Songbird Cottage

by Barbara Cool Lee

  She said that aloud to Camilla, the way she always did, and Camilla said, "No."

  "No?"

  Camilla came right up in front of her and looked her straight in the eye: "No, Robin. You don't have to be perfect. You just have to be you. You're just fine the way you are. Everyone in this town likes you. Everyone respects you. And some of us even love you. And it's not because you wear the best clothes and speak in the most articulate way and volunteer the most and support the village the most. It's just because you're you."

  Robin shook her head, and the kitten clung harder to her shoulder. She reached a perfectly manicured hand up to steady the kitten. She had fixed her manicure at the office, too, before coming over here. Having a chipped nail was another imperfection she couldn't even let her best friend see.

  She could feel the kitten's purr rumbling steadily under her hand.

  "Go ahead and get your hair mussed and your makeup smudged," Camilla said, as if reading her mind. "You've got nothing to prove to people who care about you."

  "I hear you, I do, but I don't feel it." She put her hand over her heart. "Here. I don't feel it here."

  "You will," Camilla said confidently. "One day you will. You'll just look up one day and say: this is who I am and this is where I belong."

  "Like you did."

  "Like I did. Oops!" Camilla dashed over and grabbed Caleb before he could pour a bucket of sand over the unsuspecting dog's head. She tripped, and the bucket went flying up. She landed on her rear end on the lawn, and the bucket landed on her lap. Upside down, of course.

  "Are you okay?"

  Camilla nodded. "Only hurt my dignity."

  "You sure you're exactly where you're supposed to be?" Robin asked her.

  Camilla looked down at the damp sand covering her from chest to knees. "Yup," she said with a sigh. "Exactly where I'm supposed to be."

  Caleb giggled and clapped his hands. "Do it again, Mommy!"

  Dylan left another voicemail for Junior while he drove his Jeep to the cottage. The guy was avoiding him, and he was getting sick of it.

  Who was the owner of the property? Why had Junior put it on the market at this time? Why had Senior acted so surprised about the whole thing?

  Senior had not just acted surprised, but annoyed.

  And now Junior was avoiding his calls.

  Dylan was beginning to get suspicious about this whole situation. Something felt wrong about it. He couldn't pin it down, but Junior's evasiveness, Senior's surprise, and now Robin almost getting hurt. All of it was wrong.

  Dylan turned his Jeep onto the rutted little Songbird Lane.

  He stopped in the road, then called Junior's phone one more time. It beeped to tell him there was no signal out here. "Fine," he muttered, throwing the phone on the seat next to him.

  He put the Jeep back into gear and drove to the parking spot.

  He wanted to see the place for himself. He'd promised Robin he'd make sure there wasn't too much damage to the cottage. But it was more than that.

  He pulled to a stop and got out.

  "Stay here, big fella," he told Alonzo. He rolled down the back windows, set his cup of water in the cup holder within Alonzo's reach, and the old dog put his head on his paws and went back to sleep.

  Dylan took the path up to the cottage at a jog, finding himself getting more angry the more he thought about it, until he was running at full speed uphill.

  He got to the meadow and stopped, out of breath.

  The cottage sat there in the field, just as before.

  He walked around to the side that faced away from the sea to examine the damage. Now uncovered, the window on the back wall looked like a little round entrance to a birdhouse under the peaked roofline, with its "perch" sticking out so jauntily. He tried not to think too much about Robin dangling from the pole, trying to escape as the smoke began to fill the house.

  The window was busted now, and the shards of hand-blown glass crunched under his feet. He'd have to get his tools from the Jeep and nail the plywood up over the opening again to protect the house from further damage.

  He bent down to pick up some of the caming, holding the gray leaded pieces in his fingers.

  Robin had been frightened for her life, and the thought made him want to punch a wall. He threw the caming down on the ground.

  He walked to the patio side, where the front door stood. An ugly black stain showed on the siding where the fire had licked at the aged redwood boards. Not too much damage. The powdery residue from Ava Kelly's fire extinguisher clung to the surface. He would have to clean that off. Maybe bring his shop vac after he found out how to turn on the power to the cottage.

  He walked all around the building, looking it all over.

  The he pulled the door open and went inside.

  The smoky smell was strong, and he coughed a bit. No fire damage that he could see, but the smoke damage would take some work to clean up. He'd have to air the place out, at the least.

  He took the stairs up to the attic room two at a time.

  She'd closed the door to the bedroom to keep the smoke out. Smart girl. Inside the room the smoky odor wasn't nearly as strong. The room was brightly lit now, with the window all torn away and even part of the lath support for the stucco broken away where she'd pushed out the window frame in her desperation to escape.

  He looked it all over, trying to picture how to repair the damage. The outer wall and inner wall formed a dark pit only inches wide. He shone his flashlight down in there and saw a maze of openings and cross-supports. No way he was going to find the diary she said she'd dropped in there—it must be somewhere inside the wall itself, hidden in a space fifteen feet high and twenty feet across, having bounced around in the wall like a ball in a pinball machine until it came to a rest somewhere deep inside there. He'd look for it later.

  He went back to his jeep and got his tools, then carried the plywood window panel inside and reattached it to cover the opening, this time from within the room instead of on the exterior.

  That would have to do. At least until he had time to do a proper job of replacing the glass.

  Or not. It all depended on whether Robin ended up buying the house. Or Junior gave him permission to fix the damage.

  So he took his tool bag and went back outside, where he put up the original plywood to block the door again, this time screwing it into the door frame with sturdy four-inch screws to make sure. No one should be going inside until they had a chance to do a thorough inspection of the place.

  It was weird, really, he thought while screwing in the panel to cover the door. This was the only place that seemed to actually have fire damage. The smoke had gotten inside, but the only charring was right here.

  He saw a shimmer on the ground and reached down.

  An old glass bottle was half-buried in the blackened patch by the front door. He picked it up, and saw the brush was charred under it, and the charring had spread to the base of the front door. He put the bottle into his tool bag.

  The flames had climbed up the siding and wooden door right at this spot.

  He pulled at the blackened batten next to the door. It came loose in two pieces. He held the black sticks in his hands, and imagined Robin on the other side of that wall, realizing she couldn't make it out past the flames.

  A fire had just happened to start right in front of the door to the cottage. If no one had been here, it could have consumed the cottage, burning it to the ground.

  It was possible that a fire had spontaneously started when an old bottle caught and concentrated the sunlight on the weeds. Right in the spot where it would be most likely to burn the house down and not just race off into the tall brush and run out of fuel when it reached the cultivated fields next door.

  Sure. That could have happened. Sure. It all could have been an accident.

  He threw the sticks across the patio.

  But in his gut, he didn't believe it for a minute.

  "Hey there, Pretty Lady!" Hector said with a smi
le when Robin pulled up to his auto repair shop late that afternoon after dropping the kitten at her apartment.

  He came over and leaned in her open car window. "What's up?" he asked.

  She started to tell him, but then he saw the big red scratch on the back of her hand. "Ouch!" he cried out, and pulled out his greasy rag to pat ineffectively at it. "Are you hurt?" Tears welled up in his eyes, and once again she was touched by his simple empathy.

  "I'm fine," she said. He obviously hadn't heard about her near-miss with the fire, and hopefully that meant the grapevine hadn't yet picked up on the drama. "I just got scratched by my new kitten."

  He smiled through his tears. "That's good. Kittens are good." He stared at her hand. "Even when they scratch. They're good little souls."

  She laughed.

  She got out of her BMW and came around to the front with him. "My car's giving me trouble all of a sudden, Hector," she said.

  "Trouble?" He patted the hood. "No problem. We'll fix it up. What's wrong?"

  "Ever since I drove it on a dirt road this morning, it's been making a squeaky noise whenever I turn the wheel. Something up here—" She pointed to the front wheel on the driver's side.

  He dropped down to take a look.

  That's when she noticed that his wife, Rain, was sitting at the desk in his office. The woman gave her a friendly wave through the window, then took a bite of the sandwich in her hand.

  "Are you having supper, Hector?" she asked to his feet (the rest of him was somewhere under her car by that time). "I can come back tomorrow."

  "No problem!" came the cheery reply from under the car. "You just got some dirt in your wheels. Gonna fix it."

  He scooted out from under the car, then got to his feet, not bothering to wipe off the mess he'd gotten all over himself. "Gotta take the wheels apart. Come on in and I'll get you a loaner."

  "I don't need a loaner. I'm just going to go home and crash," she told him.

  She followed him into the office, where Rain had set up a picnic on his cluttered desk. She'd spread out a pretty tie-dyed purple cloth over the papers, and there were pita breads stuffed with falafel, rice crackers and little carrot sticks with hummus, and various cut-up fruits, all set out on hand-thrown pottery dishes she must have brought from home.

  "I'm sorry," Robin said to her. "I didn't mean to interrupt your meal."

  "No problem," she said, in an echo of Hector's cheerful attitude. "Car trouble's a bummer. But he can help." She looked adoringly at Hector.

  He turned around and caught her expression. His smile grew even more broad.

  Rain stood up. "I've gotta get back to work. I'll leave this with you," she said to Hector, motioning to the picnic. "Eat something," she said firmly to him. She picked up a grape and popped it into his mouth.

  He crunched down on it obediently.

  Rain kissed him on the cheek and left, waving goodbye to Robin on her way out.

  Hector moved the corner of the cloth to find an order pad. He wrote down an estimate for her and she signed it. "You been driving on dirt roads?" he asked. "That's how you get that kind of gunk in your wheels."

  She nodded. "Looking at a property outside of town."

  "Well, I'll fix you up," he said. "But if you're gonna be going out in the country a lot, you should get a four-wheel-drive."

  "Like Dylan's Jeep," she said softly.

  "Yup," Hector said. "Or you could just marry him and use his."

  She looked up, ready with a sarcastic retort, but of course Hector was sincere. He was always sincere in what he said.

  "I don't think so, Hector. I don't think we're in the same place in life."

  "There's only one place," Hector said seriously. "We're all in it together."

  Robin smiled patiently at him. "Is that so?" she said, ready for some of his loopy philosophy. "I'm not sure about that. Sometimes people just don't understand each other."

  "Yup," he said, very seriously. "Nobody really understands each other." He took a carrot stick and crunched on it meditatively. "But you see, it don't matter none. I don't understand Rain. But that's okay. I just want her to be happy, and that's all that matters."

  "That's what Dylan said," she said quietly.

  In the two years she'd been married to Taye, she couldn't remember him ever saying that he wanted her to be happy. Not those words.

  He told her what she should do to be happy.

  He didn't understand why she wasn't happy.

  He was convinced if she would just listen to him she would be happy.

  But he never just simply said he wanted her to be happy.

  In her own way. In her own time. On her own terms.

  Hector smiled that uncomplicated smile at her. "Don't you think that's what we all want? For other people to be happy?"

  "Yes, Hector. I think that's what kindhearted people want most of all."

  Chapter Sixteen

  Robin had gone to bed as soon as she got home, totally worn out by the crazy day she'd been through. Now, after sleeping hard, it was night, and she was wide awake.

  So was the kitten. It wandered around the tiny apartment on its wobbly legs, investigating everything and meowing for its mother.

  She felt a bit wobbly herself after the day she'd had.

  She opened a can of the kitten milk replacer and heated a bit of it in the microwave for a few seconds. Then she managed to get it into the bottle, only spilling about half of the stinky stuff into the sink in the process. "Either I need to buy a funnel, or you're getting weaned soon," she told the cat. The vet had said she'd only need to keep up the bottle feeding for a few days, and then the kitten should be ready to switch to solid food. That day couldn't come soon enough, since it appeared she was going to be stuck with the little monster.

  She wiped up the mess, and then screwed on the little nipple cap.

  After that she had to find the kitten, who had managed to go from being everywhere underfoot to being invisible.

  Her apartment was a studio, and had hardly any furniture in it, yet it took her a good ten minutes to track down down the cat.

  Finally she found it curled up in one of her best Manolos. She gently lifted the kitten out of her brand new houndstooth ankle boots and placed it on her lap.

  As soon as the kitten figured out she had food, the tiny claws started working and it was climbing up the front of her pajamas to get at the bottle.

  "Hold on!" she squealed as the claws bit into her. "There's plenty."

  Soon the kitten settled down to suckling and the loud purr seemed to echo in the little room.

  "All gone?" she asked when the kitten slowed down.

  She got a paper towel and wiped its tiny face, then settled it down on the bed to nap.

  She grabbed her laptop and joined the kitten on the bed to get a little work done.

  The kitten refused to lie down next to her, and crawled onto the laptop keyboard to nest right on top.

  "This is not going to work," she explained to the cat, who just smiled and grabbed at her fingers.

  She set it on the pillow next to her and tried again.

  She managed to check her email before the kitten maneuvered its way back into the middle of the keyboard. The kitten typed "grzlblnk" into a message for a client before it was, once again, plopped back on its pillow.

  "Stay!" Robin told it.

  The cat looked at her and blinked, as if she were insane for expecting obedience from a feline. Then it climbed up the outside of Robin's pajama sleeve onto her shoulder, where it perched, purring.

  "Fine," Robin said. "At least I can type that way."

  So she did a bit more work, with the kitten's purr in her ear and the faint scent of the steak enchiladas wafting up from the shop downstairs to remind her that she still needed to get herself something to eat.

  She checked the time. Great. Santos' Market was closed. All those beautiful enchiladas were locked up out of reach. She set the now-sleeping kitten on the pillow, where it finally stayed p
ut, and then raided her fridge. The tomato from Ava's garden, a frozen whole-grain waffle, and a slice of mozzarella. That would do.

  She toasted the waffle, added a slice of tomato, and then melted the cheese on top.

  Could be worse, she thought, sitting back down on the bed and munching on the surprisingly tasty shortcut version of margherita pizza.

  She found her mind wandering to the little turquoise cottage kitchen. And then from there to Camilla's pink kitchen at the Honeymoon Cottage, and Ava Kelly's farmhouse kitchen with its charming casual vibe.

  It was her turn, Dylan had said. He was right. She was tired of making do, of not living a full life, in her own home.

  The kitten poked its head under her arm in another attempt to get to the warm keyboard. "Tell you what, kitten," she said, picking it up and yet again placing it on the pillow nearby. "We'll get that cottage. And then I'll make a real pizza in my own oven. And you"—she booped the little one on the nose—"can have a warm nest right by the fireplace."

  Her email dinged just as she was closing the app. She sighed and checked it again, figuring it was a client with another demand. But it wasn't. It was Ava, sending her a link to the blog post she'd written about their impromptu brunch. So glad you weren't hurt today, Ava typed. Hope you enjoy the pictures. Let me know when you want to stop by again—will have our first apples of the season next week.

  Robin clicked the link to Ava's website. The whole site was darling, from the little drawings of chickens and strawberries in the header, to the pastel script titles marking each blog post, to all the luscious photographs of everything from food, to animals, to the view from the strawberry field looking out at the sea.

  She sighed. She wanted to live that kind of life. Though she knew Ava edited the posts to show her little world at its best, she included enough realism to keep the blog from being saccharine-sweet. Even the latest post, about their simple tea and crumpet meal, included a photo of a mess from when her dog knocked the jar of cream all over the oak floor, with a caption about not crying over spilled dairy products.