Keeping Katie

by Stella Quinn

  She gave his ears a quick rub. “Not calm, are you, Prince? But calmer. And that’s a win. You ready to get a little closer?”

  She gave Rose a hand signal, and Rose stood up, walked forward a couple of feet, then sat smartly back down again. Prince growled, low in his throat, but he remained still.

  “Progress,” she muttered.

  She worked with the dogs for an hour, and by the time she’d finished, the sun was slanting low shadows through the chain mesh fence.

  Ramon had wandered over from the office and was leaning up against her car.

  “He’s responding well,” he said.

  “Yes, I thought so. I might work him a couple more times with Rosie, then take him on a walk in a public space.”

  “You’re a great asset to the refuge, Katie. We’re lucky to have you.”

  She punched him in the arm. “Back at you, Ramon. These dogs need us all.”

  “Pity we can’t get the donations up.”

  “You telling me I wasn’t a hit in my dog suit?”

  He grinned. “The festival stall brought in lots of donations, which will pay for dog food and vet bills. But we need to think big, Katie. I’d love to move us out of this industrial park and fund us some actual grass. Trees for the dogs to pee on, instead of cement walls.”

  “I know. Still, this place is rent free. It was good of the winery to let us use this space.”

  Ramon gave a nod in the direction of the main gate. “I’m heading out soon; the night watchman is here. You ready to go?”

  “Sure. Sorry, we ran a little overtime today. I’m sorry I can’t get here earlier, but my shifts at work have been kind of crazy lately.”

  Ramon pulled her in for a hug. “You come when you can, Katie girl. I’ll see you soon, hey?”

  “You bet.”

  Katie secured Rose in the car, then slid in behind the wheel and hit the road for home. Full-time traffic controller, part-time therapy dog volunteer…that’s why she didn’t have time for socially awkward spritzers down on the waterfront.

  She was busy, darn it. Not unsociable.

  Chapter 6

  Anton usually ran his four-mile track along the cliff walk at dawn, but Page Seventeen had kept him busy all day, so it was late afternoon by the time he was ready to hunt down his sneakers.

  The crossword was never the problem, it was the agony aunt letters that had him tearing his hair out each week. He’d have ditched that column like a shot if Danny hadn’t put the emotional thumbscrews on him. According to Danny, the residents of Redwood Cove would fall into a decline if they didn’t have a personal letters column to read each week.

  At least he, or Anna Tugoy as he called himself for that part of his page, had a psychology degree in his dim, distant past. As little as he relished dishing out bland answers to zany questions, at least he could dish them out with the mantra of “do no harm”.

  He grinned, thinking how thoroughly his three sisters would roast him if they caught wind of the fact that he was masquerading in a local newspaper as an agony aunt. Being the youngest, he was treated by all three of his sisters as though he was barely competent to use a toaster or change the diaper of one of their growing broods of kids. They’d laugh even more at the thought of all the letters he received addressed to Dear Anna.

  He treated his fake persona like she was a character in one of the books he used to write. In his head, Anna was a mid-fifties spinster with kooky glasses and a head of curls that she regularly dyed a loud, fire-engine red. She ate Tootsie Rolls for breakfast, drank tea by the gallon, and had a regrettable habit of asking her nephews for a selfie when she saw them at Thanksgiving.

  He stopped in town near the end of his run to clear his postal box. Should have bought a bag, he thought, as the dozens of letters threatened to scatter from his hands all over the street.

  He nodded hello to the café owners, who were busy setting up tables and umbrellas for the weekend cocktail crowd.

  It would make a good photo. He pulled his phone out of his running shorts and lined up a row of umbrellas, green and red and orange, blooming along the esplanade like giant flowers. Maybe he could upload it to the paper’s Reel Life account and choose his own Happy Snap for once. Photo by Anton: This photo of the Redwood Cove beach makes me happy because… He frowned. That was the problem, wasn’t it? Was he, Anton Price, happy?

  He’d kind of forgotten what happy felt like, which was probably why he had a slightly unhealthy obsession with sticking other people’s happy photographs in his newspaper column. Sometimes he even scoped out where the photo had been taken and stood there, trying to understand why a place, a view, could inspire happiness in others.

  “Ant, long time no see.”

  He turned at the voice. “Dash, hey. Good to see you.” You couldn’t live in Redwood Cove and not know Dash. Part television celebrity, part hometown hero, he was also one of the few friends Anton kept in touch with.

  “You still hiding out in that cottage of yours?”

  He held up the bundle of letters in his hand. “Keeping myself busy.”

  Dash nodded. “Well, that busy ever translates into a new book, let me know. We’d love to have you on Good Morning Gold Coast.”

  He grinned. “Nice try, buddy.”

  Dash had been trying to get him on that show for years.

  “Seriously, man. We never see you. You can’t stay glued to your keyboard forever; get the next book finished already.”

  It was easier to smile and nod and mutter something about writer’s block than admit he’d lost his mojo. “It’s a slow process.”

  “Too bad. I love those books.”

  Yeah. He had too, once.

  “Got time for a beer?”

  “Next time, Dash,” he promised. He waggled the thick stack of letters. “Better get stuck into this.”

  “Fan mail?”

  He laughed. “Maybe. Bound to see some bills in there, too.”

  “Ain’t that always the way,” said his friend, waving him goodbye.

  Anton’s thoughts spun back to photography as he made his way up the hill. The idea for his Happy Snaps column had come to him when he’d been filling in a long, blank evening scrolling through other people’s social media posts. People—meh, he scrolled on by. Pets, memes, politics, news stories—he scrolled past them all.

  The landscape shots always caught his attention, though. Beach scenes taken here in town, or wilder shots from further along the coast where the Pacific Ocean rolled into steep granite cliffs. Rolling prairies of wildflowers, surgically neat rows of manicured grape vines, the charm of a historic building front framed by maple leaves in the full fire of autumn.

  He found them…soothing. And, boy howdy, was he in a mood to be soothed. His headspace had—he could admit it—gone haywire when his latest book’s plot suddenly seemed to be a script the real world was trapped in.

  The Happy Snaps column on Page Seventeen of the Cove to Coast Herald was the way he’d found to move forward. Readers shared a photo to the newspaper’s Reel Life page, along with a few paragraphs on why that place was important to them and how being there made them feel better. He’d kickstarted the column with a few of his own photos, taken from the walled garden of the restored lighthouse-keeper’s cottage that he’d bought back when his books were selling like hotcakes in every airport in the nation. The sun setting across the bay, the gilded fluke of a whale caught by sunlight as seawater streamed across it.

  He hadn’t had to use his own photos for long, because the column went viral, at least in their town. Turned out, he wasn’t the only one who loved scenic views.

  On his usual dawn runs, he might find himself staring at a bleached log in the corner of a rocky cove and think: Ah! Photo by Amanda: she sat here after her father’s funeral and remembered how he taught her to swim. Or he’d be walking through the older district in town, where the shop fronts were painted in pastel colors and tourists ate ice-cream and exclaimed over the pretty park by the grassy a
rea before the beach, and he’d see an old clock perched in the high brick tower of a municipal building and think: Photo by Peter: married his girl here before she went to the war in Iraq. She’s been home a long time now, but she’s suffered, and they like to come here to feel good and have a take-out coffee on the sand and think about what foolish kids they’d once been.

  He reached the narrow wooden gate set deep within the stone wall that circled his garden and let himself in.

  A beer. A shower. But first, duty. This wad of letters wasn’t fan mail for Anton Price, thriller writer. His agent dealt with that, and since he hadn’t been answering his agent’s calls for months, who knew what was waiting for him—fan mail or hate mail, he wasn’t interested.

  The only letters he got these days were for his new vocation: Page Seventeen in the Cove to Coast Herald.

  He flipped through the mail. Ones addressed to Anna Tugoy he could go through later when his laptop was handy and he was in a mood to read a heap of half-foolish, half-sweet requests like, “Dear Anna, my best friend never offers to buy me lunch even though I buy her lunch every week.” A couple for his crossword column; excellent. There were some keen crossword enthusiasts out there in the community who sent him clues they’d invented. He always used them when he could. A buff envelope with the tell-tale logo of his publisher on the front stopped him cold.

  He should read it.

  He really should read it.

  He took a long breath in, then pushed it out just as slowly. Majoring in psychology at college had only ever landed him one job. He’d barely completed the minimum hours to receive his practicing license when his first book was picked up by a publisher and took off like a freight train.

  But some lessons stayed learned, like how to calm himself the heck down.

  He looked at the envelope for a long, long time. They’d just want him to finish the last manuscript he was working on, another five-hundred-page megabook of guns and bombs and villainous one-eyed assassins.

  No, nope, never. He chucked the letter into the trash and headed inside to boot up the shower. He was a chicken, yes. But he was a chicken who had a newspaper page to write, so he’d better get clucking.

  Chapter 7

  Katie remembered the letter waiting for her when she was midway through slicing up a jalapeno chile to toss in the wok with her greens. She flicked the gas off on the stove, perched on the stool at the kitchen counter, and pulled everything from the envelope.

  The crossword clue could wait…it wasn’t as though she ever worked them out anyway. She opened the folded letter and started galloping through it, a smile on her face. Sure, she could call Veronica any day of the week, but this letter gig they had running was fun.

  Hey there, sis! Grab Page Seventeen. This week’s clue is a tricky anagram. You’ll crack this one, I know you will. Five across…you know what to do!

  How’s work? How’s the house? How’s Rose?

  Anyhoo, enough about you, because drumroll: I have NEWS.

  I have to make a confession first. You know how I told you I moved up to Maple Ridge because of a promotion? Well, that was only partly true. I moved because I had a crush on this guy at work down there in Redwood Cove and I made a fool of myself at an office party. There was a job going at this branch of the bank, so I applied for it.

  I’m sorry I didn’t tell you when this was all happening, but I was too embarrassed.

  But…fast forward eight months and boom! How quickly things can change.

  I’ve met someone. THE someone. I’m feeling so, so good about this, Katie. Like, the luckiest girl in the world. And to think it was Tuna Yango who helped me out, LOL!!! Gotta love the irony of getting personal life hacks from a crossword compiler!

  Call me for the details too juicy to put in print. (*waggles eyebrows up and down).

  Vee xx

  Katie dropped the letter like it was a hotcake and grabbed for her phone. Veronica had been seeing a guy and had kept the news a secret? It boggled the mind. Vee was the chattiest person in the state of California.

  She hit speed dial and waited for her sister to pick up. And waited…and waited. The phone rang out and switched over to a recorded message. She waited for her sister’s voice to stop, then spoke into the phone. “Vee, it’s me. Call me anytime. No hour is too late to share juicy details with your sister. Later.”

  Hmm. She ran her eyes over the page again. Tuna Yango…what on earth? Sounded like a food dish or a South American dance craze. It also sounded weirdly familiar.

  She flicked the gas back on under her wilting stir fry and carried on cooking dinner. Vee would call any minute now and explain all.

  Vee didn’t call. Not that night, not the next day, not any time during the week.

  By Thursday, Katie felt mildly anxious. Friday, she had the day off, so she and Rose spent the morning at the refuge working with Prince. After lunch, she ripped weeds out of Uncle Roly’s flower beds and thought dark thoughts about selfish sisters who left their relatives wondering why they couldn’t return a simple phone call.

  When her weekly letter wasn’t in the bunch of mail Rose collected from the mailbox and dumped onto the sofa, her mild anxiety ratcheted into full-blown alarm. At four p.m. she stopped kidding herself that she was okay and called the Maple Ridge branch of SantaCal Bank, only to learn that her sister had called in to take some personal leave last Thursday and hadn’t been heard from since.

  If she’d had a blood pressure machine, she would have strapped it to her arm and taken hers, because she was so not okay with her sister going missing like this. Personal leave? What on earth for? If she was sick, she’d be in the apartment she rented in the historic quarter of Maple Ridge, so why hadn’t she returned Katie’s calls?

  She’d have to drive up there, and she’d have to do it now. Her shift in the tower started at ten a.m. next day, and Maple Ridge was a three-hour round trip along the coast then up into the Santa Cruz Mountains.

  “Road trip, Rosie?”

  The dog pushed her heavy head onto Katie’s thigh and gave a soft whuffle.

  “Atta girl.”

  She was an hour into the drive up over the mountain pass into Santa Cruz County when she remembered what—or, to be more precise, who—Tuna Yango was. She (or he?) was the compiler of the cryptic crossword Veronica sent her each week. The one she usually ignored.

  Chapter 8

  The brass bell tied to the door of the Cove to Coast Herald offices tinkled, but Anton ignored it. Jules was around somewhere. Or Danny. The two of them loved nothing more than spending the morning chattering over the front counter to some Redwood Cove octogenarian who wanted to put an advertisement in the paper or talk about their new whizz-bang golf-cart.

  Can’t keep up in sport? he typed into the software program that typeset his page. Help is available. Not the cleverest clue he’d ever dreamed up, but he liked to keep enough easy clues in each week to help the beginners crack the harder ones.

  The bell on the counter was the next one to ding, and he sighed, hit save on his laptop, and peered around the filing cabinet and drooping fern to see who was needing attention.

  “Jules?” he called. “Someone out front to see you.”

  He waited, but the usual click-clack of Julie’s needle-thin heels was notably absent. He blew out a breath. Looked like he could add office receptionist to his list of alternate careers now that thriller writing had been kicked to the curb.

  He rose to his feet. “Sorry, no one seems to be around—”

  Oh. The second his gaze locked onto the woman standing at the front counter with a massive, shaggy golden dog at her side, his ability to speak evaporated. This was no octogenarian…and if she needed help driving her golf buggy around the green, he was taking up golf, pronto.

  She was small and willowy, lissome of limb, and her eyes were divine, more than divine…sparkly and greenishly-hazel, and fringed with—

  Whoa. He was sounding like a drunk English poet from a century long, long ago.
Okay, the woman at the counter was a looker, in that girl-next-door way that had been weakening his knees ever since adolescence had kicked his hormones into full throttle. That was no reason to lose whatever was left of his common sense.

  He tried again. “Can I help you, ma’am?”

  “Oh, hi. I hope so. Wait! Is that…a mark on your face?”

  He ran his hand over the slight graze running along his jaw. What was it with women and scars? “Ran into a brick wall,” he said.

  “I know. I was there.”

  She was there? He ran his eyes over her again. The woman in the pretty dress with the even prettier face, bore absolutely no resemblance to the shaggy gray dog he’d bowled over the weekend before. “No way.”

  She smiled, and it was like the clouds parted and sunshine shone for a moment on her, just her. “Sorry again for the, um, bump.”

  He was not sorry at all. If he was a romantic, like Jules, he’d be thinking fate had finally decided to take a hand in his life. Thank heavens he didn’t own any embroidery thread.

  She cleared her throat. “So, um…I’m looking for the crossword writer you employ here, someone named, um…”

  She colored faintly, and he raised an eyebrow. Sure, Tuna Yango was a heck of a nom-de-plume. He couldn’t wait to hear it spill from her pretty lips.

  “Yes?” he said helpfully. “Named…?”

  She cleared her throat. “Tuna Yango.”

  He grinned. Who would have thought throwing in his career for a non-paying job at the local paper would be such fun? “You’re looking at him.”

  Her eyes widened. “You write the cryptic crosswords in the Cove to Coast Herald?”

  “Guilty as charged. Why, am I not what you expected?”

  “I hadn’t— I didn’t— Well, heck.”

  Her blush was as adorable as the rest of her. Her reddish-blonde hair was pulled back in a loose braid, and the pink hair tie she’d wrapped the end of the plait in was a dead match for the color that fanned in her cheeks. He rested an elbow on the counter, suddenly understanding the appeal Jules and Danny found in chatting with customers for hours on end. If he’d had any reliance at all on the milk in the office fridge being within its due date, he’d have offered to make the vision before him a coffee.