“Did you eat?”
He nodded. “I checked in with River, and we had a quick dinner with Kaz and Wessel. And I filled your tank.”
My gaze shot to his. I wished I could accept everything helpful and attentive about him at face value. But that kiss earlier in the day, at the orchard? “Could you help me with one more thing tonight? I need to get into the attic, and the pull-down ladder is stuck.”
“Sure. Let’s do that now.” Tanner needed ten minutes of muted swearing to figure out the problem was rusted hinges. “When you get back from the ritual, you might want to have someone take a look at your roof before the rains get here. Could be a leak.” He held the sides of the lowered ladder and jammed the resistant hinges into place. The lone attic lightbulb, covered in grime, gave off a faint yellow glow. “Got a flashlight?” he asked.
“Right here. And thanks.” I started up the rickety steps and paused, sweeping the flashlight across the beams and floorboards until I spied what I was looking for.
When I first left this house for married life with Doug, my aunt had given me the child-sized steamer trunk packed with mementos: a few of my mother’s books, pieces of costume jewelry and glass vials of crystal beads, bundles of velvet and silk satin ribbons. A shoe box tucked into a bottom corner held squares of fabric, pinned together and ready for quilting. Tiny blood-colored spots dotted the bits of cotton where the pins had rusted.
I went through the trunk’s contents with reverent hands.
One day, I would bring the trunk to my room and go through everything, piece by piece. Read every book, page by page. And hope something more of my mother would reveal itself. Because there was an empty place in my chest no one else had ever filled and questions I still wanted answers for. When all the magical happenings settled down, I planned to contact my cousins and ask whether my aunt had left any old photographs or scrapbooks with them before they moved her to the eldercare facility.
I sat back on my heels. If only I could take the contents of the trunk and make something beautiful to wear out of the fabric scraps, take apart the jewelry and…
I pivoted, attic dust swirling around me like a cascade of fairy sparkles, and yelled for Tanner. “Can you come here?”
The folding ladder squeaked with every step.
“What do you need?” he asked as his head and shoulders appeared through the rectangular hole in the floor.
“Could you help me get this down to my room?”
“Sure.”
My gaze swept the tent-shaped space and honed in on the low book shelf. “And those books too.” I slid the trunk to the opening. “Watch the straps,” I cautioned, pointing at the cracked leather strips tacked to either end. “One broke and the other looks just as fragile.”
“I can take this myself. Where do you want me to put it?”
“My office. The room across the hall from the ground floor bathroom.”
While he maneuvered the trunk down the ladder and stairs, I scanned the books. Childhood favorites, vintage cookbooks, and a set of binders from Good Housesweeping, all with faded spines and covered in fuzzy, brownish dust. Better to haul up my vacuum cleaner and clean them off first.
Tanner stepped to the bottom of the ladder and held the sides as I descended.
“On second thought, I’ll get the books later.” I blew drooping strands of hair out of my face. “We can close this up now.”
Stepping off the lowest rung, I pulled the long string hanging from the ceiling and listened for the click of the lightbulb turning off. Tanner’s chest was to my back, both his arms raised as he guided the slightly warped attic door closed. He quickly lowered one arm, wrapped it around my shoulders, and let go of the door.
I tamped the urge to pivot on the balls of my toes—a dusty ballet dancer in dirty khakis and a snap-front shirt—and burrow my nose into his breastbone.
He turned me to face him with his free arm. “Calli?”
I got my wish. A cluster of curly chest hairs tickled the tip of my nose. My mouth went dry, and my lips likely tasted of old attic. I slipped my arms around his waist and waited.
If inanimate objects could hold their breath, then the walls and floorboards of my little A-frame were doing exactly that right along with me. I was safe. Buffered. And we were the only ones in my house.
I was safe—we were safe—from the presence in the orchard.
Tanner stroked his hands down my back and tugged at my shirt, slipping warm fingers between my skin and the sweaty patch of cotton. I shifted my hips when his fingertips asked permission to slide below the waistband of my pants. Tilting my head back, a cool blue light from the waxing moon washed over one side of his face.
He scanned the periphery of my neck, cheeks, and jaw before settling on eye-to-eye contact. “It would be so easy to court you, Calliope Jones.”
I lifted my heels off the floor and kissed the left side of his mouth and the right side.
“It would be so easy to be courted by you, Tanner Marechal,” I said, giving his name the French inflection that could make even a packing list sound sexy. “But I’m not ready.”
Chapter 11
The drive to Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park was bumpy and dusty and interminably long. I was glad for the use of Harper’s Jeep, which provided high clearance over the jumbled rocks and wash-outs that punctuated the logging road. I had to pay attention to what was directly in front of me, rather than run fantasies of what it would have been like to toss every
