Josh sighed heavily.
‘I don’t know how many other ways I can phrase this, Lily. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know why Adam sent you here. Maybe he just wanted to torture me some more.’
His words jerked my attention. A vague blush was now lurking among the stubble as Josh realised he’d given away more than he’d intended with his words.
‘Why would Adam doanythingto torture you? You scarcely knew each other. You met like, what, twice? And Adam wasn’t mean or cruel. He was the kindest, gentlest, sweetest person I’ve ever known.’
If my words were painful for Josh to hear, he hid it well. Although I noticed he was drying a bowl with such intensity he was in danger of removing its pattern.
‘I’m sorry, Lily. I’m sure Adam was a great guy and a good husband.’
I couldn’t be certain, but it sounded very much like there might have been an invisible question mark attached to that sentence. But he had at least apologised.
‘He was. We had a wonderful life together until ... until he got sick.’
A strange resolve seemed to settle over Josh’s features. ‘I reallyamsorry that you lost him, Lily. I know you probably don’t believe me, but all I ever wanted was for you to be happy.’
I could have asked him if that was why he’d angrily told me,‘You’re not meant to be with him, you’re meant to be with me.’But those were words another Josh had said to another Lily. They’d jarred then, and six years later, as they echoed in my memory, they still did. It had been a mistake to come here, and it was one I wanted to rectify as soon as possible.
‘Is there really no way out of this forest? No footpath that could take us back to the road?’
Josh rubbed the back of his neck as though to ease away an ache before shaking his head and reaching for his jacket. ‘You want to leave as quickly as possible – I get it, Lily. Believe me, we’re on the same page here, one hundred per cent. But there’s no way anyone’s getting out of this forest until a tractor drags that fallen tree out of the way. Even if we managed to walk through thigh-high drifts and somehow made it to the road, there’d be no passing traffic to flag down. Even in the height of summer, it’s rare that anyone comes this way.’
I shook my head in disbelief – not at what he was telling me, but at why anyone would choose to live somewhere this remote.
‘What if there was an emergency? What if you had an accident and the power and the phone were both out?’
Josh shrugged as though the prospect either hadn’t occurred to him or was of little consequence.
‘I’m sure I’d survive,’ he said decisively, zipping up his jacket.
I scoped the room, looking for my own coat. ‘I’ll come with you.’
‘Why?’
‘So we can talk some more.’
Josh didn’t bother disguising his sigh. ‘I guess you haven’t worked out yet that my whole reason for going out is precisely so that wedon’thave to do that.’
‘Were you always this rude?’
‘You’re the one who said, “You’re the rudest, most annoying boy I’ve ever met”,’ he replied, parroting the words I’d said to him at the top of the sycamore tree twenty years ago. It shocked me momentarily into silence. He was almost at the door before I recovered the ability to speak.
‘I thought you said you didn’t remember anything about the past.’
‘I lied,’ he said. It was a great exit line, and he looked pleased with it as he opened the back door of the cabin and let himself out into the softly falling snow.
‘You did,’ I said quietly to no one except Fletcher, as I watched Josh trudging through the drifts to reach his workshop. ‘And you’re still doing it. You know exactly why Adam sent me here, and by the time the snow melts and we get out of this forest, you’re going to tell me the truth.’
Chapter Fourteen
Seven Years Earlier
Adam spoke about our first date in his wedding speech.
‘After finally persuading Lily to go out with me, I wanted everything to be perfect, but nothing went the way I’d planned ...’
He wasn’t wrong.
