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He took a deep breath and got in his car and backed out of the garage. As he approached her car, she turned left.
He watched her car disappear around the corner before he took out his phone. The screen came alive, showing Zoey’s unanswered question:
Do you miss Mallow Island?
That had always been such a complicated question to answer because of how closely it was tied to his mother. He didn’t miss her. But he missed Frasier. He missed the way sugar seemed to float out of every open door on Trade Street. He missed trying to find fiddler crabs with a flashlight on summer nights. He missed being able to drive around without GPS because he knew every road by heart. He missed the good things. He thought the job at the Rondo would give him a taste of himself again, but he knew now that he was never going to find himself here.
He’d left too much of himself behind.
And now he just wanted to go home.
Chapter Sixteen
The Dellawisp turned into a construction zone overnight, which surprised everyone who woke up that morning to a cacophony of hammering and sawing and the bright scent of newly cut wood. Zoey stepped onto her balcony, Pigeon zooming out with her to see what was going on. She looked down and noticed that Mac and Charlotte had already emerged from their condos, looking as disoriented as Zoey felt. Charlotte had drawn a robe around her. Mac’s red hair was muted with a coating of what Zoey assumed was cornmeal.
They each stared, disbelieving, at the tunnel of plywood and scaffolding being erected through the garden.
Frasier was in the thick of it all. He had a tool belt around his waist and was helping to hammer up a sheet of plywood, his long white beard swaying against his chest with every stroke. He had a bird on his head, but the rest of the dellawisps were swarming around angrily. The construction workers kept ducking away from them and giving each other faintly alarmed looks.
“Frasier!” Zoey called. He didn’t hear her, so she called again, “Frasier!”
He finally turned to look up at her.
“What’s going on?”
He smiled. “It all came together overnight. There wasn’t time to call you.”
“What came together?” she asked, confused.
“I arranged for renovations on Lizbeth’s place to start sooner than I told you they would. It’s on a fast track, so it’ll only be about five days of work. Sorry about the last-minute change.”
“Why the rush?” Zoey asked.
“Oliver called yesterday. He’s coming home!”
Zoey’s brows shot up. “Really? When?”
“He didn’t say. But I want the place to be ready for him.”
Mac called from his patio, “I hate to tell you this, Frasier, but I think you missed the mark by several feet.” He pointed across the garden. “Lizbeth’s condo is over there.”
Frasier laughed, a full-bellied laugh, more joyful than Zoey had ever seen him. It altered the entire character of the man. This, Zoey thought, is what loving someone must do to you. It changes you completely. “No, no. This is just a temporary shelter to keep the birds from attacking everyone as supplies come in,” Frasier said, getting back to hammering.
Well, it was a nice theory. But once the tunnel was completed, the dellawisps hopped inside and chased the workers anyway. Zoey spent the whole day watching the spectacle.
But the novelty of this new development at the Dellawisp grew old very quickly. In fact, the only person who remained consistently happy with it all was Frasier. He got to work earlier and stayed later, supervising the work on Lizbeth’s condo and overseeing the installation ofthe new keypad gate lock and the security camera in the parking lot. For everyone else, the noise every morning was a rude awakening, and remained pervasive throughout the day. Mac and Charlotte had work to escape to, but Zoey was stuck in the chaos without a car or a job, joined by an invisible bird who was even more cranky than she was. Even the initial thrill of the news of Oliver coming home was diminished when Frasier told her that it could be weeks, or even months. He wasn’t sure.
Every day after lunch Zoey would leave to visit Charlotte at the trolley tours just to get away from the construction. When she and Charlotte got home, they would check out the progress being made at Lizbeth’s place before Frasier locked up. Every day there was something new to marvel at—snowy white drywall, sinks with elaborate fixtures, shiny appliances, glass-paned cabinet doors.
“I wonder who’s footing the bill for all this?” Charlotte asked one day. “Surely not Oliver.”
“I don’t know. Frasier? He seems very fond of Oliver.”
“Who knew he had this kind of money?” Charlotte said. “The mystery of Frasier deepens.”
As promised, most of the larger, noisy work was completed by Friday. There was only painting and detail work to be done, which Frasier said he was going to do himself. So the tunnel was deconstructed and hauled away.
Then, on Saturday morning, Zoey finally got the call that her car was arriving from Tulsa.
