Indigo Moon (18 page)

Part of Isabelle would have loved the excursion, but her secretive, cunning side knew this was the ideal opportunity to explore Ren’s cabin again while she was away for a few hours. There had to be some information about the float plane delivery schedule somewhere. All she had to do was check out the farm accounts in Ren’s bureau.

“Thanks, but I’ve got a headache. I think I should lie down for an hour or two.”

“A headache? Do you want a poultice for your forehead?” Ren was immediately concerned. “I have homemade remedies for headaches.”

“No, honest. I’ll be all right. I just need to rest.” Isabelle held her breath at her blatant lie, relieved Ren couldn’t read her well at all. Quickly she said good-bye and excused herself, and headed straight back to the cabin.

*

Isabelle ignored the bureau and walked through the living room to Ren’s kitchen. Straight to the bread bin where she had cleaned up Ren’s sooty fingerprints only yesterday morning. Her car lay burned out at the bottom of a gully. Her car documents had been tossed in the fire. So why was Ren rummaging about in the cold ashes? What had she been looking for? What else had been burned?

Isabelle was certain she had not crashed in this valley, but most likely somewhere close by. The marks in the clearing suggested her car had been towed in, dragged to the ledge, and pushed over. When Ren said “Burn it” she had meant the car, not the car documents. Ren had not ordered that, so she hadn’t lied to Isabelle about it. For some unfathomable reason, she could not lie to Isabelle, but she could omit the truth. Isabelle was bitter, and she worried Ren had no intentions of letting her leave the valley at all. She had covered Isabelle’s tracks so no one would know she was even here. And that left the question of why?

Isabelle opened the bread bin. It was empty. She checked the tin containers on either side. Empty. The cups on the shelf. Empty. The spice jars. Empty. Everywhere she looked she drew a blank. There was something she was not seeing. It was frustrating. Ren’s sooty fingerprints had left clues, and all Isabelle had done was wipe them clean.

She stepped back, drew a breath, and glared at the kitchen cabinets. What had Ren found in the ashes? Patrick had dumped a book in the flames. What if it was not just her car documents, what if there was something else?

Then she saw it—a thumb smudge on a soup ladle. It hung from a hook with other utensils. Isabelle tipped out a small brass key into the palm of her hand. A key! But to open what?

She ran into Ren’s bedroom and went straight to the dresser. The key fit in the locked drawer and turned with a perfect, oiled click. She opened the drawer.

“Oh God.” Her fingers touched the battered cover of a Canadian passport. She knew it was hers even before she checked the ID page. Her driver’s license was there, too, and a wallet with American and Canadian dollars. The credit cards were all in her name, and there was a set of house keys—for where? What was her address? Her driver’s license gave a characterless apartment building on a boring Portland street. Everything about her was nondescript. She was the perfect person to grab and hide away. What were Ren’s plans for her?

At the back of the drawer she found a battered digital camera and another burned book. It was the remains of a handmade journal. An expensive one, and that was what had saved it from total annihilation. The thick covers had protected some of the pages, but most were lost to the flames. The inner cover showed it was a Christmas gift from her aunt Mary, but the last section of the book was the more intact; a few pages were just about legible. Isabelle recognized her own handwriting. The journal entries were chronologically consistent, and ended at a date sometime in the last week or so.

This was her journal, and Ren had salvaged it from the ashes. She had wanted to preserve it after Patrick had carelessly tossed it away. Why was it so important? What did it hold?

Isabelle perched on the edge of the bed and opened the soot-caked covers. It smelled acrid, but she could still make out ash-smudged words on the cracked pages.

13
^th

It’s Friday the 13
^th
today. Do I feel particularly unlucky? Well, I signed the last of the divorce papers and mailed them off to Jaggart, Swartz, and Tresco this morning, and that felt very, very good, if not a little lucky.

Aunt Mary says Paul Jaggart is a “damned good divorce lawyer,” and she should know, she’s used him three times already. She’s being so sweet and support—

15
^th

I am so looking forward to seeing the Old Ironshoe falls. I’ve even packed a picnic. I love spending time with her—so much fun and easygoing. She’s exactly what I need right now. A new friend and such a beautiful person—

Aunt Mary adores her, too, because of Atwell—poorly—

16
^th

—arrived this morning on a massive quad! Fantastic day, we went miles and—Came home and downloaded my photos immediately to show Aunt Mary.

18
^th

—kissed—can’t believe I did that.—as gay!! But it feels so right. As if I have been waiting for this moment all my life. And she is so wonderful. I think I must be—

23
^rd

—acting so strange—we argued because I did not want to visit this lake she insists on going to. I became very upset. I hate it when—cold and distant. Lonesome la—Unpleasant—too intense, and—I feel awful, but she’s acting like she owns me, or something. I told her I was leaving in a few days and said good-by—

27
^th

—glad of the break. Drove Aunt Mary down to the Port Hardy ferry for a sad farewell. I will miss her, but promised to lock up tight and call her when I arrive back in Portland.

I must admit it is nice to have the house to myself for this last night. The full moon is beautiful this evening—

—all packed and ready to go at seven a.m. sharp—the weather looks good for the—

28
^th

—she really lost it, and scared the hell out of me. Glad to get away. What an intense woman, and she was so lovely at the start—

Isabelle closed the journal. There was no more to read, and what little she could make out told a bizarre tale. Was Ren hiding the journal because it showed their troubled past? Why not let the book burn? Eventually, Isabelle’s memories would return, and journal or not, she would remember this suffocating friendship. Except it wasn’t a friendship any longer. Last night she had allowed it to become something else. Isabelle sank her head in her hands. What had she done? It was all such a mess, when only last night it had felt so right. Her
coup de foudre
had collapsed into dust. Last night she had unwittingly flung herself from a point of safety into Ren’s arms. Today, secrets had been laid bare, and she realized she had fallen—heart, head, and soul—into a trap.

She slipped the journal and her passport and papers into her jacket pocket. As an afterthought, she grabbed the camera, too. Her mind was made up. She had to get away. If she stayed, she might well recover all her memories as Ren had promised. And then what? Find she was a captive in the valley? It sounded implausible, but the odds were stacking up against Ren. She had been devious without lying, manipulative under a mask of caring, and if the journal was anything to go by, predatory from the start. Isabelle patted the documents in her pocket, drawing comfort from their presence. They told her she was Isabelle Monk of Billinghurst Drive, Portland, Oregon, USA, and she was twenty-nine years old. It was all she needed. She now knew where home was. She was getting out. Somehow, between float planes, logging trucks, quads, and her own two feet, she was going home.

“I’ve got to go out tonight.” Ren’s arms enfolded her from behind; she buried her nose in Isabelle’s hair and breathed her scent. Standing before the kitchen sink with soapy water splashing up her forearms, Isabelle tensed. Mundane household chores had helped her through the rest of the day while she mulled over her limited options and tried not to fret. Now Ren had returned and she wanted to turn her anger on her and demand to know why she had stolen her journal, and torched her car, and stalked her, and hidden her away in this valley like Sleeping Fucking Beauty. But she also knew if she turned in Ren’s arms not only would she scream at her, she would also be staring into eyes that would melt her like molasses. She wasn’t used to being loved. She could sense it in herself, her awkwardness and reserve, her neediness. If she challenged Ren now she would be easily manipulated because she wanted to believe her. She wanted everything to be okay, she wanted to stay in love, and that was dangerous. A big part of her wanted to believe Ren’s half-truths. It would be so easy to just accept and take the easy way out. She’d come to Canada to end an abusive relationship, and she’d be damned if she was going to sink back into another one. If she blurted out her discovery she would concede an important advantage.

Ren’s scent was knocking her senseless. She had to stand firm and not start the fight she so dearly wanted. Not because she was any less angry. If anything, her anger fueled a need to pound on Ren and bring them both to the floor in a writhing mass of teeth and nails and ripped clothing.

Powerful emotions rippled through her. Ren was hers. How dared she act like this? How dared she try to lock her up, to hide her away like a dirty secret? She gripped the edge of the sink with soapy hands. Ren nuzzled her nape, as if sensing Isabelle’s heightened state.

“I promise I’ll be back by dawn.” Her voice rumbled in Isabelle’s ear, causing the fine hairs on her neck to rise. She shivered.

“Why so late?” she asked. “Do none of the animals around here get sick during the day?”

“It’s a mare. She’s begun to foal and I need the work.” Ren abruptly moved away. Isabelle turned into the space she’d left.

She was fine-tuned to Ren’s elusiveness, and little escaped her now she knew what to look for. The knotted muscles of Ren’s jaw, even the slightest quirk of her lips betrayed her. Her thoughts paraded across her eyes with fanfare. Isabelle read the clues as Ren tightened and twitched before her—a shoulder shrug, a hip slouch, restless hands. Every movement screamed a million messages until Isabelle’s head banged, until it felt she was living inside Ren’s skin. She wondered why she’d never noticed this acute sensitivity before. Now she thrummed with it.

Did sleeping with a person make your nerve endings mesh with hers, your heartbeats synchronize, your skin tingle as if magnetically charged, just because she stood beside you? No, of course not. So why was it that way with Ren?

“Stay with me.” The words were out before she’d barely thought them. She was embarrassed by the plea. What she wanted to say was, “Don’t go. Tonight is important. Curl up in bed with me and make love and tell me about our history. Give me all the missing pieces of our time together, the good and the bad, and I’ll forgive. I promise I will. I know I will.”

“I have to do this, Isabelle.” Ren was awkward and unhappy. “I’ll come back as soon as I can. And tomorrow will be different. Tomorrow will be special.”

“Tomorrow, then.” Isabelle turned back to the sink. She felt Ren hesitate behind her, swore the air moved as her hand reached out to touch. Instead, Ren turned for the door.

Isabelle stood in the empty kitchen for some time looking at her refection in the windowpane. Straggly, dirty blond hair framed a thin, angular face. The swelling had gone down and her bruises were less vivid. She was healing quickly. She concentrated on her eyes, as if scrying secrets from their surface.

I’m no longer numb.
The thought unfurled, and she realized she had been coiled up and frozen in the lead-up to her divorce. Ren had somehow dissolved all that. She wished her journal had been more complete. There had been happiness in those lines, as well as anger and regret. Ren had wooed her out of her numbness. Then it had all gone wrong. Isabelle ached to know what had happened between them. There was such connectivity and yet so much deceit.

“Tell me something new,” she asked her reflection. She ticked off what she did know. She’d come up to Canada to divorce her American husband, visit her aunt, and return to Portland, where she lived and presumably worked. She knew a lot about classic literature. No—she
loved
classic literature, and suspected she either taught or studied it. At least she had money now. A few hundred dollars was tucked away in her wallet along with her credit cards. A dollar for every mile she had to run. All she had to do was take a quad up to the logging road and hitch a lift with one of the trucks heading for Bella Coola. It all sounded suspiciously easy.

And suspiciously not what she wanted to do.

What she really wanted was for Ren to come clean. Running away was her last resort. She had run up here to end her marriage. She could feel it, the relief, the absolute rightness of that decision, but running from Ren—the very thought of it made her feel nauseous. Weak. Out of place in the world.

Had emerging from her amnesia made her form an unnatural bond with her rescuer? Was Ren really her rescuer, or was this another face of the woman in the journal? If so, then Isabelle was in some weird, stalkerish wonderland.