The one-room bedroom held what was left of my life. My brighter, happier, less lonely existence had been lost in the months since Dad’s untimely heart attack.
To distract myself from my depressing thoughts, I looked outside. My heart did a double take. Was that . . .?
Yes. Yes, it was.
The Viking had just stepped out of the grocery store and was scanning from left to right. He wore a black T-shirt and work khakis now.
Grateful for the anonymity of my upstairs window, I watched him cross the parking lot in the dusk. He was late twenties, possibly early thirties. Deep lines on his forehead meant he was a thinker, but he’d been easygoing despite my total mess this morning.
I spent so long studying him, lost in my thoughts, that I didn’t realize he was staring right back at me. With a gasp, I jerked back and shoved the curtain closed. My heart slammed in my chest.
When I peeked out again, he’d disappeared.
Acting as if I didn’t see the stack of bills on my desk that had arrived that afternoon, I pushed past the mess, tumbled onto the bed with my hair still wet, and fell into a restless sleep.
The wooden door to the Frolicking Moose Coffee Shop groaned open the next morning. With a quick kick, I propped it open to let cool morning air circulate inside. The OPEN sign flickered to life when I hit the switch behind the counter.
Still half-awake, I shuffled across the wooden floor that desperately needed a refinish and over to the drive-through window. A slight breeze whipped past me. The machines hummed a mellow greeting when I turned them on. After a thorough rinse that left espresso grounds bound into my skin, I’d been able to save the espresso machine from yet another espresso-doctor visit. Not to mention the two-hundred-dollar bill that would have choked off my food supply for the next four months.
My laptop sat on a nearby table, but I ignored it. No, there wouldn’t be an email offer waiting for me. Namely, a scholarship to the online real-estate program I had been hoping to interview for yesterday. Getting my license would help me recover what dropping out of college had done to my life.
Really, what had I been thinking? With the Frolicking Moose this hot of a mess, I wasn’t bound to recover from anything soon. And I wouldn’t give this place up.
I yawned, heading for the bathroom and ignoring the voice of panic that constantly rang in my ears. Dishwasher to run. Inventory to tally. Cups to stock. I really should have prepped last night, but I’d been too tired.
Halfway to the bathroom, a little scritch near the back door caught my attention. I paused, turned an ear toward it, and waited. A shuffling sound followed.
Was that . . . a whisper?
Quiet voices, if they were voices at all, came through the door. I reached into my office, grabbing a baseball bat I kept propped against the wall, and slipped toward the back. It was 4:45 a.m. Fifteen minutes before the rush of people commuting an hour to Jackson City. No one should be outside.
I threw open the door.
Two pairs of human eyes stared at me, startled.
I jumped back, screamed, and lifted the bat. Two girls were huddled on the rickety porch, peering up at me in wide-eyed shock. I’d startled them, too. One of them grabbed the other, shoving her away to safety.
“Don’t hurt us!”
Eternities seemed to pass as the voice registered in my brain, then traveled to my heart and almost stopped it. It happened the very moment I recognized the two faces. Those eyes.
Those emerald eyes.
I sucked in a sharp breath, the bat clattering to the ground behind me.
“Lizbeth?” I whispered. “Ellie?”
“Please,” Lizbeth whispered, her coppery hair limp around a pale, thin face. “Please let us inside.”
She was sixteen but looked closer to twelve right then. Her hair hadn’t been washed in what looked like weeks, and smudges gave her sallow skin a dirty tinge. Her shoulders trembled as she stood in front of her little sister—no, our little sister—Ellie.
Ellie, with her raven-black hair, verdant eyes, and wiry frame, looked so much like me despite being only my half-sister. She would be eleven now, although she acted more like an adult.
In a daze, I stumbled back.
“Yes. Right. Of course. Come on.”
Lizbeth whispered something to Ellie, who straightened. I’d never known Ellie to truly fear anything. Rage snapped like fire in her eyes, simmering into a slow-burning coal. Even when I’d seen her last at seven years old, on the second-worst day of my life, she hadn’t been scared. No, she’d been angry.
Not much had changed.
Lizbeth put an arm around Ellie’s shoulders and rushed past me into the shop. There wasn’t far to go. Right next to the back door were the spiral stairs. The hallway that led to my office emptied right into the main coffee shop. Lizbeth shuffled off to the side, eyes darting around. I shut the door firmly behind us. Not until I locked it did Lizbeth relax. Even then, she reminded me of a frightened rabbit poised to skitter off.
“Can we talk?” she whispered.
“Of course.”
“I . . . I didn’t know if you’d . . .”
Her uncertainty stung, but it wasn’t her fault. Lizbeth, Ellie, and I hadn’t seen each other in years. Not since Mama died. Even now seeing them brought flashes of Mama back, because Ellie looked just like her. The three of us hadn’t parted well after the service.
A thousand questions welled up in my mind, but I bit them all back. A healing split on Ellie’s lower lip didn’t need explanation. Nor did the slight discoloration around Lizbeth’s left eye.
Shoving aside my shock, I said, “Are you hungry? Let me close the shop and get you something to eat. Then you can tell me everything.”
Twenty minutes—and half the dry pastries in my display case—later, their appetite had finally slowed.
Ellie grimaced and held her stomach. Lizbeth hadn’t attacked the food with the same zest and seemed to be in less pain. She stared at me over the rim of her green tea. I picked a cheese stick apart without eating it, satisfied by the way it splintered into fragile strings.
My gaze dropped to the bruise around her left eye. There were probably others. Mama had married Jim when I was seven, but Dad kept me away from him. Something undeniably ugly had always festered in his eyes.
It had clearly broken free.
“We’re a good fit, doll,” Mama had said after first introducing me to Jim. “You don’t need love if you can find a good fit.”
The numbers told the real story. Lizbeth was born seven months after their suspiciously quick wedding. It had never been clear whether Mama loved Jim or a roof over her head more. He was sullen and quiet, like a storm cloud. Maybe Mama’s death four years ago had brought the hideous monster out.
“Jim?” I asked quietly.
A gentle breeze blew through the closed shop, stirring Lizbeth’s dirty copper hair. They smelled like forest and sweat and body odor. An angry scratch marred Ellie’s right cheek.
Lizbeth hesitated.
“What happened?”
Lizbeth and Ellie exchanged a glance. As usual, I couldn’t read Ellie.
“Dad got worse after she died,” Lizbeth said, her voice barely a whisper. “Not right away, but slowly. He just . . .”
“Lost it?”
Lizbeth nodded.
A rush of regret slipped through me. I hadn’t been in contact much, but I hadn’t deserted them, either. Christmas presents. Birthday cards. Occasional phone calls. Lizbeth had my number, and we’d text sometimes. That had slowly faded over the last year. Most of our contact had been obligatory.