Her brown eyes widened. “Oh, no. That’s not what –”
“It’s in one of the boxes in the spare room.” I levered myself off the couch. “I’ll get it for you.”
I slipped down the hall, needing a minute alone. Fortunately, I found the dress in the first box I searched. I fanned it out on the floor. The vintage ivory satin gown with black lace overlay was stunning. I had no qualms about giving it to Nicole. It looked tiny. I couldn’t ever imagine fitting into the dress, or any other part of that life, ever again – and selfishly, I didn’t want my kid anywhere near it either.
* * *
“Look what else I found,” said Nicole, briefly glancing back at me as I walked back in. “Adam Décarie – fresh from his doomed union with the Australian – was back in wonderful form while celebrating the twenty-third birthday of Seraphina Sawyer in uptown Manhattan on Saturday night. There’s a picture if you want to see it.”
“No, I don’t want to see it!” I couldn’t trust myself not to scroll down in search of other photographic proof that Adam’s life got wonderful after we split.
“Of course not. Sorry. That’s really rough reporting.” She managed to sound contrite and outraged at the same time. “Who would write something like that?”
I didn’t have to check the website to know. “Her name is Tilly Roberge. She writes a malicious little blog about the goings on in her wicked little neighbourhood.” Dress in arms, I sat on the edge of the couch, mindful of sinking too far back into the cushion if I leaned back. “She’s a whole bag of nasty.”
“Who is?” asked Ryan, injecting himself into the conversation as he strutted through the door.
“Tilly Roberge,” I explained.
“Tilly Roberge.” He dragged out her name, making it sound practically pornographic.
I rolled my eyes at his shameless reminiscing, making Nicole laugh.
“Ignore him,” I urged. I bundled up the dress in my lap and dumped it on hers, far less gently than the three-thousand-dollar gown deserved. “Do you like it?”
She dropped the phone in favour of the dress, holding it out in front of her. “It’s so beautiful,” she crooned, smoothing her hand over the intricate lacework. “Are you sure you want me to have it?”
Ryan answered for me. “Someone might as well get some wear out of it. I don’t think Tinker Bell is going to need it for a while.”
“Don’t you have something better to do?” I snapped, whipping my head around to glare at him.
“Yes I do,” he replied, throwing both hands in the air and backing out of the room. “I’m going to take a shower.”
* * *
By the time Ryan waltzed back in, Nicole had gone. I was still doing my best slob impression on the couch.
“How was the beach?” he asked, flopping down beside me.
“I didn’t go. How was the tree felling?”
“Alex is my new hero,” he beamed, leaning forward in his chair. “He chops wood for fun, Charli. For fun.”
I was astounded by his enthusiasm. I’d never known Ryan to get excited over anything, let alone something as mundane as replenishing Alex’s wood heap.
I allowed him to go on with his tale uninterrupted. “He cut it down with a chainsaw – making it fall exactly where he wanted it to – genius!”
I grinned. “He’s had a bit of practice.”
“Did you know that he uses an axe to chop it up for firewood?”
I snickered, amused by his naivety. “What else is he supposed to use?”
“But an axe, Charli. Old school.” He spoke as if the whole concept was alien.
“I’m happy you had fun,” I said.
Ryan ruffled both hands through his damp hair. “It was fun, right up until the drive home. I got pulled over for speeding.”
“Were you speeding?”
“Possibly.” He shrugged. “Obviously that’s a huge crime in this town. I thought the cop was going to lynch me.”
“Don’t take it personally,” I consoled him. “Constable Davis isn’t happy with me at the moment.”
“Why? Did you sleep with his brother and dye his hands orange too?”
A picture of Wade Davis flashed through my mind. “Ugh! No. He has a bit of a crush on me. I shut him down.”
“A recent crush, Charli?” I nodded. “You’re pregnant.”
I couldn’t blame him for the disgusted tone. I thought the whole notion was distasteful too.
“Yeah. But I think I finally got through to him. I’ve hardly seen him lately, which is impressive considering he lives next door.”
“What a creep. Maybe I should go over and have a quiet word.”
“Or maybe you should settle your bad Armani self down and forget about it,” I suggested. “I don’t need the drama.”
* * *
As much as Ryan enjoyed his newfound hobbies, he had one more thing on his Pipers Cove bucket list. He wanted to go fishing, and much to his surprise, Alex had refused to take him.
“Alex isn’t into fishing,” I told him. “Alex is friends with the fish. They watch him surf.”
“Okay, you can take me fishing then.”
I stared at him as if it was the most ludicrous idea on earth – and considering I was seven months pregnant and in a constant state of exhaustion, it probably was. “You’re such a bossy jerk,” I grumbled.
Ryan gave me weird puppy-dog eyes that made him look damaged. “Pretty please, Charlotte?”
“And what are you going to do if you actually manage to catch a fish?”
“You can skin it and cook it for me, wench.”
I gave him a shove, but it was a weak protest. An hour later, we were in my father’s shed, rifling around for a fishing rod.
“What sort of fish will we catch?” he asked.
I could’ve told him we’d be fishing for two-headed purple tiger fish and he would have believed me. “Bream, probably.”
“What do we use for bait?”
The man was absolutely clueless, and I could feel the wickedness creeping in. It had been a long while since I’d had fun tormenting someone, and Ryan was the perfect mark. “Behind the house, at the top of the paddock, there’s a creek,” I explained. “The best bait for catching Bream is little heebie fish. The creek is full of them.”
“Do we catch them with this?” He thrust a fishing rod at me.
“No, just a net will do. They’re only small.”
Alex appeared in the doorway and asked us what we were doing. Ryan was so ramped up that he laid out the plan in ten seconds flat.
Alex looked at me in a way that immediately made Ryan question why. “Is there a problem?”
Ryan couldn’t tell that he was battling to keep a straight face, but I could. “No problem,” he said, taking the net from me. “But you’ll need a smaller net. Heebie fish are tiny.” He hung the net back on the wall and grabbed one with a smaller weave.
“This is what we need?” asked Ryan sceptically, swatting it through the air like a tennis racquet.
I couldn’t blame him for being unsure. The small net hadn’t seen the light of day since my butterfly hunting days when I was ten. “It’s perfect,” I told him.
* * *
Just on dusk we walked up the dirt track toward the creek armed with a bucket, a butterfly net and a torch. Ryan might as well have been on a trip to the moon.
“Do I just scoop them out of the water?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“How will I see them? It’s getting dark.”
“You’ll see them,” I assured him.
After twenty more questions, we reached the creek. The water was barely knee deep at its highest, but Ryan looked nervous. I couldn’t blame him: daylight was almost gone and the dark bush behind the creek made for an eerie scene. The wind made the thick bracken rustle. It wasn’t a familiar sound to Ryan. He kept staring at the bush as if waiting for something to leap out at him.
I sat on a big rock near the edge of the water and order
ed him into the creek. He rolled up his jeans, pulled on a pair of gumboots and waded in, net at the ready.
“It’s cold,” he complained. That was an understatement. It would’ve been bloody freezing.
“Such a brave little soldier,” I mocked.
“Now what do I do?”
“Start scooping heebies.”
His back to me, he dutifully scooped the net through the water. I used the time to gather a handful of rocks.
“Like this?” he asked after a few seconds.
“Perfect,” I praised.
Just as he was getting into it, I tossed a small rock into the bush on the other side of the creek. Ryan straightened at the sound and stared into the endless dark bush.
“What was that?” he hissed.
I managed to keep my voice straight. “Nothing. A possum maybe.”
Satisfied with my answer, he went back to scooping water – and I went back to tormenting him.
“Have you ever heard of a fairy called Eolande, Ryan?”
“Of course I haven’t,” he replied, only half paying attention.
“She’s Scottish,” I explained. “A beautiful female fairy that likes to capture fishermen.”
“Really?” he said dryly. “Do tell me more.”
“She appears in flowing water, like rivers and creeks.”
I pegged another rock into the bush while his back was turned. Ryan’s head snapped up following the sound and my hand flew over my mouth to muffle my laugh.
“There’s something out there.” He punched out the words.
“No there’s not.” I shone the torch into the bush to prove it. “You’re imagining things. Do you want to hear my story or not?”
He waded closer to the bank, and closer to me.
“Tell me the stupid story,” he demanded, failing miserably at downplaying his terror.
“Well, she attracts men with her sad moaning and wailing. Thinking she needs rescuing, the fisherman follow the sound of her cries,” I explained. “When she lures him to the water’s edge, she leaps out of the creek and grabs him.”
Ryan looked at the water, blackened by the low light. “What happens next?”
“She loves him to death. She has her way with him over and over until he dies of exhaustion. Then she moves on and finds another victim.”
He took a moment to process this before returning to the task of heebie catching. His mind was clearly elsewhere. He hadn’t even questioned why his net was coming up empty.
As soon as he was occupied, I threw my third rock.
Ryan tossed the net on the bank and scrambled out of the water. “That’s it,” he declared, pulling off his boots. “We’re done.”
He scooped up the empty bucket and walked away, leaving me to fend for myself. He was at the edge of the track before I even managed to stand.
“Wait for me,” I called between giggles. “I can’t move that fast any more.”
He barely slowed. “You should’ve thought of that before you brought me to the haunted woods.”
I was laughing so hard now that my belly hurt.
“Move, Charlotte,” he ordered. “I’m not waiting for you. Whatever’s in the forest can have you.”
He was well on the way to the house before he stopped to let me catch up. It was then that the penny dropped.
“Heebie fish,” he said thoughtfully.
“What about them?”
“Are they any relation to the heebie jeebies, Charli?”
“Oh, you’ve heard of them?”
Even in the darkness, I read his expression perfectly. He’d been had, and he knew it. He shook his head, muttering down at the ground. “I can’t believe I fell for that.”
“Me neither, you big baby.”
“Your father was in on it too, wasn’t he?”
“Of course he was,” I confirmed. “You don’t learn wickedness. It’s generally inherited.”
He pointed at my belly. “We’ve so much to look forward to, haven’t we?”
“I’ll teach her everything I know,” I declared, putting my hand to my stomach.
“I’ve missed your evil ways,” he told me, slinging his arm around my shoulder as we walked. “It’s surprisingly good to have you back.”
“Thank you very much,” I replied, doing my best Elvis impression. “It’s good to be back.”
June 15
Adam
I wasn’t overly surprised that Ryan had changed his plan of getting in and out of the Cove in less than a week. Nothing in that town moves quickly, including Charli.
She’d agreed to the buyout, as I knew she would. It was up to him to work out the details, which he hadn’t got around to because he was caught up in extracurricular activities like buying cases of wine and cutting down trees with Alex.
I was totally jealous.
I had only spoken to him a couple of times since he’d left, and only asked about Charlotte once.
“She’s doing fine,” he promised me. “I’ll tell you all about it when I get home.”
He’d given me nothing, but that was okay. Any mention of Charli was a double-edged sword. I wanted to know how she was, but feared hearing the answer. Either way, I was left feeling as if I’d been stabbed.
* * *
Considering my list of friends was down to extremely low single digits and my brother was out of town, my phone should’ve been quiet. But it wasn’t.
I’d been taking calls from Judge Lassiter’s office every other day. I was now on a first-name basis with Laura, the judge’s PA. She kept contacting me with an offer of starting my clerkship early – an offer that I politely declined over and over again.
Anyone would’ve thought I was an accomplished attorney in high demand rather than a recent graduate who hadn’t even sat the bar yet.
I knew my father was behind it. I didn’t want to confront him about it, so when I was summoned to my parent’s house for dinner that night, I left it him to mention it.
The queen spent the evening fussing over me. My father spent the night lecturing me, as I knew he would.
“A clerkship is an important first step in your career. I don’t understand why you’re delaying.”
“I’m not delaying,” I defended. “I start in mid-July. That’s always been the arrangement.”
“Procrastination is unbecoming,” he growled.
I kept eating, paving the way for my mom to jump to my defence. “He deserves a break, Jean-Luc. He’s worked his tail off up to this point.”
“The hard work hasn’t even begun yet,” he scoffed.
“I’m holding down the fort at the restaurants until Ryan gets home,” I muttered. “I’m not procrastinating.”
People who attain law degrees at twenty-three are not procrastinators. It was almost unheard of, but not spectacular enough to satisfy my father. My brother and I had been pushed into every accelerated program available, taken extra classes and maintained near-perfect grades since we were kids. Instead of folding under the pressure, we’d both worked incredibly hard. When Ryan opted out of a career in law, our dad nearly lost the plot. I was his last hope, and his desperation was beginning to show.
I moved to change the subject. I picked up my wine glass, holding it up to the light. “Mom, do you know why they cut patterns into crystal glassware?” I asked.
“I imagine it’s for decorative purposes,” she replied.
“Not originally.” I rolled the stem of the glass between my fingers. “It was a tradition started by a Scandinavian couple, Geirvé and Hersir.”
“Really?” The scepticism in her voice made me smile.
“Yes. They were madly in love. He was a prince and Geirvé was a pauper girl.”
“Oh,” crowed my mother putting her hand to her heart. “Like you and Charli.”
I rejected the absurd comparison. “Charlotte is not a pauper and I’m not a prince.”
“You’re my prince,” she beamed.
“Do you want to hear the story or
not?”
My father chimed in. “No. Enough nonsense. We were discussing your future.”
“No, you were discussing my future, Dad,” I corrected. “Mom and I were discussing fairy-tales.”
“Let him speak, Jean-Luc,” insisted my mother, flicking her napkin at him.
He groaned but complied.
“Geirvé worked in the kitchen of the castle. She wasn’t allowed to speak to Hersir so they used to meet in secret,” I explained. “Whenever she wanted to arrange a meeting, she’d cut a mark in of the crystal glasses just before serving his meal, letting Hersir know that she would be waiting for him later that evening. Over time, all the glasses in the castle ended up looking like this.” I held up the glass. “The king thought they looked great. He had no idea they represented secret booty calls.”
My mother must have been taken with the tale. She overlooked my choice of word. “Oh, how romantic.”
“Absolute nonsense,” barked Dad.
I ignored him. So did my mother. “It didn’t end romantically,” I said gravely. “Geirvé found out he was seeing other women and vowed to get revenge for breaking her heart. She spent hours grinding one of the glasses into tiny shards and hid it in his food.”
My mother gasped. “What a wretched, wicked girl!”
I smiled down at the table. “He deserved it, Mom. He was an ass.”
“Did he forgive her?” she asked.
“No. He died,” I replied. “A slow painful death. That was his punishment for breaking her heart.”
“What a terrible story, Adam.”
“Not all fairy-tales have happy endings, Mom.”
I knew that better than anyone.
“It showcases his mindset,” scoffed my father. “Charli’s nonsense has damaged him. Charli has damaged him.”
Charli’s stories hadn’t damaged me. They’d captivated and enchanted me. The lack of ambition and bad attitude I’d recently acquired was entirely my own doing. It was my dose of crushed glass. It was my punishment for breaking her heart.
“Charlotte is a good girl,” defended my mother. “Eventually they’ll sort out their differences.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her otherwise.
“I’d prefer that our son just sort himself out,” he barked. “He should be focusing on his career.”