Return to Eagle Cove

by M. L. Buchman

(Tuesday)

  “She emerges.”

  “Go jump, Natalya.” Okay, maybe she had lost Monday afternoon to Greg being absolutely lovely to her. And maybe, after they’d both slept for a while, she’d spent a fair portion of the night doing her best to give back as good as she’d gotten.

  And maybe there’d been a quick round during breakfast—kitchens seemed to fire up Greg’s imagination; hello, he’s a chef. no big surprise. It had made an incredible finish to the make-up sex. And she was going to pretend that it wasn’t only people who were dating or were couples who had that. After he headed to the restaurant, she’d slept another few hours. They hadn’t spoken, not much. Which was just as well because as good as her body felt, her brain was still mostly mush.

  “Let’s see,” Natalya took a piece of paper off the nightstand. “Your mom won the pool.”

  “What pool?” Jessica started digging in the drawers for a fresh t-shirt. All Greg had were chef ones and for some reason she’d ended up wearing the fuzzy face of the Muppet’s Swedish Chef declaring “Kiss the Chef!” Jessica had kissed Greg—very much had—which made it seem appropriate when she had pulled it on. But now it conveyed a degree of coupleness that was uncomfortable with. She felt like a story element out of its proper context.

  “Well, you didn’t give us time to make a pool on how long until you got back together. Instead we took bets on how long you two making-up would last.”

  Jessica stopped with a t-shirt in her hands that said: I’m a journalist! To save time let’s just assume that I’m never wrong. She shoved that one hard into the bottom of the drawer and found an old Northwestern University t-shirt to wear instead. Once properly protected from complete ridicule by being clothed as herself once more, she turned back to face her grinning cousin.

  “My mom bet on how long Greg and I would spend in bed?”

  “She nailed it within twenty minutes. Aunt Gina thought that you’d try to slip in before dawn so that you didn’t technically spend the night. Bluebird was always a romantic and bet you’d play house for another day.”

  Jessica flopped onto her unused bed, face down into the pillow. The coolness of the not-slept-on Wonder Woman linens only emphasized her heated cheeks. So much for not feeling farcical. “What was your bet?”

  “You don’t want to know,” Natalya sounded like she was gloating.

  Jessica sat up enough to reach out and grab the piece of paper before Natalya could stop her. Across the top in bold letters she’d written: When will J. reemerge? ($5 to enter.) There were a dozen names with dates and times. Her dad even. And names she didn’t even recognize that might be guests at the B&B.

  Maybe she could get a flight back to Chicago tonight. Too bad the antipode of Eagle Cove lay somewhere deep in the Indian Ocean or she’d go there to be as far from here as possible. NASA really needed to get the whole flights-to-Mars things going…now.

  Down by Natalya’s name, rather than a day or time, she’d simply written: Never!

  “What the heck, cousin?”

  Natalya shrugged. “I’m on your side. And I can always hope.”

  Jessica planted her face back into the Wonder Woman pillow.

  The high whine of Vincent’s table saw made speech mostly impossible this afternoon and Greg was thankful for it.

  He’d started the morning feeling high as a kite. The thoughtlessly complete welcome he found in Jessica’s arms had blurred the last twenty-four hours into a single, very pleasant memory with a thousand little highlights. The possibility that he might have the chance to wake up day after day to discover Jessica wrapped about him had been a vision of the future that overwhelmed him. The sex had been fantastic, but it was the holding and companionship that were rapidly becoming his favorite aspects of their relationship. He’d never imagined her as the kind of woman who snuggled, but she absolutely was.

  There had been so little time for talking. He had the sneaking suspicion that was the important part and he’d better be careful not to neglect it.

  Throughout the Judge’s breakfast service, he’d pondered that more and more.

  He’d promised to think about her problem but then proceeded to not be able to focus. The trouble with thinking about it was that he knew nothing about journalism. He was one of those people who actually knew almost nothing about the news. Other than restaurant reviews, if Jessica Baxter didn’t write about it—and her niche was special interest not world news—then he knew squat about it.

  He fetched boards for Vincent from the stack and caught them as they came off the saw with a nice forty-five degree bevel down their length. A quick flip and another cut for a double bevel. Goggles and heavy earmuffs made for safety but prevented most conversation.

  It was a real problem talking with Jessica at all when the other option was getting his hands on her.

  “Are you covered for all of this lumber if the client flakes?” Greg shouted in between cuts. There was thousands of dollars of hardwood stacked here and weekenders were notoriously unreliable customers.

  “They paid half of labor up front and all materials on their account, not mine. Forty percent on installation and the last ten percent on acceptance.”

  Greg shot a thumb’s up and went for another piece of oak. Clearly Dawn had negotiated the contract no matter how unhappy she was about what it was doing to her family life this summer.

  Actually, he and Jessica had talked plenty in between bouts of sex, but it was all about the past and the Judge’s offer to bankroll the start of his restaurant. None of it was about the subject of her future…a topic she seemed to be avoiding.

  Did journalism work like the Kriegson’s contract ? Half up front? He’d wager not. Especially not for a freelancer like Jessica. She’d started full-time at the Chicago Tribune, but had become a stringer since then. He’d tracked down her writing in a dozen different places, but even that seemed to be tapering off.

  A chef who had a restaurant paid his employees first, his vendors second, landlord third, and then prayed there was enough to pay himself. The good restaurants could always do that. Feeding people was steady work. Focus on your people and the menu, he’d been told by any number of chefs, then the rest works out.

  “Yo!” Vincent shouted at him and Greg got back in motion. Staring at the lumber wasn’t helping Vincent.

  None of that would be of any help to Jessica either—just staring at the problem was useless. But there had to be some way that she could get paid up front, even half.

  He picked up another length of 1x6 oak and delivered it to Vincent.

  “Since when do moms have nerves?” Jessica asked and the whole group started laughing.

  Knitting was a serious business in Eagle Cove and anyone who could get away met at the Lamont B&B’s verandah Tuesday and Friday afternoons, or in the period-decorated parlor when the weather was less friendly.

  Her mom was all in a fuss over wedding details that clearly had nothing to do with the details and everything to do with a barely controlled state of panic.

  “Just wait until it’s your wedding, young lady. Then I dare you to be calm about it.”

  “Double dare you!” Natalya jumped right in.

  It was lucky that Becky was out doing deliveries today. Jessica wasn’t in the mood to face a triple dare.

  Tiffany stopped knitting on her Fair Isle leggings long enough to hold up three fingers. Triple dare! At least Tiffany’s name hadn’t been on the sign-up sheet for the Jessica-and-Greg betting pool. Jessica sighed, she’d probably only missed it because she hadn’t come down out of her woods while the pool was running. Tiffany returned to her knitting and Jessica did her best to follow her example.

  “Your mother is right, dear,” Mrs. Winslow patted Jessica’s shoulder. “I was a complete wreck. Of course I only did it the one time.” She aimed an arch look at Jessica’s mom who appeared completely oblivious to it.

  “It’s hard to imagine you being a complete wreck.” Mrs. Winslow was more of a Rock of Gibraltar type of wom
an.

  “Oh, it turned out well enough, but on the day of, I would have taken a one-way ticket right back into Saigon even if the war had not been over by then.” She’d come to Eagle Cove almost straight from reporting on the Vietnam War and married an older retired-Navy man who taught junior high math. Her two boys had been finishing high school by the time Jessica and Natalya had reached Mrs. Winslow’s class and Jessica only barely remembered them from occasional visits home.

  She let the conversation move on without her as she focused on her knitting. A stripe of butterscotch gold and another of light woodland green. She had plenty of scarves and had traded in her long straight needles for four shorter double-pointed ones to start again, because you could never have too many pairs of thick warm socks. Once she’d started knitting again it had come back easily. Anyone could make a pair of socks—though she might need some help remembering how to turn the heel. She wasn’t too proud to ask; she’d just sneak a look in Aunt Gina’s Vogue Knitting book the next time no one was around. It had meant pulling out a dozen rows of scarf but a woman was allowed to change her mind, wasn’t she?

  Change her mind.

  Like her break-up, make-up, wake-up with Greg Slater. She froze as she recognized the pattern of her last few days. Please, someone tell her that she wasn’t like her mother.

  She glanced at Monica Baxter. Having given control of the wedding meal to Greg, she was now worrying about the rehearsal dinner. Just a judge’s civil service wedding on the B&B’s lawn. Get a grip, Mom. Gina had offered to do a big BBQ for the dinner, but because Greg had gourmet sliders on the main wedding menu, Mom wanted to change everything Aunt Gina had planned for the rehearsal.

  Jessica turned back to her scarf-turned-socks and focused as hard as she could. Chatting was usually one of the joys of knitting. Except when doing a tricky section or detailed lace work, her hands could run along mostly on autopilot allowing for other enjoyments like conversation. But now she was trying to avoid both the conversation and her own thoughts and the sock was not providing the haven she so needed. She was out of the gold ribbing, which had at least offered an alternating knit-purl for a minor distraction, but now it was just a dozen rows of knitting green in a circle without even a purl in sight.

  Change her mind.

  Why was that thought sticking around? Like maybe she should change her mind about being a journalist.

  She dropped a stitch, then saw that was because she’d dropped one on the prior row. She tried to pick up the dropped stitch in the prior row and only managed to cascade the loss back another row.

  Jessica stilled her hands, rested the whole thing very calmly onto her lap, but wasn’t paying attention to the needles. One of them had only a single stitch on it—you never let go of a needle in such a state. There wasn’t enough yarn friction to hold it in place. The needle slipped out, dropping yet another stitch in the current row, and fell onto the porch without making a sound, which was odd. There should have been a bright Ping! drawing all attention her way. Leaning over, she couldn’t spot where it had fallen.

  She glanced at Tiffany, who of course again hadn’t missed anything. She pointed straight down. Jessica looked again by her feet, then Tiffany pointed downward more emphatically. Jessica eyed the dark gap in the old porch decking—too narrow for even a stiletto heel, but big enough for a single knitting needle if it fell perfectly.

  “Swish,” Tiffany said softly.

  Jessica stared at the narrow gap once more. She hadn’t climbed under the porch since she was a little girl. It was a dim, cool space filled with garden snakes, old cobwebs, and—at least it was easy to imagine no matter how unlikely—zombie corpses. She looked around, but there wasn’t a single small boy running around the yard that she could send in after it. She gathered her knitting, losing another three stitches in the process, then pulled the three remaining needles out. She snapped the ball of yarn off with a sharp tug and then threw the sock disaster into Aunt Gina’s rose bush.

  Tiffany looked sympathetic.

  Natalya just roared with laughter.

  Greg felt a close kinship to the abominable snowman by the time Dawn and the twins returned from the beach. The sawdust that clogged every pore was brown rather than white—maybe he was more akin to a sasquatch.

  They both were.

  He and Vincent were coated in a thick layer of wood shavings, sawdust, and a half dozen of the inevitable splinters until their hair, face, and clothes were all of a common oak-dust color. Even the white dust masks looked more like furry Chewbacca muzzles. Vincent tugged his mask down around his neck and tried to hug his wife, who kept him at fingertip distance with a firm hand in the middle of his chest as their lips brushed together.

  To balance the scales, Greg pretended he was a goggle-eyed monster and began chasing the twins around the yard with roars on his part and eardrum-shattering giggles on theirs. He finally caught them and gave himself a big shake like a wet dog, completely coating them in sawdust. Soon they were having a sawdust-ball fight with the thick piles that had accumulated under and around the saw. Fistfuls of sawdust flew back and forth—exploding into fine clouds just moments after they were thrown.

  One of the twins caught Dawn on the behind.

  She turned one of her fierce scowls on the girls and then on Greg. It was enough to cow them all into silence. One of Dawn’s strict rules for her husband’s furniture making business was: No Sawdust in the House.

  Ever so calmly, she reached out and gathered a large handful of shavings from the backside of the table saw’s fence.

  Greg prepared himself for disaster.

  Instead, she eased up to Vincent, laying against him and guaranteeing that her front would be coated in dust. She wrapped him into a kiss and just as he leaned in, she rammed her fistful of shavings down the back of his pants eliciting a yelp of surprise.

  Dawn jumped back, leaving three moderately clean spots where her chest and hips had pressed against her husband. Vincent however had other things to concentrate on as he danced and shook his legs trying to shake the itchy shavings out of his pants.

  Greg had just started to laugh, when he felt two much smaller hands at his back. They found just enough slack in the back of his own belt to dump fistfuls of sawdust down the back of his own pants.

  The twins!

  He spun as they rushed away, laughing as high and fast as chickadees.

  “Yow! That really itches.” In moments he and Vincent were doing similar dances to clear out their underwear. Vincent had already opened his pants, holding them wide with one hand and digging out the sawdust with the other.

  Itching too much to be embarrassed, Greg did the same and began digging great scoops of shavings out of his underwear. How could so much have fit in two such small hands?

  He heard a car door slam hard in the opposite driveway.

  He turned in time to see Dragon Winslow standing by her car and staring at them. She looked such foul daggers that he was surprised they didn’t fall down dead.

  Oh perfect.

  Then Jessica climbed out of the passenger side and grinned across the street at him.

  He tried to close his pants, but instead they slipped out of his fingers. As he reached for them, Dawn gave him a sharp shove. His fallen pants trapped his ankles. Greg fell over sideways and was lost in a puff of sawdust.

  Greg decided that he’d just stay here. His best option now was to lie still and wait for the fall rains to come and wash the sawdust and his embarrassment down the ditch and out to sea.

  “That boy, really?” Mrs. Winslow asked Jessica once they were inside, but there was a glimmer in her eye that said it was at least partly a tease.

  Jessica looked back out the living room window. Greg and Vincent were both down and now being inundated by the three McCall women. Then Dawn discovered a large garbage bag that must have included previous rounds of sweepings. With the twins’ assistance, she dumped it over the two men, then walked off around the house—quickly, a very tactica
l retreat—waving the girls ahead of her. Probably to hose themselves down in glorious victory.

  “That boy, really,” Jessica replied, perhaps a little more dreamily than she’d intended. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t a reply she’d expected from herself at all.

  But she and Mrs. Winslow had sat in the car and watched him playing with the twins. It was clear that the girls loved him. It was also clear what an incredible father he would be. He had a good mind and a great heart. Who knew?

  “I wouldn’t worry, Mrs. Winslow,” she turned from the window because she didn’t want to keep seeing where her thoughts were going. “I’ve never found a man worth keeping for long.” But if there was one—

  She absolutely was not going to be completing that thought.

  “Best be calling me Marjorie now or I will have to start calling you Ms. Baxter and we have both been through too much to start that.”

  “Thanks, Marjorie.” It felt wrong on her tongue, but it warmed her through. Mrs. W—Marjorie was like the Judge; her merest presence commanded respect. Being on a first name basis with her after all these years was a mark of approval or acceptance that affected Jessica more deeply than it should for a thirty-two year old worldly woman.

  Marjorie led her back into the kitchen. At the end of Tuesday knitting, she’d invited Jessica home for dinner with a simple, “Time we talked a bit and it will be a nice change from eating alone.”

  Throughout the meal prep she kept Marjorie on the topic of her early years in journalism. She hadn’t taken a journalism degree and then simply flown into Saigon to begin filing stories from the front lines as Jessica had always pictured.

  “I was working at the Chicago Tribune,”—one of the main reasons Jessica had applied to Northwestern University in Chicago and also applied to the Trib—“when the son of my editor was killed. She was in such agony, knowing nothing of what happened, that it was tearing her apart. I finally filed for an assignment to go get some hard facts and maybe we would get a couple of good articles out of it. I never found out more about her son, but I spent three years filing from there. Just as in any new job, I began with human interest stories, but things happen fast in a war zone. Soon I was reporting from forward bases and camps.”