Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Find the Girl with the Map
GHOST
T his right here. This searing pain in my mind, my body...this was why I hadn’t opened myself up to anyone in years. Was the high worth this low? Was the gleeful excitement of getting to know Emily, of believing there was really something there, worth the disgust, embarrassment, and sadness I felt now?
She’d taken me for a fool.
I was a fool.
I am a fool.
“Shit, man, is the resort in the red again or something?” Wiley asked when he popped into the bar the next day to find me staring into space from the end, my laptop propped in front of me. I had a proper office in the back, but I thought having people around might help focus me. I’d been wrong.
“Why?” I asked, snapping my gaze to his. “What?”
“You look awful. I haven’t seen you look like that since before we officially opened and started making money. What’s going on?”
I closed the laptop and looked up at him, not ready to bare my soul. “Nothing. Everything’s great.”
“Everything except you.”
He ducked around the back of the bar and searched around for a minute, withdrawing something and sticking it in his pocket. “My lucky pop top.”
“What?”
“I have this soda top I got when I was a kid, and I was pretty sure I left it up here. I want to keep it close, you know?”
No. I did not know. “Um, okay. Aren’t you supposed to be on daddy leave?”
“Lucy and Penny just showed up with the other kids. I needed a little break, so told Aubrey I was coming up here to find this. Now I just need a reason not to go back quite yet.”
“Ah, got it.”
“You’re my new reason.” Wiley came around the bar and sat in the stool next to me. “Start talking.”
I shook my head. “Nah, there’s?—”
“There’s clearly something, and my Spidey sense tells me it’s named Emily.”
Hearing her name stole the resistance from me, and I felt myself sag.
“So, is she gone?” he looked around.
“Yeah. But she kinda dropped a bomb before she left.” I sighed, glancing at the bottles lined up behind the bar. It was way too early for a drink, and I needed to get to work checking on the Thanksgiving dinner progress. It was only two days away.
“What bomb?”
I sighed and looked down at the patina of the old wooden bar top. Had my uncle sat right here? Rubbed his hands over this very spot? Something about the conclusion of the hunt had me feeling nostalgic for him, or maybe it had just been the message he left us with. Or maybe it was the loss of the person who made me understand what his message meant.
I watched my finger trace a decades-old ring on the bar top. “She told me her last name is Schaeffer. She’s Jake Schaeffer’s sister.”
Wiley knew the story, maybe not as intimately as my squadron mates who’d been there on the carrier that day. He might not have remembered the guy’s name, though. He was looking at me intently, a wrinkle between his brows.
“Jake Schaeffer was the guy who died that day. Back in the navy.”
Understanding softened Wiley’s tight features and his mouth loosened into a little “o.”
“She came up here knowing exactly who I was and wanting to...I don’t even know what. Meet me. Figure something out.” The anger blazed in me again, but it didn’t burn nearly as hot as it had when Emily had first confessed.
“Did she?”
“What?”
“Did she figure out whatever it was?”
I lifted my hands, turning them up and shrugging. “I have no idea. I do know she didn’t tell me any of this until we’d been together for a couple weeks. Until I trusted her. Until I thought I knew her pretty damned well.”
“Until you fell for her.”
When I didn’t answer, he gave me a half smile. “I saw you guys together at the hospital, rode back with you in the car.”
“I thought it was mutual,” I said, anger and misery making my voice flat. “I actually thought we might have a future.”
He nodded, saying nothing for a moment. And then he lifted a finger. “Let me ask you a question, and don’t punch me, okay?”
“Okay.”
“What difference does it make whose sister she is?”
“I just told you.” What was he not getting here?
“You told me who she was, not why it matters.”
“Because she lied!” I didn’t shout, but it was close. I was so frustrated and upset I wished I could just sink back into the protective shell I’d been wearing for years. But Emily had broken it. And now I felt like every bit of living was rubbing some new sensitive spot inside me.
“She didn’t lie, right? She just didn’t come clean right away. Did she say why?”
I sighed, the anger fading a bit. “She said she meant to, but then we got close so fast and she knew it would seem like she’d lied, and she didn’t know what to do.”
“Sounds pretty honest.”
“I guess.”
“I’m not saying it was right, what she did...but how did you guys leave things?”
“We didn’t really. She just left. She said she was sorry.”
“But you’re too mad to forgive her?”
Forgive her? Could I possibly? It wasn’t even the mistruth. Part of my misery related to who she actually was, to the fact that what had ruined everything in my life that day had undoubtedly done the same to her, and to everyone she loved. I wasn’t sure I could face her again, knowing that. “I guess I don’t know if I need to forgive her... I’m the one who took her brother from her.”
I dropped my head into my hands. That was it, I realized. Being angry at Emily just made it easier to camouflage the guilt that still haunted me.
“It was an accident. You know that.”
I didn’t answer. I’d had a version of this conversation too many times with too many people. And knowing it was an accident did nothing to lessen the guilt.
I stood, hoping to end this conversation. “I should check on the holiday dinner prep.”
“You should call her,” Wiley said, ignoring my attempt to escape. “Or go find her. I think you were really good together. She liked you too, you know.”
I sighed. “I’ll think about it. Right now I need to go make sure we’re defrosting the birds for Thursday.”
“Sure, the age-old ‘gotta defrost the turkeys’ excuse.” Wiley grinned at me and stood. “Come down and see baby Finn tomorrow, okay? He misses you.”
“You just want someone else there for Aubrey to order around.”
“Maybe.” Wiley gave me a sheepish smile, and headed for the door. “I’ll be here Thursday to pour after the big dinner, okay?”
I nodded. “Thanks.” We had about thirty guests staying for the holiday weekend, and I had no doubt the bar would be in demand.
I grabbed my stuff and followed Wiley out of the bar, stopping a second in the grand lobby to look around. The giant painting was back on the wall. Since the hunt had ended, and since Emily had left, the whole place felt different to me. I couldn’t quite figure out what it was, but everything was a little colder, a little less glowy and bright. Darker. Moodier.
Or maybe it was just me.
Either way, I knew it was time for me to move on, to leave the place that had served as a safe refuge for me when I’d needed one. Time to find what my life was really meant to hold.
That night I wandered the resort for hours, letting my mind run through the memories that came with each long hallway and turn of the stairs. As the hours darkened the quiet spaces around me, I heard echoes of the laughter my sister and I had shared here as kids, having no idea of the complications that would come with adulthood, the odd cocktail of sadness and glory that came with becoming an adult and accepting the torch from those who preceded you there.
Eventually I made my way to my room, and as I opened the door and stepped inside, the more recent memories of time spent here with Emily rushed back to join the others. Kasper Ridge had been my refuge and my salvation. But it had been more than that too. I’d built a family here, maybe not the kind I had always dreamed of, but the kind that rooted for me and supported me. The kind that included people who would tell me the truth when I was too stubborn or sad to see it.
Wiley’s words came back to me as I stared out the big windows toward the quiet ski mountain. “You told me who she was, not why it matters... she didn’t really lie, did she? You should call her. Or go find her...”
The resort sighed around me as wind swirled against its sturdy walls. I could stay here forever. This place would hold me and protect me—physically at least. But a refuge could become a prison, and being the one who always remained as life came and went around you wasn’t much of a life. I knew it was true, and as I soaked in the familiar comfort of my surroundings, certainty began to push resignation from its long-held place.
I needed to move on.
There was a life waiting for me outside this place.
Kasper Ridge would always be here for me.
I laid out the realizations like puzzle pieces before me, examining them as the implications of each rolled through my mind. Together, the pieces formed one more understanding, one I knew I had to acknowledge: I did need to find Emily, that was true. But I also needed to find her parents. I needed the chance to say what was in my heart, what had been holding me down like an anchor for years. I needed to apologize.
In person.
Based on Emily’s scant descriptions of her father, I didn’t have much confidence that he’d want to hear what I had to say, but maybe that didn’t matter as much as having the chance to say the words. I could only control what I did. Not how other people received my actions and words.
Plus, my aching heart reminded me, that would give me a chance to talk to Emily again too.
Along with the other pieces I’d assembled to my internal puzzle, I’d come across one right up front and it took no manipulation to see where it fit. It was Emily, and she was a piece of my heart. I’d let her leave, let her believe she’d done something we’d never get past in keeping her identity from me for so long, and I needed to tell her that wasn’t true. I’d been surprised, and the wound of my culpability in her brother’s death was raw, so any injuries near to that site were sure to hurt. It just took me a little while to see that she hadn’t reopened that wound at all. In fact, I thought she was probably the one person in the world who could help it to heal.
I loved her.
But not because I needed her to move on with my own life, though that was true too.
I loved her because she was optimistic and light, affectionate and funny. I loved her because I felt more like myself around her than I’d ever felt with anyone, like she unlocked something inside me I hadn’t known needed a key. She was the solution to the mysterious hunt that was Archie Kasper. She had the map and the key, and I knew I’d never be as whole without her.
I moved to the computer and sighed as the screen flared to life. I had an address, which I’d gotten a long time ago, just after the mishap. It was how I’d sent the letter. Now I just needed a flight. When it was booked, I laid down in my bed, hoping sleep would come now that I’d worked through the complicated worries inside me.
When I woke again, it was to a bright new day, and an adventure on the horizon. Hopefully the first of many, and I hoped—with all my heart—that those in the future would be with Emily.