certainly true.” Gina frowned at the partly shaped fishing fly on her vise, then rummaged in a tackle box full of colored feathers, scraps of fur and spools of thread. “I think I’m going to add some black antennae,” she said. “Something that wobbles a bit.”
“Do nymphs have antennae?” Roger asked.
He crossed the room to the big oak table, the antique lights overhead reflecting on his bald pate with its scant fringe of silver.
“Who cares?” Gina said cheerfully. “Never question an artist. I’m the one who tied the fly that caught your prizewinning trout, remember?”
Roger sat at the table, stirring cream into his coffee. “I remember, all right. Speaking of being busy,” he said thoughtfully, “when do Mr. Colton and his daughter arrive?”
“Next week. At least, that’s when the rooms are booked, but he’s going to be arriving on his own. He faxed a confirmation last week. I gather she’s going to be coming a week or two later.”
“It seems strange,” Roger said. “I mean, booking the patio room just to have it available, even though the girl won’t be here for maybe two weeks. At a cost of more than a hundred dollars a day, too. Isn’t that a real waste of money?”
“It appears,” Gina said, “that money isn’t a problem for Mr. Alex Colton.”
“I didn’t think college professors made that kind of income.”
“Neither did I. But, you know, he seemed so casual about the cost. He was perfectly willing to accept my terms. In fact, I could probably have charged him twice as much and he would have agreed without an argument.”
Roger sipped his coffee and looked out the window at the glowing sunset colors reflected in the waters of the lake. “Well, it’s sure an advantage to have those rooms booked full-time. No turnover. Less work for you.”
“Maybe.” Gina snipped at the colored thread. “And maybe not.”
Roger glanced at her in surprise. “What do you mean?”
Gina selected a bit of black wire, wrinkling her brow thoughtfully. “What if they’re awful guests?” she asked. “What if we find after a while that we can’t stand them, like that Kimmer family last summer, but we’re stuck with them for two whole months?”
Roger grinned. “Remember how Mrs. Kimmer demanded a computer printout of the fat and cholesterol content in every breakfast?”
“And Mr. Kimmer kicked Annabel, and he and Mary almost came to blows over it?”
“And—” Roger grimaced “—the way they kept letting those awful kids of theirs slide down the banisters all the way from the attic, and take their towels outside to play in the mud.”
“Oh, they were a charming group, all right,” Gina said dryly. “That’s my point.” She put the wire down and turned to look at her caretaker. “What if these two are horrible like the Kimmers and turn out to be really disruptive? We’ve never had somebody here for two whole months, Roger.”
“I’m not worried,” he said calmly. “I met Alex Colton and had a talk with him that day he booked the rooms. He struck me as a decent sort of fellow. I liked him.”
Gina was silent, idly flexing her pliers.
“His daughter sounded nice, too,” Roger went on. “In fact, Colton told me she’s a real outdoors type. I was wondering,” he added almost shyly, “if maybe she’d want to go fishing with us sometime. Wouldn’t it be fun to have a kid along, Gina? Somebody young and enthusiastic?”
Gina considered this, startled by the idea. “I’m not sure,” she said at last. “I don’t know much about teenage girls.”
“Didn’t you grow up with a little sister?”
“Sure,” Gina said. “But Claudia’s ten years younger than I am, Roger. She was eight when I left home, and I’ve hardly seen her at all since. It’s too expensive to travel between here and the Maritimes.”
“How long ago was it that time she came out here? Five or six years ago?”
Gina considered. “It would have been eight years, I guess. That trip was my gift to Claudia the year she graduated from high school, when she was eighteen. My goodness—” Gina sighed “—I can’t get over the way the years fly past.”
“Does she still have that trouble with her leg?”
“Not much. She hardly limps at all anymore.” Gina turned to stare out the window. “But it’s taken years of hard work and therapy.”
“What happened exactly?” Roger asked. “I don’t think you ever told me the whole story, just that she’d been in some kind of an accident.”
“It was after I’d been out West a couple of years, when Claudia was ten. I was in Vancouver when I heard.” Gina shuddered. “My mother decided to take Claudia with her for a summer holiday in New England. She’d been driving all day and was exhausted, but I guess she didn’t realize how exhausted. She dozed off on the freeway in Maine and drove under a semitrailer parked by an off-ramp.”
Roger took another sip of his coffee and listened in sympathy.
“It was so awful,” Gina went on. “Mom’s injuries were mostly superficial, but Claudia’s right leg was almost severed just above the knee. They rushed her to the hospital and used all kinds of microsurgery techniques to reattach the nerves and tendons, then did bone grafts to restructure the leg.”
“Wonderful, isn’t it?” Roger said. “What they can do with medical science these days.”
“Oh, it’s wonderful, all right,” Gina said gloomily. “Really wonderful.”
“Gina?” he asked, puzzled.
She met Roger’s gaze, thinking about the nightmare her family had been forced to endure. “My mother’s kind of an absentminded professor, Roger. Not practical at all. She didn’t think to buy medical insurance for herself or Claudia before traveling out of the country.”
His eyes widened. “My God,” he breathed. “So how much did a procedure like that cost?”
Gina brushed a hand across her forehead. “Some of the surgeons donated their time, and we had Claudia transferred back to the Maritimes as soon as she could travel. But the bill for her treatment was already over forty thousand dollars by the time she was moved.”
“Could your mother afford that?”
“My mother could hardly afford to put meals on the table,” Gina said bleakly. “She was about to lose her little house, her teaching job, and any possibility of earning enough in the future to pay for the years of extended therapy that Claudia was going to need.”
“So what did you do?”
“We managed.” Gina stared at the lake. The sun had completely retreated behind the mountains now, and the black still depths of the lake seemed to echo the void in her heart, the aching sorrow and yearning that never went away. “We managed somehow. We all made some…pretty big sacrifices.”
Roger studied her thoughtfully for a moment. “Your sister is a real stunner, as I recall,” he said at last.
“She certainly is.” Gina gathered herself together. “Claudia looks a lot like our mother. I wasn’t lucky enough to get the red hair or the peaches-and-cream complexion.”
“Well, you’re a beauty in your own way, Gina,” he said gallantly. “Red hair or not.”
She smiled at him. “And you’re a sweetie. But I’m realistic about myself, Roger. I know what my strengths and weaknesses are.”
“I’m not sure you do. I don’t know if you’ve ever been fully aware of your strengths.”
Gina