Page 92 of Dream Lake

“When did you get married?” Emma demanded testily. “No one told me about that.”

Although he’d talked to her about his marriage to Darcy, Alex realized she had forgotten. He said in a matter-of-fact tone, “It’s over now. We’re divorced.”

“Well, that was fast.”

“Not fast enough,” he said ruefully.

“You should marry my Zoë. She can cook.”

“I’m not marrying again,” he said. “I was terrible at it.”

“Practice makes perfect,” she told him.

That night, as Alex stayed at the cottage and held Zoë while she slept, he finally figured out what the sweetly painful chest-clutching sensation was, the one that had plagued him since he’d first met her. It was happiness. And it made him exquisitely uncomfortable. He’d heard about certain addictive substances that if you did it once, you’d already done it more than once. That was the nature of his attraction to Zoë—instant, full-blown, no hope of recovery.

***

Three days after Sam and Lucy’s breakup, Alex stopped by Rainshadow Road to pick up some tools he’d left there. A delivery truck followed him along the drive, and parked in front. Two guys proceeded to unload a huge flat crate. “Someone’s gotta sign for this,” one of them told Alex as they carried the crate up the front steps. “It’s insured up the ass.”

“What is it?”

“Stained-glass window.”

From Lucy, Alex surmised. Sam had told him that Lucy had been making a window for the front of the house. The one that Tom Findlay had installed so long ago had been broken and removed, and replaced with a single pane. Sam had said something about Lucy coming up with the design during her stay at Rainshadow Road, some image she’d seen in a dream.

“I’ll sign for it,” Alex said. “My brother’s out in the vineyard.”

The delivery guys laid the massive window on the floor and partially uncrated it to make certain no damage had occurred in transit. “Looks okay,” one of them said. “But you find anything after we’re gone, hairline cracks or somethin’, call the number on the bottom of the receipt.”

“Thanks.”

“Good luck,” the guy said affably. “Gonna be a bitch to install.”

“Looks like it,” Alex replied with a rueful smile, signing for the package.

The ghost stood beside the window and stared down at it, transfixed. “Alex,” he said in a peculiar voice. “Take a look.”

After the delivery guys left, Alex went to glance at the window, which featured a winter tree with bare branches, a gray and lavender sky, and a white moon. The colors were subtle, the glass layered and fused to give it an incandescent 3D effect. Alex didn’t know much about art, but the skill that had gone into this window was obvious. It was masterful.

His attention returned to the ghost, who was utterly still and silent. The entrance hall had turned chilly in spite of the summer heat. It was sorrow, so raw that Alex felt his throat and eyes sting. “Do you remember this?” he asked the ghost. “Is it like the one you put in for Emma’s father?”

The ghost was too upset to speak. He responded with a single nod. More sorrow, filling the air until every breath was an icy scourge. He was remembering something, and it wasn’t good.

Alex took a step back, but there was nowhere to go. “Cut it out,” he said gruffly.

The ghost pointed to the second floor, and gave Alex a beseeching stare.

Alex understood instantly. “All right. I’ll install it today. Just… no drama.”

Sam came into the house. To Alex’s disgust, his lovelorn brother wasn’t nearly as interested in the window as he was in the question of whether Lucy had included a note with it. Which she hadn’t.

Taking out his phone, Alex began to dial Gavin and Isaac. He would pull them off work on Zoë’s garage just for the afternoon, and have them come over here. “I’m going to call some of my guys to help me put the window in,” he said. “Today, if possible.”

“I don’t know,” Sam said glumly.

“About what?”

“I don’t know if I want to install it.”

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