One of the thoughts that did cross his mind as he drove them back to her place was that this was a hell of a time to figure it out. They just had themselves to deal with right now. No interfering family members. Sure, he would have to show up for the wedding and be good for a little while. He still couldn’t believe that he came all the way across the country because Laysha had asked him to. It had nothing to do with the wedding. But maybe him coming for Laysha said an awful lot about how he felt about her.
He acknowledged these feelings again. He didn’t want to before because he couldn’t risk ruining this perfect friendship in his life. Instead here he was, sitting with her, wondering how to take it to the next step. And even that thought surprised him because it hadn’t occurred to him, until it came up this time, what he was looking at doing. It’s almost as if he’d been biding his time all these years. And here he was now, looking at how to make something of his past that he had walked away from a long time ago—when he shouldn’t have.
Chapter 5
The next morning Laysha woke up and stretched, delighted to have some time off so that she could get back to work on her house. As she got up and went downstairs, the emptiness of the house made her feel funny. She walked to the spare bedroom door, which was open, and found the bed was empty. “Well, you said you would leave early this morning, but I wasn’t thinking you were leaving that early,” she muttered.
She hadn’t even woken up when he left. That gave her an odd feeling. It was weird to think that somebody could walk around her house, and she wouldn’t notice. She set about making coffee and feeding her four dogs. She made breakfast, all the time looking out the window to see if Caleb would come back anytime soon. Yet she didn’t want him to feel like he had to check-in because that was too pushy and nosy and clingy.
As it was, she bustled around, talking to her dogs, cuddling them a bit, then getting ready for the day’s work that she had planned to do in the upstairs guest bathroom. She was serious about getting that vanity in today, had actually hoped to have it all done before Caleb arrived but didn’t quite make it.
As she lined up everything that she needed, she heard the dogs barking downstairs. She walked downstairs, expecting to see Caleb, but instead nobody was there. And the dogs weren’t barking like it was a friendly visitor; instead they raced from one end of the house to the other, as if they saw somebody and then lost them. She stepped outside, the dogs with her, Caleb shouting in her head to get back inside. She walked around on the veranda but couldn’t see anybody. She called the dogs back inside and said, “Come on, guys. I’m not sure what’s going on, but let’s go upstairs.”
With her phone in her back pocket and her gloves on, she headed upstairs with her plumber tools. She managed to connect the vanity, get it settled into place, opened up the cupboard beneath, and tightened down all the piping. With that done and properly level, she caulked the back joint to keep water from flowing over the countertop against the wall and going down, and then she segregated the dogs from her workspace and started in on her tile work. She had done enough now that it was second nature to get set up.
By the time she was done with the tile backsplash that she had planned around the vanity—just behind the wall close to the toilet—she started in on the tiling of the floor. She wanted to get the whole room done, then close the door. Although it was inconvenient having Caleb share her en suite bathroom, this guest bath did need a day at least, if not two, as it set.
She frowned at that, wondering at the sense of doing this when Caleb was here. She got it done without his help. But now, for sure, when he wanted a shower, he had to use her bathroom, since he was only here a couple days.
When she finished with the last bit of tile on the floor, she was happy at how quickly it had all come together. She stood up, cleaned off the caulking on her knees, and walked downstairs to wash off. She set the rest of her tools off to the side and worked away at cleaning her hands, elbows, and arms. It didn’t seem to matter what she did, she ended up covered in whatever.
By the time she was as cleaned up as she could get from washing at a sink, she grabbed a cup of old coffee, threw some ice cubes into it, and walked out onto the veranda with the dogs, giving them a pee break. It was almost two o’clock and still no sign of Caleb. She frowned at that and quickly sent him a message. When there was no answer, she got even more worried.
Hearing a sound, she walked around to the front of the house to see his truck driving toward her. She stood here with a smile on her face, sipping her iced coffee.
He hopped out and said, “Sorry. I had just taken the turnoff onto your street, and I figured it was faster to get home, than stop and answer your text.”
“Not a problem,” she said. “I just finished tiling the upstairs bath.”
“Good for you,” he said. “I was coming back to help.” He stood by his rental, the door still open.
“Oh, there’s more work to be done. No problem,” she said with a fat grin.
“We can pick one job now and get started.” He grinned back at her. “What about the upstairs bedrooms and hallway? Were you redoing all that hardwood?”
“I wanted to get it all redone,” she said, nodding. “That would only leave paint and new windows upstairs.”
“And what about the attic?”
“I want to install one of those drop-down stairs,” she said, “but I haven’t got the funds for that yet.”
“Well,” he said, “I might need a bite to eat first.” And he leaned into the front seat and grabbed two bags of groceries. “I was hungry and stopped and bought a bunch of groceries too. Did you get lunch yet?”
She shook her head. “No, but whatever you’ve got in mind, I’m signing up for quite happily.”
He laughed. “As I recall, you used to be a big eater.”
“I still am,” she said. “I lost a lot of weight over the divorce because I felt so guilty, but I’m slowly pulling back out of that.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “I think I went the opposite. I inhaled everything, but, because of my heavy fitness routine, I didn’t really gain any.”
“Oh, I ate a lot too,” she said, “but the emotional stress was always one of those issues for me, where I lost weight. Same as when I got sick.”
“I remember that.”
As they walked into the kitchen, she asked, “Did you have any luck tracking the dog?”
“Nope, not a whole lot,” he said, “but I did come up with a couple different avenues to keep looking.”
“In what way?”
“I talked to the neighbors. They said they heard some shots the day the dog went missing.”
“And they actually remember that specific day?”
“Yes, because they saw the dog tear out across the property at the same time.”
“Wow.” She stopped, thought about it, and said, “But the gunshot wasn’t the one that killed the same guy we found in the storeroom, right? I mean, he hasn’t been in that house for a couple months?”
“I don’t think so,” he said, “but I don’t really know. The decomp was extensive though. And it is hot inside the house, being closed up and with no AC running. So the heat deteriorated the body inside, even while stopping the bigger wild animals from getting to his body because it was closed up in the house.”