into a corner. He surrendered to the swirling forces but held his ground. He wanted to see what was being kept from his sight.
To his left, a flickering light darted in and out of the shadows. It didn’t move closer, and he had to wonder if he was being watched. Spirit guides often appeared to lurk beyond reach.
A whoosh of energy made him gasp. A white gold cloud appeared. He squinted at it and focused with all his might. Summer materialized. She was sitting at a small table under a window. His heart pulsed with joy. Just as beautiful as he remembered, there was also the air of something different about her.
Fighting through the fog, he moved closer and looked harder.
He sensed exhaustion.
And bliss.
There was also sadness.
What was she doing? His vision narrowed. On the table in front of her was a smallish book. The blank page hinted it was a journal. She held a pen with a showy crystal on one end. Arnie recognized the blingy writing implement. Ali collected things with diamond accents—she had several diamond topped pens in the cup on her desk.
Summer covered a page in scribbles. He tried to catch what she wrote and drew, but all he saw were doodles of flowers and a sneaker.
Wait. What? A sneaker?
Trying with all his might, Arnie zeroed in on the page. The shoe she’d drawn was covered in geometric shapes. A pulse of heat started an inferno in his gut. And then his world tilted. In a flourishy script, she wrote his name and wove heart tendrils around the letters.
Wherever she was and whatever she was doing, he remained in her thoughts and in her heart.
The scene faded, and he was yanked so violently his head snapped back and forth. The flickering light he was sure represented his soul guides accompanied him until the moment he violently slammed back into his body—rocking the heavy Adirondack chair.
He sat forward, gasping for air. His head swam, and for several seconds, he worried about blacking out.
Coming from the house behind him, screams of laughter squelched his visions. The pre-wedding festivities were still going strong. He looked at the fire. The flames were gone, and all that was left was a pile of embers.
In ways that made him uncomfortable, the fire seemed to be commenting on his life.
She’d avoided the scrapbooking craze until motherhood changed her outlook on the pricey hobby, and a new mom she met at the clinic showed her how to score fifty percent off and buy one-get one coupons to fund the creative diversion. Now she was a devoted scrapbooking queen.
Closing her cheap laptop and switching off the printer, Summer placed a few of the pictures she printed in an envelope affixed to the inside cover of a pink and white album.
“Looks like I might have to slow down,” she murmured. Maybe documenting every day of her daughter’s life was a bit much. Lynda asked why she felt so strongly about it, and she’d reluctantly admitted a part of her was positive Arnie would one day come, and she wanted to share the wonder of parenting with him from day one.
Did this make her a fool? Or was she simply childishly and romantically naïve? In all honesty, it was hard to tell.
Pushing aside the crafting hobby, she reached for her journal and the ledger she used to keep track of essentials. Just because she was living a lie didn’t mean her real life was forgotten.
Using the ribbon bookmark, she opened the ledger to the current page and immediately sighed when reminders of her time in Santa Barbara hit her full in the face.
Without her knowledge or participation, Cy and Reed quietly let the lease on her apartment end. She discovered what they’d done only after her brother was forced to tell her all her belongings were transferred into a storage space under his name. And that wasn’t all. Shortly after Ari was born, there had been activity involving her credit report from an unknown source. He was keeping a close eye on her finances and was less than thrilled to discover someone poking around her business. The thought was deeply unsettling.
By now, the ruse of her having gone on a cruise with friends was over. Anyone with a functioning brain could see she’d flown the coop. If Arnie ever went looking for her, he’d find a fake cousin and little else. Now, he wouldn’t even find that much.
Losing another tie to the past sent her mood straight