Midnight Valentine

40

“I should’ve made you stay in a rental until this place was fixed up.” She draws a hitching breath. “Jesus, Megan, if anything had happened to you, it would’ve been my fault.”

“Don’t be silly,” I say firmly. “Accidents happen all the time. These kinds of things are nobody’s fault.”

She looks up at the house with her brows pulled together, as if she’s afraid of it. “I don’t know, sweetie, my mother always says an accident is just fate’s way of making sure you know you’re not the one in control.”

I blow air through my lips, a derogatory sound that coordinates well with my eye roll. “There’s no such thing as fate, Suzanne, or destiny, or an old man in white robes in the sky who watches over us and expects us to spend an hour each week sitting on hard wooden benches in a building with ugly stained glass windows praying to a statue of a dude nailed to a cross. We’re alone in the universe. Everything that happens is simply chance.”

I have to ignore the nagging voice in the back of my head that’s asking about the bear claw in my hand. And the computer renderings of the Buttercup. And the lightning strike. And a man who just happened to be out for a midnight stroll on the beach in front of my house the moment I needed his help.

And half a dozen other things scratching restlessly at my subconscious.

Suzanne says flatly, “That was depressing. Remind me not to invite you over for Christmas dinner. You’ll give the baby Jesus a migraine.”

“Sorry. Is it too early in the morning for nihilism?”

She wrinkles her nose. “No time of day is good for negativity, hon.”

“It’s not negativity. It’s…practicality. It’s realism.”

“It’s bullshit is what it is,” pronounces Suzanne with finality, giving me a small shake. “Don’t let life rob you of hope just because it’s kicked you in the balls a few times.” She pauses. “Metaphorically speaking, of course. I wasn’t insinuating I think you have testicles.”

“Oh, but I do,” I say with a straight face. “Big steel testicles that clang when I walk.”

“I was wondering what that noise was,” Suzanne shoots back. “I thought maybe you had the Liberty Bell stuffed up your vag.”

Then we’re laughing. It feels good after all the tension and confusion of the past few days.

She asks, “All kidding aside, how are you? Really?”

I sigh, glancing back at the house. “I’m fine. A little weirded out about Theo, but that’s nothing new.”

Suzanne arches her brows. “Don’t tell me he glared at you again. Coop let me in and said everything was going great.”

I meet her gaze, relieved to have someone to talk to about the subject of Mr. Mysterious. “Theo showed up before the firemen did last night. He got here when I was still on the line with 9-1-1. He had to be, like, right outside the house.”

She does a slow blink that’s almost comical in its exaggeration. “In the middle of the night?”

“I know, it’s weird, right?

Her expression turns horrified. “You’re not saying you think he’s responsible, are you?”

“Oh, no, not at all,” I reassure her, because she looks like she might pass out at the thought. “The outlet where the fire started has been making strange noises since I moved in, and all the lights in the house flicker. I knew the wiring was shot. And Theo had to break through a wall with a sledgehammer to get to where the flames were. There’s no way he could’ve started anything.”

Suzanne looks confused. “Break through a wall?”

“The fire started between the walls. Something to do with an arc failure. The firemen explained it, but the bottom line is that Theo, somehow, was outside my house when it happened. The question is why?”

Suzanne runs a hand over her head, smoothing away a few dark tendrils that have escaped from her ponytail and are trailing into her face, teased by the ocean breeze. “Did you ask him?”

“Of course I asked him. And he did his usual impression of a slab of granite and refused to answer.”

I don’t mention his strange note. It feels too intimate, as if telling someone else would be breaking a confidence. Spilling a secret meant just for me.

Suzanne draws a breath, shaking her head. “Well, I don’t know what to tell you. He does have a reputation for being nocturnal.”

“Yeah, one of the firemen said that he wanders around at night, keeping his eye on things.”

“So maybe just chalk it up to coincidence. He happened to be wandering in your neighborhood at the right time.” When I give her a dubious look, she adds tartly, “Hey, you’re the one who thinks everything is pure chance.”

There’s chance and then there’s circumstance, and I know Theo’s arrival wasn’t a random event. He was here at that time for a reason, even if I don’t understand what that reason is.

Yet.

My intuition and common sense both tell me it has to do with whatever his obsession is with the Buttercup. He’s already admitted in an email that the house feels like true north to him. But no matter how obsessed I was with something, I wouldn’t be hanging around it in the middle of the night.

Have you forgotten all the midnights you spent on your knees on the banks of the Salt River?

The thought sends a spike of pain straight through my heart, as if it’s been lanced by a spear.