Emily brought herself up to her full height. “I really need to see to my dinner.”
Roz sighed. She could hear at least two of her staff in the kitchen doing the actual cooking. It was obvious Emily just wanted to get away. But Roz was sorry she’d brought up the subject now. “So who is this friend of my father’s who’s coming to dinner?”
“It’s a surprise. You really should get into some dry clothing before you catch your death. You can have a drink before dinner with Suzanne.”
Roz would rather catch her death than have a drink with Drew’s sister who was probably half-sloshed by now.
As Emily headed toward the kitchen, Roz heard the front door open behind her and turned to find Drew standing in the foyer. He had her suitcase in one hand, her camera bag in the other. She hadn’t heard him leave.
“It finally stopped raining but I’ve heard there’s another storm on the way. I brought your things in,” he said, studying her openly as if concerned about her conversation with his mother.
“Thank you.” She appreciated his thoughtfulness more than he could know.
“Where’s Mother?” he asked.
“She’s seeing to dinner. She said she invited a friend of my father’s to join us.” Drew seemed surprised. “I’m hoping he might know where my father went. I know your mother isn’t concerned—”
“Mother hides her feelings,” he said as he started for the stairs. “She was just telling me earlier that she wished Liam had shown up before your visit. She’s much more worried than she’s letting on.”
Sure she was.
When Roz didn’t comment, he said in an obvious attempt to change the subject, “Planning to do some shooting while you’re here?”
“I never go anywhere without my camera.”
“You must have gotten that from your dad,” Drew said. “Except he says for him it’s just a hobby and he could never be as good as you. Your photographs really are amazing. I saw your latest book. It’s your best yet.”
“Thank you.” She was surprised he even knew she had a new photography book out but if he was trying to flatter her, he was succeeding quite well.
“Mother had the maid get your old room ready,” he said over his shoulder.
She barely heard him. “Were you here when my father left?” she asked, still convinced Emily wasn’t telling her something. Something important.
“I guess I was.”
Was it just her imagination that his back stiffened at her question? Her dad had told her that Drew had moved in after getting a new job so he could work from Timber Falls via computer and help his mother with the house remodeling.
“Did my father seem…upset? Or act differently?”
“Not that I noticed.” He reached the second floor landing and continued on up to the third floor without turning to look back at her.
Roz stared after him, more convinced than ever that something had happened before her father’s departure. Something Drew and his mother were keeping from her.
As Roz passed the second floor, she heard a voice she recognized. Drew’s sister, Suzanne, had a distinct whine that was easily recognizable even from a distance. She must be on the phone. Roz wondered why Suzanne hadn’t answered the intercom when Drew had buzzed her.
As Roz hurried up the stairs after Drew, she couldn’t help but remember the happy times in this house. She and her best friend, Charity, used to pretend that each room was a separate house in town where they lived happily ever after with their husbands and children and neighbors. She smiled ruefully at the memory of this house ringing with their laughter. She and Charity had both thought that one day their own children would race along these worn wooden floors as they had done.
She pushed the thought away as she and Drew reached the third floor.
“Mother hasn’t gotten this far yet in her remodel,” Drew said.
Roz swallowed hard as she looked down the hallway. This floor looked exactly as it had ten years ago. Her room had always been on the third floor just down from her mother’s sewing room and her father’s studio and darkroom. When she was young, they would put her to bed, then her mother would sew, her father would work in his darkroom. They had wanted her close by.
Her parents’ bedroom had been on the second floor along with several guest rooms. Her mother had installed an intercom so she could always be within earshot of her daughter.
It was crazy, but for a moment, Roz thought she heard her mother’s favorite song playing on the old phonograph in the sewing room. If she listened hard, she thought she would hear her father whistling a little off key in his darkroom down the hall. But hadn’t he told her that Emily was doing away with the darkroom because she’d purchased him a digital camera?
Drew stopped in front of Roz’s former bedroom door and waited for her. “Don’t look so worried. Your room is exactly as you left it. Liam insisted.”
Her feet felt like leaded weights as she walked down the hall to slowly turn the knob.
As the door swung open, Roz caught a glimpse of the whimsical quilt her mother had spent months stitching in secret for her thirteenth birthday. It was still on the bed, just where she’d left it. Albert, the stuffed teddy bear she’d loved threadbare, sat in the corner still wearing the tuxedo her mother had made for the tea parties she and Charity always had at the brightly painted table and chairs. On the table was the little tin tray her mother served the tiny chocolate chip cookies she’d made for them.
Roz swallowed, fighting the stinging tears that burned her eyes and choked off her throat. Drew was right. Her room was exactly as she’d left it ten years ago after her mother’s death. Everywhere she looked in this room she saw her mother.
“Roz, are you all right?”
The room magnified her loss. Forcing her back to those horrible days after her mother’s death. She couldn’t face the loss any more now than she could at seventeen.
“Roz?”
“I’m fine,” she said, realizing it wasn’t near the truth. She could feel Drew’s gaze on her. She glanced over at him, ready to reassure him. What she saw in his expression stopped her.
“Hey, maybe you’d better sit down,” he said putting down her suitcase and camera bag to take her arm and lead her over to the wicker chair by the window.
Had she only imagined that he’d seemed to be enjoying her discomfort at seeing this room? He looked and sounded concerned now. She told herself she was tired. Imagining things. Like she’d imagined someone in a yellow raincoat leaping into Lost Creek Falls?
“I’m fine. Really,” she said to Drew, watching him for some sign of the expression she’d thought she’d seen only moments before. “I just need to get out of these damp clothes.”
He backed toward the door, still studying her openly. “I know how hard this must be for you. Come on down soon for a drink before dinner. You
