“In the Sierras?
“No, sir, I don’t—
“Don’t you mean a hot tub?”
As the conversation progressed, the clouds in Laura’s expression grew darker. She was rinsing off her legs, looking angry as a wet cat.
“That, too?
“Yes, sir.
“Yeah, I suppose we can dig for a pool. ”
He flipped the phone shut, silently cursing those stupid dot-com people who’d sold to Fairview in the first place. There was a ton of young Internet money in the foothills, parcels of land owned by people who didn’t remember how many houses they owned or where. Why couldn’t Fairview have pursued them instead? Why’d they have to come sniffing around Sierra Falls?
Laura verbally accosted him the moment he’d clicked off. She’d clearly understood the gist of the call. “They want you to add a pool? Who swims in a pool in the Sierras? They’ll be able to use it, what, one, maybe two months a year? Have they ever been here in the winter? It’s cold. ”
And so was the tone of her voice. Cold enough to chill him to his bones.
He sighed heavily, back to square one. “Then it doesn’t matter if there’s a pool, now does it, Laura?”
But when he dared risk meeting her eyes, what he saw there speared him. Laura stood, a towel clenched in her hands, visibly holding herself together. She looked so sad, so alone in her despair.
“Don’t you see?” she pleaded. “I can’t lose. I need this. The past few years have been such a mess. I need to succeed. For once. ”
“Laura, you have a TV network coming to film here. If that’s not success, then I don’t know what is. ”
“But Fairview has all the money in the world to throw at this project. Whatever I do, they’ll come in and do better. Bigger. How can I ever compete?”
He didn’t know the answer. There was no beating a competitor like Fairview. He just wished he could make her see how, to him, whether she was wildly successful didn’t matter. “You’re a winner, Laura. You always have been. Losing against Fairview won’t change that. ”
His intentions had been good, but it was obvious his words weren’t.
She bristled. “A winner? Seriously? What are you, a motivational speaker? You don’t get it, Eddie. I can’t lose. ” She tossed the towel on the bathroom floor and strode down the hall to the front door. “Take me back to my car. ”
He checked the time on his cell. “I gotta go, anyway. ”
“What? Back to Reno for y
ou? You’re always running off. The mistress getting impatient?”
“There’s no mistress, Laura. ” Was that really what she thought of him? The only thing she’d ever think of him? He met her at the door with a tired sigh. “Maybe one of these days you’ll open your eyes and see things for how they really are. ”
Thirteen
Laura was driving probably a little faster than she should’ve been, but she knew these roads as only a local would, anticipating the exact moment to downshift to second for the turn, when to pop it back to third, and smoothly into fourth.
The scent of grocery store flowers overpowered the car and made her nose twinge. She cracked a window. She was anxious, at sea, over her head, not to mention ready to crawl out of her skin. She was too proud to admit the full extent of her despair to her family, and yet she craved comfort. She longed to be someplace she could feel like a kid again. A safe place.
Lately, with Eddie sniffing around, and Helen having tantrums, and Dad hassling her, and Sorrow and Billy taking every spare moment to play kissy-face, the lodge and tavern felt far from safe. But she did know one place she could find it.
Finally she slowed way down to pull into the Kidds’ driveway—it’d do no good to shock the sisters with peeling tires and spitting gravel. As it was, the last time she’d seen them, she’d been agitated and impatient, and she regretted it. She owed them an apology, and a thanks, too.
Though nothing had come from having Eddie remeasure the property line, it’d stalled him a little, and for that she was grateful. The idea had come from Ruby and Pearl. She got the feeling that despite the fact Eddie was their grandnephew, they didn’t look askance at badgering a man every once in a while.
Girl power, the old-fashioned way.
Ruby had heard her drive up and came to stand on the front porch to greet her. She clutched the zippered front of her pastel blue seersucker housedress as if bracing a winter’s chill instead of a pleasant July morning. “Laura Bailey, you tell me everything’s okay with your poppa. ”