Page 47 of Dream Lake

That was fine with Zoë, who liked going to builders’ supply stores and looking through hardware catalogs. And she wanted the opportunity to spend more time with Alex. No matter how much she learned about him, he remained a fascinating stranger. He was not a charmer like his brother Sam, nor did he try to be. There was something unreachable about him, an intransigent remoteness. But somehow that only made him sexier.

Although Zoë had no doubt that Alex drank too much—he certainly hadn’t tried to pretend otherwise—so far he had lived up to his reputation for being reliable. Alex arrived early whenever they had agreed to meet. He liked schedules and lists, and he used more sticky notes than anyone Zoë had ever met. She was sure he had to buy them in bulk. He put them on walls and windows, attached them to cables and flooring samples and catalogs, used them as business cards, appointment reminders, and shopping lists. When Zoë didn’t know the location of a place he had mentioned, he drew a little map and stuck it on the side of her bag. When they went to an appliance store, he stuck blue squares on all the models of refrigerators, dishwashers, and ovens that were the right dimensions for the kitchen.

“You’re wasting trees,” Zoë told him at one point. “Have you ever thought of making notes on your phone, or getting a digital tablet?”

“Post-its are faster.”

“What about writing a list on one big piece of paper?”

“I do that sometimes,” he said. “On jumbo Post-its.”

Maybe it was because he was so controlled that the discovery of a quirk was something of a relief to Zoë. She would have liked to learn more about him, to find out his weaknesses. To find out if she could possibly be one of them.

There were, however, no chinks in the armor. Alex had taken to treating her with a calculated politeness that made her wonder if the scene in the kitchen at Artist’s Point had been a dream. He asked Zoë plenty of questions about her family and her grandmother. He’d even asked about Grandpa Gus, whom she’d never met and knew next to nothing about, other than he’d been a pilot in the war and afterward had worked as an engineer at Boeing. Eventually he’d died of lung cancer long before Zoë was born.

“So he was a smoker,” Alex had said in a faintly censorious tone.

“I think everyone was back then,” Zoë replied ruefully. “Upsie told me that my grandfather’s doctor said that smoking was probably good for his nervous condition.”

Alex had taken particular interest in that. “Nervous condition?”

“PTSD. Back then they called it ‘shell shock.’ I think Grandpa Gus had it pretty bad. His plane was shot down over the Burmese jungle behind Japanese lines. He had to hide for a couple of days, alone and wounded, before he could be rescued.”

After telling Alex about her family’s past, Zoë expected him to do the same. But when she tried to find out more about him, asking about his divorce, or his brothers, or even something like why he’d become a contractor, he turned quiet and standoffish. It was maddening. The only way she knew to handle his evasiveness was to be patient and encouraging, and hope that in time he might open up to her.

Zoë had an innate compulsion to take care of people. It must have been in the Hoffman blood, because Justine had it, too. They both loved to welcome travel-weary or burned-out guests at the inn, most of whom were battling the endless variety of troubles that came along with being human. It was gratifying to be able to offer them a quiet room with a comfortable bed, and a good breakfast in the morning. Although none of that could fix anyone’s problems, it was an escape.

“Do you ever get tired of this?” Justine had asked one day, putting away clean dishes while Zoë made cookies. “All this baking and cooking and stuff.”

“No.” Zoë rolled out cookie dough into a perfectly even sheet. “Why do you ask?”

“No reason. I’m just trying to figure out what you like about it. You know how I feel about cooking. If it wasn’t for the microwave, I’d have starved long before you ever started working here.”

Zoë had grinned. “I’ve wondered the same thing about all your jogging and bike-riding. Exercise is the most boring thing in the world to me.”

“Being outside in nature is different every day. The weather, the scenery, the seasons… it’s always changing. Whereas with baking… I’ve seen you make cookies about a hundred times. It’s not like you get a lot of excitement.”

“I do, too. When I need excitement, I change the shape of the cookies.”

Justine had grinned.

Zoë picked out cookie cutters shaped like flowers, ladybugs, and butterflies. “I love doing this. It reminds me of the time early in my life when most of my problems could be solved by a cookie.”

“I’m still at that time in my life. I have no problems. No real problems, that is. And that’s the key to happiness—knowing how good you’ve got it while you’ve still got it.”

“I could be happier,” Zoë had said reflectively.

“How?”

“I’d like to have someone special. I’d like to know what it’s like to really fall in love.”

“No you don’t. Being single is the best. You’re independent. You can go on adventures with no one to hold you back. You can do whatever you want. Enjoy your freedom, Zo—it’s a beautiful word.”

“I do enjoy it, a lot of the time. But sometimes freedom seems like a word for not having anyone to snuggle with on Friday night.”

“You don’t have to be in love to snuggle with someone.”

“It doesn’t feel the same to snuggle with someone you don’t love.”

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