The rebuff leaves me stunned for a moment, staring at Douglas’s retreating back.
Gavin follows Douglas inside before glancing back at me. “You coming?”
“Flirt?” I whisper-yell.
He grins widely.
The man was goading me again. Fooling me. Trying to set me up for failure? No, that seems unlike him. Pulling my leg would be a more apt description. It seems more reasonable to say hewas setting me up for a joke. The man is a kidder. I bet hethriveson April first.
If they do April Fools’ Day here. They do, right?
“Yer letting the heat out,” Douglas shouts.
I scurry inside and close the door behind me. It’s dim, the fire in the living room and two small windows providing most of the light. A lamp is lit behind a deep green patterned sofa and matching chair, and the rug on the floor is a similar tartan to Douglas’s bonnet.
It’s smaller than Gavin’s house and fits the word cozy a little better, too. Picture frames line the stone mantel and a dusty trophy sits off to the side, grimy with neglect.
“Grab a seat. I’ll just be a minute,” Gavin says.
He’s leaving me here with the grump?
He must sense my panic, because he leans in. “You two will get on fine. Same temperament, the pair of you.”
“We can start a Scrooge convention,” I mutter.
“Yousaid it.”
The awkward level in the room rises as he takes a step away. “Gavin, I can help you,” I whisper. “I’m a good assistant.”
“You don’t want to. Trust me.” He nods toward the door between the living room and the kitchen like that should explain what he means. Shockingly, it doesn’t…until he opens the door and disappears down a set of stairs using a flashlight to guide him.
I busy myself looking at the photographs on the mantel. Douglas and his wife are featured in quite a few of them, with what I’m guessing is his son. “Your family is lovely.”
Douglas grumbles, situating himself in the green chair and lifting his feet onto the stool.
“Is this your wife? She’s beautiful.”
“Sasha. Aye. She’s been gone twenty years.” He frowns, looking at the fire. I’m beginning to think his face is permanently set in that expression. He reminds me of the old man inthe movieUp,if the cartoon face was longer, more oval and less square. Same bulbous nose, same frown.
“That sounds hard.”
“Hard is a boy who never comes home,” he counters.
“That sounds hard too.”
Douglas doesn’t seem to have a counter argument for this. Something about his grumpy attitude makes me want to win him over, but I know it’s impossible in the five minutes I’m going to be here. I search the photographs for common ground. Douglas is fishing in quite a few of the shots, or holding up various dead fish. The trophy at the end is for the 2004 Glenbruar Gala Day Biggest Catch. Well, the only things I glean are the award is two decades old, and he caught a really big fish to get it.
Maybe now’s a good time to tell him I absolutely loathe seafood. We’ll be instant besties.
“It looks like you’re quite the fisherman,” I say.
Douglas says nothing.
Tough crowd.
I can hear Gavin tinkering around in the basement, probably lighting the boiler, whatever that means. The water heater, maybe? What else would he need to boil if it wasn’t water?
Douglas has written me off, which doesn’t feel great. I’ve been trained, but even without my schooling, it’s not usually hard for me to draw people into conversation. I take stock of the room around me. I already know the man is lonely, his son has all but abandoned him, his wife died twenty years ago, and he’s spent his entire adult life in Glenbruar, perhaps longer. He loves to fish, and he’s a curmudgeon. It’s a fair amount to go on.
