Midnight Valentine(18)

There are lavish gardens and splashing fountains and a rolling green lawn in the front. The exterior of the house is painted a soft shade of butter yellow, trimmed in white. Inside, the rooms are decorated with beautiful furnishings that pay homage to the era the house was originally built, paired with more modern pieces that effortlessly update the ambiance.

The wraparound porch features several seating areas where guests can congregate, and the backyard has been turned into the most amazing adult playground, with fire pits surrounded by sofas, a dining table under a retractable awning, several lawn game areas including one featuring a giant Jenga, and an infinity pool overlooking the sea.

It’s exactly how Cass and I envisioned it would be, down to the smallest detail.

This isn’t simply a project rendering. This book is a blueprint of the inside of my head.

Stunned, I stand in frozen silence until Theo takes charge and unfurls one of the rolled folios. It’s an architectural drawing of the Buttercup, white schematics on a background of pale blue illustrating the technical particulars of the building, including floor plans, site plans, and detail drawings, giving an engineering perspective of the work to be done.

If the book was a blueprint of my mind, these drawings are a map of my heart.

Unnerved, I flip back to the first page of the book, hunting for a small detail that struck me. I point at the row of purple flowers lining the front porch on both sides of the house. In a low voice, I ask, “What kind of flowers are those?”

Theo writes on his pad, then holds it out to me.

Sweet peas.





Knife to the gut. Bullet to the head. Free fall from a fifty-story building. I slam the book shut, say hoarsely, “Excuse me for a minute,” and walk out of the kitchen, my stomach in knots. I head to the back patio in a half run and burst through the French doors out into the backyard. Then I stand there, gulping air, letting the sun blind me and the sea air play with my hair as I try to get a grip on myself.

Don’t cry. Don’t cry, you big sissy. DO. NOT. CRY.

One of the first shrinks I went to after Cass died told me that the brain has a hardwired need to find correlations, to make sense of nonsensical data by making connections between unrelated things. Humans have evolved a universal tendency to seek patterns in random information, hence the existence of fortune-tellers and dream interpreters and people who see the face of Jesus in a piece of toast.

But the cold, hard truth is that there are no connections between anything.

Life—all of existence—is totally random.

Your lucky lottery numbers aren’t really lucky, because there’s no such thing as luck. The black cat that crosses your path isn’t a bad omen, it’s just a cat out for a walk. An eclipse doesn’t mean that the gods are angry, just as a bus narrowly missing you as you cross the street doesn’t mean there’s a guardian angel looking out for you.

There are no gods.

There are no angels.

Superstitions aren’t real, and no amount of wishing, praying, or rationalizing can change the fact that life is just one long sequence of random events that ultimately have no meaning.

I really hated that shrink.

But he’s with me now, reassuring me in that flat voice of his that the sweet peas planted along the front porch in Theo’s vision of the Buttercup Inn have no relevance to the nickname Cass used to call me. There’s no connection whatsoever between a mute stranger creating an exact replica of what my dead husband and I had envisioned for this exact house. It means nothing at all that we spent years dreaming and scrimping and planning to find this property, in this town, with that view of the rolling surf and those flowers in the front yard, and here it all is, coming together like it was fated.

It’s not fated. It’s a fluke. It’s just life, doing what it does best: screwing with me.

If only my stupid heart would believe it.

“Megan? You okay?” Coop stands in the open doorway, one hand on the frame, his brow crinkled with worry.

“Yep. Fine.” Just super, thanks a million, I’m not at all having a breakdown on this lovely September day, nosirree. I swipe at my eyes, angry with myself for this show of weakness. I straighten my shoulders, take a deep breath, and plaster a smile on my face. “Just needed a bit of air.”

Coop doesn’t look convinced. I don’t blame him, because I’m a terrible liar. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to admit I’m a woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown, seeing ghosts in the blueprints of my house.

I walk back inside, sending Coop another reassuring smile, and find Theo waiting in the kitchen, standing in the same spot I left him. I smile at him too, my lips stretched so tight, they hurt, but he doesn’t reciprocate. He simply stares at me, a furrow carved between his black brows, a muscle jumping in his jaw.