look in his eyes, something she didn’t trust at all. The muscle in his jaw was jumping.
“I can only take about a week off.”
He considered her for another nerve-wracking moment. “That’s better than nothing.”
“For what?”
“Your brother needs to get away,” he told her, expressing no interest at all in what she could only take a week off from. “He said he’d give anything to get away from all the memories of Tina for a while. But there’s no one to stay with the kids. If you really want to help, tell him you’ll watch them for him so he can go over to my cabin. It’s over on Gainey,” he said, speaking of one of the other seven hundred islands in the area. “I’ll fly him there myself.”
The discomfort she felt suddenly shifted course. “Why would he need to go to another island?”
“Because it’s isolated there.”
“This place isn’t?” Incredulous, even more confused, she swept her hand toward the door. “His house is the only one on that inlet. The only house for miles,” she felt compelled to point out, since the location was now taking on an entirely new significance. “I’d think that would be about as remote as it gets.”
“Trust me.” His tone went as flat as the map on the wall. “There’s a difference between being a few miles from town and being in a place you can’t leave.”
“But being isolated couldn’t possibly be good for him right now. He needs his friends. He needs family.”
“Why?”
Why? she echoed, but only to herself. As tempting as it was, she wouldn’t fall for the challenge carved in his face. He’d just proved he wasn’t anywhere near as insensitive as he’d first seemed. She did, however, have major philosophical problems with his perceptions of her brother’s needs.
“Because he needs people around him,” she replied, not sure why he couldn’t see it himself. “To help keep him occupied. To help him deal with his grief. Being alone would be so much worse.”
“Or maybe,” Zach suggested, doing a commendable imitation of her patently patient tone, “it would be easier. Maybe what your brother needs is the opportunity not to be stoic for all those other people and to deal with whatever he’s feeling head-on.”
“He doesn’t need to be stoic around me.”
“Of course he does. You’re his little sister.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
The look he gave her held amazing tolerance. “A man doesn’t want to show weakness around a female member of his family. And he sure as hell doesn’t want to show it in front of another male. The life Sam had is gone and he needs to come to grips with that before he can move past it. The only way that can happen for some people is to leave them alone so they can deal with whatever they’re feeling without worrying about how it’s affecting everyone else. That includes you. Your parents. Me. Everyone.”
There was something about the way he included himself in that list that caught her attention. It was almost as if he were making a conscious effort to keep from adding to her brother’s concerns. But that thought was lost in the face of his absolute certainty. It was heavy in his voice, mirrored in his eyes.
Conviction like that wasn’t born of assumption. The only place something that deeply felt could come from was personal experience.
“Everyone has to deal with what they’re handed in their own way,” he muttered, suddenly looking uncomfortable with the way she was watching him. “The choice isn’t yours or mine, anyway. It’s Sam’s. And whether he chooses to stay or go, he’s not flying for a while.”
He sounded as if he expected her to disagree. Given that they hadn’t agreed on anything either had said so far, the expectation was reasonable. But she wouldn’t debate his decision about Sam flying. Zach had made his point. She just wasn’t at all convinced that what her brother needed right now was solitude.
“Does he know he isn’t a competent pilot?”
“I doubt it.”
“Is he going to argue with you about it?”
“I imagine he will. He’s been taking extra flights so he can be away from here. He’s not going to like the idea of being stuck where he doesn’t want to be.”
The faint buzz of fluorescent lights underscored the soft whir of a space heater in the far corner. Over those quiet sounds came the sharp, electronic ring of the telephone and the thud of Zach’s boots on the scarred linoleum floor when, without a word, he moved to the counter to answer it.
The deep, authoritative tones of his voice carried toward her as her glance skimmed his profile and the wide scar covering the side of his strong neck.
She’d told him she didn’t know him. And she didn’t. The things she knew about him were that he was divorced and that he was no longer in the military. If she had to guess, she would put him near her brother’s age. Thirty-seven or so. Only eight years older than she was herself. But those things were superficial. It was what he’d said about how some people needed solitude to deal with whatever it was they had to confront, and how they needed space so they didn’t have to be stoic for everyone else, that hinted at what might have shaped him.
He had spoken with the voice of experience. And though she could only wonder at what that experience had been, she had the uneasy feeling that he had suffered himself, and that he’d done it alone.
“I have to go.” Zach made the flat announcement as he dropped the receiver back in its cradle. Taking the note he’d just written, he moved to the map on the wall. After using a ruler and string to calibrate the distance between two points, he scribbled the result on his note. “Tell Sam I have to go to Vancouver for a pickup, so I can’t talk to him now. I’ll stop by the house about eight. You have until then to convince him to leave the kids with you. If you can do that, I won’t have to talk to him about being grounded.”
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