I noticed the tension in his shoulders. He reached out, opened a second cabinet, took out a second jar of coffee, and set it rudely on the table. It was exactly as it had been when I bought it the morning before. His things were in the next cabinet over. He must have put them there when he got in at night. That explained the noises that woke me.
But I couldn’t say I was sorry, so I turned around and hurried out, sitting on the sofa, unsure of what to do. Outside, the storm was raging mercilessly, but it was nothing compared to the hurricane inside me. I was frustrated. I wanted to go home.
I closed my eyes and concentrated on the plinking sound coming from the roof. Then I heard a thud. Slowly, I opened my eyes and saw Trey walking up the stairs. On the table, he’d left a steaming cup of coffee.
Now I felt guilty.
The hours passed with agonizing slowness. There was no thought of going out, and inside, there wasn’t much to do. I had fled Montreal so quickly that I had forgotten to bring anything to read—justAnne of Green Gables.
I tried to satisfy myself with the one book I did have, but I knew every word on every page and could even recite them in my mind, so I closed it and left it on the table.
Trey never showed himself again that morning. Only at midday did he come out to get some lunch. Whenever he appeared, I scurried off to the furthest corner of the house. We played this cat-and-mouse game all afternoon, not even bothering to try to be cordial. When night fell, our cold war had turned glacial.
After dinner, I lay down in bed and covered myself with the comforter. The temperature kept dropping. It was hard for me to believe it was late August. My head was starting to hurt, I felt something drilling into my brain, and finally I went down to the living room to get an aspirin from my purse.
Trey was kneeling in front of the fireplace. He’d lit a fire, and I could just feel the heat from where I stood. The flames glowed orange on his face, drawing out shadows and making him look slightly cruel. He turned his head to the side. There was something deep and firm in his stare. I held his eyes for a moment, but then I weakened and gave up.
I was nervous as I crossed the room to the chair where my purse stood. I felt around for the pill bottle and went to the kitchen for a glass of water. On the way back, I tried to pretend he wasn’t there, buttoning up my sweater, shivering. I was freezing.
“Harper, this is ridiculous.”
I stopped on the first step and turned around. Trey was looking at me with an expectant, almost anxious expression as he rubbed hischin and stood. His presence took up so much of the room that I felt I could hardly breathe.
“We’re acting like children. You obviously have a problem with me, and I don’t like the situation we’re in any more than you do. But this is how it is, okay? We’re going to be stuck here until the storm lifts, and it’s up to us not to turn the hours we have left into a living hell.”
I hated to admit it, but he was right. “So what do you suggest?”
“I don’t know. Let’s at least try to pretend we don’t want to kill each other every second of every day. You avoiding me like I have a contagious disease kind of gets to me, if I’m honest.”
“You’re doing the same.”
“Dammit, of course I’m…” He stopped himself. I guess he was trying to calm down. “You’re right. But look, it’s cold and we still don’t have power, so why don’t you stay here by the fire and we’ll try to act civilized?”
He sounded sincere, so I replied in a whisper, “Sure.”
Trey sat on the sofa, and I settled down as far as I could from him and watched the fire. As the minutes passed, my mood fluctuated between tension and anger. This was, without a doubt, the most uncomfortable situation I’d been in for as long as I could remember. The fire was crackling. Trey was shaking his leg nervously. Each second that passed was like an eternity. At last he sprang up and said, “I’m in the mood for a tea. You want one?”
Before I could respond, he’d vanished into the kitchen. A few minutes later, he was back and setting two cups down on the table. I shivered with disgust as he fell back on the sofa. It was one thing to put up with us sharing the same space. It was another to have tea with him like we were the best of friends, when I had to bite my tongue not to scream at him like a banshee. “I don’t want any tea.”
“Don’t drink it, then.”
My thoughts were a raging river, and the air was thick with tension. This was no good for either of us, so I decided to break the silence. “Are you staying here for long?”
He looked at me askance. I didn’t think he was going to respond, but then he shrugged.
“It all depends on how long it takes.”
“On how long what takes?”
“We’re planning an addition. Scott wants to renovate the house. But he doesn’t have the blueprints—apparently the only ones that exist are at the government offices on the island here—and I need them. We also need to check the state of the foundation and the retaining walls to see if the project is viable.”
“If that’s true…”
“Are you calling me a liar?”
“All I’m saying is, if that was true, Hayley would have said something to me. The idea was that I would get some alone time here.”
At that moment, briefly, I saw interest in his face, a desire to talk that he immediately snuffed out.
