Love Rebuilt Read online

  Somewhere during my ruminations I remembered snapping the photo at Connor’s house without thinking about it, and I pulled out the camera and played back the photos, determined to erase the few I’d shot of him. But when his face appeared on the tiny screen, shadows exaggerating the broody sadness of his features and his hair lit up from behind, I found myself startled. It was the best photo I’d taken in a long time. Maybe ever. There was so much emotion visible in that shot, and if I had the chance to get it into a proper editing program, there was no telling how incredible it could become. My finger hovered over the delete button, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was an amazing shot. I had to keep it. I’d never do anything with it, but it was too good to delete.

  At some point, huddled under the heavy blanket of the very late night, I had decided that I needed to get to work on pulling myself back from the brink. No one else was going to save me, and sitting and crying on the edge was doing me no good at all.

  “You look awful.” Adele’s sagging jowls waggled while she talked, and her beady eyes narrowed at me.

  “I’m fine,” I responded automatically. “Though actually, I could use the afternoon off. I need to drive down to the valley.”

  “You can have it, Princess. Work the morning, and then you can go. Gonna be dead in here today.”

  I looked around. She was right. There were a few locals sipping coffee or poking at eggs, but most of the tables were empty, and not many people lingered out in the parking lot or on the street beyond. Kings Grove was getting ready to tuck in and sleep for the winter. And it was barely even Fall.

  The morning dragged on, as my mind turned over potential options for pulling together the money I’d need to get out of the mess I was in. Lower car payments would help. And I needed to call my lawyer.

  “What’s with you?” Miranda asked, breaking me out of my thoughts. She had ketchup bottles lined up the counter, waiting to be refilled. I pulled another rag out in preparation for the inevitable mess.

  I shook my head. “Nothing.”

  “Something.” Her eyes were intense, and I knew she could see more than I was willing to tell her.

  “I’m a little sad today is all. I’m trading in the car.”

  “For what?” She looked adorably confused, her blond ponytail swinging behind her as she cocked her head to one side.

  “For a cheaper car with smaller payments.”

  Her face fell a bit. “You? Without the fast sporty car? How will you maintain your fancy?”

  “I think my fancy is out of place here anyway. And I’m more worried about maintaining my refrigerator full of food. And my heat.”

  She nodded. Miranda still lived with her parents, so I was pretty sure she had no idea what I was talking about. “Did you hear the latest?” Her voice was a harsh whisper as she dropped her head toward my ear and leaned in, and though she seemed to think she was being discreet, her dramatic change of posture actually called Adele’s attention our way. Miranda stood up straighter and pretended to arrange the ketchup bottles on the countertop until Adele looked away.

  “What are you talking about?” Something in my stomach clenched. I knew this would have something to do with Connor, just by the look on her face.

  “Amanda Terry went missing.” Miranda’s eyes were wide.

  I froze and my mind started spinning. “What?”

  “Yeah. She just disappeared a couple days ago. Her parents were in here, handing out flyers.” She pointed to the bulletin board behind Adele near the door. There was a picture of a young girl with big eyes in the center, with the word “Missing” centered above her.

  “Oh my God,” I breathed.

  Miranda nodded out the window, where a police cruiser sat. Another dark car idled next to the cruiser. “I told you Connor Charles was creepy. He’s probably got her chained up next to the other woman in that big house up there.” Miranda was shaking her head. She’d already convicted him.

  “He does not,” I snapped, not willing to tell her that I had pretty solid proof there was no one in that house except Connor. I felt sorry for him. Miranda was certainly not the only person willing to blame him so easily.

  Miranda had the grace to look embarrassed as she muttered, “Yeah, you’re probably right. I’m sure it’s something else.”

  “I have to go.”

  “Hey,” she said as I grabbed my bag from beneath the counter.

  I turned back around.

  “I don’t know what’s going on with you, but it’ll get better, Mads.”

  “I know.” Man, I must’ve looked like crap if Miranda was trying to console me.

  *

  The last drive down the hill in the Jaguar was exciting. I drove harder than I had before, knowing I’d essentially be puttering back up in a car with all the power, torque, and finesse of a toaster oven.

  “She’s in great shape,” the salesman had said at the dealership just before offering me a price way below blue book for the car. I doubted he’d ever even seen an XKR in person before. Jack had ordered this one custom, with every possible bell and whistle. The thing practically did my lipstick for me.

  “That’s why I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to get something more like…” I pulled his notebook from his hands and wrote down a number square in the middle of the blue book price I’d found online at the library before driving down. “More like this.”

  His eyes narrowed as he looked at my scrawled numbers. “I don’t know, miss. I’ll need to talk to my supervisor.”

  “I can wait.” I turned around and looked at some of the other cars standing around the edges of the lot. The shiny sports cars were out in front, the minivans and sedans hidden behind the more glamorous rides.

  The salesman went inside and came back out ten minutes later, his bald head shiny in the valley sun. “5K less and we have a deal,” he said. “Gotta account for administrative costs, processing. That kind of thing.”

  I knew that was bullshit, but I needed to get on with this. I shook my head. “I’m pretty firm. I could see fifteen hundred less maybe. I could always just take it back to the guy who sold it to me. He clearly knew what it was worth.” This guy didn’t need to know that Jack had special ordered it to San Diego from some high-end dealer in Los Angeles and that I couldn’t find the guy if I tried.

  The man wiped his palms on his suit pants and gave me an appraising look before his shoulders slumped and he blurted, “Fine. Okay.”

  “Very good. So show me something that carries a lot, can handle some snow and isn’t a complete drag to drive. And something that will let me walk away without a payment.” I couldn’t give up all my ideals.

  “That’s not how this usually works.” He looked uncomfortable.

  “With the trade-in value we just agreed on, I could buy most of the cars on this lot outright.”

  “True, but…you’ll want to finance…”

  “I don’t want to finance a thing. I want a car that will let me drive off your lot with cash left in my pocket.”

  He grimaced and wiped his hands on his pants again, then seemed to accept my terms. “There are plenty of options with the money you’ve got to play with.”

  I spent the better part of the afternoon with the car salesman. In the end, I drove away in a small crossover SUV with all-wheel drive. It felt sturdy and safe as I maneuvered it toward the mountain highway. It also felt like one more admission that my life was completely out of control and that I had no idea who I really was. Was I Maddie with the high heels, gorgeous house, and incredible car? Clearly I was not. So who the hell was I now? Besides Maddie with the practical SUV and zero car payments, thanks to the ridiculous trade-in price of my former car.

  I pushed buttons on the stereo touchscreen, trying to get it to connect to my phone, but failed. That was something I’d need to do while sitting still. It was probably not a good idea to fiddle with it while pounding over pavement on a curvy road. I gave up and flicked on the radio instead. The announcer’s voice poured
in to fill the silence around me.

  “…Bracing themselves for the first real storm of the season,” he was saying. “The mountains east of Stockton will be hardest hit, with high winds and driving rain. This is a summer storm, folks. No snow in the forecast yet. Might get pretty cold at higher elevations, though.”

  I ground my teeth together. It was beginning. I’d been warned more times than I could count about what the winter would be like up here. We’d started building the house last March, after a light winter had faded and the scant Sierra snow had washed away with spring rain. But this year was predicted to be cold. And snowy. And I had done little to winterize the trailer as everyone had told me to do before the winter came. I was going to freeze. At least Jack had the good sense to have a septic system and a well dug in when he’d planted me here. If I’d had to worry about hauling myself through the snow to deal with tanks of black water and grey water in the middle of winter, I’d be a mess. It might be a trailer, he had said, but it would feel like a home. Until the temperature dropped below freezing.

  I turned around, heading back down the highway. There were more things I would need if winter was going to be starting early. And now that I had the storage space of the little SUV’s back end, I could actually pick them up.

  *

  The man at the RV shop had smiled brightly when I told him I needed materials and advice on winterizing the trailer. I think he saw dollar signs when he figured out that I didn’t have the first clue what I was doing. I knew I needed to add some kind of insulation, something that could shield the space under the trailer to protect from wind and snow accumulation, and I knew that there was some way to insulate the single-paned glass in the windows.

  I walked out with a huge winterization kit and a few suggestions on how to install it all. And as I drove up the hill again in the gathering darkness, watching the temperature drop on my dashboard thermometer as fat raindrops began pelting the windshield, I realized that it was probably too late. At least for this storm.

  By the time I reached my lot, the rain was sheeting down and the temperature had dropped another fifteen degrees. I hauled the huge plastic-wrapped package out of the trunk, thinking I’d somehow get it started tonight, but as soon as I got near the door I realized that there was no way I was willing to figure it all out in the pouring rain. I dropped the kit next to the picnic table under the cover of the awning and dashed in, wringing water from my hair.

  Inside, I changed into warmer clothes, boiled water for hot tea, and stared out at the water streaming down the windows. If I’d felt isolated before, it was nothing compared to the loneliness that began to creep around me as I sat and watched lightening rip the sky open and listened to the thunder that crashed violently through the forest outside. When the wind threatened to pull my trailer from where it stood, I retracted the awning, hoping the tin walls were strong enough to keep me from blowing off the mountain.

  As the cold set in, the walls of the trailer seemed to absorb it, and I retreated to my bed, pulling extra blankets from the storage space beneath the mattress and huddling down, fully dressed, into my wretched existence.

  At some point, the constant pounding of rain must have lulled me to sleep, but it wasn’t a restful sleep. It was more of a dark purgatory between day and night, sleep and waking. I was on edge, even in my slumber, thanks to the incredible noise of thunder crashing down around me and the wind wailing through the treetops and rocking my trailer. There were several tremendously loud crashes in the midst of it, the kind that shook the ground and made you wonder if God was cruel enough to send an earthquake as an ironic accompaniment to the storm. I was certain that something had fallen from the treetops. Something big.

  The heating system had kicked on as well, and it was by no means quiet. The hum of the heat added to the sound of the storm and fueled the frightening dreams that plagued me—monsters chasing me through the forest, knocking me from cliff tops. In another dream, the trailer somehow plunged off its moorings and slid down the hillside into the pond I’d nearly drown in as a child, sinking to the bottom before the entire pond turned to ice.

  I woke to a cold eerie silence, shivering beneath the blankets in my clothes. It felt as if the mattress I slept on had been turned to ice beneath me. I bundled myself within the quilt I’d thrown on top of the bed, and slipped my feet into the slippers that waited on the icy floor. How had it turned so cold so quickly?

  Teeth chattering, I shuffled out to make coffee and turn up the heater. The coffee maker responded to my repeated button pushing with a cold indifference that lit a tiny fire of panic within me. It was a bad day for the coffeemaker to die, I told myself, and turned to the heater, pretending I didn’t already know that it would respond as the coffeemaker had. The thermostat had a battery in it, which was the only reason I could see that the temperature inside the trailer had dropped to just above forty degrees. And as I went around flicking light switches, I finally accepted that the power was out.

  Which left me stranded on a hilltop in the cold, surrounded by mud (confirmed by a glance out at the previously dusty ground around the trailer.)

  I stared out the window at the debris that littered the ground—branches that had perched unwavering above me all spring and summer—and my eyes caught on the end of a branch that looked incredibly large, peeking out from behind where the new car sat near the road. Moving to the window next to the bed gave me a clear view of the other side of the car, and confirmed my fear. A tree was down across the road in front of the property, and from here, it appeared that it blocked my property completely from the village below. I stared at the downed pine, disbelieving. I picked up my cell phone, which had been charging next to the bed and jabbed the power button. I was basically trapped, without power. Or a phone.

  I crawled back into bed and settled in to wait for one of three things: sunshine, help, or the motivation to get myself out of this mess. The rain continued to trickle down. Like my misfortune, the storm refused to call it quits completely.

  Chapter 9

  Since everything had happened with Jack, I’d done my best to maintain a positive outlook. I’d gotten myself a job, I’d committed to a new trailer-based lifestyle, and I’d kept the faith that this whole situation was a bump in the road. I’d maintained hope that my lawyer would work her magic and get the joint account released, and that Jack would be thankful I hadn’t played hardball and leave me alone.

  Most of what I’d believed in since the divorce, and everything I’d believed in for the five years that preceded it had proven to be completely untrue. My life was revealing itself to be a thinly woven veil of false hope. And I was starting to see that there was little left for me to hope for. I’d had a lot of luck in my life. And perhaps it had run out.

  I huddled in my blankets, wallowing in my own misery for the better part of the morning, and almost missed the gentle tapping at the door just before noon. I glanced out the window in time to see John Trench, my nearest neighbor down the hill, peering back at my sad little tin can as he picked his way across my lot, heading back out to the truck that sat idling beyond the fallen tree.

  Bolting to the door, I pulled it open and called out to him. “John! Hi!”

  “Hey there, Maddie!” John turned around, his friendly lined face beaming a smile in my direction. “Louise and I were worried about you last night. I would’ve come up sooner, but she wouldn’t let me out of the house with all the branches coming down out here.”

  “She’s a smart lady,” I said. She was. John and Louise had retired from high-powered finance and tech careers and moved up here full time. “Thanks for thinking of me, though.”

  “You doing okay? We lost power down in the village.”

  “Me too. I’m not sure what time it went out.”

  “Well, it’s gonna be a few cold days up here till this storm blows out. Haven’t heard yet when they’ll get the power back on.” John scratched his stubbled chin. “Would you want to come down and stay with us until they g
et it set up again? We’ve got a generator down there.”

  I felt the smile break across my face. Between the storm, the cold, and everything else, I’d allowed myself to sink into a fairly deep pool of self-loathing. But I didn’t hate myself quite enough to banish myself to staying alone when I could go stay in a warm cabin in the village. And John and Louise had never been anything but sweet to me. I’d known them, at least been acquainted with them, since childhood. “Would that really be all right? I sure don’t want to impose, John.”

  “Louise will kill me if you say no.” He smiled. It had always seemed like maybe Louise wore the pants in their relationship.

  “Well, I would hate for that to happen. Thank you so much.”

  He took a couple tentative steps toward me. “Do you have some things you’d like to bring with you? Clothes and stuff?”

  “Let me pack a quick bag. Do you want to come in?”

  “No, that’s okay. I’ll just look around and make sure your place didn’t sustain any damage during the storm.”

  I had thought about doing that, but hadn’t gotten myself there yet. “Thanks.”

  As John made a tour of my sad little homestead outside, I threw clothes into a bag along with my toothbrush and some toiletries. I grabbed a couple bottles of wine, hoping John and Louise enjoyed a glass now and then. I had nothing else to offer them in thanks. After I’d smoothed my wild curls into a ponytail and wiped at my face in the mirror, I stepped out.

  John was watching me with a strange expression on his face, and after a moment I figured out what it was.

  “No. Un-uh. John, don’t you dare look at me like that.” I shook my head at him. “Don’t you dare feel sorry for me.”

  He smiled slightly, looking apologetic and spreading his hands before him, about to apologize.

  “Trust me, I feel sorry enough for myself. But I’m going to work all this stuff out. I’ll figure it out.” I was still shaking my head. “I’m not sure how exactly, but it’s going to be fine. And I do need a little help at the moment, but I couldn’t stand to be down there with you guys if you’re going to be pitying me the whole time. I’m a grownup. I made my mess. I can fix it.”