Twisted Echoes Read online

  “Hi,” was all she could think of to say, and she hoped her mouth wasn’t hanging open or that she’d have to wipe drool from her chin. Lorna wasn’t a big talker on the best of days, but today she appeared to be particularly verbally challenged. Really, she should be able to come up with something besides a one-syllable greeting.

  Renee didn’t seem to notice that she wasn’t just staring but staring stupidly and displaying the vocabulary of a one-year-old. Instead, she sat back down in the chair she vacated to offer her hand in greeting, took a sip from the hefty coffee mug sitting on the table in front of her, and then sighed. “I hope you don’t mind me crashing here. My place burned down last night.”

  That statement, said so calmly, shocked her. If her house burned down, she’d be a damn wreck, and yet here Renee sat at her table looking cool and collected like it was just another morning with family and friends. A twinge of guilt hit her as she thought about how depressed she’d been over her breakup. Seemed kind of dramatic when compared to a house fire.

  Jolene handed Lorna a cup of coffee in a mug just as big as Renee’s. “I was going to ask you today if you’d be all right with Renee staying just a bit until this fire mess gets straightened around. Since we’re all here, might as well ask you now. I realize I’m putting you on the spot and in front of my daughter, but would you mind terribly if Renee stays with us?”

  “Well, me and Clancy.” Renee added with a wry smile. “And it won’t be for very long. I’m sure my insurance covers temporary lodging. We’ll be out before you know it.”

  Lorna held the big mug between both hands, not yet taking a drink, and asked, “Clancy?” Her boyfriend maybe? A shame. Despite her recent breakup, Lorna found Renee’s face entrancing. Wouldn’t it be sweet if she was, well, like her? Fantasy.

  Renee smiled, and the way her face lit up made Lorna’s heart skip a beat. Having her stay was a no-brainer, but if she smiled at her very often, she wasn’t sure she could take it. Right now, she better sit down before her knees buckled.

  “My dog. A pup really, not quite six months old. He’s a dream, and I promise he’s very well behaved. You won’t even know he’s around.” As if on cue, a sound came from the kitchen door, and Renee got up to open it. A young black and tan German shepherd raced in, came right up to Lorna, and jumped up, his two front legs draped over her knees. His tail wagged, smacking the table leg with a thump, thump, thump. Thank goodness she’d set the big mug on the table or she and the dog would be wearing the coffee.

  If he was only six months old, he was one big boy. Handsome too with his shiny black and tan coat. She laughed and petted him between the ears, her fingers touching damp fur in his undercoat. Seeing him certainly explained the barking earlier. “He’s beautiful.” Her smile was only half for Clancy. So far, no boyfriend. She liked that.

  Renee pushed the thick hair off her shoulders. “Thank you. I’m pretty fond of him. He might be a little wet. We both had to shower or we’d still smell like a campfire.”

  Her hand still stroked Clancy as she asked, “Your house burned down?”

  “Yeah, my house, my business, my everything pretty much. I own a building in Seattle. Downstairs is my natural foods store and upstairs is where Clancy and I live. Well, I guess it’s more like where Clancy and I lived. Everything was lost last night.”

  “What caused the fire?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know and the fire department folks weren’t saying much last night. They probably think I started it.”

  “You? Why?”

  Renee shrugged. “No reason I just figure that’s what they always assume in a situation like this. The owner did it.”

  “That’s fucked up. Oops, I’m sorry. I mean, ah, um, tell me about the fire.” God, what an asshole she could be. Who talked that way in front of strangers? Beautiful, sexy strangers?

  Renee didn’t seem to miss a beat. “I’d closed up for the night like I always did, then Clancy I went to the dog park…”

  As she talked, Lorna couldn’t help but think how different they were. Renee was taking the loss in stride, something she didn’t think she’d be able to do. She told the story calmly as though she were an observer rather than a victim. Everything the woman owned was gone, and yet she sat here drinking coffee and smiling as if she were on a happy holiday break. She even seemed to take in stride the idea that she might be considered an arson suspect. Her first impression was this was one amazing woman.

  Made her embarrassed at how mopey she’d been since getting here. She’d been dumped, and that hurt more than she’d believed possible. Even so, she still had a home, her belongings, and a job. Everything that Renee had lost in a matter of hours last night. If she could still smile and see hope in the world, then Lorna didn’t have much of an excuse for not pulling her head out. She’d been dumped by her girlfriend, BFD.

  By the time they polished off a second pot of coffee, Lorna was trying to remember the last time she’d enjoyed a morning so much or felt so relaxed. Both of these women made her feel comfortable and alive. She didn’t want it to end even at the expense of her training.

  Across the table, the fatigue clearly showing in Renee’s face made her feel guilty. Even taking her tragedy with incredible grace, Renee needed rest, and here she’d been blabbing for at least an hour. She was a horrible hostess and not a very good caretaker.

  “Why don’t you bring in whatever you were able to save and get settled?”

  Jolene squeezed Renee’s shoulder as she walked behind her. “I’ll get clean linens on your bed, sweetheart. You need to lie down and sleep for a bit. It’s not that I’m not thoroughly enjoying being here with both of you, but, honey, you look dead on your feet.”

  Renee smiled at her mother and then looked back at Lorna. Her eyes were sparkling despite the weariness etched into her features. “You’re sure it’s okay if Clancy and I stay for a little bit? It’s a terrible imposition. I promise though, we’ll stay out of your way as much as we can.”

  After Anna’s devastating rejection, Lorna was leery of being around someone she found attractive. What would be the point? Even if something did miraculously come of it, odds were it would end on a bad note. She was good at a lot of things, but gracefully ending a relationship wasn’t one of them.

  Still, as she gazed into Renee’s mysterious eyes, she couldn’t bring herself to refuse her shelter. She was lovely and energetic, the kind of distraction that was good for the soul. Especially a soul battered by the crushing loss of a loved one. In short, a breath of fresh air. God, how she needed fresh air and a bright light.

  It didn’t make sense. Here was a woman that tragedy chose to dump on, and yet she almost glowed with light. Lorna was drawn to it like a moth to a fire. To hell with first reactions, she hoped it was a long time before Renee was able to go home. Besides, thinking there was a chance in hell they’d have a relationship was just plain stupid. The probability that she liked men was far greater. It was the way the world worked. Well, it was the way her world worked anyway.

  “Yeah,” she said softly. “I’m sure.”

  *

  The last thing Jeremy felt like doing was driving I-90 across the state. Tired and grumpy, what he really wanted to do was to drop into bed to sleep for a week or two. The marathon meetings had been a real bitch, and exhaustion weighed him down like a bag of bricks slung over his back. When he had this brilliant idea to go into business with his best friend, Lorna should have slapped some sense into him. Never in his wildest imagination did he see how it would all turn out. It wasn’t that they failed. On the contrary, their contracting business had taken off like a rocket.

  So had the time he’d put into the business. Anywhere from sixty to seventy hours a week had helped to make the business flourish and make him an old man at thirty-five. He had money, he had status, and he had lots of friends. No time to do much with any of it though. His world was more work than much of anything else.

  Even that wasn’t so bad. In the beginning,
it was also exciting enough that he found a way to make it all work. The turning point came the night he caught Nate and their office manager, Melinda, in the storeroom. Both were married to other people, and they’d been going at it like a couple of kids. It wasn’t that Jeremy was the morality police. Not in a million years because he wasn’t the kind of guy who threw stones at glass houses.

  No, it was everything. The crazy hours. The stress. The way his best friend changed from a nice guy into a money-obsessed player. Their success had changed his friend into a guy he didn’t know and one he didn’t like. These days Nate wasn’t the kid who’d sat at the kitchen table with him drinking cheap beer and dreaming of what they could accomplish together. He missed that guy a bunch.

  Combine that with the mess he’d managed to make of his personal life, and everything seemed to be blowing up in his face. Living like this wasn’t something he wanted to do anymore. He’d been coasting along too long now, and if he was honest with himself, pretending he was making everything work. Changes had to happen, and he couldn’t wait around to see what they were going to be. The only choice he felt he could reconcile with was to make his own changes. So he did.

  He owed it to the memory of his mother to do the right thing for himself and those around him. It was, after all, the proceeds of her life insurance policy that gave him the freedom to quit his first real job and go back to school. Armed with his graduate degree, he and Nate had launched their business. That Mom was gone too soon hurt his soul because she didn’t live to see what he’d built. Even so, he knew that what he’d done with the legacy she provided him would make her very proud.

  Things were different now. Living a life that was a lie would not make her proud regardless of the monetary success. That had to come from the heart, and his had called for a change. Mom would take one look at him and would know in a flash he was not a happy guy. He was beyond pleased at what two regular guys had been able to create and nurture, and if he’d been able to find a balance that worked would have been able to look his mother in the eye. Instead, he failed in that department and now had to make it right.

  Now, however, before he could work on his own life, he had to get Lorna her gear or she was bound to have a heart attack. Ironman wasn’t that far away, and she needed her stuff to keep her training on track. Granted, it would be easy enough for her to find a wetsuit to practice in, but the bike was a whole different story. The one loaded in the back of his SUV cost more than his first car. It still made him shake his head every time he thought about it. Lorna swore it made a world of difference in her biking speed. He wasn’t so sure. After all, a bike was a bike was a bike…right?

  Whether or not he was a believer didn’t matter. This was her gig, and he respected her for taking on the huge challenge of the endurance race. If she said the bike made a difference and was worth the cost, then who was he to argue? Besides, bringing this bike to her was a small price to pay to give her a little pleasure. Though she tried to hide it from him, he could tell she was suffering. That bitch Anna had dropped her like she was nobody special, and he hated her for that. Lorna was awesome, and Anna should have been thanking her lucky stars a woman that wonderful loved her. Not Anna. Instead, she runs off with some pretty little artist, breaking his sister’s heart in the process. His patience with people who cheated was slim at best. When the person cheated on happened to be his sister, well, his patience was non-existent.

  All he could do to help was be there for her. If she asked him to pick up her uber fast bike from what she characterized as the only guy in the Pacific Northwest who could tune it up right, and bring it to her, then he would. It might seem like a big favor to ask, but he didn’t feel that way. It’s the kind of thing a person did for someone they loved. He loved Lorna even if he didn’t say it often. He’d try to work on that.

  In the middle of the Vantage Bridge, a gust of wind hit him like a hammer to the side. Every time that happened, he wondered why he didn’t end up in the Columbia River. Hadn’t happened yet and probably never would, but that didn’t mean the wind was going to give up either. He hated that bridge.

  The long and winding hill up past Vantage with its sagebrush and basalt rock always made his imagination soar. He could envision the wild horses that used to roam the hills and the Native Americans who camped on the shores of the Columbia River. These days, all that rose from the earth were hundreds of giant white windmills that looked like aliens standing sentry.

  Finally, he made it past the hills and windmills and to the wide-open flatlands that announced Ellensburg. Farmland and cattle ranches replaced the desolation he’d just left behind. At the second exit, he put on his blinker and pulled off. He had to get out of the car and stretch.

  He pulled up to the gas pump at the Exxon right off the exit and got out. Waiting for the tank to fill, he raised his arms over his head and stretched. Man, that felt good. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed a little boy maybe three, four tops, racing across the parking lot. He also caught sight of a car turning in and it wasn’t slowing down. The little boy was smiling and running as though he didn’t have a care in the world and as if he was in a park instead of a terribly busy service station. Without giving it a second thought, Jeremy took off in a full-out sprint and managed to grab the boy around the waist. He spun away from the incoming car just in time. It missed them by inches.

  “Oh my God, Michael,” a young woman screamed, dropped her purse, and ran from the other side of the lot.

  “He’s all right,” Jeremy said as he handed the squirming boy—Michael—to his frantic mother. Her lips were quivering and her hands shaking as she took the still cheerful toddler out of his arms. Happy to return the little one to his mother, only then did Jeremy realize his heart was beating like a drum. It hit him how close they’d come to being struck down by the car.

  “Thank you, oh thank you,” she said on a sob. Her blond hair flew around her face as wind gusted through. If not for the fear still etched in her face, she’d have been a beautiful young woman.

  “Tank you,” the smiling boy echoed. His blue eyes crinkled with the joy of innocence, and he reached out with a pudgy hand to pat Jeremy on the cheek.

  He laid his hand over Michael’s. “You’re welcome.”

  The woman started to turn away and then turned back. With one arm still around Michael, she used the other to give him a hug. “Thank you,” she said again softly before hurrying back to her car holding her son close.

  He watched them go, an ache in his heart that he didn’t understand. These people were strangers, and their paths crossed only because they’d happened to stop at the same service station. Saving the little boy didn’t make their connection any deeper. All he’d done was what any decent person would. So why did seeing a mother hold her child give him such an empty feeling?

  He ignored the emptiness that settled in his stomach and instead focused on the drive ahead. Snoqualmie Pass was just ahead, and he always looked forward to driving the ascent that would take him to the top of the mountains. Each time he hit the summit, he smiled because it brought him that much closer to the beautiful and vibrant city of Seattle. Didn’t matter that he was born and raised in Eastern Washington, the west side of the state had its own special charms, and he wasn’t immune. He loved crossing the mountains.

  Even given how much he liked coming across state, Lorna’s move to the coast was weird because she was an Eastsider too. Not that he was saying her move was a bad idea. On the contrary, getting her away from the possibility of running into Anna and her new little gal pal would help her heal. Time and distance were great for that. Not a bad idea for him either.

  So, if taking his first weekend off after the epic showdown with Nate to drive over to the coast with Lorna’s stuff was an inconvenience, he’d live with it. Besides being a great excuse to get out of town, he really wanted to help make certain she had everything she needed to kick ass in Ironman.

  Chapter Three

  “Mom,” Renee said whil
e watching Lorna through the kitchen window as she stretched and readied for a run. “She’s special.”

  “She’s a lovely young woman,” she agreed. “Sad though. She hasn’t said too much to me, but I see it in her eyes. She’s hurting over something or someone. She’s bright enough when she knows I’m looking. It’s when she thinks no one will notice that sadness drops over her like a blanket. Breaks my heart.”

  Renee was shaking her head as she turned around and watched her mom clean up the coffee cups from their morning around the table. “That’s not what I mean. I’m with you. I see the sadness in her, but it’s something else. She has an aura I haven’t seen in anybody for a long time. Maybe never when I really think about it.”

  “You think she has some kind of power?” It was said absently, her attention more on cleaning up the kitchen so it sparkled.

  Mom never really did buy into what Renee could read in people. She passed it off as her daughter’s eccentric nature. In some respects, it was true. Renee couldn’t deny that she wasn’t exactly the normal daughter. That was true even before she stopped pretending. For as long as she could remember, she stepped to the beat of her own special drummer. Life worked for her that way. It still did.

  It didn’t, however, explain away what it was she could see. From the time she was very little, she was able to see light around people. As a young child, she thought everyone could see the lights. It was quite an eye-opener to learn very few could actually see them, and it made her feel like more of an outsider than she already did. It didn’t take very long before she discovered that it was best not to talk about what she saw. Easier to keep friends if they didn’t think she was the local crazy kid. Eccentric, people could tolerate. Crazy, not so much.

  When she learned it was auras she could see, it actually made her feel a little less nutty. After a while, she even learned to love her unique ability. Strangely, it made her feel special. She was teased plenty about being the odd kid, but that little bit of special was all she needed to help reconcile with herself. By the time she was an adult, she found the talent pretty handy. Good, bad, and everything in between had a tendency to show up for her. Made it easier to know who to trust and who not to trust.