Starlight Bridge Read online

  Oh yes, she had her dander up all right. Admittedly, it wasn’t entirely Jasper’s fault. He was just trying to protect her great-grandson. Jasper blamed Ava for breaking Griffin’s heart. If Colleen had shared Ava’s secrets, Jasper would know the truth. She should have shared them before now. At the very least, she should have broken her vow to Ava and told Griffin.

  Back then, Colleen had a good reason not to. Ava had shared her heartbreaking secret with Colleen a week before Griffin married Lexi. Colleen liked her great-grandson’s then wife-to-be and couldn’t bring herself to hurt the girl, even for Ava’s sake. Lexi had saved Griffin from himself.

  Setting the teacup on the nesting table beside him, Jasper rested his linked fingers on his chest and grinned like a Cheshire cat. “It appears you’ll have to set your matchmaking sights on one of your other great-grandchildren, Madame. I have it on good authority that Master Griffin will be leaving in two days’ time. Not the fortnight Miss Kitty had planned on and you no doubt had hoped for.”

  At least she and her daughter-in-law Kitty were on the same page. But the news Griffin planned to leave in two days’ time was worrisome at best. “I don’t know what you’re so happy about. You want to save Greystone from that grasping developer’s hands as much as the rest of us do, and we need Griffin’s vote. Without Ava to convince him otherwise, the lad’s dead set on selling the estate.”

  Colleen had spent the months leading up to her death fending off local real estate agent Paige Townsend’s attempts to steal Greystone and the family’s five-thousand-acre estate out from under them. The thirtysomething woman represented the developer who wanted to tear down the manor and build high-end condos.

  Colleen’s great-grandchildren stood to make millions if they went through with the sale. It’s why she’d set up her will the way she did. The estate couldn’t be sold unless all her great-grandchildren agreed. To date, only two of them were on the Save Greystone Team.

  A scratching sound and then an insistent meow came from the other side of the door.

  “Ah, it appears your partner in crime has arrived. Perhaps you should let him in,” Jasper said with a smirk in his voice.

  She glared at him. He knew darn well she couldn’t open the door. These days her hands rarely obeyed her brain. There were some things she’d become quite adept at though. She walked to the television and put her hand through Mr. Carson’s face, smiling when static filled the screen. “You’ll think twice before pulling another fast one on me, laddie. Enjoy your evening. I have work to do.”

  “Where have you been, Tomcat?” she asked Simon when she arrived on the other side of the door. The black cat was the only one who could both see and hear her. Sophie and Liam’s daughter Mia could see her. Lately, though, Colleen sensed that she was no longer as visible to the child as she used to be.

  Simon gave Colleen a testy meow, looking at the spiral staircase that led to the tower and then back at her. Nudging his head before he ran off, he obviously expected her to follow.

  “Oh, but you’re a bossy one. I’d already planned on paying my great-grandson a visit.” She walked to the staircase. There had to be a way to convince Griffin to stay until she found her memoirs.

  “Stop your caterwauling. You’ll wake the other guests,” Colleen said to the meowing Simon as she reached the landing in no time at all. It never ceased to amaze her how quickly and easily she got around these days. The aches and pains of old age were no longer a problem in her ghostly state. A shame she couldn’t say the same for her memory.

  Simon cast her a smug look when Griffin opened the door. Colleen rolled her eyes, scooting past her great-grandson, who wore black sweatpants and a T-shirt. He was on the phone.

  “It was just Simon, the cat.” Griffin grimaced as he shut the door. “Ah, no, I’m staying at the manor. It was my dad’s idea, Lex.” He sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed the heel of his palm on his forehead. “I don’t know why you’re getting so bent out of shape.”

  Simon parked himself in front of the fireplace and meowed at Colleen. “What’s gotten into you? Hush now. I need to hear this. It sounds like Jasper isn’t the only one going to give us trouble.” She sat on the bed beside Griffin, trying to hear what his ex-wife was saying on the other end.

  Griffin looked across the room at Simon. “Knock it off. No, not you. I was talking to the damn cat. Hang on.”

  “Oh, you’ve gone and done it now. You should have listened to me and stopped while you were ahead. He’ll be throwing you out on your ear,” Colleen told Simon as she followed her great-grandson to the fireplace. Simon had managed to get himself trapped inside. He stood on top of the logs, meowing at Colleen.

  “What is it that’s got you in such a dither?” She went down on all fours and pushed her head and the upper half of her body through the wrought-iron candelabra to peer inside.

  Griffin scooped up Simon. “If you don’t cut it out, you can find somewhere else to spend the night,” he told the cat as he put him down. “Sorry, I…What? No, I’m here because my family asked me to come, not because I’m interested in Ava. You can’t be serious.” He paused and shook his head. “Yeah, yeah, I know what you thought you saw when we were here for GG’s funeral, but you’re wrong. I’m not in love with Ava, and she’s not in love with me.”

  Colleen glanced over her shoulder, catching the look of frustration on Griffin’s handsome face. “Oh yes she is, my boy. That girl never stopped loving you. If I could just find my memoirs, you’d understand why she—”

  Simon meowed twice, nudging his head at the fireplace.

  “Bejaysus, are you trying to tell me my memoirs are in here?” The cat responded with what could only be described as a get-on-with-it meow. If Colleen still had a heartbeat, it would have quickened.

  She pushed all the way inside the fireplace at the same time Griffin said, “Okay, this is the last time I’m going to say this, Lex. There’s nothing between Ava and me, and there never will be.”

  “Never say never, my boy. If I’ve taught you anything, it should be that,” Colleen said, narrowing her eyes on the wall of soot-covered bricks while keeping an ear open to Griffin’s side of the conversation with his ex-wife.

  “So are you going to tell me why you really called?” Several beats passed before he said, “Sure, but why don’t you just tell me now? Okay, fine. I’ll give you a call when I’m headed home, and we can get together then.” His eyebrows drew inward at whatever Lexi was saying to him. “You sure you’re okay? All right, I’ll see you in a few days.”

  Scrubbing a hand over his face, he tossed his phone on the pillow. “Simon, take my advice, stay single and play the field.” Griffin came to his feet and walked to the fireplace, rubbing his muscular arms. “Let’s get some heat in here.”

  There was a scratch on the brick, then the smell of sulfur. A small flicker of flame lit the inside of the fireplace. Griffin touched a match to the logs, sparking Colleen’s memory. Her memoirs were here. She could see herself fitting them behind the loose bricks for safekeeping one hot summer night.

  “No!” she cried. Then realizing Griffin couldn’t hear her, she leaned over and blew with all her might. The small flame blinked out. Her great-grandson cursed but was undeterred.

  “You always were stubborn,” she groused at him after his fifth try. She wasn’t sure how much air she had left. As he lit another match, she frantically waved her arms. The small flame sputtered and went out.

  Griffin snapped the long matchstick in half, tossing it on the logs. “If I get lucky, the pipes will freeze, and they’ll have to get their heads out of their asses. The sooner we sell out, the better.”

  Chapter Three

  The sun had yet to rise when Ava walked from her bedroom through the sparsely furnished living room and into the kitchen. She started the coffeemaker and then bent to retrieve a pot from the bottom cupboard. She turned on the tap, glancing out the window while filling the pot with cold water. The sky looked like an artist’s palette with
splotches of lavender breaking through the midnight black, streaks of tangerine on the horizon.

  When she was younger, she would have taken a moment to appreciate the beauty of the view and watch the white-crested waves breaking against the dock’s pylons across the road. Today her eyes automatically went to the thermostat attached to the white window frame, its paint peeling. Her walk to and from the manor would be more pleasant than yesterday’s.

  She turned off the water and placed the pot on the back burner, flicking it on. The coffeemaker spat and gurgled as she salted the water. She reached for the bag of steel-cut oats, placing it on the yellowed laminate countertop beside the stove. Then she went to the fridge and took out the top round beef and vegetables, placing them on the counter beside the cutting board. She retrieved two sweet onions from the windowsill and removed the skins. Ignoring the ache in her arm, she mechanically chopped the vegetables before moving on to the meat.

  Once she was finished, she scraped everything into the Crock-Pot, adding two cups of red wine, several cups of the beef stock she’d made earlier in the week, the leftover tomato sauce from last night’s dinner, and a couple pinches of basil, thyme, and marjoram. Setting the Crock-Pot to medium heat, she turned to the water boiling on the stove and added the oats before covering it with the glass lid.

  It was a routine she could do in her sleep. Which was probably a good thing since she’d barely gotten two hours last night. Her father had had another bad night. Every night for the past three weeks had been the same. Though Ava doubted she would have slept even if he’d had a good one.

  Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Griffin. Her body responded with the same desperate yearning, the same want and need, as it had when he’d opened the shower curtain, when he so easily swept her off her feet, and when his strong, calloused hands had gently wrapped around her ankles to remove her shoes.

  The strength of her desire had shocked her. It shouldn’t, she supposed. This was Griffin, after all. A man who, with one look, could cause butterflies to take flight in her stomach and her toes to curl. A man whose body she had once known as well as her own.

  There had been a time, though—twelve years before—when those rippling muscles and chiseled eight-pack had filled her with something other than desire. Her emotions had been darker and haunted back then. The thought of making love, even with the husband she adored, had filled her with dread, shame, and guilt. Unable to see a way to get past the crippling emotions, she’d asked him for a divorce.

  If he discovered the book behind the bricks, he’d know why. For now, she thought she was safe. She would have heard from him if he’d found it. She prayed he’d used all the firewood, inadvertently burning the book in the process.

  Reaching for a mug, she recalled the flash of anger in his indigo eyes when he whipped open the shower curtain, the way his upper lip curled in loathing beneath his heavy scruff. After all this time, he still hated her, and she loved him with every fiber of her being. The mug slipped from her fingers and hit the edge of the stove, shattering into a thousand pieces at her feet.

  “Can’t a man get some sleep in his own home? Keep it down out there!” her father yelled in Italian from the back bedroom, his voice gravelly from lack of sleep and his two-pack-a-day habit.

  She crouched to pick up the broken mug, fighting back tears of exhaustion and resentment. Her emotions were bubbling too close to the surface these days. For years, she’d been like a zombie, sleepwalking through her life. Then Colleen died and Sophie became manager of the manor, figuratively holding up a mirror to Ava, forcing her to see the woman she’d become. Ava hadn’t liked what she saw, but she couldn’t change the past, and she didn’t see a way to change her future. The road that lay ahead seemed as bleak as the one she’d been on for the past twelve years.

  As she stood up to walk to the garbage, a splinter of glass stabbed the ball of her big toe. She swore and raised her foot, pulling out a thick shard of ceramic. Droplets of blood splashed onto the tile.

  “What’s wrong?” her father called out.

  She grabbed the paper towel roll from the counter, ripping off several pieces to stop the bleeding. “Nothing, Papa.”

  Wrapping the paper towel around her foot, she straightened to give the pot of oatmeal a quick stir and then removed it from the burner. Once she cleaned the blood droplets off the black-and-white tile floor, she washed her hands before preparing her father’s breakfast tray. She scooped several tablespoons of the fruit salad she’d made the night before into a small bowl, sprinkled wheat germ and cinnamon on the oatmeal, and added a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and a mug of coffee to the tray. She hobbled to the bathroom, cleaned and bandaged her foot, then made her way down the bright blue carpeted hallway to her father’s bedroom.

  Squaring her shoulders, she forced a smile and entered. “Good morning, Papa.”

  “What’s good about it?” he grumbled, glaring at the breakfast tray. “What is that crap? Where’s my bacon and eggs?”

  She set the legs of the tray carefully over his hips. “Your cholesterol levels were high at your last appointment. Dr. Bishop recommended—”

  “I don’t give a good goddamn what Doc Bishop has to say. I want my bacon and eggs. Take it away.” He shoved the tray.

  Ava gasped, grabbing the juice glass and mug before they toppled over, hot coffee sloshing over her hand and onto her father’s beige comforter. What looked to be regret flickered briefly in his green eyes. “I don’t have much to look forward to. I should be able to eat whatever I want,” he said in a sullen voice, pushing at the tray again, not as hard this time.

  Ava nudged aside the framed photographs on the nightstand to set down the glass and mug. Her parents’ wedding photo, a photo of the three of them the Christmas before her mother died, and one of Ava and her father taken a few years before his accident.

  He was still as ruggedly handsome as the man in the photographs, though his curly hair was more gray than ebony now and his green eyes no longer sparkled with good humor. Unless he was angry, which more often than not he was these days, his eyes were dull and lifeless. The lines that fanned from the corners were deeper and more pronounced, like the ones carved into either side of his down-turned mouth.

  His injury had turned her once kind and loving father into a man who could be cruel and vindictive. He wasn’t the father she remembered, but as she had done for so many years now, she reminded herself of the man he’d once been and stuffed down the hurt, anger, and resentment. “Eat some of your porridge, and I’ll make you bacon and eggs. Only one egg, though, and two slices of bacon. You can have the fruit cup for lunch.”

  Making a second breakfast for her father messed up Ava’s carefully scheduled routine. By the time she’d showered, gotten ready for work, stripped and remade her father’s bed, helped him bathe, shave, and get dressed, it was almost eight o’clock.

  At the side door, she pulled on a black knit hat and wrapped a scarf around her neck. “I’m leaving now, Papa. I’ll see you at six.”

  Her father, sitting in his wheelchair watching television, glanced at her. “Don’t be late. I’m almost out of smokes and whiskey. Get me a forty-ouncer of Crown Royal this time. No more of the cheap stuff. They’re watering it down.”

  Ava opened her mouth and then closed it. She couldn’t tell him she was the one watering it down. She hadn’t thought he’d caught on. “Next paycheck. There’s red wine in the bottom cupboard. It’s better for you anyway.” If he’d drink only one glass it would be. “Dr. Bishop wants you to cut—”

  “I don’t give a good goddamn what Doc Bishop wants. He can kiss my hairy ass. I’ll not give up the only things that give me pleasure.”

  Ava thought about arguing, pointing out he was heading for an early grave. But she was too tired to fight. “All right, Papa. I’ll get your Crown Royal.”

  He picked up his package of cigarettes, looked inside, and frowned. “I thought I had more left. You better get me a couple packs.” />
  Ava had picked up her father’s dirty habit. She found it relaxing. Though she limited herself to eight cigarettes a day. She’d taken them from her father’s package this morning. Now she’d have to find time to make the long trek to the liquor store and corner store on her lunch hour. “Papa, why don’t you go out today? The fresh air will do you good. The sidewalks have been salted, and I put sand on the ramp last night.”

  He turned up the volume on the television. Ava sighed and opened the door, the tension in her body releasing as soon as she pulled it closed behind her. She glanced at the ramp. On the off chance he’d actually go out, she scooped another cupful of sand from the bag beside the door and tossed it onto the weather-beaten boards.

  The front door of the blue bungalow beside theirs opened, and Dorothy popped her head out. “Do you have a minute to spare, lovey?”

  Ava’s stomach dropped, afraid this was the day their neighbor said she’d had enough of Gino’s verbal abuse. The older woman was a retired nurse and had been Ava’s mother’s childhood best friend. She’d moved back to Harmony Harbor last month when her husband died. She popped in to check on Gino a couple times a day.

  “Of course. Is something wrong?” Ava asked tentatively as she walked along the sidewalk.

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Come in, it’s freezing.” She held the door open. No matter what time of day, the older woman was always well put together. Today was no exception. Dorothy’s chin-length blond hair was styled, her lightly lined face made up. She wore black slacks and a fuchsia sweater. “I didn’t want to call in case your father picked up the other line.”

  Ava tried not to let her panic show. “Did something happen when you were over yesterday?”

  “It’s not just yesterday. He’s getting worse, lovey. Surely you out of anyone can see that.” She gave Ava’s arm a pointed look.

  Dorothy knew how Ava had gotten the bruise. Gino had been in a rage when she’d arrived home late from work the other night, and Dorothy had been outside shoveling. She’d heard Gino throwing things around the kitchen and cursing at Ava. The older woman had opened the side door at the same time Ava deflected a cast-iron frying pan with her arm. Dorothy had threatened to call the police. At the thought of everyone in town knowing their business, Ava had begged her not to. She didn’t believe her father meant to hurt her. He’d never hurt her purposefully before. Sometimes, he just forgot his own strength.