“He’s the one who should be apologizing to you.” He glared at the house as if his worst enemy lived inside. “Bloody fool, thinking he can play God to a messed-up kid and get away with it scot-free.”
“I wasn’t that messed up,” she said, trying to make him smile. Didn’t work.
“I wasn’t talking about you. Let’s go.”
Without another word, Lucy followed Hugo to the house on Clock Island.
Chapter Eleven
Finally, the last of the contestants had arrived. Now this bloody game could begin. Hugo was already counting the minutes until it was over and the house was quiet again. Then he could sit down with Jack and let him know it was time for Hugo to get on with his life. With everyone safely here, he relaxed a little. They weren’t the obnoxious invaders he’d been dreading. Andre was cordial and curious. Melanie, the Canadian, was endlessly polite. Dustin, the doctor, seemed a live wire of nervous energy. And Lucy Hart? As young and slight as she looked, he might have written her off, but she was the only one of the four who’d had the decency to apologize for putting Jack’s entire career at risk by running away to his house. He didn’t realize people still apologized. God knew Hugo certainly tried to avoid it whenever possible.
“This way,” he said, carrying her bag up the cobblestone walkway to the front double doors. He opened the door for her and let her inside.
She shrugged off the coat he’d given her and held it out to him. “Is this yours?”
“Keep it. I have loads of coats. Unless you have a parka in your suitcase, you might need it. Give it back to me later.”
She held it to her chest. “Thanks again.” She looked up, then around, turned a circle under the old stained-glass chandelier that hung in the entryway, and smiled. He looked at her, trying to see the scrawny thirteen-year-old he vaguely recalled. What he remembered most about that bizarre afternoon was his absolute fury at Jack for being so stupid as to encourage a troubled kid to think she had a real connection with him just because she read his books. Didn’t he realize that every kid on the planet thought they were special, that they’d be princes or queens or wizards if the universe hadn’t betrayed them by dropping them into the wrong family, into the wrong house in the wrong city in the wrong world? The last thing those kids needed was to think that some rich and famous writer could and would magically change their lives if they just wished for it hard enough. Poor Lucy Hart had bought into that dream. He hoped she’d woken from it.
Hugo had wanted to be an artist as a kid. He’d sketched and painted ten hours a day, every day, for his entire life before he finally made one single half-decent painting. Wishing hadn’t delivered his dream to him; he’d had to work to make it come true.
“The others are in the library,” he told Lucy. “We’ll get started soon.”
She started to pick up her suitcase, but he held out his hand. “I’ll take it up. This way.”
Lucy followed him into the sitting room. God, she’d really grown up since he’d seen her all those years ago. Pretty girl, he begrudgingly admitted to himself. Brown hair fell to her shoulders in soft waves, slightly damp from the ocean air. Bright brown eyes. Big smile, soft pink lips, and pink cheeks from the cold night air. Jack said she was a kindergarten teacher or something. Did he ever have primary school teachers this young and pretty? Not likely. He would have remembered.
The oak doors to the library were closed. When they reached them, Lucy stopped.
“What is it?” Hugo asked her.
She smiled. “I’m on Clock Island again. This is crazy.”
“Every morning I say the same thing. I don’t smile when I say it, though.” He was joking, but she didn’t laugh. She didn’t seem to be paying any attention to him. Instead, Lucy Hart was in a trance. Or, more accurately, was entranced. Her purse, which was just a canvas tote bag with the words Redwood Elementary and a redwood tree on the front, slipped down her shoulder and landed with a soft thud at her feet as she turned and gazed around the room.
“We have time. Look around if you want.”
“I want.”
Jack’s house could dazzle anyone. It had dazzled him all those years ago. The room, the whole place really, was something out of a Victorian fever dream. Deep purple wallpaper patterned with silver chains and skulls…a ceiling painted the palest sky blue…a large bay window that looked down the hill that led to the ocean, not that they could see it now in the dark…Lucy paused at the massive marble fireplace, a low fire murmuring inside, and picked up a long piece of rusted metal off the mantel.
“What’s this?” Lucy asked. “Railroad spike?”
“Coffin nail,” Hugo said.
She looked at him, eyes wide. “From a real coffin?”
“A hundred years ago, this island belonged to a wealthy industrialist’s family who buried their dead in their own private graveyard. The pine boxes rot, but the nails don’t. Sometimes they work their way up to the surface.”
“And onto the fireplace mantel?”
Hugo took off his coat, tossed it over the back of the sofa. “Jack’s an eccentric, if you hadn’t figured that out yet.”
“‘Jack’s an eccentric,’ said the artist who literally painted himself?” Her tone was teasing. She looked pointedly at his forearms.
He’d rolled his sleeves to the elbows. Both arms, from wrist to shoulder, were covered in full-sleeve tattoos, abstract swirls of paint colors so that his arms looked more like a paint palette than a person.
“He’s an eccentric and I’m a hypocrite,” he said, rather pleased she’d noticed his tattoos. He looked at both forearms, seeing his ink again through her eyes. “Overkill, you think? I blame youth and sambuca.”
“No, I like them,” she said. “Makes you look like you’re made of paint. Paint and pain.”
“I’m made of poor decisions,” he said, though he was impressed she’d intuited the meaning of his ink. Because what was the life of an artist but paint and pain?
Lucy carefully touched the eye socket of the cyclops skull hanging on the wall by the fireplace, a prop from the Disney Channel film version of Skulls & Skullduggery.
“This house is amazing,” she said. “I was so nervous the first time, I don’t remember much of the house.” She studied the wall clock that served as a map of Clock Island, her finger hovering over the times and the little pictures of wishing wells and tide pools…
The Noon & Midnight Lighthouse The One O’Clock Picnic Spot
The Tide Pool at Two
Puffin Rock at Three O’Clock
Welcome Ashore at Four
The Five O’Clock Beach
Southernmost Six
Seventh Heaven Guest Cottage
At Eight O’Clock We Wish You Well
The Nine O’Clock Dock
The Forest and Fen at Eleven and Ten
“How is this place real?” Lucy said.
Hugo shrugged. “Sometimes I’m not sure it is.”
She looked up, eyeing the chandelier curiously. “Antlers?”
“Loads of deer on the island. Even some piebald ones.”
“Piebald?”
“White with spots. They’re rare in the wild, but we have quite a few on the island. Small gene pool. An artist friend of mine in New York uses their antlers to make chandeliers and extremely uncomfortable chairs.”