Evergreen Falls (4 page)

“How many languages do you speak?” I asked.

“Just English and French.”

“And Danish.”

“Of course. I’m from Denmark.” He shrugged. “I want to hear more about your brother. You must miss him.”

Another gulp of wine. “I do, but . . . you know . . .”

“Go on.”

I took a deep breath. “When I described my family to you just now . . . well, it probably sounded completely normal, if a little sad. But we kind of aren’t normal. Or weren’t. Because of Adam.”

He smiled gently. “You’d better explain.”

Fortified by wine, I tried to get at the nuance of the situation. My brother’s illness had lasted sixteen years. From first signs at nineteen, to a lung transplant at twenty-one, to the endless panicked trips to emergency with colds that ordinary people could recover from in a day but could be a death sentence for him, to the various diagnoses of other horrors that the medications wrought upon his body and the related surgeries, to the slow tortured wait for the transplanted lungs to give out. Some people get a good ten years, they told us. Adam got fourteen. All the while we waited, held together by his awful sentence, afraid to go out in the world lest we bring back a germ that would kill him. My mother’s brain rewired to see certain death for her offspring everywhere. Her caution was not just for Adam; as the surviving child, I was her only consolation, and she
couldn’t bear to lose me, too. She kept me in. She begged me to undertake my university degree remotely, and I didn’t bother to finish it because I felt so divorced from the experience. She asked me not to go out to work, but instead she employed me to help her with Adam, and he did need a lot of help, a lot of our time. She kept me as close under her watchful eye as she kept her terminally ill son. The four of us, in that house, held close by illness, all hearing the deafening tick of time’s passing for sixteen years.

Tomas was a wonderful listener. He knew when to ask questions, when to sit back and let me be silent. His watchful eyes occasionally searched for our waiter, and occasionally alighted on my hand as it went for the wine bottle again. But he didn’t stop me and, truly, once I’d started it all came pouring out.

“Wow, I’m really drunk,” I said when I was done and Tomas was gazing back at me with empathy. Immediate regret. Why had I told him everything? I was an idiot. “I shouldn’t have told you all that,” I said.

“I’m glad you did.”

“Where is the waiter? I’m really hungry and my stomach feels kind of . . .”

“I think they’ve forgotten us.”

I glanced around the room. It spun a little.

“You don’t drink often, I take it?” he asked.

“Hardly ever.”

He stood, dropping his napkin on the table. “Come on. I’ll take you to my place and make you a sandwich. We need to get something into your stomach, and I don’t think anything rich is going to sit well with you.”

The waiter dashed after us calling apologies, but Tomas waved dismissively and handed him a fifty-dollar note for the wine.

On the hill down to the car, my body’s ability to balance on the
wedge heels failed me completely. Tomas caught me, arm around my waist, and guided me to the car. I was aware dimly that the night was going very badly, that I was a drunken mess after four glasses of wine in less than an hour and I had confessed to him that I had lived my adult life like a character out of
Flowers in the Attic
. But all his concern seemed focused on getting me in the car and then on the way home.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“For what?”

“For embarrassing you.”

“You haven’t embarrassed me.”

“For embarrassing me.”

He pulled the car to the side of the road and turned to me, reaching for my face with a warm hand. “Lauren, there is no need for anybody to be sorry. Now, I’m taking you to my place, all right? For food. Nothing else.”

“Right.”
Nothing else?
What did that mean?

The car sped off again. The last blush of sunset on the horizon. Everything seemed to whir and blur around me. I pressed my hands to my forehead.

“Nearly there,” he said.

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re going to have to stop saying that.”

Then we were outside his house and he was helping me out of the car. He got me inside. Things got a little woolly for a while, but it seems I had hot tea and a toasted cheese sandwich, and then Tomas was sitting beside me. “Why do you like me?” I said. “You’re so wonderful and I’m so . . . me.”

“Just drink your tea,” he said gently.

“But . . .”

“I like you because there’s something very real about you, Lauren.
Your heart is in your eyes. I don’t know. I’m not good at saying these things.”

I finished my tea and sandwich while he watched. He was so gorgeous. I leaned in to try to kiss him, but he backed away and grasped me gently by the shoulders. “No,” he said. “Not like this.”

He moved to clear away my plate and cup, and I sat alone for a few moments, listening to him in the kitchen.

The next thing I knew I was waking up in grainy morning light, still wearing my dress and heels, under a light blanket on Tomas’s couch.

The shame. The horrible, crawling shame. Snatches of the previous night came back to me. Drinking too much, talking too much, falling over too much, trying to kiss Tomas and being rebuffed. I looked at my watch: it was just before five. If I crept out now . . .

But my bladder was too full for a quick escape. I climbed slowly to my feet, head pounding, and glanced around the room. Couch, coffee table, television. No rug, no bookshelves, no paintings. Tomas was renting, which perhaps explained the lack of finishing touches on the place. The cottage was silent. I could hear birdsong from outside.

I spied a likely hallway in the hope of finding a bathroom, slipped off my ridiculous shoes, and made my way quietly down it.

Shortly after, I was halfway out the front door, congratulating myself on having got so far without waking Tomas, when I heard his voice.

“Sneaking out?”

I turned. He stood behind the couch, in blue pajamas, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.

“I’m sorry—”

“I forbade you from using that word last night, remember?”

I shook my head. “I don’t really remember much.”

“Stay,” he said, smiling. “Let me make you some toast and coffee, at least.”

The idea of coffee caught my attention. “You don’t hate me?”

He shook his head, laughing. “That’s the last thing I feel for you.”

I closed the door on the cool predawn air. “Thank you,” I said. “And thanks for the blanket. And for being . . . you know . . . a gentleman about it all.”

“Follow me,” he said, and I followed him to his kitchen, where he switched on the light and indicated I should sit at the table.

“So, I take it you’re not usually a big drinker?” he said as he fired up his coffee machine.

“Ah, no. Nor a big dater, I’m afraid. I was very anxious.”

“I find it impossible to believe I could make anyone anxious.” His bright blue eyes were twinkling.

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“You told me a lot of it last night.”

“I didn’t tell you I’ve never had a boyfriend.” The word
boyfriend
felt wrong in my mouth, like a word I should have used fifteen years ago, not now.

“Not one?”

I shook my head. He busied himself making coffee, and I sat in my embarrassment until he placed a cup in front of me and joined me at the table.

“Really?” he said, picking up the same conversation. “Not one relationship?”

“I couldn’t. For . . . all those reasons I spoke about last night.”

“But didn’t you want a relationship? Didn’t you want a life?”

“Of course. I longed for it. But . . . Adam’s life seemed to depend on me not doing anything I wanted. Then his impending death made me feel selfish for even wanting something.”

“Did you have dreams? Aspirations?”

“Not really. Beyond maybe getting married one day, having children. When Adam died and I realized I had some freedom, I discovered I didn’t know what I wanted to do.”

“So you came up here to find yourself?”

I shook my head sadly. “I came up here because Adam always wanted to. I didn’t have a dream, so I just picked up his.”

Tomas sipped his coffee, wearing that listening expression that had kept me talking so long last night.

“He spent some time up here in the two years before he became ill. He talked a lot about coming back. For a long time, when he was younger, he was quite agitated about it, about not being well enough to travel. As time went by, he stopped talking about it so much. But he had a framed photograph he’d taken on the bush track to the Falls, and he had it enlarged to a meter across and hung on the wall of his room. He spent a lot of time looking at it, I imagine, when he could do nothing else.”
Dammit, no
. On top of everything else, my voice shook and I had to blink back tears.

Tomas reached his hand across the table and covered mine with it. “Cry if you need to. It’s okay.”

“I think women are supposed to be more mysterious than I’ve been on this date,” I said.

“I don’t like mysterious. I like you. Maybe all those extra years with your family meant that you didn’t learn how to be hard, or cool, or false. Maybe that’s exactly why I like you, Lauren.”

His kind words made me cry for real, and as I did he sat patiently, stroking my hand with his thumb.

“I need to be honest with you, though,” he said, and an ominous chime rang out in my heart. “Knowing what I know about you now, about your . . . inexperience, I suppose you’d say. I’m due to return to Copenhagen in June, and I won’t be back until January next year. Then, six months after that, I’ll be returning home for good.”

“Home? To Denmark?”

“Yes. So, I can’t . . . I wouldn’t be able to offer you anything . . . you mentioned marriage, children. It’s better that I warn you. I’m not here forever.”

“That’s fine,” I said, probably too quickly. “I don’t mind. I’d really like to keep seeing you. I’m sure our second date will be better than the first. It can’t be worse.”

He tapped my hand gently. “Let’s have our second date now, then.”

“Breakfast date?”

“How about a quick piece of toast, then let’s go back into the west wing, and see if we can find any more about our forbidden lovers.”

“I’m wearing an evening dress and ridiculous shoes,” I said.

“We’ll stop by your place and get some sensible ones, then.”

I grinned at him. “Okay.”

*  *  *

The faint dawn light fell in cracks through the boarded windows, but Tomas had brought a large torch with a long beam, and I got a much better sense of the faded grandeur of the place.

“Will you try to preserve the original look?” I asked as he shone the torch onto the ornate ceiling. “The pressed-metal designs are magnificent.” I was much more comfortable now in jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt.

“It will look very different when I’ve redesigned it. I haven’t drawn up plans yet, but I need to knock through some walls and build others. The developers want to maximize the space. As for what the interior decorators will do: Who knows?” He handed me the torch. “Lead the way.”

I led him down the corridor to the storeroom. Old floorboards creaked beneath our feet, and the dust itched my nose.

He fished out the key and unlocked the door, then shone the torch around. “Good grief, what a mess.”

“Will they just throw all this out?”

“I’m surprised they haven’t already. They must have missed this room.”

“Are you going to tell anyone about it?”

He shook his head. “The developer won’t care. We can go through these things, if you like. If you’re interested in our little historical mystery.”

“That would be fun.”

He squeezed my hand, then leaned in towards me and kissed me lightly on the lips. My head swam a little.

“Now for our third date,” he said. “Coffee at my favorite café.”

I smiled, imagining the surprise on Penny’s face when we turned up. But then I remembered. “Oh! I’m due at work at six thirty! What time is it now?”

He shone the torch at his watch. “Six fifteen. Good thing we’re on site.”

“I’ll have to dash. Third date. Soon.”

“Tonight.”

“You’re on. I’ll make you dinner at my place. Seven o’clock?” I boldly kissed him on the mouth, letting him open my lips with his tongue, then ran off up the corridor while he lit my way, and out into the early-morning light. Smiling like a fool.

CHAPTER THREE

M
y shift seemed to drag on forever, but I was free at two. I picked up some groceries and went home to marinate steaks and make a pasta bake and salad. A long bath followed, and I finally washed off the grime and stale alcohol smell. I could easily have fallen asleep in the water, but I needed to unpack Adam’s books before Tomas arrived. There was no space in my sitting room for unnecessary clutter.

Wrapped in my dressing gown, I sat on the floor and opened the first box. In it was a letter from my mother.

I hope you enjoy these books, and take the time to remember your brother—my darling son—when you read them.

With a pang, I remembered I’d turned off my phone last night at the restaurant. I quickly located it in my handbag, switched it on, and waited as it downloaded seven increasingly desperate voice-mail messages from Mum. With the phone jammed between my shoulder and cheek, I began to unpack the books.

“Hello?” she answered breathlessly.

“It’s me.”

“Where have you been?”

“Nowhere. I just forgot to turn my phone on.”

“Lauren, you must be more careful. It’s not fair to me to disappear like that. I’ve been worried out of my mind. I called the police but they wouldn’t do anything.”

I took her admonishment with good grace as I moved books from boxes to bookshelves, apologizing, feeling like a teenager, but then when I could finally get a word in, I said, “Mum, I’m a grown woman. You really can’t expect to know where I am every second of the day.”

The line went quiet, and I knew I’d hurt her feelings. “Sorry, Mum,” I said again. “But don’t worry about me, okay? I’ll be fine.” Because I felt guilty, I said too much. “I’ve met a man.”