Page 49 of Her Property

The day had been the most amazing of her life. The sex was mind-blowing, but it was the culmination of something they’d started the moment they’d met. When he’d taken her to the clinic to get her hand fixed and they’d stayed together talking about their lives. When he’d helped her get warm after she fell in the lake. When she’d run to him in the middle of a storm not only because she wanted to help him, but because she wanted him. She’d needed him.

But now look where she was. Further away than when they’d begun.

* * *

When Cat wokeup the next morning, the sun was just rising onto a brilliantly clear day. The sky was so blue, and the water on Ruby lake so calm, it was as if the storm had never happened. It was fitting—maybe the day with Jake had never happened either.

But when she went out on the lower deck, she saw the ground was littered with broken branches. The trees were now almost completely bare, their long spindly branches having divested themselves of nearly all their leaves. The exposed limbs seemed so bare, so defenseless, and Cat found herself thinking about how trees, just like people, were so much more vulnerable when they were naked. Only trees didn’t make the mistake of caring too much; of getting too close, fooling themselves that intimacy was anything like actual connection.

After making herself some breakfast and managing to eat it without once looking in the direction of Jake’s dock, she told herself she wouldn’t waste this day moping around. It was only seven in the morning, and though she probably wouldn’t see Jake again—which, despite her brushing off as for the best made her heart feel like granite, it wasn’t like he’d have any more information, anyway. He may not want her help, but Cat was determined to see this through for Alfred’s sake.

And for her own. She needed to come clean with Alfred, to tell him she and Jake were… acquainted. And to ask him why he was so furious with Jake when he was the one who’d left his mother.

Bracing herself with a third cup of coffee, Cat picked up the phone. It was early Saturday morning. If she knew Alfred, he’d probably be in the office, though he wouldn’t have any client meetings on the weekend. So when his phone rang all the way through to voicemail, she was annoyed. He always picked up the phone. He’d even interrupt meetings to answer the phone from certain key people, and she was a key person.

By the third try, she was worried. After leaving two messages, she figured a third wouldn’t do any good, so the next number she dialed was Laura’s.

But it wasn’t Laura who answered. It was Chase, Laura’s boyfriend.

“Cat, thank god!” Chase said, his normally calm and soothing counsellor’s voice decidedly agitated. “Why haven’t you been picking up your phone? Or answering my texts?”

Cat’s heart plunged. Oh god. “I don’t have my phone!” Cat exclaimed. “Laura knows that!”

“I’m not with Laura—” “Where is she? Is she okay? What’s going on Chase? I—”

“It’s Alfred. He’s in Intensive Care. Laura’s been with him since Joan called at three this morning.”

“Oh my god, what happened!?”

“He ran off the road sometime last night. They say he must have had a heart attack and lost control of his car—”

Panic ripped through her. “I’m coming down! Which hospital is he at?”

She thought desperately about all the routes to all the hospitals in New York. How she could get to each as quickly as possible.

“Neither. He’s in a place called… Millerville?”

Cat’s mouth fell open. “Millerville! What’s he doing there—”But her words trailed off. She knew exactly what he was doing. He’d been coming to see her.

Jake

Jake woke up the next morning with the headache to end all headaches. After he’d gotten back from dropping Cat off, he’d cracked open a bottle of whiskey of unknown vintage, tossing it back to keep from having to think for even one second about Cat and what had happened. He’d wanted it all gone—the good and the bad.

Now as he stood over his kitchen sink struggling to keep the glass of water and aspirin down, he regretted that course of personal treatment immensely. This morning he had both the pain of trying to forget the pounding in his skull and the pain of remembering yesterday too.

He wanted to walk straight over to Catherine’s, to beg her to forgive him for letting his personal baggage ruin the precious thing that had happened between him. But the deep shame of what he’d done, along with the disastrous state of his body, kept him home. She couldn’t get far enough away from him last night. She probably never wanted to see him again. He nearly drowned in self-pity before breakfast.

Later that afternoon the stormy weather returned, and Jake spent the day fixing up a thousand things he’d been meaning to get at in the main house. He’d get a better price for it if the house was in good shape. Plus, it kept him busy.

He didn’t start feeling recovered from the wicked hangover until after dinner, and by that time, the storm had quieted too. Jake forced himself to stick a DVD in the player and watch a ridiculous action movie to occupy him. But he was too distracted thinking about Cat, and his failed plans for the camp. How he’d let James down.

How he’d let Cat down.

Jake couldn’t concentrate. He kept turning his head to look at the door of the guest bedroom, which he considered sealing off and pretending it didn’t exist for all the pain it would cause him to go back in there.

Pacing the living room, he thought about finishing the bottle of whiskey, but given the abysmal result of that today, he threw that idea aside too.

He had to get out of the house. A few minutes later, after he’d managed to pass Alfred’s house without stopping—barely—he pulled onto the highway. He didn’t really have a destination. He thought about going to see Gran, but nixed that thought as soon as it came—it was nearly eleven. She’d have been asleep for hours.

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