Livia gazed up at her but didn’t say a word.
“Go take your shoes off.”
Livia disappeared, and Jaycie looked at Annie. “I heard you were back on the island, but I didn’t expect to see you up here.”
Annie moved closer but stayed in the shadow of the trees. “I can’t get cell reception at the cottage, and I needed to make some calls.”
As a child, Jaycie had been as blond as Theo Harp and his twin sister were dark, and that hadn’t changed. Although she was no longer the skinny rail she’d been as a young teen, her pretty features had the same softly blurred quality, as if she existed behind a breath-fogged lens. But why was she here?
Jaycie must have read her mind. “I’m the housekeeper here now.”
Annie couldn’t think of a more depressing job. Jaycie made an awkward gesture behind her, toward the kitchen. “Come in.”
Annie couldn’t go in, and she had the perfect excuse. “I’ve been ordered to stay away by Lord Theo.” His name stuck to her lips like rancid oil.
Jaycie had always been more earnest than the rest of them, and she didn’t react to Annie’s jibe. Being the daughter of a drunken lobsterman had accustomed her to adult responsibilities, and even though she’d been the youngest of the four of them—a year younger than Annie and two years younger than the Harp twins—she’d seemed the most mature. “The only time Theo comes downstairs is in the middle of the night,” she said. “He won’t even know you’re here.”
Apparently Jaycie didn’t realize Theo was making more than nighttime excursions downstairs. “I really can’t.”
“Please,” she said. “It would be nice to have a grown-up to talk to for a change.”
Her invitation sounded more like a plea. Annie owed her everything, and as much as she yearned to refuse, walking away would have been wrong. She pulled herself together, then moved quickly across the open expanse of the backyard in case Theo happened to be looking outside. As she mounted the gargoyle-guarded steps, she had to remind herself that his days of terrorizing her were over.
Jaycie stood just inside the open back door. She saw Annie looking at the purple hippopotamus poking incongruously from beneath one of her armpits and the pink teddy bear poking from the other. “They’re my daughter’s.”
Livia was Jaycie’s daughter, then. Not Theo’s.
“The crutches hurt my armpits,” Jaycie explained as she stepped back to let Annie into the mudroom. “Tying these on top for cushioning helps.”
“And makes for interesting conversation.”
Jaycie merely nodded, her gravity at odds with the stuffed animals.
Despite what Jaycie had done for Annie that long-ago summer, they’d never been close. During Annie’s two brief visits to the island after her mother’s divorce, she’d sought Jaycie out, but her rescuer’s reserve had made the encounters awkward.
Annie scuffed her boots on the mat just inside the door. “How did you hurt yourself?”
“I slipped on the ice two weeks ago. Don’t bother with your boots,” she said as Annie bent down to pull them off. “The floor is so dirty, a little snow won’t make any difference.” She moved awkwardly from the mudroom into the kitchen.
Annie took her boots off anyway, only to regret it as the chill from the stone floor seeped through her socks. She coughed and blew her nose. The kitchen was even darker than she remembered, right down to the soot on the fireplace. More pots had piled up in the sink since she’d been here two days earlier, the trash was overflowing, and the floor needed sweeping. The whole place made her uneasy.
Livia had disappeared, and Jaycie collapsed into a straight-back wooden chair at the long table in the center of the kitchen. “I know everything is a mess,” she said, “but since my accident, it’s been hell trying to get my work done.”
There was a tension about her that Annie didn’t remember, not just in her chewed fingernails, but also in her quick, nervous hand movements.
“Your foot looks painful,” Annie said.
“It couldn’t have come at a worse time. A lot of people seem to get around on crutches just fine, but obviously I’m not one of them.” She used her hands to lift her leg and prop her foot on the neighboring chair. “Theo didn’t want me here anyway, and now that things are falling apart . . .” She lifted her hands, then seemed to forget where they were going and dropped them back in her lap. “Have a seat. I’d offer to make coffee, but it’s too much work.”
“I don’t need anything.” As Annie sat catty-corner to Jaycie, Livia came back into the kitchen, hugging a bedraggled pink-and-white-striped kitten. Her coat and shoes were gone, and her purple corduroy slacks were wet at the cuffs. Jaycie noticed but seemed resigned.