something out of a magazine you saw on the shelves at the grocery store. I was sure, knowing her taste, it’d probably be stark clinical whites and pops of gold.
“How often will she be here?”
“As often as she needs to be until Christmas. Do I need to repeat that no one was supposed to be in the house until the thirteenth of December, if not after?” reminded Sarah.
“And on the twelfth day of Christmas, your true love gave to thee, your fucked-up brother returning from overseas?”
“If you’d like, but I think he already did that part,” said Sarah. “Now, we’re just waiting for you to actually come home to us and stop being an asshole.”
Well, she’d certainly gotten Mom’s guilt-trip abilities down. It was going to be red-and-green plaid everywhere, too, if she got her way.
Fuck .
I grunted.
“Thank you,” she said.
“If I don’t like what happens, if she gets in my business?—”
“Aaron—”
“Then it’s over.”
“Give it a chance. Like I said, you weren’t even supposed to be there to notice. Don’t be difficult.”
I wasn’t the one making things difficult.
“I have to go. Let the designer they sent know that she has free rein and to message me if she has any other questions since I’m not going to make it to the consultation there today. She can also message me if you give her problems,” my sister added.
“Would’ve been nice to know someone had a key to my house.”
“You weren’t supposed to be there!” Sarah cried. “I’ll talk to you later. Next time, it might be nice to call when you want to talk to me.”
I hung up the phone and made my way back toward the door before pausing. I still only wore a towel.
This day couldn’t get any better, could it?
The girl was still standing exactly where I left her. Her attention locked on where I gripped the towel in my hand before her eyes swung up to meet mine. Her eyes were wide and the oddest gray-blue, as if the color began to fade out of them.
How old was she? She looked like she could still be in school.
At the very least, she looked the epitome of a preschool teacher, if a preschool teacher wore pants with little pink bows all over them.
Along the back wall, double French doors had been installed. There used to be a single window there that leaked when it rained. The fancy glass doors led onto the brand-new patio I hadn’t taken notice of until now either, mostly covered in waves of white.
My sister must’ve been busy on this place since they’d found out I was coming back.
So was the weather. It’d snowed.
Huh.
Carefully, the girl—what had Sarah said her name was again? I couldn’t remember and wanted to curse myself for forgetting things so easily—cleared her throat. “I’m sorry if I startled you. Before.”
I cut her off with a hand, her eyes flying this way and that, as if I were a flight attendant directing her attention on where to land. “Do what you need to do.”
She didn’t move. In fact, the moment I started speaking, her eyes drew back to my other hand, still clutching the knot on my towel.
What? Did she want a show?
“Then you can get out,” I said. “As you can see, I’m not prepared to receive visitors.”
“Oh.” She shifted on her feet. “Okay. Of course. I just need to look at a few more spots around the home. It’s a nice house. I have lots of plans. It’s going to be great. We want to enhance …” Drifting off, she still seemed unsure.
Then, she walked toward me.
What is she doing? I flinched back.
She pointed behind me. “I, uh, planned on peeking in the bedrooms, if that’s okay? I want to make sure that things are on track and the photographs received were accurate.”
I waved a hand for her to go on. “Fine.”
Her eyes glanced back down at the towel still around my waist once more.
Was she shitting me?
“The faster you move, the faster I can get dressed, homemaker.”
“I’m not a homemaker,” she immediately corrected. “I’m a designer.”
“You said you made houses homes, didn’t you?” I raised an eyebrow.
A hint of glare at me crossed over her face. Before it went too far, she dipped her head as she walked down the hall, writing something down as she went.
“What are you writing?”
“Notes,” she explained meekly. “The living room was supposed to be finished. Both bathrooms were supposed to be completely done by now too.”
I grunted. “Neither of them are.”
“Can I see the second one?”
Huffing, I extended a hand toward my room across from the guest bedroom that used to be mine when I’d grown up here—or at least finished growing up in high school.
The homemaker clenched her jaw when she looked at the new tiles that were half finished in the new walk-in shower off the main bedroom. I had noticed, but hadn’t cared to look into it much. The sink, too, was a mess aside from the faucet which looked somewhat more ornate compared to what I would’ve expected from Sarah. She was all about bland beige minimalism and whatever was in style.
The homemaker moved back through my room, careful to step over the strewn blankets and clothes still half unpacked from my issued duffel and backpack without a word. I didn’t apologize for it. Wouldn’t. This was my space, and at this point, those two pieces of luggage were all that belonged to me.
Other than the mostly empty house we stood in.
A box of old books was all that was left stuffed into the corner of the closet. The old classics I’d had to read for school were stacked inside with my grandmother’s historical romance with bent edges and spines so creased that you could barely read the titles.
“Well-loved books,” my grandmother liked to call the used copies she picked up at library sales.
She had at least three or four dozen small books stacked inside the box. Some of them I remembered reading when I ran out of other material. The two of us had been in a constant loop of fifty-cent thrift paperbacks and library books until I’d enlisted. Nights had been for warm dinners and reading by the fireplace.
What else was there to do in the middle of nowhere with no cable television?
“Okay, well, um, I think I mainly have what I was looking for today. I mean, I wanted to start on …” She clicked her tablet off and tucked her stylus into the palm of her hand. “But I guess that all can wait. I’ll make some calls about the bathrooms. And the living room. And everything else. I already have a lot of ideas I think will turn out great so long as the crew keeps on schedule.”
“Crew?” I cut in.
I didn’t just have to deal with her, but other people now?
Long eyelashes peppered her cheeks. “Yes. They were supposed to be done last week, but it doesn’t seem like that’s the case. I’ll need to call them to come back to finish the bathrooms and the kitchen, among other things. They were supposed to be farther along by now. I’ll be putting in the order for the rest of the house now that I’ve seen it too.”
“Order for the rest of the house?”
Why did I feel like this chick was speaking a different language?
“Furniture,” she clarified. “Is there anything specific you think you’ll need? If there’s anything, let me know. Then, I’ll be working through the holiday decorating and?—”
“Decorating. That’s what you do?”
Up until now, the homemaker had been looking around the space—anywhere but at me. Now, she lifted her eyes and nodded. “Part of what I do.”
“They pay you to do that?”
Her face screwed up as she looked away from me again.
For some reason when she did, I wanted to reach out and turn her chin back toward me. I wanted her to look me in the eye instead of away.
Did I frighten her? Maybe it would be a good thing if I did. It would better if she knew to leave me the hell alone and out of whatever scheme my sister had tried to come up with to make this some big holiday celebration that I wanted no part of.
I was the big bad wolf. She was Little Red Knit Socks, walking straight into my den.
“And events. Sometimes. Not lately.”
I snorted a short, unamused laugh. “Impressive.”
The homemaker bit the inside of her cheek, though her face revealed nothing of the frustration I’d expected to be there at my comment. “I’ll send along the tentative schedule to you. That way, you’re not surprised by anything. I’m confident that this project will come together perfectly. Thanks for not calling the police or anything on me.”
“Then, even more people would show up?” I chuckled. “Yeah. No, thanks.”
“Right. All right then.”
Now, get out.
Light brows furrowed. Without any further ceremony or rambling, the flighty blonde headed back the way she had come through the kitchen. I followed her out, making sure she made it as she slipped her shoes back on and donned her oversize puffer coat.
“Have a good rest of your day, Aaron—Mr. Hayes.”
The heavy door shut behind her.
Finally, I was left alone. Again.
I stood frozen in the cold and empty living room, listening to the echo of her lapsed presence.
“Aaron,” she had said. Hadn’t she?
When I had started in the military from the beginning, my name had changed. I was no longer Aaron. Nearly everyone was called by their last name, unless given a call sign or they were special.
And I quickly learned from training and becoming the best soldier I could be in the Army—from basic to infantry to special forces—I wasn’t special. None of us were.
I learned that on day one—from the time I got off the plane to where I was supposed to report alongside my friend, Barrett. The tall, lanky blond kid had shown me around my first day of school after I moved to the cabin with my grandmother outside the city. Eventually, he enlisted right alongside me. He said that he always planned on doing it. It wasn’t just because I had brought it up or because we joked that he had to if I beat him at the push-up competition, which I did, even if my arms felt sore for days after.
Barrett’s father was in the military. Barrett had lost his father, too, by then. His mother had still tried to convince him to stay home by the time basic training came around.
“Hayes!”
The deep voice of the sergeant still shocked my system whenever I remembered it. Raspy and guttural. The way his boots were always polished and most of all how his gravelly voice never had a volume lower than loud from day one.
“Looks like you didn’t get out of sharing your bunk yet. This private decided he didn’t need to follow direct orders and show up on time.” The sergeant, who all of us had already met—at the time, we were still slightly quaking in our newly issued boots at being called little girls or much worse—addressed me.
Standing behind him with what could only be considered a smirk under his high-and-tight haircut, which looked like a puff of black curls, was another recruit. He at least had the sense to wait until the sergeant was out of earshot to smile and look between me and Barrett—we had somehow lucked out and gotten bunks across from each other.
“Hey.” The new guy smiled, stretching his thick coating of freckles across his tanned cheeks. Soon, I’d learn that he rarely wasn’t smiling. “Warren Vassar. Nice to meet ya.” He met my eyes. “We bunking? Cool stuff. Haven’t bunked since I went to camp in seventh grade. Guess I get top.”
Immediately, Barrett smiled back at this new character with a wave across the aisle. His bunkmate was somewhere else, probably getting teeth pulled or making sure he could see out of both eyes in medical. “Joseph Barrett.”
I rolled my eyes. “His name’s Barrett. I’m Aaron. Aaron Hayes.”
Vassar dipped his chin as he threw his duffel onto the top bunk. “Got it. Nice to meet you, boys.”
For some reason—maybe it was the fact that basic training managed to bond us more than break us somehow—it wasn’t just me and Barrett anymore. The three of us made it through basic training together during the rain, shine, and the sergeant screaming at us like we didn’t have eardrums and he didn’t have vocal cords he was afraid of ruining.
Case in point, the day we were all doing one of the famous runs. Someone always ended up either puking or passing out from sleep deprivation or how hot it was. Either way, you ended up covered in a layer of sweat you hadn’t known was possible.
With Barrett leading the three of us and Vassar keeping pace at my side, he stopped.
Leaning over his knees, Vassar picked up a stick on the side of the path, turning it around like it was some kind of treasure.
For a second, I considered that he might have heatstroke.
“What the hell are you doing?” I sneered at him, reaching to drag him with me if I had to.
Barrett was turning around as he ran to keep up with the rest of the pack, peeking over his shoulder to see what the holdup was.
Unfortunately not before the sergeant did.
“Are you holding a stick, Private?” Sergeant screamed.
Vassar looked down at his hand, still holding the stick like a toy wand, and then back up to the sergeant. After a moment, he nodded. “Sir, yes, Sir!”
“Good,” said Sergeant, catching me still watching the two of them. “What are you looking at, Hayes? Get running! Now, you, Private, what the fuck is that? Vassar? You, Private, get to hold that stick for the rest of your time here in the Army. That way, it can replace the oxygen that you’re wasting!”
I didn’t know what the sergeant thought was going to happen when he gave that order. I’d already started to keep running to catch up with Barrett, but Vassar nodded harder.
“Sir! Yes, Sir!”
And Vassar laughed.
His laugh had been loud enough that when he was inside, I swore it nearly shook the entire building. It was deep and brash and never held back. It made the sergeant and anyone else all through our years of training up to special operations make him run double, train double, be as good as his humor was.
But for the rest of basic training, Vassar had run, eaten, and slept with that puny stick until graduation day.
Eventually, years later after basic and special training, all three of us ran back into the sergeant between deployments. He looked at the three of us in recognition before his eyes caught on Vassar—because everyone remembered Vassar. Only now, it wasn’t just Vassar to look at. Vassar stood with one of the best work dogs I’d ever seen in the Army at his side.
“If that ain’t the best shit I’ve ever seen,” the old drill sergeant muttered, looking at Vassar. “Congratulations. You might be the only soldier I taught with follow through. Hayes! You’d better be keeping this soldier in check.”
When we walked away, I turned to Vassar. “What did he mean about follow through?”
Vassar shrugged. “Always figured he mean to make sure every breath you take here counts.”
I stared at my friend, shocked at his thoughtful answer.
“Now, come on, you’re supposed to keep me in check,” He shouldered me, and it was back to the same old Vass.
I was supposed to keep him in check.
I’d sure as hell tried.
The final time I had heard my last name outside of a hospital room, I could nearly still hear Vassar and Barrett—I swore it was the two of them—screaming my name still, like a piercing, high-pitched ring looping through my head over and over.
“Hayes! Hayes! It’s gonna be all right, Hayes. We got help. You gotta let go.”
Or at least at the time, I’d thought it was Vassar. I’d hoped it was.
I shook myself out of it. No one had called me by my first name, other than my sister, in years. Not since high school.
Had my sister given cheery homemaker my name? Had I at some point since I’d caught her sneaking through the place?
Did I not remember?
I ran my hand through my hair, feeling how long it’d been since I’d last cut it. I shuffled back to my room. Without bothering to change, I dropped onto my mattress. It did the job well enough. Certainly weren’t the worst conditions I’d ever slept in.
I shut my eyes, squeezing them for a second as I pretended the world didn’t exist. I wished it didn’t.
Aaron. Aaron Hayes.
Funny. It hadn’t sounded so terrible when she said it.