Twice Shy, Sarah Hogle [100 books to read in a lifetime .txt] 📗

requesting constant approval over every renovation detail when it comes to our own home, which we are each being forced to share with a stranger. Or not a stranger, anymore, not really—but certainly not a friend. He makes his distaste for my company crystal clear by finding any excuse to exit a room right after I’ve entered it and responding to my attempts at conversation with apathetic monosyllables.

“You all right?” I ask. I can’t help it. I’m an incorrigible peacemaker.

“Fine.” He shuts the water off, even though his hands still have paint on them, and begins to leave. He’s an incorrigible room-leaver.

“Have you seen the new box of garbage bags?” I ask before he can perform one of his vanishing acts. “I need to bag up about a billion paper towels. Cleaning out vents is disgusting.”

Without turning fully around, I know he’s gone stone-faced. I can tell by the shape of his profile, the minuscule jut to his chin. I hate that I pay close enough attention to be able to tell. “New bags are at the cabin. On top of the fridge.”

“Why’d you put them all the way up there?”

I’m trying to lift the mood with a little light ribbing, but Wesley’s too distressed to realize it.

“The top of the fridge isn’t all the way up there to me,” he replies tartly.

I don’t think I like his tone. “Not everyone’s as tall as you are.” He’s the ungrateful kind of tall. If I had that sort of height, I’d be a blessing upon the earth. I’d hang tire swings and save cats. Ask my neighbors if they needed their curtains taken down to be washed.

“Not my problem. You should have eaten more vegetables when you were a child.”

I glare at him, which he doesn’t see, because he’s refusing to look at me. After a short miracle of getting along, showing me kindness, he’s reverted back into the grouch he’s been from the start. When I get my hotel up and running, I’m putting families with small, loud children in the bedroom directly beneath his. There will be complimentary trumpets and kickballs.

“For someone as beautiful as you are, it’s a shame you’re such an insufferable ass,” I blurt out angrily.

Stillness rings. “I’m not that bad, you know,” I continue. “You are constantly turning your back on me, ignoring me when I’m around like I’m a punishment to talk to, and it makes me feel like shit. You make me feel even lonelier than I already was.”

I can’t believe I said that. I can’t believe I said that out loud. But if I’m shocked, he is floored.

His eyes are saucers. I’d give up the left wing of the hotel to know what’s running through his mind.

“Whatever!” I shout, embarrassment joining my anger. “I won’t bother you anymore, then. Go ahead and be alone.”

I spin on my heel, leaving him behind. From another room, I hear him yell out: “I was just kidding about the vegetables thing! Maybell! That was a joke!”

I slam the front door. A section of door frame splinters apart.

“Damn it.”

God, I have had it with today. With this week. Month. Year. Maybe Falling Stars is cursed. My phone starts to vibrate in my pocket and I decide that if it’s that telemarketer from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who’s been calling me for two years nonstop, I am going to give them hell.

“Hello?” I bark into my phone, marching stiffly across the dark yard back to the cabin.

“Maybell?”

I stop short. “Ruth!”

I don’t know why my attitude does a one-eighty. Too many years spent using my customer service voice, I suppose.

“Hi! Sorry it’s taken me so long to return your call. I’ve been swamped.” Right. Violet probably wasn’t her only client, and being a home health aide must be a demanding job. “My son moved back in with me, my mom decided to visit for the next few weeks unannounced, and I just found out my daughter dropped out of culinary school to get away from her ex-boyfriend.”

I feel stupid for having called days ago, wasting her time. “Oh my gosh. You’re so busy—I didn’t really have anything important to say—”

“No worries, I’m taking a drive right now to escape the madness. So, how are you settling in?” She’s bright and cheery. Friendly. It’s nice to know some people still know how to be.

“Fine, fine. Settling in fine!” I chirp. “Everything’s great. Fixing up the manor.”

“That’s wonderful! I’m so glad to hear it.” She genuinely sounds glad, too, which makes me smile. “How are you and Wesley getting along?” There’s a cautious edge to her question that tells me she suspects we might not be.

“We’re not,” I reply baldly. “He’s driving me nuts.”

“Ah, well.” Ruth is warm. Sympathetic. “Don’t worry, it probably won’t be long before the house is good to go and you’ll be off the couch in no time.”

“I’m not—”

“The plaid is quite an interesting choice,” she continues. “The couch, I mean. Wonder where Wesley got it from. It was so strange when I visited. Eerie to walk in and not see Violet’s hospital bed taking up the whole living room anymore.”

“Why’d she have a hospital bed in the living room?”

“Where else would she go?” I hear an ignition spur to life on the other side of the phone. “I’m just glad she had a room there, you know? The way she was living before Wesley moved in was . . .” She audibly shudders. “It took plenty of convincing on his part to get Violet out of that house, but he hated her sleeping there. Fire hazard, you know. And unsanitary. We’re lucky nothing fell on her. Then he got in touch with some doctors, brought me on board.”

I wheel around to peer up at the second floor of Falling Stars. All the windows have gone dark but two. In one yellow rectangle, a tall, broad silhouette looks down on the lawn. His body curves away slightly, as if preparing to make a quick getaway, but I don’t move and neither does