Tofino Storm

by Edie Claire

  He stifled a sigh, wondering what impression she must have of him. Whatever it was, it must make her nervous. Unlike the married boat captain across the table, who in a matter of minutes had her snorting with laughter.

  “What about you, Jason?” Ben asked in a laudable attempt to reengage him in the conversation. “Ever lose any hair to a nesting seagull?”

  Jason had not. But since a spiny fish had once gotten so snarled in his curls he’d had to extract it with a pocket knife, he told that story instead. His mood improved with Laney’s continued laughter, and he wondered if — aside from Ben’s charms — she was feeling better in general. She’d had no alcohol, per doctor’s orders, but being out of the hospital and away from her troubles had definitely sparked new light behind her eyes.

  As he watched her blossom back into what must be her normal personality, he felt a welcome sense of relief, along with a certain sense of accomplishment. She could easily have died yesterday, but she was going to be all right. He and Ben both had seen to that. With a little help from his friend Dr. Steve, of course.

  He continued to watch her as she talked, her blue eyes sparkling on either side of her enchanting little nose. He still couldn’t figure out why she intrigued him so. She wasn’t what you’d call beautiful. Any number of other women in the restaurant now were prettier than her, sexier than her. But there was nothing amiss with Laney, either. He was sure that under her shapeless clothes lay a hot little bod that was both muscular and athletic. Her naturally blond hair had looked so soft and free blowing in the ocean breeze that his fingers had itched to brush it from her face. And her face… well, it was perfect just the way it was. Cute and fierce. Sparkling with intelligence and — as he was only just now beginning to appreciate — a wicked sense of humor. So what if she didn’t do makeup, much less cosmetic surgery? Laney Miller was a natural. She was herself. She was real.

  And she’s not for you, dude. So cut it the hell out.

  Jason gave his head a shake. Laney wasn’t in his swim lane. A woman like her wouldn’t dip one toe in his pool.

  “What does your wife do?” she was asking Ben. Honest to God, did she have to look at the man like that?

  No “forever girls.” Full stop.

  “She’s an attorney,” Ben answered proudly. “Right now she’s working with an environmental group. Fighting the good fight against ocean pollution, among other things.”

  So if Ben had such an awesome woman at home, Jason thought uncharitably, why was he trying so hard to attract this one? Not that it mattered who Laney was attracted to. She was an interesting new acquaintance, nothing more, and he was totally cool with that. He had lots of platonic female friends.

  Sure you do. And every one of them is married. Ever notice that?

  “My brother works for Fish and Game in Alaska,” Jason interjected, trying to distract himself. “Plastic on the beaches makes him crazy.” As he launched into an amusing anecdote Thane had shared on the phone last week, he made a point of acting relaxed and casual. Why shouldn’t he? Male or female, they were just three new friends, chilling over some burgers.

  There was nothing unusual about that.

  ***

  Laney was feeling so much better, she could almost pretend that her entire hospital stay had been a bad dream. Imagining that she’d taken an impromptu road trip to see the ocean and just happened to run into two seriously great guys in the process was so tempting. Ben and Jason were two of the sharpest, most interesting, and most fun-to-be-with men she’d ever met, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed so hard. Besides which, who knew that something as simple as a hot, drippy burger could make her feel like a whole, functional person again?

  She felt silly, in retrospect, not realizing how little she’d eaten lately. The “bacon” the hospital had served for breakfast was too thick and practically raw, and by noon her head had hurt so bad she couldn’t even think about food. Last night she’d been offered nothing but crackers and Jell-O, and God only knew if she’d eaten anything on the bus or ferry earlier in the day. No wonder she felt debilitated!

  Now, as they waited for their checks to arrive, she felt blissfully sated. The prices in the bistro Jason had suggested were frighteningly high, even after the conversion to US dollars, but she couldn’t begrudge the restaurant its due. With her eyes still sensitive to light, the comfy four-season patio area with its wooden candlelit booths, scattered gas-log firepits, and a heater at every table fit her mood perfectly. The whole local vibe, which seemed to consist of surfing, socializing, and enjoying good food, was a welcome change to her system. She’d enjoyed every offering on the sampler appetizer they’d shared — including the fried squid — and the apple and miso slaw on her burger was to die for. The evening would cost more than she could afford, but not a penny more than it was worth.

  She dug in her purse hoping to find enough cash for a tip at least, but stopped when she remembered she had no Canadian dollars. She would have to use the credit card. Concerned, she made a mental note to check her balance as soon as she got back on her computer. She hated to think how much she had charged on this trip already. But under no circumstances was anyone else paying her way. She’d made that clear when she’d requested separate checks.

  Her phone caught her eye, and she noticed she’d received a voice mail. As Ben and Jason launched into a semi-scientific debate over whether coldwater or warmwater fish were more likely to nibble on humans, she put the phone to her ear and played the message. It was several hours old; she wasn’t sure how she had missed it.

  Hello, uh… this is Dave at Kuntz Motors. I’m afraid it’s like we thought… Laney only half understood the gearhead jargon that followed, but as she got the gist, her heart sank. Wordlessly, she returned the phone to her purse.

  “Something wrong?” Jason asked immediately.

  Laney nodded. And to think she’d actually been having fun for a while. “You were right about my car. It broke down someplace in Vancouver. Apparently I left it at a shop, hoping they could get it running again before I started home. Well, they couldn’t. They say the transmission’s shot, and the car isn’t worth fixing. Basically, it’s scrap.”

  “Tough break,” Jason commiserated. “I’m sorry.”

  “Are they offering you anything for it?” Ben asked. “I hope they’re not trying to rip you off.”

  Laney snorted out a laugh. “Good luck to them if they are. That wreck has been running on borrowed time for months now. I’m surprised it made it as far as it did, since it barely got me back from Oklahoma. Oh, well.” She raised her water glass to the defunct. “Maybe now I can save some money on duct tape.”

  The men laughed, and she laughed with them, even as newfound worries gnawed at her insides. Her joke reminded her of her mother’s car, which she did still have and which was newer and more reliable than her own. But a couple months ago her Gran had backed it into a utility pole, and its rear fender was, quite literally, attached with duct tape. It could be fixed, for a price, but if Laney had no car here, how would she get home? Stringing bus routes together would be a lengthy misery. Flying would mean more stress on the credit card, and she had no idea how long it would take for her mother’s will to get through probate.

  Ben began telling a car story that was probably funny, but Laney was unable to focus. Jason appeared to be listening, but more than once she caught his unusually observant eyes on her. She had enjoyed his company immensely today, and it would be easy to mistake his natural empathy for something more. But Laney knew better. Jason Buchanan was a man of many, many women. Even without the calls and texts he got constantly, she would know from the reactions of those around him. If obliged to guess, she’d say he’d been involved with at least one woman on staff at the hospital, the surfer on the lodge deck, the driver who’d just honked at him in the crosswalk, and — please, how obvious! — their current server.

  Still, she was certain that the eyes that watched her did so with genuine concern. Player or
not, she believed that his efforts to be helpful were sincere. And since she wasn’t in the business of judging other people, why should his record of conquests matter? There was no reason they couldn’t be friends, so long as she kept her own lust in check. He wasn’t considering her for his all-star lineup anyway. She was more like a stray puppy he brought in from the rain.

  “Here you go,” the Barbie-doll waitress chirped, handing each of them a slip of paper in a tray. “I can take that whenever you’re ready.” She stretched out one perfectly polished nail, stroked a leisurely trail along Jason’s scruffy jawline, then winked at him as she turned away.

  Ben, who had been in mid-swallow at the time, let out a queer gurgling sound. Jason frowned and shot a glance at Laney.

  She directed her attention to her bill.

  Chapter 13

  Peck, Missouri, Five Days Ago

  Laney was standing in the kitchen with her coat on and her purse slung over her shoulder when her cell phone rang. She checked the caller and answered immediately. “Aunt June? Is everything okay?”

  “Your Gran’s fine, honey,” June answered, her tone belying her words. “She’s just got herself a little upset about something.”

  Laney dropped into a chair. Last she’d heard from the memory care center, Gran’s first day of limited family contact was going well. The plan had been for June to check on her briefly in the morning, and Laney in the late afternoon. She was on her way now. “Upset about what?”

  “Oh,” June replied, her frustration evident. “It’s that teddy bear again. You know the—”

  “I know the one,” Laney interrupted, her head drooping. She would never forget it, either. As one of her more prominent adult failures, it would likely haunt her the rest of her life. Christi’s requests for her own funeral had been modest and undemanding, the most specific being her choice of items with which to be buried. The first was a small, misshapen baby pillow, sewed for her by her mother in a ninth-grade home economics class. The second was the bear.

  “She’s upset it wasn’t in the coffin,” June explained miserably. “I don’t know why she’s remembered that all of a sudden, but she has. And it’s more than that, even. She wants the thing herself. She made me promise I would look for it and bring it straight over to her. I told her I would, figuring she’d forget about it, but they called me back just now and said she’s been going on about it nonstop. Wandering all over the building, looking under the furniture and crying. They almost had to give her a sedative, she was so upset. She keeps saying Christi will never forgive her.”

  Laney closed her eyes. “What she means is we’ll never forgive ourselves. I know I won’t.”

  The teddy bear had been a gift to Christi from Jimbo on the couple’s first Valentine’s Day. Its deep brown fur was made of a super soft, extra fine plush, its plastic eyes sweet and adoring. In its paws, it held a red silk heart. Laney had admired “Jimbo Bear” from afar throughout her childhood, but he had always belonged to her mother. During the day, he sat with the lopsided pillow at the head of Christi’s bed. At night, both moved to her bedside table.

  “Now, don’t you start that nonsense again,” June said firmly. “Your momma told me and Amy both what she wanted, and we forgot right along with everyone else. We’re only human.”

  But it hadn’t just been a matter of forgetting, Laney thought ruefully. Christi’s final days had been cruelly prolonged, lengthening the interval between her requests and her funeral, and rendering her caretakers both physically and mentally exhausted by the latter. Laney had managed to remember the task by the morning of the service, at which point they still had time to get both items to their final resting place. But when she went to fetch them, they had disappeared.

  “I hate to ask you this, honey,” June continued. “But do you think you could look for it one more time before you head out? They’re doing their best to reassure her, but she can’t seem to let it go. She’s worried someone’s going to steal it or something.”

  Laney sighed. It was her Gran’s paranoia that had set the sad sequence of events in motion. Over the past year or so, the more precious an item was to her, the more likely she was to “protect” it by squirreling it away. A good portion of Gran’s waking time was consumed with looking for things that been misplaced, none of which she remembered hiding. Her wallet would appear behind the toaster; her favorite broach in her sewing basket. The morning of the funeral, Laney had found Christi’s pillow wedged between some sheets in the linen closet. But despite an all-out effort by everyone present, Jimbo Bear could not be found.

  “I have no idea where else I can look,” Laney said with despair. “We went through all Gran’s things again before the move. There’s no way we could have missed it twice.”

  “It wouldn’t have to be with your Gran’s things,” June insisted. “I found her glasses in the ice cube tray once. And your momma told me one time she opened up the fireplace flue and a checkbook fell out! That teddy bear could be anywhere. Next time I get over there I’ll scour the house myself — I just thought I’d call and see if maybe you could get lucky. Maybe if you put some thought into it… last time, you know, we were all in such a tizzy we were just running around like chickens with our heads cut off.”

  “That is true,” Laney agreed, remembering the chaos. “I’ll try to put myself in Gran’s head, see if it helps.”

  June thanked her for her efforts, wished her good luck, and hung up. Laney set down her purse and removed her coat. “Okay, Gran,” she said out loud. “What were you thinking?” She walked up the stairs to her mother’s room. Steeling herself against the grief that still spiked every time she saw its emptiness, she stood over the bed, imagining herself to be Gran. If she wanted to keep a small pillow and a medium-sized plush toy safe, where would she put them? Laney pulled both regular pillows from the bed and took them with her. Who knew… maybe the physical props could be useful. She turned and walked out into the hall.

  Voila. Gran’s first thoughts were easy to recreate, since the linen cabinet was directly across from Christi’s room. Laney opened the door and stuffed the first pillow onto a shelf. The bear wasn’t in the same closet — she had eliminated that possibility earlier. It wouldn’t be quite as easy to hide, since it was bulkier.

  She closed the closet and looked down the hall. The bear had definitely not been in Gran’s bedroom, nor was it in her own or Christi’s. She moved into the much smaller guest room, which was used mainly for sewing and storage. She had already searched it, as had several others. But the floor was cluttered with stacks of fabrics, crafts, and garments waiting to be ironed, and the closet was stuffed to bursting. It would not be that difficult to overlook something.

  She held the pillow in her arms and pictured the teddy bear. Keeping its size in mind, she dissected any pile of loose items large enough to conceal it. Nothing. She opened the door of the closet. The jumbled mess on the floor could be sifted with one foot. No bear. The top shelf seemed unlikely. It was packed tight with boxes from end to end, and Gran wasn’t nearly tall enough to open and stuff a bear in any of them, even if they weren’t already full. Laney turned to the hanging bar, which resembled a vintage clothing shop. Her great-grandfather’s army uniform hung here, as did as his old tuxedo. Two generations of prom gowns. Christi’s wedding dress, which she had wanted Laney to wear someday. A whole bunch of Gran’s old formal dresses and coats, none worn in decades.

  Laney reached out her free hand to unzip the hanging bag that was jammed into the closet’s left corner. She was pretty sure she’d felt around its bottom before, but she tried it again just in case. As a child, she had refused to touch its contents on moral grounds. Gran used the vinyl bag to store her fur coats, none of which she had worn in Laney’s lifetime, but all of which she refused to part with. The musty smell and disintegrating skins still made Laney’s own skin crawl, and she withdrew her hand as quickly as possible.

  A flash of red struck her eye. She dropped the pillow and dove back into
the furs with both hands, spreading the hangers apart. Unbelievable. How diabolically clever could May Burgdorf be? There was Jimbo Bear and his red silk heart, practically at her Gran’s eye level, wedged into the triangle of a plastic hanger, nestled within a collar of fur nearly the same color as he was.

  “Gotcha!” Laney muttered, pulling the bear from his perch. She would feel triumphant if she didn’t feel so stupid. Why hadn’t she found him the first time? If she had, all this upset could have been avoided! I’m sorry, Mom.

  She replaced the pillows where they belonged and carried the bear downstairs. He smelled musty too now, and seemed stiffer than she remembered. But Gran would doubtless be relieved to see him. Laney was pulling her coat back on when she noticed the bear had a thread trailing. She grabbed the string and gave it a tug, but it held fast. When she inspected its source, she frowned. Several inches of the bear’s bottom seam had been resewn. The stitches were of a slightly different color than his fur, and they looked as uneven and amateurish as if Laney herself had done them.

  She hadn’t. Nor could she imagine the bear needing repair, when no child had ever played with him. She gave him a squeeze and noticed the unusual stiffness again.

  Someone’s put something inside.

  She didn’t stop to think who. Or why. She just fetched a pair of scissors and cut open the seam. Her fingers dug into the polyester fiberfill, working upward toward the bear’s center until she touched something firm. The object was about the width of a ruler, stiff, but flexible. Her fingertips grasped its edge and pulled it out.

  She stared. Multiple strips of plastic, bound with a rubber band. Black and brown semitransparent plastic.

  Photographic negatives.

  She slid out one of the strips and held it up to the light over the table. It had individual sections. Each one was a picture, but the light parts were dark and the dark parts light. She stared some more.