Chapter 28
Chapter 28
“Hey, you’ll get eaten alive out here.”
I feel warm hands on my shoulders, shaking me. “What? Get off of me!” I’m startled awake, and my hammock sways, then pitches to one side before I right it without falling out.
“Whoa, whoa.” The man holds his hands up in the air and backs away. “I come in peace.”
It takes me a few seconds to get my bearings. Then it all rushes back to me in Technicolor. I’ve come to the cabin to regroup. To breathe before starting over. Lolly and the kids are coming for a whole weekend.
I pull myself up into a sitting position and stare at the man standing in front of me. He looks vaguely familiar, but in my hazy state, I can’t place him. And we’re here . . . alone. The nearest neighbor is a good half mile away.
“Do I know you?” I feel like I’ve been here before, like I had this same encounter just a day or so again, like I’m experiencing a severe case of déjà vu.
He tilts his head to the side and looks at me like I’m a little off my rocker before saying, “I’m Leo Antonelli. Austin hired me to fix your roof.”
And then it hits me where I recognize him from. That strange plaid tie. “It’s you! You’re the guy from the Top of the Mark! The one sitting at the bar alone. The one with the . . . tie.”
He’s looking at me with a patient grin on his face, like maybe he thinks I’ve lost it.
“It was in October, right before Halloween,” I try to explain, digging myself in deeper, making myself look even nuttier than he probably already thinks I am. “You were at the Mark Hopkins. I remember because Austin thought you looked familiar, and we kept glancing back at you to figure out why he thought he knew you.”
“Yeah. Probably because I’ve been doing work on and off at the cabin for Austin over the last year. Didn’t he tell you?” He’s still grinning.
It’s such a nice grin that I kind of get lost in it and forget my train of thought.
“You okay?” He crouches down until he’s eye level with me.
“Yes, yes. Sorry. Tell me what?”
“That I’m the one who called nine-one-one, the one who resuscitated you after the cable car hit you. I just happened to be in San Francisco to meet a friend. Fate, I guess. You don’t remember?”
“You’re that Leo?” I do a double take. “I thought you said you’re an EMT.”
“EMT and part-time handyman and roofer.”
I remember the area code when he called me. It’s the same as Ghost’s. At the time, I didn’t put it together. “Austin never mentioned anything about it . . . or that he finally figured out how he knew you.”
“He was probably distracted.” Leo looks at me as if to say You’d just gotten out of a coma, he had other things on his mind.
“Yeah, probably,” I say, still trying to piece out the missing parts. “Do you live around here?”
“Not too far. You know where Old Ranch Road is?”
I meet his gaze and stare, stunned. I can’t help wondering if I fell asleep in the hammock and am now lost in the dream again. The dream from my coma.
To test my theory, I get out of the hammock. Leo stands there, watching me, then follows me as I walk around the side of the house. There, in the driveway, I find a dinged-up pickup with a ladder strapped to the top of the truck’s utility rack.
My gaze wanders to the front door. “It’s red!” Just like in my dream, I almost say.
“Yeah, I changed it out a few weeks ago. A surprise from Austin. He said you hated the old one.”
I can’t believe my eyes, but the Halloween wreath from Flower Power is hanging there, too. The tiny orange and white pumpkins and the green juniper boughs are as fresh as the day I dreamt I bought it.
“Did you hang the wreath?” I ask, baffled at how it got there.
“Nope. I don’t know where that came from.” He shakes his head. “A little past its season, though.”
I look at him, wondering if I’m imagining it all. Him, the red door, the Halloween wreath. Or is it magic? “Are you real? Is this real?”
“Excuse me?” He tilts his head to one side. “I think you got up a little too fast. You want to sit down? I could get you a glass of water. Maybe that’ll help.”
Before I can stop him, he’s off to his truck, returning a few seconds later with one of those lunchbox-sized ice chests.
“Here, drink this.” He hands me a bottle of water, then rummages through his cooler until he finds a package of vanilla wafers.
I stare at the familiar-looking cookies, dumbfounded.
“For sugar,” he says. “Sometimes a jolt of sugar helps.”
“Oh . . . right. Yeah, I get that.” I blink a few times, making sure that I’m really seeing what I think I’m seeing, then point at the package. “Where did you get those?”
“Uh, the grocery store. Why?”
“It’s just that I know someone . . . knew someone . . . that had a fondness for that particular brand of cookie.” I look down at the wafer he’s pushed into my hand, still trying to decide whether this is actually happening.
“They’re good stuff, my favorite,” he says. “Go ahead and take a bite. Hopefully it’ll make you feel better, less disoriented.”
“I’m fine . . . I think.” But Leo has caught me off guard. Everything about him is foreign, yet completely familiar.
“It can take a while,” he says.
“A while? For what?”
“To recuperate. You suffered a pretty serious head injury.”
“Yes, I did. But I’m better now, better than I’ve been in a long time.”
He gives me a long, assessing look and says, “You sure seem good to me,” then flashes that wonderful grin again.
And there, in his shining, happy brown eyes, I see hope—and even traces of my future.