Chapter 2
TWO
Dutch
What kind of lunatic walked on the beach at the crack of dawn in a snowstorm?
“Mr. Dutch, where do you want this?”
I turned away from the woman. “It’s just Dutch,” I muttered. Not that the kid would call me anything but sir or Mr. Dutch. He’d been hired by my publisher to deposit my life here on this godforsaken rock in the middle of nowhere New York to work.
“Maybe a change of scenery will be good for you, Dutch.”
I could hear my editor’s voice in my head. Usually, Monte was kicking my ass via email, and occasionally in a strongly worded voice note while reading my pages. But the soft voice she’d used last month was far more terrifying.
Because it meant I was truly fucked.
She only used that one when I was two weeks out from deadline.
“Sir?”
“Just put it in the living room,” I said, snapping out of my head.
Not like it mattered.
My life would be my office. And my laptop.
And chalkboard.
The currently empty chalkboard that should have my whole damn plot on it.
Because it had already been done. And now I had to start over.
From scratch.
I threw one more look over my shoulder at the woman on the beach. She had her face tipped up to the sky, with her arms out.
Peculiar woman.
She did a little twirl, then tromped up the rocky trail toward the house kitty-corner from mine. It was a stark white in the winter gray landscape. Black shutters illustrated with chaotic flowers in a crayon box full of colors. I guess the house fit the woman.
Annoyed for no good reason, I followed the movers into my stone house rental. I had six months to get my head out of my ass and write this fucking book.
With no ideas.
San Francisco was a long way away. Maybe I could leave the writer’s block on that coast.
With the betrayal?
The little voice tickled the back of my brain like the spindly branches above my head. I ignored it and stalked inside.
The house was surprisingly large inside.
And the view was killer. Living by the ocean for most of my life, I was used to punishing waves, salty air, and the damp heaviness of perpetual fog.
But Providence Lake was placid as glass one moment then churned with splintering ice the next.
The roar of it battered the stones below and the power of it kicked something inside of me to life for the first time in a year.
I tipped my forehead to the cold window pane, waiting for another crash of snow-tinged whitecaps against the slate colored rocks.
The house had recently been updated, but the old windows spoke of the age of the house and the cold crept into my bones.
A scrape of wood against stone jolted me from the mesmerizing lap of water. I straightened away from the window in time to watch a mirror teeter off the evergreen sideboard and crash to the floor.
A kid with a mop of sandy hair froze, all color draining from his face. He’d been the local guy who’d shown up to help out this morning. His gaze swung to meet mine. “I—”
I waved him off. “It’s fine.”
What was a little more bad luck in my shitstorm of a life?
I glanced around, spotting a broom in the kitchen. I grabbed it and started gathering the shards into a pile.
“Mr. Dutch, I’m so sorry.”
I just grunted. I should have been inside actually directing the flow of traffic. Instead, the furniture had been plunked down in random spots according to the colored Post-its I’d slapped on them.
Entry way, purple.
Living room, yellow.
Kitchen, orange.
Bedroom, blue.
Black for my office.
The organization kept me from losing my damn mind with a cross-country move. But it also required me paying attention. One thing I’d been failing at quite spectacularly.
I cracked my knuckles, the pop of each joint relieved pressure both in my hands and my mind. The sound grounding me in the now and away from the frothy disassociation that I slipped into so easily.
“What’s your name, kid?”
Sandy blond darted his gaze toward me. “Me?”
“Yeah, you.”
“Dylan, sir.”
“Okay, Dylan. Push the sideboard out of the way, then take the broken mirror frame out to the truck.”
His head bobbed, relief eased his face with instructions.
I barked out directions to the other two movers who stomped through the door with their wet boots.
The room was a wide rectangle with wood beams framing out the angled ceiling.
At the back was a stone fireplace crafted into the stone wall.
On either side was a bank of windows, one that looked out to the lake, and the other was all dark green trees that lined the gravel road into our little cove.
After a few trial and errors, I settled on my thinking couch butted up against the west facing windows so that I took advantage of the lake view.
Three massive bookcases were clustered on either side of the bay window filling the whole wall.
The kitchen was at the front of the house with more stone accents.
New appliances and rustic cabinets were offset by sage tiles to make a serene space.
A neat stack of boxes sat between the two spaces full of my cookware.
I often worked ten hour days which meant I’d had to learn to cook to survive since even in San Francisco, there was a limit to the available deliveries. It would come in handy since the only eateries I’d seen on the drive included pizza, a café, and fish fry.
I directed the last of the boxes to my office, but avoided going in.
I’d painted the room this morning hoping the black walls would activate my brain. I often used chalkboard-painted walls to sketch out ideas before they landed on the official rolling board. Instead of excitement, the massive blank wall made my stomach churn with acid.
There wasn’t a single word in my head. Just unending silence.
“Mr. Dutch?”
I glanced over at Dylan.
“That’s the last of it.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Do you want me to drive the truck back to the U-Haul station?”
I dug into my pocket for the cash I’d grabbed at the gas station. “Yeah, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“No problem.”
I peeled off a few hundred dollar bills and handed it to him.
He paused before taking it.
“Don’t worry about the mirror.”
“You sure?”
“Won’t make a difference, believe me.” I tucked the bills into his hand. I followed him out and dispersed the tip money to the other guys who were eager to be on their way, but happy with the bonus cash on top of whatever my publisher had already paid them.
The snow was rapidly piling up on the gravel lane.
“Sure you’ll be good?”
Dylan nodded. “Oh, yeah this is nothing.” He hopped into the driver side of the truck. “You should have seen the storm right after New Year’s. I had to shovel out the Winter Wonderland with a backhoe.”
I didn’t know what a Winter Wonderland was and didn’t bother to ask. “If you say so.”
He jerked his head toward the guy sitting next to him in the cab of the truck. “Phil will drop me off after. I’ll plow you out tomorrow, if you need me earlier give me a call. It builds up quick out here.”
I wasn’t sure how to get a hold of him, but nodded. Maybe if I got snowed in, then I’d actually write. I backed up as he started the ancient moving van. The kid waved, as did the other young guys now that they were free for the day with cash in their pockets.
The lure of the water drew me to the stone wall as I looked out over the beach. Snow had piled up like icing over the slick stones. My dark hair turned to crystals, but I still couldn’t pull my gaze away.
The Bay had called to me with my first million dollar advance but my condo had nothing on the vast expanse of this random lake in nowhere New York.
My gaze tracked from the churning rocks to the white cottage across the road.
A flash of something gold pulled my eye to her porch.
Under the patinated copper awning was a large egg-shaped swing.
In the center of a torrent of blankets, the woman from the beach was curled up like a cat with only her cheeks and nose showing.
Damn fool.
It was barely thirty degrees.
The urge to go and check on her annoyed me enough to drive me back into my house. I didn’t need to get involved with some weird neighbor. If she wanted to freeze her ass off in a storm that was her business.
I turned on some Breaking Benjamin and unpacked one of the dozen boxes of books in the living room. The first one was a mix of non-fiction and folklore born from random research I used for my novels. Twelve years in publishing and thirty books to my name had amassed an eclectic stockpile of titles.
I broke down the box and took it to the door to toss on my porch. More snow had fallen, obscuring the craggy lane that stretched between our properties. The lump in the swing was still suspiciously human shaped. What the devil was she doing out there still?
I rubbed my arms against the bite from the wind that lifted off the water and crackled through the overhead branches lined in ice and snow.
“Not your problem,” I muttered to myself.
I closed my door firmly and crossed to the fireplace.
Wood had been laid inside by the owner of the cottage who had handled the rental.
I found matches in a jar on the mantel and sacrificed some packing paper for starter.
When the snap and pop of fire filled the room, I changed over the album to the dramatic, soaring voice of Myles Kennedy from Alter Bridge.
The complicated lyrics of longing and pain suited my mood.
Made me think.
And still my gaze continued to stray to the white cottage each time I emptied a box.
My overactive imagination specialized in horror and desperation.
In psychological warfare that suited the slick, cold stones and cloying snow that climbed off the beach like crystalline fingers.
The slate gray sky held an orange tinge of sun strangled snow.
How long until a body slipped into hypothermia even under a pile of blankets?
My stomach roared with hunger, making me check my watch.
It was nearly noon.