Evercrossed

  "I might swat this one," Beth said as she entered the cottage. Ivy retrieved a paperback mystery, one of the many left behind by visitors to the Seabright, and carried it around to the inn's porch.

  Oceanside, running the length of the inn and wrapping one comer, the porch had its own special light. In the early morning it was an airy room adrift in the marmalade and yellow of the sunrise, but gradually it became as cool and blue as the distant streak of sea. When no guests were around, Ivy liked sitting there.

  Tilting back in a wooden rocker, her feet up on the porch railing, she gazed past the green edge of Aunt Cindy's yard to the ocean and cloudless sky, her mind drifting.

  It's such a great feeling, Ivy. Do you know what it's like to float on a lake, a circle of trees around you, a big blue bowl of sky above you? You're lying on top of the water, sun sparkling at the tips of your fingers and toes.

  She had pictured it so many times, floating with Tristan at the center of a sun-spangled lake, that the dream had become as tangible as the real memories she carried of Tristan.

  Why had she thought that escaping to Cape Cod would put distance between her and her memories? There was water everywhere, and everywhere that there was water, she thought of Tristan.

  Ivy sighed, opened her book, and stared at the words without reading them. A week ago she had awakened in the hospital certain that she had been kissed by Tristan.

  That had been no comforting dream as Beth had suggested; rather, it had made her long all the more for Tristan! And it made painfully clear the difference between what she'd had with Tristan and what she felt for Will. The weekend visitors and full work schedule had helped her and Will get through the last few days, but now that they had time to be together, she had been relieved when he said he was headed into Chatham to shop for art supplies.

  "Hey, girl, get off your sweet bum and come running with me," Kelsey called to Ivy, shaking her out of her thoughts.

  Kelsey had trotted around the side of the inn and jogged in place for a moment.

  Her auburn hair was pulled high on her head in a bouncy ponytail.

  Ivy smiled at the invitation, which she suspected wasn't real, and shook her head no. "How far do you run?"

  "Today I'm doing five miles on the beach, which is like ten on the road, then twenty minutes of hard swimming and an hour of biking. I'm thinking of doing a triathlon in September."

  "You're amazing," Ivy replied.

  "You don't have to tell her that," Dhanya said, stepping onto the porch, carrying a bowl of frosty looking blueberries leftover from the inn's breakfast. "Kelsey already thinks it way too often."

  "Knows it," Kelsey corrected, then adjusted her iPod and took off for the stairway to the beach.

  Dhanya sat down. "Berries?" she asked Ivy, holding out the bowl. "Thanks." Setting the bowl on a small table between them, Dhanya rocked back and forth for a moment, then put her feet up on the railing, studying them.

  "Lavender polish looks good on you," Ivy said.

  Dhanya wrinkled her nose. "I'll never have pretty feet. Dancers don't—we abuse our toes."

  "Do you do ballet?"

  "And modern, and jazz, even tap. I used to do Indian, but my teacher was old and strict—she had this thing about attitude. Discipline, Dhanya, discipline."

  Dhanya imitated a British sounding accent, and grimaced. "Want to come with Kelsey and me to Chatham today? Max is having a group of friends over from college."

  "Thanks, but I'm headed out to Provincetown with Beth and Will this afternoon."

  Dhanya sighed. "You're so lucky—Will's great"

  "Mmm," Ivy replied, and changed the subject. "Tell me about Max." Dhanya rolled her eyes. "Kelsey said you liked him," Ivy added. "Kelsey would like me to like him. Somehow she thinks he's perfect for me, which is kind of insulting. She keeps telling me I'm a snob. Do you think so?"

  Ivy was surprised by the blunt question. "I think most of us are snobs in one way or another. We just don't see our own prejudices."

  "Yes, but some people really are nose in the air types," Dhanya asserted. "I hate that. Especially when they do it to me."

  "So, what's Max like?" Ivy asked.

  "Rich." Dhanya pointed her toes, then relaxed her ankles. "I need to stop digging my feet in the sand. They're paler than my legs. . . . Max is rich and tacky, into stuff like cigarette boats and gaudy sports cars. He may have lots of money, but he acts so ... blue collar."

  Ivy bit her lip to keep from laughing. Before her mother married Andrew, they had lived in blue collar Norwalk.

  "His father owns a chain of discount clothing stores," Dhanya added.

  Ivy cocked her head. "So?"

  "Max looks like he buys his clothes from his father. I want someone as rich as Max and as classy as Will."

  "Maybe that guy will show up at Max's beach party," Ivy replied, trying to hide her irritation— she didn't need anyone to remind her that Will was a great guy.

  "Did you date someone you really liked in high school?"

  "No, but I have a Facebook boyfriend," Dhanya said. "Of course, it's hard to take a guy from Australia to the senior prom."

  After a long silence, Dhanya added, "Thanks for not saying, 'Get real, Dhanya'! Kelsey says I live in la la land. She says I'm afraid of real guys."

  For a moment, Ivy felt bad for Dhanya. "Kelsey has a lot to say about you. Maybe she should focus on herself, and leave you alone for a while."

  Dhanya smiled a little, "Yeah. Maybe she should. More berries?"

  "No thanks."

  Dhanya scooped up the last handful, then picked up the bowl and headed back to the cottage.

  Opening her mystery. Ivy read the first chapter —read it twice before she had absorbed enough to go on. But eventually the sea, salty air, and sunny porch faded, and Ivy was creeping with the hero down a dark backstreet of London.

  About a half hour later, she felt a hand resting on her shoulder.

  "Hey, Will," she said. "Get everything you wanted?"

  "Who's Will?" At the sound of Guy's voice, Ivy spun around, not sure if she felt annoyed or glad about his reappearance. "How did you know where to find me?"

  "Your hospital papers. How did you know I'd come back to the parking lot?"

  He was wearing the sweatshirt and cargos she had bought him—and his old shoes; the new ones were tied to the backpack.

  "I didn't. I was just too mad to go back in the store and return the stuff."

  One side of Guy's mouth lifted in a smile. He dropped his backpack on the porch. Seeing a new bedroll attached to it. Ivy hoped he had used her cash rather than shoplifting it.

  "Have a seat," she invited.

  He shook his head and leaned against the railing facing her. "I'm kind of muddy."

  "Where have you been staying?"

  He shrugged. "Around."

  Ivy closed her book. "Around here?"

  "Here and there," he replied elusively.

  "Have you eaten anything in the last four days?"

  "Yeah," said Guy, "but you don't want to know what."

  "Sure I do."

  He laughed. Was it the unshaven cheeks, the tousled hair, or the mischief in his eyes? What made his laughter sexy? "Leftovers," he said. "An assortment of leftovers."

  "Yum. Why didn't you come here right away?"

  "Because you had already done enough."

  "Then why are you here now?" Guy's face grew serious. There was something mesmerizing about his eyes and the way they seemed to peer into her soul. She had no power to look away.

  "Because I'm hungry enough." He turned away from her and gazed out at the water. "Nice view."

  "So what will it be," she asked, "breakfast, lunch, or dinner?"

  "Whatever you have."

  She stood up and held open the door for him. "Come on."

  "I'll stay outside."

  "No one's here," she said. "Come on in."

  "What if Will comes home?"

  Ivy thought she caught a gleam in Guy's eye
. "Then I'll introduce you," she said.

  "I feel better out here."

  Ivy shook her head. "All right, but if I make you a meal, and come back and find you're gone, I'll be really teed off."

  "It's almost worth hiding in the bushes, just to see you lose it," he replied, grinning. Sitting on the floor of the porch, he rested his back against the wood railing.

  Ivy retreated to the kitchen, and after a moment's thought made him a cheese omelet, figuring it would have plenty of protein, then cut a huge slab of Aunt Cindy's homemade bread. She added to the tray an assortment of fruit and a cup of tea, and carried the tray through the parlor, pausing to look at Guy through the screen door. His eyes were closed and his shoulders sagged against the porch balusters. Ivy's heart went out to him—he was exhausted.

  "I smell food," he said, opening his eyes. She pushed open the screen door, debated for a moment where to set the tray, then put it on the floor next to him.

  "Thank you," he mumbled, and started eating. Pushing aside her chair, Ivy sat on the porch floor a few feet away, studying him. He had removed his shoes and pushed up one sleeve to eat. She saw that his feet and ankles were bruised badly, as was his forearm. The fight he'd been in must have been brutal.

  "So where are you staying?" Ivy asked.

  "We already went over that," he replied.

  She nodded. "I thought maybe this time you'd answer."

  "Around."

  Ivy drummed her fingers against the porch floor and asked herself where she would go if she wanted to sleep outside inconspicuously yet be around enough people to acquire "leftovers." Since he didn't have a car, some place not too far away. "Nickerson State Park," she said aloud.

  His face remained a cipher. Having set down his fork, he picked up the mug of tea, holding it with both hands, as if he were warming them. It wasn't warmth Guy needed. Ivy thought, but comfort, kindness. She didn't know how to help him; last time, her comfort and kindness had set him running.

  "Have you remembered anything about who you are?" He took a sip of tea.

  "No."

  "Are there still things that seem vaguely familiar?" Guy frowned and gazed down at his tea. She wondered if he was choosing his words, deciding what to tell her and what to hold back.

  "If anything, it's gotten worse. Now too many things seem familiar to make a pattern that I can understand. And sometimes things are contradictory. One day a smell, like a wood fire, gives me a good feeling; and the next day, that same smell makes me want to run."

  "When you went to the park, did you see a sign and follow it, or do you think you may have already known it was there?"

  He hesitated. You can trust me, Ivy wanted to say. Sometimes the hardest thing to do was wait until another person decided to trust you.

  "I saw it on a map. I remember general things— such as motels having free maps in their lobbies. When I saw the size of the park on the map, I knew I could survive there and could hide if they came after me."

  Ivy leaned forward. "Who's they?"

  "I don't know."

  "But it's more than one person?"

  "I don't know!" His eyes became a stormy blue. "How am I supposed to know?"

  Ivy bit her lip, realizing she had pressed too hard. His eyes, looking more gray than blue now, told her that he had withdrawn into his own thoughts and fears.

  He ran his finger over the long cut under his jaw. Ivy felt afraid for him, but she knew that telling him that would make him even more skittish of her.

  "Here's what I can offer you," she said. "A razor and a shower."

  "I don't need either," Guy answered quickly.

  "You'll probably feel better. If you let me wash and dry your clothes, you'll be good for a few more days."

  He grimaced. "Trying to make me respectable?"

  "Yeah, if that's possible." Guy raised an eyebrow and she laughed.

  "You have a lot of research to do," she said. "You want people to feel comfortable talking to you."

  ''You got a point," he said, smiling.

  "I'll be quick." A few minutes later, in exchange for the clothes Guy had been wearing and the dirty clothes in his backpack, Ivy handed a washcloth and towel through the cottage's bathroom door. She had considered raiding Will's room for shaving supplies and deodorant, but something held her back, and she offered Guy her own instead.

  "Oh, I'm going to smell good!" he remarked.

  "The laundry room is in the inn, back by the kitchen," she told him, then headed off with her bundle. While the washer was filling, Ivy searched Guy's pockets to make sure they were empty. She found a sheet taken from her release papers, listing the inn's address and her family's contact information, folded into a tiny square. Ivy wrote her cell phone number on it, then refolded the paper and set it in a bowl on top of the dryer. The other pocket had money in it, which she dug out and placed in the same bowl. When a glint of gold caught her eye, she poured the money back in her hand. Her breath caught in her throat.

  A shiny coin stamped with an angel lay in her palm, like a sign from heaven.

  Eleven

  PHILIP HAD REACHED OUT TO GUY AT THE HOSPITAL, IVY thought on her way back to the cottage, just as she had. Her instincts were right; both she and Philip were meant to find and help Guy. Ivy smiled to herself; maybe they were Guy's "angels."

  "I need some clothes," Guy called to Ivy from the second floor of the cottage.

  Ivy walked as far as the kitchen. "They take longer to wash than you do," she called from the base of the steps. "That's what the beach towel's for. When you come down, help yourself to anything you want to eat."

  She returned to the living room to work on a large puzzle, one of the many Aunt Cindy kept for rainy days at the inn. After clearing the coffee table, she sat on the sofa and studied the box top, which showed a painting of an idyllic New England town and bridge. Sorting through the jigsaw box, she pulled out green pieces with straight edges.

  Guy came in a few minutes later, munching an apple. His hair was still wet, darker than its usual streaky gold. Ivy's beach towel hung on him like a low-waisted skirt, leaving little to the imagination about his upper body strength—or his injuries. It took all of her self discipline not to stare at him.

  "Where should I sit?" he asked.

  "Wherever you want." He glanced down at the puzzle box, then sat in an armchair that faced the coffee table, making an L with the sofa. Ivy, having extracted a small pile of green puzzle pieces, handed him the box, hoping the puzzle would take his mind off things. As Guy sorted through the contents, pulling out straight edged pieces of blue sky, he started to hum off key, which made Ivy smile.

  "Are you laughing at me?" he asked. She met his bright eyes. "I wouldn't dare . ..

  What is that song?"

  "You can't tell?" He grinned at her. "Neither can I." She tried humming what she had just heard, adjusting the flat notes, then said suddenly, "'If I Loved You."

  Guy looked up at her, startled.

  "It's the title," she explained, and sang the first three lines for him. He laughed.

  "Oh, yeah, now I recognize it."

  "It's from—" Ivy's hand went up to her mouth as she remembered.

  "From what?"

  "Carousel" she answered softly. Last year, when attempting to communicate with her as an angel, Tristan had played on her piano the first few notes of a song from Carousel.

  "Do you like musicals?" she asked Guy, pulling herself back to the present.

  "I guess I do."

  They continued working on the puzzle. Ivy musing over the strange connection between events. "Here's one of yours," Guy said, suddenly leaning close to her, placing the green piece he had found next to those she had gathered.

  Ivy was caught off guard—she couldn't explain it, the feeling that swept through her at that moment. She became acutely aware of Guy, felt his nearness like a kind of heat inside her. Astonished, she sat back quickly. She thought about getting up, putting distance between them. But confusion and prid
e kept her cemented in place. She touched her cheeks, afraid they had turned a warm pink.

  "Got another." He leaned across her. An overwhelming sense of him passed through her like a wave, making her light headed. This was crazy! Ivy snapped together two pieces, then added a third.

  "I think you forced that last one," Guy observed.

  She pulled off the wiggly piece. "I know that!" Perhaps the crispness of her response made him raise his head to study her. His face was three inches from hers. She tried to pull her eyes away, but couldn't. He lowered his eyes. She felt him staring at her mouth. If it were possible for a gaze to be a kiss—

  "Hey, I'm back!"

  Ivy knocked over the box full of puzzle pieces. About one thousand four hundred little pieces scattered on the floor. "Oh! Hey, Will," she replied, scooping up pieces as he came through the screen door.

  Guy leaned over to pick up the box that had fallen between him and Ivy. Will stopped in his tracks. Glancing down. Ivy realized what Will saw from his perspective: a bare back and broad, muscular shoulders. "Who are you?" Will asked.

  Guy straightened up, rose to his feet, then quickly hiked up his towel. Will continued to stare at him, his eyes noting the injuries. Guy gazed back.

  "I said, who are you?"

  "Guy is the name I go by."

  "Guy has just gotten out of the hospital," Ivy explained. "He was on the same floor as me."

  "Was he?" Will replied tersely. To Guy he said, "I assume you left the hospital wearing something other than Ivy's towel."

  Guy grinned. "Yeah, I left wearing her shirt." Will didn't seem to find that amusing.

  "It's a long story," Ivy said.

  "I've got time."

  "Guy doesn't have a place to live right now," Ivy explained to Will. "He's been dealing with a lot. I told him he could take a shower here. His clothes are in the wash. It's the least we could do for him."

  "Yeah, I can see he's dealing with a lot," Will remarked sarcastically, then set down his packages. Ivy felt bad, knowing he had dropped by the cottage first, excited about what he had bought at the art supply store and wanting to show her.

  "The problem is, I can't remember what happened to me," Guy said. The way Will tilted back his head made it clear he didn't believe Guy.