GEORGIANA
May directs me to the porch swing. “Now tell me how you’ve been settling in?” She sits and pats the space beside her. “And how do you like Ashleigh Lake?”
I sit down next to her and admire the view. From here the lake is breathtaking and with the sun dipping behind the far mountains, the water is a silver mirror reflecting the goose-down clouds that drift over.
“It’s so peaceful here,” I say, after a moment. I had to think how to truthfully answer her question, because if I search for the baseline feeling I’ve had since coming to Ashleigh Lake, it would be peace. The work I’m doing here doesn’t come with half the stress I’m used to. I catalogued the boathouse as a shack when I saw it first, but I’ve been quietly falling in love with it.
It’s the faraway world that waits for me back in Miami that breaks up this inner peace. Each morning, before I get up, I lie in bed and soak up the sounds of the birds and the water as it swells and splashes against the short jetty by the firepit. And then, when I eventually sit up to look through the windows of my bedroom at the lake, it’s as if I’m living in a dream.
“We love it here,” May says. “I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”
May stills and we tune in to the sounds coming from the house. Bill is reading a bedtime story to Hannah. Occasionally, Raiden, Hunter, and Derek burst out into laughter, teasing and reprimanding each other about who should do what next or how to correctly stack the dishwasher.
“And Raiden? What’s it like to work with him?” May asks, and when I glance in her direction, there’s an unexpected eagerness in her eyes.
“Well,” I chuckle. “He isn’t afraid of putting in long hours, that’s for sure. But I don’t mind that, I’m used to it. He has so much knowledge when it comes to every aspect of construction…and I simply adore his tiny house. He has a brilliant mind when it comes to design. I’ve never worked with someone like him before.”
“Really?” May reaches for my hand and takes it in hers, fingers trembling. She squeezes hard, as if she’s holding onto me for strength.
I clasp our hands together. “Are you okay?”
She breaks into a soft whimper, but it ends in a croaked chuckle. “He’s come through, as I always knew he would.”
I’ve been wanting to get the lowdown on Raiden from day one, but initially he kept to himself. It’s only over the last few days that I’ve gotten to know him better, once he became at ease talking to me. What I’ve seen so far of Raiden has made my opinion of him change exponentially. He is, deep down, solid gold.
Here is May, opening up to me, and if ever there was a moment to pry into all things Raiden, it’s now. “He’s come through?”
“Oh, honey,” she sighs. “He’s come through so many things I don’t know where to start.”
“He always mentions Cash McGraw,” I say. “Night and day, it’s Cash this, Cash that, but he never speaks of his parents.”
May swallows audibly and lets go of my hand to fold her own over her heart. “Cash is his godfather. He served with Raiden’s dad in Iraq.”
My heart drops and my stomach twists. Oh no.
“But that’s not it,” May says as if she senses my every dread. “Trent Logan was married to my sister, Annabelle. They died in a car crash when the boys were small. The Logan boys came to live with us and, well—”
She breaks off and all my limbs go numb. “Oh God, May, I’m so sorry.”
May presses her lips together and from her strained breathing, she’s on the verge of crying. “It’s a long time ago now, and yet, sometimes it feels like it happened yesterday.”
I lean toward her and gather her into a hug which she returns gently, and for a moment, it’s me clinging to her for support and not the other way around.
When she lets go, she searches my face. “So you see, that’s why hearing this from a stranger is the most honest confirmation I’ll ever get that this boy of mine—Annabelle’s beautiful Raiden—is going to be okay.”
“Of course he is,” I whisper. I close my eyes and make a quiet promise—whatever comes next, I’m sticking out this project and will help make Raiden’s dreams a reality. It might only be for one summer, but it could be the best one I’ve ever had.
“You ladies all right here?”
I drag in a breath past the tightening in my throat as tears swim shallow in my eyes. In the doorframe, Raiden’s body is etched against the light from the inside that pours around him onto the darkening porch.
If I knew him better… No, if there wasn’t this other thing brewing between us, I would have walked up and pulled him close and whispered in his ear that I’m sorry, so very sorry for his loss and that I am a horrible, ungrateful, despicable person. Here I am, fighting with my parents while working with a man who has lost both of his own.
“We’re doing just fine,” May says as she rises, her voice controlled. “Are you staying for coffee?”
She’s talking to me and I’m sitting here, staring at Raiden as he walks up to us, as if he is going to help me up from the porch swing and not let go of my hand, but that could be me dreaming.
“Georgiana?” Raiden asks.