Page 10 of Echoes in the Storm
“That would place you about … Greymouth?” I ask.
He nods, spinning on the stool so he faces the counter dead-on. “Just outside of, yeah.”
I scrape the wooden spatula along the base of the pan, mixing it around to get perfect fluffy scrambled eggs. “You’re lucky your car made it over here in the first place then.” God only knows how he made it up the steep-as-hell viaduct, but I wouldn’t be brave enough if I knew the car was on its last legs.
“I didn’t bring it over; I only just picked it up,” he says. “It’s not mine. My brother bought it.”
Explains a bit, then.
“If you don’t mind me saying, it looks like he got a lemon.” I set a plate on the counter. “Hope he didn’t pay too much for it. Not that I know what cars are worth, really, but you know.”
Duke frowns as I plate the eggs, finishing with a spritz of salt and pepper. The frown remains as I set the plate down before him, quickly adding a knife and fork to the ensemble.
“Shoot. Did you want toast with them?” Why is he so pissed off?
“Nah, it’s all good.” That twitch of a smile returns as he picks up the fork and pushes the eggs around. “They look great. Thank you.”
“No sweat.”
I pull a mini Mars Bar from the fridge and lean back against the edge of the counter to eat it while he devours the simple meal I made him. A glimpse of silver flashes at his throat as he leans forward to take a mouthful, and I tilt my head a little to catch it again as he straightens up. The chain is simple; not the kind I’d expect a man to wear, that’s for sure.
His shoulders noticeably slope beneath the fabric of his dark navy T-shirt, his bare arms confirming what I guessed the minute I laid eyes on him: he’s built. This is a man who carries the discipline to work out regularly, jeans that look as though they’re either pressed or usually hung carefully in a wardrobe. He’s put together, and yet, he seems so … messed up.
He rolls his lips together, clearing the last of the taste away as he rises from the barstool. “Thanks, Cammie. That definitely filled a hole.”
“You’re welcome.”
And yet, as I watch him pick the dishes up, rinse them clean and then stack them in the dishwasher I never use, I wonder. What made theemotionalhole inside this man that leaves him so empty? So lost?
So sad?
Duke
Everything in her house is either white, or a shade of grey. It’s so light, so deceivingly peaceful. Yet I get the sense this woman projects her clean and crisp image to hide something else.
I wasn’t blind to the way she purposefully turned her head and shoulders as she walked down the hall to avoid the pictures on the wall. How she paused and swallowed after she opened the cabinet, and then gently pushed a plastic dinner set aside to get the plate out for me. How her fridge seemed to be stocked with kid-sized juice boxes, yoghurt snack-packs, and the individually wrapped cheese bites you see plastered on a poster in the supermarket with some overly happy kid biting into them.
Details, that I suspect have nothing to do with a small appetite.
“You live here on your own?”
She places her rubbish into the trash, and then hesitates with her hand on the pantry door. “Yeah.”
Interesting.“Well”—I check the time on my phone—“it’s already after ten, so I guess I better start making some calls before all the motels are done for the night.”
“Yeah. I didn’t think about that.” Her gaze slides somewhere else for a while, and then snaps back to the here and now with scary urgency. “You could just stay here.”
“Pardon?” I mean, she’s a nice woman and all, pretty, but that’s the kind of intimacy I reserve for only my closest friends.
The dead ones.
“I can make up the sofa for you.” She shoots out of the kitchen into the adjoining open-plan living room. “It’s not the biggest three-seater out there, but if need be I could sleep on it, and you can have my bed. I’ve got blankets in the hall cupboard, maybe a spare pillow. I can go check if you like, make it comfortable. I mean, you’re probably dog tired anyway …”
I lose focus on her incessant rambling, blinded instead by the crazed focus in her eye as she comes up with a thousand things to keep her occupied by fussing over me. Classic avoidance. Seen it, know it, swore not to embrace the fall-back trait.
And yet, here I stand in the kitchen of a woman who’s consumed by it.
“Cammie?”