Free Rooms: A Novel by James L. Rubart

feet under where it belongs? You’re setting me up. Rick is setting me up. Archie is setting me up. What do You want from me? What does that house want from me? I have a life. One I love.”
    He stopped. What was the point in lying to God?
    “Fine. Maybe Seattle isn’t perfect, and maybe I have lost part of my heart, and maybe You’ve got something going on down here that will help me, but I don’t think I want it. I know I don’t want it.”
    Enough introspection. He stood and jogged back to his house. Tomorrow he’d wander into town. Meet a few normal people. Have a few ordinary conversations.
    At least that was the plan.

CHAPTER 10
    Saturday afternoon Micah strolled into Osburn’s Ice Creamery on Main Street to order two scoops of frozen bliss.
    The girl behind the counter dug out a double portion of Cookie Dough Hunk for the customer ahead of him as he breathed in the sugar-sweetened air and waited for his turn.
    Micah glanced back and forth between the comics on the wall—some new, some faded from years of entertaining tourists with a taste for Rocky Road and Chocolate Chip Mint—and the girl with shoulder-length dark walnut hair. A wayward strand draped across her eye. Tiny dimples set off her genuine smile perfectly. Beautiful.
    She was quick with the ice cream and quicker to share a smile with the tourists on their way to a cold sugar high. “Hi. What can I get for you?”
    Micah gazed out the window and watched the tourists meander down the sidewalk, thinking about how radically different this world was from the one back in Seattle.
    “Ice cream! Anyone up for ice cream today?” The girl pretended to call out to the whole crowd before turning back to Micah. Her smile filled the room.
    “Sorry. Yeah, ice cream.” He looked into her eyes and saw laughter behind them, then glanced at her left ring finger. No gold.
    “What flavor is calling to you today?”
    “Pralines and Cream, definitely.”
    “Ah, he goes for the slightly plain ice cream with just enough flavor to avoid the ‘vanilla’ label.” She brushed the hair away from her face, but it drifted back down.
    “Do you always give personality profiles to people based on their ice cream choices?”
    “Only when they’ve just returned from a foreign land in their mind.”
    He smiled inside. This girl had wit.
    She dug out a huge scoop of Pralines and Cream and packed it down tight. “New in town?” She handed Micah his scoop on a waffle cone and winked.
    “Aren’t all the tourists?” He handed her a five-dollar bill over the top of the Plexiglas ice cream case. She took it, bumped the cash register with her hip, and the drawer opened.
    “You’re not a tourist.” She gazed at him with the hint of a challenge in her double-shot espresso brown eyes. He waited for her to explain how she knew that, but she reached into a register overflowing with Georges and Abes and handed him his change without comment.
    “And what, Ms. Sherlock, is your first name?”
    “Watson,” she said with a twinkle in her eyes but no smile on her lips. “But I only let my friends call me that.” She turned to the next person in line and asked for his order.
    Micah eased over to the side of the cash register. “So how’d you figure out I’m not a tourist?”
    She started working on a triple scoop of Strawberry Cheesecake for the next customer. “Most of the tourists stay the weekend, a week, maybe even two. Then they go home. So since you’ve been frequenting these parts for six or seven, I figured you were down here for more than a few pictures.”
    Micah blinked. “And you know I’ve been here off and on for seven weeks because . . . ?”
    She glanced at him, one corner of her mouth turned up, but didn’t reply.
    “You the owner?” Micah took the first bite of his ice cream.
    “No, why do you want to know?” She looked away to make change for a Vanilla Fudge Ripple customer.
    “Well, I feel I have an obligation to let him know—”
    “Let her