by Alice Archer
“What was the question?” My first attempt to sit, to get Kai off my chest so I could take a better breath, failed because I needed the breath to make the move.
“I asked if you wanted to get wet,” the voice said.
“You did not ask me that,” I snapped.
“Feisty, even while being rescued. Intriguing.”
I looked up at the voice for the first time and discovered my vision had gone monochromatic while I slept. Amused copper eyes in a tanned face surrounded by a reddish-brown beard and moustache. Auburn hair, tendrils fallen from a messy topknot. All against a backdrop of gray clouds.
The man’s mischievous expression pulled me toward something I hadn’t wanted in a long while, not since before I met Laura. He made me want to hold my breath and make a wish.
“Cozy ditch?” The man’s eyes twinkled.
“Ditch?”
“Activate more brain cells, Ophelia. It’s going to pour in two minutes, and we have a bit of a ride. Hop to it.”
A fat plop of rain landed between my eyebrows.
“Oh, that landed right on your third eye. You’ve been anointed. Arise!”
“Do we know each other?” I grumbled, too annoyed to be polite.
The man didn’t answer except to hold out a long arm covered with black tattoos of ferns. I didn’t know what to call the tattoo style—tribal art, prehistoric cave painting, and Renaissance masterpiece, all rolled into one. I couldn’t tear my eyes away.
“Drug hangover?” The man asked. “Lost your meds? Escaped a cult? Whatever it is, your first step to a solution is to get vertical.”
It bothered me that the host of the strange reality I’d woken to seemed to think I needed to be rescued, even if I did. I ignored his hand, kept one arm around Kai, and rolled to my side. Poor little fellow. Whatever bothered Kai must have kept him from getting enough sleep.
Without Kai’s heavy weight on my lungs, it was easier to think about what to say. I set Kai on his unsteady feet on the road and straightened up. It pleased me to find out I was taller than the auburn-haired man by a good five inches.
He squatted in front of Kai and said, “Hey, soldier. Want to hop in?”
I moved to stop the man from sucking up to Kai, but my brain blanked when I saw his leg tattoos. His tattoos bled through his pants. Wait. Probably not tattoos, then. A Sharpie hung in a side pocket of his pants. Creative guy. The realization dampened my attraction.
Kai mumbled and turned his head into my stomach, my comrade in crankiness.
I looked around to see how far we’d walked from Mitch’s place. The gravel road extended to the horizon in both directions. Hell, no wonder Kai had needed a nap. He sagged harder against my legs.
Before I could stop him, Copper Man scooped up Kai and set him in a trailer attached to a bicycle.
“This is the ride? In a bike trailer?” I felt too weary to suppress my disdain.
“Yep. Climb in, unless you want to walk in the rain to wherever you’re headed, which can’t be close, ’cause there’s no one out this way but me.”
More rain splatted onto my head. I looked around for any option other than the humiliation of climbing into a tiny trailer to be hauled away like a load of garbage by an artistic hippie, but there was nothing except fresh, damp nature as far as the eye could see. A field of tall grass sloped down to a wall of evergreens. Though I felt weary to the bone, the beauty gave me a jolt of hope. I drew in a slow breath and wondered what bargain I’d have to make with what god to be a king in the country instead of a serf in the city.
I met Copper Man’s amused gaze. He stood beside the trailer with his arms folded, waiting for me to get my act together.
“Uncle Grant.” Kai curled into a ball in the trailer. “I’m cold.”
I shed my leather jacket before Copper Man could untie his sweater from his waist. “Sit up,” I told Kai. When he did, I draped the jacket around his shoulders.
“It’s not far,” Copper Man said. He put a leg over the bike. “Then I can give you a ride in my van to wherever you need to go.”
I squeezed into the trailer, only because my humiliation, like the cold rain, threatened to turn pervasive and bitchy. I just wanted it to be over. Kai huddled between my knees and I hugged him close to warm him up.
“All set?” Copper Man asked.
“I guess.” I knew I sounded like an ungrateful ass, but I was too disappointed in myself and worried about the impending lecture from Mitch to care what a stranger thought of me. As soon as we got out of the rain I’d call Mitch. I patted my jacket pocket, to make sure I hadn’t left my phone in the ditch.
The bike wobbled and slid in the gravel for a few yards. We bounced along at a sharp clip that rattled my vertebrae, heading farther from Mitch’s property. A lone driveway came into view on the right. 24281 Violetta Road, according to a fancy sign hung from a big mailbox. A red flag flapped on a pole beside the mailbox. We stopped long enough for Copper Man to unclip the red flag, stuff it into the mailbox, pull out a green flag, and clip it on.
The creative vibe emanating from the dude exhausted me.
“Almost there,” he said in his clear voice. “You okay back there?”
No. Rain began to seal the shoulders of my T-shirt to my skin. My butt bones hurt more with each bump of the trailer. The driveway went on forever, around curves, up and down hills.
I stared up at Copper Man’s back. He didn’t seem winded in the least. His wet T-shirt hugged the moving planes of his back. I hated him for a moment for knowing how to get things done.
The crunch of gravel, the racket of the trailer, the rush of wind and rain made raising my voice to answer his question seem like too much effort.
As we started up a short rise, the irksome man began to whistle a tune so bright with unwarranted cheeriness it made my skin crawl.
Chapter 6
Oliver
We didn’t beat the rain. I ushered the big grouch and the sad boy into my house, where they dripped on my doormat.
“Hang on. Let me grab us some towels.” I shucked off my boots and trotted across the great room to the linen closet to grab a hand towel for myself and two of my biggest, fluffiest bath towels for my guests. I tried to hand one to the man with the anxious face—who hadn’t stayed on the mat by the door.
“That’s not necessary.” He waved away the towel, as though he suspected it to be disease-infested, then frowned at his cell phone and dripped all over the rug my grandmother had brought over from Italy.
The boy, on the other hand, entered my home fully present and accounted for. He took off the man’s leather coat and handed it to me in trade for the towel, which he draped around his shoulders like a cape, as I’d done with my towel. Mouth open, he turned in a circle to examine the great room’s combined living room, kitchen, and art corner.
While the boy gawked, I hung the coat on a hook by the front door and took my first good look at him. Scrawny. Shoulders slumped under the weight of the world, too much weight for his age. His gape landed on me and bloomed into a grin.
I smiled back and flopped onto the couch.
The boy sprinted to me with no hesitation and sat right next to me, as if all it had taken was one good look at my home for him to know that of course we were friends.
And so we were.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Oliver.”
“My name is Kai. It’s very nice to meet you.”
His earnest formality almost made me laugh. I wrapped his towel around him tighter, indulging my impulse to turn him into a burrito. “Well, what do you think?” I asked.
Kai wiggled deeper into the couch cushions. “I think you have a lot of really interesting things.”
“What else do you think?”
With a happy sigh, maybe from being asked what he thought, Kai said, “You must have a lot of fun in here.�
�
“That I do. Want to ask me about anything in particular?”
“Yes, please. Tell me about that.” He pointed to the corner of the room. “That’s the first thing I want to know about.” He squirmed sideways and studied my face as he waited for my answer.
His haircut and clothes—button-up shirt, chinos with pleats, and leather lace-up boots—told me he wasn’t neglected, at least not in that regard. But his pallor and the melancholy in his soulful eyes suggested there was more to the story.
Kai offered me a shy smile with a lot of love in it, which hurt my heart and made me wish I could keep him and his uncle around a bit longer to figure them out. Maybe to help.
“It’s a stage,” I said with a nod toward the corner Kai had pointed to.
“Like for doing a play?”
I nodded. “My dad and my granddad and I built it when I was ten.”
Kai up straighter. “Really? I’m eleven already.”
That surprised me, and made me wonder how Kai fared at school. Eleven could be brutal for small, serious types.
“Could you show me how to build a stage?” Kai asked.
“I would love to.”
“Okay. But I have to ask my mom.” The joy vanished from his face. “She builds things. She might want to do it a certain way.”
“Well, there are lots of different ways to build a stage.”
“I guess.” Kai pulled himself together. “What do you do on it?”
“Whatever I want to.”
That made the smile bloom again. “Like… make up stories? Then do them on the stage?”
“Yep. Or make things up right when I’m doing them.”
“Oh.” Kai’s cheeks flushed, like that was the best idea he’d ever heard.
I looked again at his clothes. Golf at the country club might not be Kai’s choice for a future. Someone had aimed him toward an adulthood too far off to be that predictable.
“Does it make you feel better? When you make things up on the stage?” Kai asked.
“Indeed.”
With a glance at his uncle, Kai said, “Even if you feel sad?”
Together we watched Ophelia drip on the carpet and mutter into his phone.
“Even if you feel sad?” Kai prompted, since I hadn’t answered.
“Yep. Do you want to do something on the stage now? Do you feel sad?” I was sure the answer would be yes, but Kai surprised me.
“No.” He shook his head and slumped against me a little. “I mean… I do want to play on the stage, but Uncle Grant needs to. Mom and Dad let him stay on our property for a while, but…” The crease in Kai’s pants suddenly needed to be finger-ironed. “I don’t think Uncle Grant has anywhere else to go.”
Grant must’ve heard Kai say his name. “What?” He lifted his head and scowled. “Kai,” he said in a sharp voice. “Get up from there. Right this instant.”
Kai turned to look at me with his brows furrowed.
With a shrug, I said, “I don’t get it either, kid. But you’d better get up. We wouldn’t want Uncle Grant to have a brain seizure because you’re sitting on my couch and we’re having a conversation, would we?” I stood up.
Kai tittered, but stood with me. We faced Grant as if awaiting further orders.
I couldn’t help myself.
“Private Kid and Petty Officer Oliver reporting for duty, sir, yes, sir!” I barked out with a salute. Kai got into the act, straightening up to snap off his own crisp salute.
The disapproval on Grant’s face shifted to something more like loneliness. He huffed. “Oh, for Pete’s sake.” To Kai, he said, “Your dad’s coming to pick us up.”
I tried to catch Grant’s eyes. Big, dark eyes, but not Bambi-big, and not innocent. I watched him examine my home with a frown and a protective hunch of his shoulders. His greasy black hair stood up in the back. Bits of bright grass hung from the backs of his pant legs. Between his eyes, a worried crease pointed down to an assertive statement of a nose, straight except for a slight bump near the top. He was taller than my six feet by quite a bit, with long legs, and muscles that made me think he did a lot of walking. Dark eyebrows scrunched with concern. His untrusting gaze landed on me.
Whatever Grant had seen as he looked around my home had a different effect on him than it had on Kai.
“What the hell is this place?” The question almost sounded rhetorical, like Grant didn’t need me to respond in order to know the answer, and the answer was that I was a nutjob.
Kai slapped a hand over his mouth and said from behind it, “Uncle Grant, you said hell.”
I nudged Kai’s shoulder with my elbow and whispered, “So did you,” which made him giggle.
To Grant, I said, “You must have put on the wrong pair of glasses this morning, Ophelia, if you can’t recognize heaven when you’re standing right in the middle of it.”
“Stop calling me that.”
“I might,” I said. “Or I might not.” It had been a long time—years—since I’d gotten on anyone’s nerves. Or enjoyed it so much. For some reason, Grant didn’t like me, and that thrilled me. Strangers didn’t often stumble into my corner of Vashon Island. Especially not ill-tempered specimens I yearned to paint pictures of. I hoped Grant and Kai lived on Vashon at least part of the year. Maybe then I could persuade them to visit again.
“Do you want something hot to drink?” I asked.
Grant shook his head, his face hardened in a staunch no.
Ah, well. Maybe it was for the best. The man would be a prickly project for sure.
“Suit yourself,” I said. “But if you hadn’t wanted me to give you a ride, why didn’t you call Kai’s dad from the ditch? You’d be the same amount of wet.”
Grant was almost out the front door by then, his hand on Kai’s shoulder blades to rush him. Without turning, he grabbed his coat from the hook and muttered, “Took me a while to wake up.”
“Keep working on it,” I called out.
The front door closed with a bang, leaving a whirlwind of barbs in the air.
I smiled, satisfied with my work.
Too hungry to change out of my damp clothes just yet, I started in on the baking project I’d planned, humming around the kitchen as I gathered what I’d need.
All the while, ferns in a rogue ray of sunlight shifted along my arms. In my imagination, I overlaid colors and tweaked shadows and lines to pose the ferns over a weary man and a mournful boy asleep in a stream.
Sadness and sunshine.
Dark. Light. Dark. Light.
Chapter 7
Grant
I shut the door with more of a slam than I should have, considering the guy had tried to help us. I paused, but decided it didn’t matter. That guy, for all his helpfulness and interesting looks, rubbed me the wrong way. So what if he thought I was a brute. I’d be on a ferry within the hour, getting up my nerve to ask Mitch to ask Sonya if she needed help at the construction site.
A review of my nonexistent construction site skills gave me a stomachache.
Kai stood on the covered porch and stared out over the driveway. He must have heard the faint clatter from inside the house, because he dashed over to peer into one of the windows facing the porch. After a moment, he smiled and waved.
When I’d looked up after talking with Mitch and seen Kai smile as he cuddled beside the weirdo, I’d felt… stuff. Suspicion. Jealousy. Attraction. Humiliation.
I was a mess.
I’d been too focused on assuring Mitch we were okay to take in the room until I got off the phone. Eccentric artist summed up the decor, with an addendum of bulldoze it.
Outside, I felt safer and less overwhelmed. Until I realized the eccentric artist decor extended outdoors. Sculptures studded the driveway and the yard. If Copper Man’s home was the result of being creative, it was good he lived in the coun
try on an island. In the real world, where I had to earn a living, he would stand out to a dangerous degree. I tried to imagine him in downtown Seattle on a weekday, with his excess of hair and his Sharpie tattoos. If he walked into the copy shop—probably to ask us for something so unusual and complex we’d have to… I didn’t know what. Send him away unsatisfied. Or get creative ourselves.
The circular nature of my internal rant whirled me into thin air and I turned to look at Kai, who’d put my coat back on. I dug through the coat pockets to find my wool cap and tugged it down over Kai’s head.
His grateful smile drew me down to squat with my back against the house between two of the windows. I drew him close and put my arms around him. The cautious breath I drew against Kai’s frail back didn’t make me cough. In spite of the pile of steaming crap the day had delivered, and more crap to come when Mitch arrived, air flowed in and out of my lungs nice and easy. My exhales bled tension from my shoulders.
For a few minutes of silence, I studied the sculpture of a giant wooden chainsaw in the middle of the driveway roundabout. Perhaps the sculpture was ironic. The sorry state of the high hedge beyond the roundabout made me wonder if it had been trimmed in Kai’s lifetime. The combination of untamed yard, well-cared-for house exterior, and in-your-face art made my brain whimper.
Kai shuffled his feet. “You didn’t have to be mean to Mr. Oliver.”
“I wasn’t mean.” I reviewed my interactions with Copper Man, whose name was apparently Oliver, with more attention. “Okay, so I wasn’t as nice as I could have been. But he was mean too.”
“He wasn’t.”
“Sure he was. He kept calling me Ophelia.”
“He was teasing. He was nice. You were mean. And I liked him.” Kai must have had enough of my attitude, because he took a small step forward, turned to face me, and folded his arms over his skinny chest. The arms of my coat flapped like seal flippers.
I wasn’t mean. Even the voice in my head sounded defensive. I tried harder to find traction for my stance, but spun out, which left me right where Kai already knew me to be.
“You’re right,” I said. “I was mean to him.”