“I’m moving into my new house in the next week or so, and I don’t plan on leaving it anytime soon.” He closed the file. “Was Angela our last patient for the morning?”
“Smoke the kitten was back in, but you were tied up so Tanya dealt with him. She said to tell you to go to lunch. She has everything in hand.”
Tanya, the other vet and his partner in the practice, was a wonder. “Good. I’ll be on my cell if you need me.”
“Hot date, Dr. Carlyle?”
“Not exactly.”
But he was working on it.
“CAN YOU BELIEVE he actually showed up at the hospital?” Standing in the garden of her grandmother’s cottage, Fliss updated her sister on the phone. “I mean, I came here to avoid him, and I’m seeing more of him than I did in Manhattan.”
“I think it’s adorable.”
“It’s not adorable! It added another layer to my totally craptastic day.” Fliss rubbed her fingers across her forehead. “All right, maybe it was kind of him, but it was also inconvenient.”
“Why?”
“I’d already told him I was you, and then there was Grams coming toward us in the wheelchair and—”
“No! You let Grams think you were me? Fliss, you promised!”
“And at the time I meant it! But then Seth showed up right at the wrong moment and I was trapped. This is what I mean. Not at all adorable.” The phone crackled and Fliss paced to the top of a sand dune, trying to get a better signal. Her toes sank into the soft sand, and long grass tickled her ankles. She wondered what it was about this place that nudged her toward the impulsive.
“If you’d told him the truth when you bumped into him, you wouldn’t have been trapped.”
“I know. And I didn’t intend to lie to him, but my mouth took over and said I was you before I could stop it and now the whole thing is getting out of control. Are you mad at me?”
“No, but I’m not good with all this deception. I wish things weren’t so complicated.”
“Me, too.”
“Are you sure Seth didn’t recognize you?”
“Positive. He hasn’t seen me in ten years. I guess that worked in my favor.” And while part of her was relieved about that, another part was a little hurt, which made no sense at all. She’d known him without even turning her head to look at him. How could he not know her? “Having told him I was you, I didn’t have any choice but to keep pretending I was you. It’s just for a couple of weeks. What can possibly go wrong?”
“A million things! Fliss, if you keep pretending you’re me, this thing is going to snowball.”
“Are you kidding? It’s sweltering here. No snowballs in sight.” Her attempt at a joke fell flat. “Maybe you can come for a visit in a week or so and we can swap identities and Grams will never know.”
“She’s going to know. For a start we don’t dress the same way.”
“I’m dressing the way you’d dress if you were at the beach.” She stared down at her flip-flops. “I’m wearing shorts and a tank top.”
“I’m more likely to wear a sundress.”
“I’m not wearing a dress. And I’ve seen you wear shorts.”
“Are you keeping your shoes on?”
“Most of the time.”
Harriet sighed. “Maybe you’ve fooled Seth, but do you really think Grams can’t tell the difference between us?”
“She was expecting you. People tend to see the person they expect to see.”
“You have to tell her.”
Fliss rolled her eyes to the sky. Yet another problem to solve. Usually life sent the boulders, but in her case she seemed to manage to throw them into her own path. “I will. Soon.”
“How is she? I’m worried about her.”
“Well, apart from the fact I almost died of shock when I saw her because ‘a few bruises’ turned out to be a massive bruise that covered pretty much the whole of her body, she seems remarkably like herself.”
“And they’re sure nothing was broken?”
“So they said. We’re using ice on the bad parts.”
“Which are the bad parts?”
“Actually, they’re all bad. It’s finding some body that isn’t bruised that’s the challenge. And talking of which, I should go and help her. We’re doing it every few hours to reduce the bruising and swelling.”
“You won’t be coming home soon, then?”
“No.” And now she was trapped here with Seth. The irony didn’t escape her. “Poor Grams.”
“Yes. Tell her the truth, Fliss. She’ll understand that it feels awkward with Seth.”
Would she? How could her grandmother understand something she didn’t understand herself? It shouldn’t be awkward, should it? Not after ten years.
Brooding on it, she ended the call and wandered back into the house. She removed ice packs from the freezer and then lifted a jug of iced tea from the fridge and took it to her grandmother, who was resting in the living room.
Sunlight spilled through the large windows, illuminating the soft, overstuffed sofas that faced each other across the room. The pale blue fabric was worn in places, but they were soft and comfortable—built for snuggling. Her grandmother had believed in the importance of reading time, and Fliss had spent many hours curled up with a book. She’d pretended she’d rather be outdoors on the beach, but secretly she’d enjoyed the quiet family time that was absent at home. Harriet had preferred Jane Austen or Georgette Heyer, but Fliss had veered toward adventure stories. Moby Dick. The Last of the Mohicans.
“Grams?” She paused in the doorway, and her grandmother turned her head, a smile on her face.
Fliss felt a stab of shock. “The bruising on your face is bad. Is it worse?”
“Just changing color.” She held out her hand for the tea. “Don’t fuss.”
“I don’t fuss.” And then she remembered that if she was Harriet, she’d be fussing. “Poor you. Let me help you ice it.”
She put a thin cloth between the ice pack and her grandmother’s skin as the doctor had demonstrated. “I’ve never seen bruising like this.”
“It will fade.”
“Maybe you should stay out of the garden from now on.”
“Nonsense. I was looking out of the window a moment ago, worrying about what’s happening to my plants while I’m trapped here immobile.”
“If you tell me which plants, I can do whatever needs to be done.” Fliss poured tea into a glass.
“You’re a good girl.”
Fliss felt like a fraud. She wasn’t a good girl. She was a liar and a fraud.
She had a sudden urge to blurt out everything to her grandmother, but she couldn’t face seeing disappointment on her face. Or finding ways to dodge the inevitable questions about Seth.
“Anything you need,” she murmured, and wandered back into the kitchen to throw together a salad for supper.