She heard nothing.
Had he really left? Had he given her three days of excitement and then vamoosed? She'd had so many pent-up questions to ask him yet about his life, his son, his brother. David's advice niggled at her. Had she been unfair? Unforgiving even?
Cole had complimented her way with children. Didn't a good mother need to be forgiving of a lot? With all her heart, she wanted to experience the trouble of children.
Until Cole's re-entry into her life, she hadn't realized how much on the surface that yearning was. At times, it burst like a river from out of an underground cave, crashing into the sun with its message. At times, it ushered forth as soft and joyous as a dandelion seed pod, its feathery wings set free to blow across a soul, to plant themselves in a heart in order to grow.
When the sun began throwing afternoon shadows on the silence and there was still no sign of Cole, Laurel's defenses grew weak. She carefully packed an insulated luncheon box, looking twice at what she put in there and wondering whether he'd know the significance of the succor she brought. Then a tremor rolled through her. Would he even be alive to appreciate the surprise packed in this box? She grabbed her first-aid kit and a coil of rope and headed for her fishing boat.
Outside, she felt as if someone were watching her, beckoning her with a powerful force that vibrated from the earth's fiery core. She peered up at the round window across the bay. Its bleakness mocked her. It seemed to know she couldn't resist giving into curiosity about Cole. Even if danger, or death, lay waiting.
* * * *
SHE CHECKED HIS tent first. Finding it empty, she hurried along the deer path, the weeds whipping against her bluejeans. She stepped onto the verandah, her hiking boots clomping on the floorboards.
“Cole?” She rapped on the sliver-ridden carved door. “It's me, Laurel."
After shoving the door open, and putting down the cooler and gear, she eased toward the hole she'd fallen through earlier in the week.
“Cole?” He wasn't down in the basement.
With ginger steps and ears attuned to cracking in the wood, she inched through the first-floor rooms. In the parlor off to the right, light streamed through a couple of windows now freed of their plywood. They flanked a dusty fireplace, spider webs spewing down from its mantle and fluttering in the quiet breeze like white sheers. She saw evidence of Cole. He'd chopped holes about the room and there were chunks of plaster piled in corners. The tracks in the dust seemed fresh. Her heartbeat quickened.
“Cole?” she called again, but to no avail. She licked her lips against the cottony fear settling in her mouth.
Searching the kitchen across the hall, she stepped over buckled linoleum. The pantry was empty and dark, as was the library with all its empty shelves, which was as bleak as the family sitting room.
She stumbled out onto the screenless back porch, looked around the yard, then hurried inside and headed for the back stairway.
Fear climbed with her. Her heartbeat tripled.
On the second floor she inspected five bedrooms, their doors screeching on rusted hinges. She found nothing but dust, a few ugly knickknacks that seemed to hold up the walls and a four live brown bats huddled in a dark ceiling corner of one room.
She then stepped into the master suite with its glassless window overlooking the lake. A shutter slapped haphazardly with the breeze. A rusted iron bed with springs sat off in a corner. An oak dresser with cracked porcelain knobs collected leaves and debris near the window. The dressertop was a carved masterpiece attesting to the teenage couples who'd snuck here for a tryst over the years. Laurel ran her hand over the rough notchings of names, holding her breath, thinking about the futures discussed here and oh, the families started, too. Why did she feel left behind by history? What an odd sensation. Lonely. Barren.
She backed away, her nerves taut as fishing line battling a monster pike. If she and Cole had gone ahead with their marriage, would they have lived in this house? They could have carved their names here. And filled the empty shell with their children. That haunted her everytime she came in here.
The stale air suffocating her, she rushed to a stairwell, stumbling several steps before she realized she was going up and not down.
Stopping, she floated a hand over her heart to quell its overwrought response to her ragged thoughts. Could love survive for fifteen years in empty spaces?
Dreaming of what might have been only imprisoned a woman in her own history.
I can't still have those kind of feelings for him. I won't allow it.
With logical thinking back in place, she decided to proceed to the top floor and get this silliness over with.
She shouldn't have.
Inside the cavernous, peaked attic room with the porthole window, she found him. And she knew—instinctively—that she was about to walk into deep, deep trouble.
* * * *
LIGHT FROM THE lowering sun now poured through the round window onto his shoulders. He slumped over a rickety wood table, his face buried in his hands.
“Cole?"
He sat on one of several rusted tubular kitchen chairs, most of which were collecting dust and artful spider webs.
When he groaned, she rushed to him and gripped his shoulders, thinking the worst. “Are you hurt? Was Rojas here? Let me see. I'll help. I'm sorry about—"
Snaking out an arm, he startled her, but he used it to rub his face through another moan. She stood still behind him, not daring to breathe hardly, watching with an ache at the way his shaking fingers clawed through his thick, dark hair. Then the same hand, warmed by his face and hair, sought hers at his shoulder, and she obliged, leaning against his back, her fingers entwining with his. The stark neediness in him bound her to him.
“The other day, when I asked for your help?” he ventured. “I overstepped the bounds between us.” His elbows rested on what looked to her like maps. “It's wrong to want your help with something like this. Go home. I can handle it."
Stepping back, she folded her arms against both the sudden chill of not being a part of him and her own indignation. “I was worried about you."
“I've been doing a lot of thinking about you."
Heat scuttled up her spine, prickling onto her cheeks. “Be careful. You don't control my mind or my will anymore."
“The drenching in the shop made your point."
“And I hate the way I turn into a fool around you to make my points. That's not me anymore."
“Did Kipp only control your heart because he was your father's best buddy?"
The words scalded. “How dare you—"
“Ask the truth? The editor showed me several photos from hunting trips they took without you. And then there's David Huber."
His obvious penchant to play detective on her personal life sparked a whollup of agitation. “Are you doing a thesis on my friends and my dead fiancé? Kipp controlled nothing about me, nor did I control him. Our relationship wasn't like that."
“And what was it like?"
She opened her mouth but discovered it was the first time anyone had asked her about it. Not even Una or her mother said much about Kipp. Certainly not David. “It was normal. And how dare you grill me."
“Normal? That's it?” He turned toward her. His face was beet red.
“Are you feeling well? What's happened, Cole? You're acting very odd."
Turning back to smooth the crinkled maps, he muttered, “What's happened?” he repeated. “Do you mean in the last fifteen years or since yesterday? Life moves along in this great big space but there's one thing we have to grab."
“Grab what? Don't talk weird."
“I'm not. It's all related. I'm talking about love."
The air grew stifling. “Whose love? What love?"
“Did you love Kipp? I mean the bone-rattling kind. The kind that transcends temporal spaces and events in our lives?"
“Bone-rattling? Transcends? Kipp would have scoffed at such hogwash. I was going to marry him."
“I suppose love comes in varying degrees. I'm only just learning that, you know. Brother love. Son love. Friend love. Love of truth weaving through it all like some surly snake you can't catch and maybe don't want to."
She cocked her head. “How long have you been up here? Maybe you've got a fever—"
“No fever. I discovered why what you and I had once wasn't enough for either of us."
The blood left her face. After all these years, was he deciding to tell her now that he never really loved her? Or that he believed he did once? That was preposterous. “You're drunk."
“I rarely drink. Just the champagne after a race."
“And you always win."
“Not at love. There was you. Then Stephanie. Lisa wants to get married but I can't seem to figure out if that's only friend-love."
“Maybe she knows about surly snakes like I do,” she scoffed. “Or, did you forget to—as you say—transcend?"
His chuckle surprised her. “No. The truth is I didn't know what love was until my brother was taken from me. And I haven't had a moment to think about it until I came back to Dresden, until I saw you. I finally came up here last night to think about it."
She was stunned. “You waited three days to come up here? Yours and Mike's pirate ship?"
“I was scared, Laurel. I thought I'd hear his voice. I wasn't sure I was ready to hear him, to see the visions of him and me playing up here, lining up chairs to make seats on our ship, stacking chairs to peer out the window with a dimestore plastic telescope our aunt had bought. We were tough, invincible brothers who wanted nothing more than to sail the seas together when they grew up. Am I crazy? To be afraid of those voices?"
She stood there for an eternity watching dust motes float across the sunbeam blanketing his shoulders. The only sound was his shallow breathing.
He rubbed his palms against his eyes, then raked his dark hair. Wrinkles pinched his forehead.
Finally, she couldn't deny his agony any longer. She went to him, stood behind him and placed a shaky hand on his shoulder, massaging the kinks away, an automatic thing, remembered by her hands after a lifetime apart.
She whispered, “No, hearing his voice isn't crazy.” She swallowed hard against the rising throb of her heart in her throat. “It's probably the most human, loving thing I've ever heard from you. He was your brother. He'll be your brother forever."
One of his hands reached back and covered hers. The heated dampness sent the years lost between them crashing into the dust at her feet. It frightened her to be drawn to his grief, yet her heart felt light as a flower in bloom, and against her will it opened to him. Overpowering, his pull was too much for her to refuse.
He clung to her hand, then edged around to look up at her. His eyes were the liquid darkness of a creekbed hidden under shade.
She could only find a whisper. “I've never seen you cry."
His jawline trembled. “How could you stand it, losing Kipp and your father at the same time?"
And so much else. “I couldn't. For a long time."
“How much time does this take?"
“What? Filling in the hole in your heart that's left behind when someone leaves you?” She quaked inside.
“Hell, yes,” he said, dropping his hand from hers and pushing off suddenly to go to the porthole window. Had he been watching her earlier? She shivered again. He must have.
In his wake she noticed he'd left behind a small, wood box darkened with age. A wet stain marred its top. His tears. She tried to swallow but her throat had gone dry as paper. She flipped open the box. It held a rainbow of crayon stubs.
She frowned. “You discovered this box up here?"
He didn't turn back from the window, just nodded. “Last night."
“You've been up here ever since?"
“Couldn't sleep."
“Because of this box?"
He took the two long steps back to the table and plucked a crayon out. “He planted these here, on his visit over two weeks back."
“Planted?” Was this another act? A game?
“These are my brother's crayons from grade school. My mother gave us each a wood box for Christmas when we were six or seven. Who knows what I did with mine, but Mike, he was fastidious to a fault even as a kid. He always shared and watched out for me. When we'd be on a plane for Chile and we'd hit bumpy skies, Mike would open up this box and we'd color like crazy to take our minds off crashing."
Laurel watched his long, muscled fingers fondle the crayon stubs one by one. The only sound in the attic room was their gentle plop back into the box. She thought about his apparent fear of flying and how he never revealed a weakness to her before this moment. This couldn't be an act.
“Why would he bring the crayon box here and leave it?"
He sighed. “A signal that he's watching out for me? He knew if I saw this I'd have to keep going after Rojas no matter how bumpy the ride. Mike knew he'd be killed. He lived for a while, knowing that.” He crushed a crayon in his fist, the pieces dribbling down into the box. “My brother knew he might die and he never asked my help."
Laurel's stomach twisted but a window in her heart opened further to him. She understood the power of familial love and how it drove people and shaped them. She had been about to marry Kipp—even David—for her father and to bring peace to the family, just as Cole would chase after Rojas for Mike's sake, for his family.
“Do you want lunch?” The question sounded so insipid it embarrassed her.
“Not really hungry.” Cole stood staring at her with a forehead furrowed and eyes blinking back tears. “I miss him, Laurel. It's so damn lonely."
Her heart lurched. “I understand,” she whispered, seeing in her memory loved ones she'd laid to rest, wishing she could see more clearly, recapture their voices more fully, but knowing time helped. She wanted to help Cole understand it all, but how? How to shrink time for him?
She thought about backing away and running, but he blinked and a teardrop trickled down his whiskery face to his jawline. She rushed to him, wrapping her arms around the tremors racking him.
Nuzzling her hair, he muttered, “I'll never bother you again, Laurel, but I did love you in my own way, and I need you right now. In every way. You feel good, steady."