Chapter 12 Daniel
Daniel twisted the copper lead wire around the nail three, four, five times, then tucked the loose end under the ceiling panel, careful to keep it away from the other wires spanning the exposed beams like a tangled nest of snakes.
It was an absolute mess up here. Whoever had done the original electrical work in the Lake Lumin General Store twenty years before had taken shortcuts and left loose ends, stringing down feed wires to the wrong switches, some that needed to be flipped down instead of up to turn the lights on.
When Daniel had arrived that morning, the store owner, Phil, a dead ringer for Morgan Freeman, walked him into the bathroom to show him a quirk that left Daniel scratching his head.
A hair dryer plugged into the outlet didn’t work, but flipping the switch between low, medium, and high dimmed and brightened the fluorescent light over the sink.
Daniel promised Phil that he’d figure it out and he had, tracking down a lighting and power circuit that had been mixed by mistake.
Though it had meant an extra half hour of work, he’d gotten it done, and now he had just this last snarled knot of wires in the ceiling to deal with and he’d be home free.
Beneath him, in the eight aisles of the small store, a few people milled slowly through rows of packaged pastries and chips, overpriced Tylenol, and too many flavors of gum.
They walked around Daniel’s ladder without glancing up, as though he weren’t here, half hidden in the ceiling, rewiring someone else’s shoddy electrical work.
He didn’t mind. He’d rather be ignored than antagonized.
Twenty minutes earlier, Ian Ward and one of his many cronies had passed through the aisle where Daniel was working.
The tatted-up friend had sniggered something under his breath that Daniel didn’t catch, miming kicking out the ladder from beneath him, but Ian was a bit more obvious as he shouldered the ladder on his way back to the register for cigarettes; not hard enough to knock Daniel off his perch, but hard enough to let him know that he wasn’t welcome.
Ian’s parents were the richest couple in town with their stable full of racehorses, and they’d thought they could buy their son the position as the town’s law enforcement officer when it was vacated, despite Ian’s not having any prior experience or municipal education.
The Proudys had stepped up and petitioned for Jake, who did have the qualifications for the job, and had gathered the signatures of nearly half the citizens in town to back him.
Daniel’s name was right at the top of the list, and Ian had naturally hated him ever since.
Daniel gave the last grounding wire a final twist and replaced the ceiling panel, climbing down the stepladder once a middle-aged woman clutching a bottle of Pepto-Bismol had ambled past. He tapped the notches between the rungs with a finger and folded the ladder together before lowering it to the floor.
“You done, Daniel?” Phil called from the front of the store.
“Yes sir.” Daniel straightened up and nodded in his direction.
“Well, help yourself to a Moon Pie and come on up. I’ll write you a check.”
Daniel nodded over the tops of the chip bags and returned the tools wedged in his pockets and waistband to the open box on the floor.
There among the wrenches and screwdrivers was a stray fishing lure, orange feathered, and Daniel reached into the box, grazing it with his fingertips. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. The lure reminded him of fishing, and of the lake, which brought his thoughts back to Annie.
He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her all morning, lost in reliving the hour they’d spent together last night on the water.
It had felt like a dream, that boat ride across the lake, but just as she had laid out those sharp-toothed traps in the woods, in dialing her number he had set out a snare of his own and then immediately stuck his foot into it like a buffoon.
He could pin it down to the precise moment, the exact second that the trap had snapped shut.
It was the moment that Annie had drawn her arm back and hit the water with her hand, sending blue sparks out across the lake and laughing into the night air with a sound like wind chimes.
Right then, he’d known it. He was a goner.
A moth to the flame. Inexplicably drawn toward something that had the power to destroy him.
“Check’s ready,” Phil called, and Daniel pushed himself to his feet. He walked to the front of the store and nodded in thanks.
“Don’t cash it until Monday,” Phil called out behind him as he walked back to gather his tools. “Sheila went a little overboard at the boutique this week.”
“Got it.”
Through the window, the glint of sunlight on copper hair caught his eye, and Daniel stopped, his heart leaping into his throat. It was her, Annie, walking side by side with Jake up the street, their heads tilted together in conversation.
As though in a trance, Daniel moved toward the window, reaching out to rest his fingertips on the glass.
At the front of the store, Phil was droning on, grumbling loudly about his wife’s purchase of three pantsuits in different shades of blue when one would have done just as well for the Ladies Auxiliary meeting.
Daniel made a noise of agreement, though his eyes stayed locked on Annie.
“She’s draining me dry, Daniel,” Phil said from behind the counter. “Slowly. Like a vampire. Remember that when the time comes for you to pick a woman. Be sure to check for fangs.”
“Okay,” Daniel agreed absently without turning around.
At the intersection, Jake and Annie crossed the street, Jake whistling at a car that zipped through the yellow light, but Daniel’s eyes stayed on Annie.
Gone was the stiff olive uniform, replaced by a loose cream-colored blouse over casual jeans.
She looked different. Her hair was still in its long braid, but it was woven a little looser today, with a few wavy locks hanging free, framing her face.
From this angle, in side profile, that freckled, upturned nose looked even more delicate, and Daniel smiled.
They stepped under the awning of the Sky High, and Annie reached for the door, tugging it to no avail. The smile on Daniel’s lips froze and fell away.
He was touching her.
Jake was touching her.
His hand was on the small of her back, his fingers dimpling the soft fabric of her blouse, and Annie was making no move to stop him.
Daniel scrambled to reach a different conclusion from the one his eyes were telling him.
Jake was a friendly guy. A touchy-feely guy.
He often clapped Daniel on the back, sometimes hugged him, and once or twice he’d even rubbed Daniel’s shoulders in a gesture of friendship, but as he stared out the window, Daniel could not explain away the tenderness of the touch.
That was not the touch of a friend. It was the touch of a lover.
He felt sick, and he wanted to turn away, to look anywhere else, but his fingertips stayed glued to the glass, his eyes following Jake as he led Annie around the corner toward the main door of the restaurant.
Of course. How could he have been so stupid?
They worked together. They spent every day together.
What woman in her right mind wouldn’t fall for Jake, with those bright blue eyes and that ready smile, his easy way with words, and the carefree attitude of a man who had never known the ugly bid for survival that life could be.
Daniel swallowed, doused by a cold wave of disappointment.
What he’d felt in the boat last night had been completely one-sided—all in his head, a figment of his love-starved imagination. And foolish moth that he was, he’d flown close enough to be badly, blisteringly burned.
“Excuse me?”
The voice behind him was high and feminine, and Daniel turned to find a vaguely familiar face with just a little too much eyeliner blinking up at him.
“Hi…” he said, flipping through the Rolodex in his head for the name of the girl standing in front of him, the Boyd girl who lived down the road. “Jamie?”
“Yep. And you’re Daniel, right?”
He nodded.
She was almost shockingly pretty, this girl, except for her teeth, which were too small, crooked, and fading brown.
But her bone structure more than made up for the ruined smile.
Refined and almost feline with the high cheekbones and wide tropical-blue eyes of a Siamese cat—eyes that were fixed unblinkingly on his face as she tucked a lock of honey-blond hair behind her ear.
“You live up at the end of my road, don’t you? Lake Lumin Road?”
Daniel nodded again, glancing back over his shoulder at the empty sidewalk where Jake and Annie had been.
“Do you think I could get a ride home?”
She made the request with such directness that Daniel turned back, blinking in surprise.
He hesitated. “Uh…”
He didn’t know Jamie Boyd. Not really. Nothing more than a nod if she happened to be outside when he passed by in his truck. Up until this very minute, they’d never exchanged a word.
“Did your car break down or something?” he asked, giving the parking lot a quick scan.
Jamie shook her head. “Don’t have a car yet.”
Daniel shifted his weight. He wanted to ask how old she was, but the question wouldn’t sound quite right voiced out loud. Improper. Or creepy, maybe. He lifted a hand and rubbed it across the back of his neck.
“I’m not sure your parents would be okay with me taking you home.”
“I’m eighteen. Nineteen next week. I can decide for myself who I get in a car with.”
Daniel considered her for a moment. She was older than she looked, this wide-eyed waif of a girl. And, fair enough. By the time he was her age, he had been living by himself in the boathouse for almost three years. She was technically an adult.
“Okay.” He nodded. “I’m leaving now, though.”
“Great.” Jamie gave him a wide smile. “Just let me buy my gum and I’ll meet you outside.”