Tom nodded. “Mason?”
“We should just vote. That building is a menace.” Her father tapped his fingers against his biceps as if his opinion settled everything. Probably he thought it did.
Jaime held her breath.
Finally, Tom said, “Okay, we’ll get that estimate. I’ll call over to the Deal house this afternoon.”
“I’ll do it. You asked me to head the project, which includes estimates and new hires.” Jaime kept her voice steady and looked from Rick to Tom and then to her father.
Mason’s expression remained impassive but his eyes studied her as if she had two heads. Maybe she did. She hadn’t left her father’s house for weeks after the senior trip. Then Emmett had stood her up on prom night. She hadn’t mentioned his name in years. Now she was suggesting the town hire him for a job that would keep him around for an extended amount of time.
Well, she wasn’t the same girl she’d been when he’d left.
Emmett being back didn’t change that.
EMMETT APPROACHED THE front door of the dilapidated Victorian home with dread. When he’d left Gulliver’s Island ten years before the gingerbread trim along the roof was an inviting green, the porch painted a delicate peach and the second floor a deep navy.
The painted lady he remembered was chipped and stained.
There was no trace of the peach color on the porch, although sometime in the past few years the porch steps had been painted what appeared to be a bull’s-eye red color. A few strips of navy remained along the windows on the second floor. The gingerbread trim looked like the rotting wood it was.
From a professional standpoint the place was a mess, but he knew he could bring her back to life.
From a personal standpoint, he didn’t understand how things had gotten this far.
How had his stickler father allowed this to happen to their home?
The doctor’s voice echoed in his mind, reminding Emmett of his father’s diagnosis. He clenched his hands. He’d failed his dad in not coming back for all this time. Maybe if he had...
Staying off the island had made it easier to move forward. Easier to forget the careless boy he’d been and to become someone capable, dependable.
The boy who’d been careless enough to ruin the life of his best friend was gone and in his place was a man people came to, to solve their problems.
Jaime Brown’s big brown eyes seemed to dance in front of him. He’d left to make things simpler for her, but seeing her again... She was no longer the broken girl who’d come back from Pittsburgh, but she wasn’t the girl he remembered from before the attack, either.
The front door creaked open and Gibson Deal stuck his head around the corner, a shock of white hair falling forward to hide eyes that were once a clear, bright blue and were now faded like Emmett’s Levi’s.
“I’m not buyin’ nothin’,” Gibson said in a voice that still held the iron Emmett remembered from his youth. To listen to the old man, nothing had changed. It was probably one of the reasons no one on the island had figured out Gibson was fading. He could still talk a blue streak; had opinions on everything. Hell, during his visit to Cincinnati last fall Emmett had thought his father was fine. Last week the doctor had assured him that during that visit his father had already been losing his mind.
Emmett was doing more than listening for the first time in years. He was observing and what he saw left no doubt in his mind that the doctors in Toledo were right. His father was fading.
Gibson’s hand tremored against the door and there was a confused look in his gaze.
“It’s me, Dad. Emmett.”
The door creaked open a few more inches. Gibson pushed the hair from his face, squinted faded blue eyes and pressed his lips together while he inspected Emmett as if he’d never seen him before.
“Well, what the hay are you doing on the porch? Come on in, boy. I’ve been expecting you.” As if nothing was wrong. As if Emmett landed on this doorstep every other weekend. “You said you’d bring paint. Did you bring paint? Mary Margaret loves to paint.”
Emmett motioned to his truck loaded with enough paint, wood and various other supplies to fix up every house on the island, which was good since he’d volunteered to—at least—take a look at Gulliver School, too. Maybe his father wasn’t the only one losing his mind.
Thinking about the school brought back the image of Jaime.
Wearing white pants and a silky blue top. In eighty-five-degree weather. When he’d known her she’d worn sundresses on any day the temperature breached seventy.
He could still see her standing on her front porch in a white sundress with pretty blue flowers long into October that last year he’d been on the island. It had been unseasonably warm that fall and when anyone had reminded her of the changing seasons she would smile and tell them she wasn’t ready for turtlenecks and snow boots just yet.
The calendar would change over to June in a few days and already it felt like August on the island.
She’d also cut her hair and the shoulder-length blond curls suited her face. She was thinner than he remembered, but those brown eyes were still deep enough to drown in. Not that he had any intention of drowning.
The Jaime he remembered... The Jaime he remembered had grown up, Emmett told himself. Just as he had.
“I’ve brought everything we’ll need with me.” He wasn’t sure what he would need when he’d left Cincinnati, only that the sooner he had the place fixed up the sooner it would sell. The sooner he could get Gibson into the assisted-living facility in Cincinnati where he could begin treatment. Not that treatment would change anything.
He’d done enough late-night internet surfing to know there was no coming back from dementia. There would be good days and bad, and eventually he would lose his father altogether, even though the man might still be alive.
Emmett’s heart beat rapidly at the thought. Gibson was his only family and he didn’t want to lose the old man.
He shouldn’t have made such a big deal about coming back to Gulliver. Should have made more of an effort to put the past to rest. He’d lost ten years he could have had with Gibson and for what? Because he’d made a few mistakes as a teenager? Didn’t everyone?
“You thirsty? Want a sandwich before we get started?”
Emmett couldn’t stomach what might be on the inside of the refrigerator. “I thought we’d just make an inventory list today.” The farther into the house they walked, the more Emmett’s hopes sank. When he was a kid, the hardwood floors would have gleamed, the end tables sparkled. A few magazines might have been stacked on one end of the coffee table and there would have been a basket for the TV and radio remotes beside his father’s favorite green recliner. His mom would have been baking something and, more often than not, Jaime would wander in through the back door.
Emmett refocused on his father.
What he saw now were stacks and stacks of newspapers. A few empty food containers. The TV was on but muted. Two lampshades sat askew because of the jackets hanging from them. Envelopes—some opened and some still sealed—littered the dining-room table and a thin film of dust covered everything.
Emmett swallowed. How much worse would it be if his father hadn’t taken the ferry to the mainland last month? He’d boarded a bus for Dayton at the ferry stop and become so disoriented that a restaurant manager had called the police.