“And you know what else Sampson said?” she announced, cheeks glowing.
“That the door’s unlocked, just come on up?” Jerry asked. His brother guffawed and gave him a high five.
Barbie shot them a scathing look. “No, thank you very much! He said the Rolling Stones are coming to the Palace of Auburn Hills this summer. Isn’t that so exciting?”
“Barbie, you do realize it’s 1996, right?” Allen asked.
“Unlike you boys, I keep track of the days of the week, yes,” she said.
“And the Rolling Stones were hip in the 60s. Do you think Mick will be rolled onstage in a wheelchair?” Allen continued.
“Oh, you two just put a cork in it,” she snapped.
Jake grinned. “Sounds great, Barbie. Better tell the old man to get you tickets for your birthday.”
Jerry leaned in. “‘But remember, you can’t always get what you want,’” he sang.
Through the window, Jake watched a black sedan pull into the muddy back lot.
“That wash job was a waste of five bucks,” Allen commented, also watching the car.
A tall, slender woman dressed entirely in black stepped from the car. Large black glasses covered the top half of her face. A plait of dark hair fell to the center of her back. She walked briskly as if to retreat from the chill, though the spring morning was fast approaching sixty degrees.
Allen whistled. “Got a new hottie on the line?” he asked Jake.
“Bite your tongue,” Barbie snapped. “Jake is with Allison. Of course he doesn’t—” But she didn’t finish her statement as the woman brushed into the office, her nose wrinkling with distaste as her eyes flicked to a glass bowl of potpourri. Barbie bristled.
The woman paused and gazed around the room, removing her glasses to reveal large almond-shaped green eyes. Her shirt beneath her black coat was white, silky-looking, and spotted in little Scottie dogs. After noting each face, she fixed on Jake. “Jacob Dunn?”
Jake gave a little start and glanced toward the Jones boys. The name Dunn startled him. He hadn’t heard it in thirty years.
“Jacob?” Jerry snickered, elbowing his brother.
“How can we help you, ma’am?” Barbie asked, stepping from behind her large desk and slightly blocking Jake, her mama bear instincts kicking in.
The woman blinked at Barbie, and then stepped to the side, fixing her eyes on Jake. “You are him, aren’t you?”
“Uh, no, sorry. Jake Edwards, not Dunn.” He thrust out his hand, but she didn’t take it.
Her own hands, narrow, bony and covered in silver rings, stayed at her sides. “I’m Petra Collins. Do you remember me?”
Jake stared at her, puzzled. He doubted he could have forgotten her. The name alone should have rung a few bells, but he drew a blank. “No, I’m sorry. Did you ask about some excavating work or—?” He gestured emptily. Or what, he didn’t know.
She looked at Barbie and then Allen and Jerry. “It’s probably best if we speak in private. Do you have an office?”
She was very forward and Barbie stiffened at the suggestion that Jake would have anything to say to this woman that he couldn’t say within her earshot.
“Sure, yeah. Follow me.” He gave Barbie an appeasing look and opened a door into the inner office.
Bids and rolled prints covered his desk except for a small space in the front where he scratched out property diagrams, estimated costs, and sometimes doodled as he planned out projects in his head. It didn’t have the homey feel that Barbie had created in the outer office. The walls were white and bare. The only item of décor was a lamp pushed to the corner of the desk as paper filled its original spot.
“Oh,” he said, realizing the office contained only one chair, his own. He dipped back into Barbie’s office and grabbed a chair, dragging it into the room and avoiding Barbie’s curious gaze and the matching smirks on Jerry and Allen. “Here, have a seat,” he told Petra.
Jake hurried around to his own chair, feeling oddly nervous. He disliked sitting in the stark little room with the stranger, a woman he’d easily have noticed at a bar, but who in the confines of his office made him uneasy.
Petra sat in the chair and folded her hands in her lap, studying him. “Your eyes are the same,” she told him.
He blushed and fidgeted in his chair, steepling his hands on the desk and then pulling them down to tap his thighs. She wasn’t hitting on him, but the way she’d spoken revealed an intimacy that implied they’d known one another for a very long time. “How do I know you, Petra? I’m not usually one to forget a face.”
Petra smiled, but there was no mirth in the expression. “Thirty years ago, this wasn’t my face. I had a little girl's face.”
Jake frowned. “We knew each other as children?”
Jake had few memories from his childhood. The black hole of trauma, one of his ex-girlfriends had called it while simultaneously nudging him into couples therapy. He’d quit the therapy and the girlfriend after one session.
“I didn’t expect you to remember me,” she admitted. “Maybe my name. I never forgot you, though. You and Maribelle. You were the only friends I had in those days.”
Jake frowned and his heart seemed to lurch at the name, Maribelle, though that too brought nothing in the form of memories. “Did we meet in Alpena?” he asked.
Jake remembered little of life in Alpena. All of his memories seemed to exist after the age of ten when he’d found himself living in Frankenmuth with his adoptive parents, Faye and Lennon.
Petra shook her head. “We met at the Northern Michigan Asylum for the Insane,” she said.
Jake cracked a smile. “Is that a joke?”
Petra wasn’t smiling. “No, it’s not. You don’t remember being at the asylum?” She frowned as she spoke, and he saw suspicion, perhaps even fear, in her eyes.
2
Jake sighed and leaned back in his chair. “What’s the deal, lady? Did Allison put you up to this because she’s pissed at me?”
Petra’s face darkened. “You were at the Northern Michigan Asylum for the Insane in 1966. You were a patient there, as was I and Maribelle.”
Jake offered her a sardonic grin. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Sorry for my ungentlemanly vocabulary, but Petra, I’ve got a crew kicking dirt in the parking lot and three jobs that need to start in ten minutes. I’m not sure why you’re here, and I’ve got a sense I can thank my old lady for it, but you’ll have to excuse me.”
Jake stood and brushed past the woman. He had half a mind to get Allison on the phone and tell her what he thought about her shitty joke, but that would only delay his morning.
He saluted Barbie, which she’d give him hell for later. Usually he pecked her on the cheek and told her to have a good day.
In the lot, he called out to the guys. “Jerry, you’re with Willis on the Sampson job. Ric, I need you to take the dump truck to Marly’s Gravel and pick up ten yards of road gravel. Allen and I will meet you on Rinehart Road.” Jake grabbed a folded map from his truck and showed Ric where the property was at.
As Allen climbed into the passenger side of his pickup, Petra emerged from the office. She had not put her glasses back on and she looked troubled, her stony expression replaced with confusion.