deposits too, to go forward with the renovations on the chalets, giving us another income stream for spring when the holiday season would truly begin.
After two hours of back and forth with Ned, me biting my tongue to prevent me speaking out of turn, and Kai keeping his cool and patiently explaining each improvement down to the type of nuts and bolts that were used, Ned agreed to approve the chapel at Cedarwood pending a visit to inspect the structure properly, before the year was out. We had a February wedding to organize, so it had to be done as soon as possible in case Ned found any problems and we needed to fix them. It was a weight off my mind, but I wouldn’t fully relax until he put pen to paper and signed the document.
As we drove sedately back to Cedarwood, the silence weighed a little heavier. It was like we were tongue-tied and I missed our usual affable chats about every little thing.
Kai must have sensed my unease and finally said, “What are you thinking about? You’re doing that squinty, hunchy thing of yours again, like you can’t see.”
“What squinty hunchy thing?”
He squinted and hunched over, letting the steering wheel go and hugging himself tight. “Like that. You always do that same thing when you’re worried.”
I peeked down at my body and found he was right. The Hunchback of Notre Dame had nothing on me. “Talk about bad posture, oh upright one.”
His shiny white teeth shone under the soft sunlight, and he let the teasing go unchecked. “When we did yoga you stopped hugging yourself tight like that. Stopped folding yourself in knots.”
“But you left.” I attempted a smile. “My yogi.”
He bit his lip, and turned away. “I wanted to stay.”
The air thickened with unsaid words.
“Did you, though? You left so early after Imelda and Edgar’s party…”
He stared straight ahead, gray clouds drifting toward us in an angry jumble. We were going to get stuck in the car, sheltering from the coming storm, if we didn’t get home soon. I held my tongue, though. I wanted an answer.
“I was two weeks late for that job and my boss wasn’t happy about it. I had to go.” His voice had an air of anguish to it, and I thought something had changed with Kai. Something had stolen the light from his eyes. Was it his boss? There was a bitterness to Kai that was out of character when he spoke of his time away.
“What’s going on, Kai? You don’t seem like the same guy who left Cedarwood.”
He smiled, but it was more like a grimace. “I’m not. I don’t think I’ll ever be the same.”
By the set of his jaw, I knew to leave it alone, that whatever it was would come out soon enough. Kai harped on about how holding toxic emotions inside damaged a person, but I sensed he needed time to mull over whatever it was.
“I’m glad you’re back, even if it’s only for a little while.”
With his hands on the wheel, he said, “Me too, I love it here.”
***
At the lodge, Kai stood behind me, shrugging out of his coat. Voices carried down the stairwell. I stopped, straining to hear. It was Amory and Cruz, having a heart-to-heart by the sound of it.
“I’m sorry I’ve kept you at arm’s length all this time. It was just easier if we were going to break up, to protect myself, my heart,” Amory’s voice carried down the stairs.
“Promise me you’ll always say how you’re feeling? Don’t run away, don’t hide it. The thought of losing you…”
It was such a happy thing to witness – two people so in love they were willing to forget their own dreams for each other. Not wanting to intrude, I tapped Kai’s arm and pointed outside, and we crept away to let them chat in private.
We went to the chalets by the lake. I watched him for a beat, and it was as obvious as his shadow that something plagued him. He was quieter than normal and something inside me wanted to make it better, or at least show him I cared. When I’d been twisted and coiled tight like a snake, Kai had recognized it in me, and helped me, in myriad ways, by his cuckoo breathing techniques and enforced exercise, but mostly by listening, and not shrugging off my concerns. Sure, at the time he’d been my employee, but it went beyond that. And I wanted to reciprocate.
“Hey,” I said, “do you want to head into town, and have a drink?” It tugged at my heart the way his whole demeanor had changed, like he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders.
“Sure,” he said.
Twenty minutes later we arrived at the Shakin’ Shack, and took a seat at a softly lit booth at the back. I ordered us two beers, thinking alcohol just might loosen his tongue and get him to open up to me.
We made small talk for an hour before I figured out how to broach it with him.
“Remember when you said you were searching for something, a feeling, a place you belong…? Did something happen to prompt that?”
He nodded, a faint smile touching his lips. “That sounded a little too mystical, right?” He shook his head as if he was embarrassed he’d shared the idea with me. “Have you ever felt so lost you just don’t know where you fit any more?”
I smiled and tried to find the right words, “Most of my life I felt that way, growing up with a mother who was there, only in body but not in spirit. The thing is, I know now that I can’t change her. I can help, I can be there, but I can’t change the way she thinks, the way she acts. I can only hope being around will help.”
We hadn’t talked about my mom, or her issues, but I’m sure he’d heard about it through the grapevine. It was a small town, after all, and word had got around that my mom had arrived at Cedarwood and stayed barely an hour, vowing never to return.
“What is it with parents?” Hurt crossed his face. “Before I left Australia, I found out I was adopted. Imagine, at the grand old age of thirty-one, your parents suddenly announce they’re not your parents.”
Shock rendered me mute. I couldn’t imagine being told such a thing. Surreptitiously, I surveyed Kai, pain etched firmly on his face. Silence engulfed us. I was hesitant to say the wrong thing. In all the time he’d stayed at Cedarwood, he hadn’t alluded to any problems back home, and I wondered if that had cost him, keeping it bottled up, and now it was finally spilling out. What had changed to bring it back to the fire now?
I’d pegged Kai for some kind of nomad, a drifter searching for adventure, but really he had been running from his past, from a secret. It reminded me of my mom and the baby in the black and white photographs. There was a momentary flash of anger toward these people, our parents, whether biological or not, keeping things from us – in Kai’s case, something so major that it had caused him to flee.
“Why did they suddenly tell you now?”
Kai’s face darkened. “My father had a close call in a car accident. He was fine but it scared him and I guess he wanted to right his wrongs. He called me over and they sat me down and blurted it out. It was tough, knowing my life was essentially built on a lie, but deep down I could sort of understand it. I mean, you hear these kinds of stories all the time.”
