Look at that. More than a three-word sentence. “That sounds magical.”
“Growing up on a resort in a small town has its merits.”
“I suppose you know everyone in town.”
He shrugged again. “I know enough.”
Ivy leaned her head back, tracing the stars, the glorious Milky Way. “I’ve always wanted to live in a town like Deep Haven. Someplace quiet and safe. Where everyone knows your name, and your neighbors greet you in the grocery store.”
“Is that what you want—to be greeted in the grocery store?”
“Maybe. And for the coffee shop barista to know my regular order. For the librarian to call me when my favorite book is in and the mailman to know me by name, maybe come in for coffee.”
“My mailman is named Dennis, and he’s never come in for coffee once in twenty years.”
“I want to have memories. Live someplace where I belong. Where I could stay, forever.” She hadn’t meant all that to spill out, to sound so desperate. But he clearly didn’t appreciate what he had.
“Military?”
“No. Just . . . not the ideal childhood. I was a foster child.”
“Sorry.”
Ivy closed her eyes. “You can’t live in the past. Your life is what you make it.” She sat up, then turned. “Take me there.”
“Where?”
“Evergreen Lake. I want to see this rope swing.”
But he didn’t move, his face going a little white. “I can’t. I’m not . . . Well, I just can’t.”
Oh. “So . . . what do you do? Are you a lumberjack like that other contestant?”
She meant it as a joke, but he didn’t look amused. “I work at the resort as the maintenance man.”
“Carrying on the family business, huh?”
Darek stared at her for a moment. “It’s getting late,” he finally said, pulling out his phone.
Huh. She wasn’t sure what she’d said, but yes, she’d wasted enough time with bachelor number one.
“Oh no,” he said, dialing. “I must have muted the ringer. I didn’t even hear—Mom, I just got your message. What—?”
He fell silent, something stricken on his face. Then, “I’ll be right there.”
He hung up and turned the key in the ignition. “I gotta take you home.”
Ivy reached for her buckle. “What’s the matter?”
He turned, bracing his arm atop her seat. “It’s my son. He’s in the emergency room.”
Son? Darek was an eligible bachelor, wasn’t he? Her gaze flickered to his left hand. But he didn’t wear a ring, so maybe he was divorced. “What happened?”
“He fell off the top bunk. I don’t know . . .” The wheels screeched as they headed out of the overlook.
She reached for the roll bar. “Who was with him?”
“His grandmother.” They pulled onto the highway. “My mother. She’s freaked out.”
Where was the boy’s mother? “How old is he?”
His hair rippled in the wind, both hands bracing the steering wheel. “Five.” His voice sounded choked, panicked. “He’s five.”
She pressed her hand to his arm. “Go straight to the hospital. I can find my own way home.”
He glanced at her, and she saw it again, that chink in his personality that hinted there might be a flesh-and-blood man under there. “Really?”
“Of course.” She squeezed his arm. And for a second, he looked down at her grip. Back at her.
Then he swallowed and glanced away, back at the road. “Thanks,” he said. Or she thought that’s what she heard in the roar of the wind.
She let her hand fall away and held on. When they pulled up to the Deep Haven hospital—a decent size for a community of less than two thousand—he parked illegally in front of the entrance and scrambled out.
Of course he didn’t wait for her, but she could take care of herself.
Especially around hospitals. How many times had she curled up in a vinyl chair for the night while they worked on her mother?
The ER canopy lights illuminated the entry and the doors slid back as Darek charged inside. Stone columns and the pristine linoleum flooring, muted beige walls, suggested a recent taxpayer-funded update. Ivy followed on his tail, intending to ask at the nurses’ desk for directions back to her apartment or even to call a cab. Did they have cabs in Deep Haven? The desk was empty, the nurses probably occupied with their patient.
Across from the desk, an emergency room bay held two beds, one of them cordoned off with a curtain.
Darek plowed right up to a cluster of women standing vigil in the middle of the hallway. The older woman—Ivy would guess she might be Darek’s mother—had bobbed blonde hair and smart red glasses, her arms folded over her chest as if trying to hold herself together. One of the girls, maybe his sister, had her blonde hair tied up in a hairnet and sported a short-sleeved black shirt with a Pierre’s Pizza logo emblazoned on the breast. The other looked younger, maybe even in high school, petite and brunette. She wore a pink tie-dyed T-shirt, low-hanging sweatpants, flip-flops. Her pink toenails looked freshly painted.