Keepsake for Eagle Cove

by M. L. Buchman

  These were somehow the opposite. Here were two very different artists painting with a common emotion in a common theme: a deep love of Eagle Cove. He’d never seen them before, yet the art looked familiar…and then it clicked in. They had joined their talents to paint the big mural in Becky Billings BlueBird Brewery.

  He’d never been an art collector, that was one of his mother’s things. She’d buy exceptional pieces of art and then loan them to the Art Institute as long as they were prominently labeled with “On Loan from the Private Collection of…” But he might have to buy one of these before he left town. Something to remind him of this place. Maybe a second one to give to his mother as a family peace offering once he was less angry at her. If that ever happened.

  Behind him, the big plate glass windows were still dark with the morning. Ahead was a six-stool counter and a big service window back into the kitchen.

  Gina had told him last night that someone had called to set up a six a.m. meeting at the diner. She’d declined to say who, though of course she had to know. The women of this town were conspiring to make him crazy.

  He’d tried drawing the plans for the renovation up at the lightkeeper’s cottage, but it had been wet and chilly these last few days. When he tried to work at the B&B, Gina had hovered. The library, his usual retreat in Chicago, was called the Wolery here (after Owl’s home in Winnie the Pooh, the seat of all wisdom in the Hundred Acre Wood), but was only open Tuesdays and Saturdays from two to four.

  For something to do, he’d spent most of the last two days ripping out the interior plaster. It had cracked with age. When he’d discovered there was no insulation behind it and the wiring was all turn-of-century (and not the most recent one), there’d been no further question: it had to come down. The problem with straight physical labor was that it left him far too much time to think.

  And Tiffany had offered him a kiss and a hug better than any lover, and then evaporated into thin air. No one spoke of her in her absence. No one thought her invisibility was strange. It didn’t bother anyone except him, and it was making him completely and totally—

  “I thought you might want some help,” Mrs. Winslow sat down across the table from him.

  “All I’m doing is mucking out at this point, stripping walls and so on.” He was currently working under a local contractor’s license, a relationship that Gina had arranged with EC Contracting. He hadn’t met with the contractor yet—and couldn’t read the hieroglyph that passed for the signature of whoever had pulled the permit, except for an N at the start of the last name—but it didn’t matter while he was still doing tear-down work. At some point he’d have to meet whoever owned Eagle Cove Contracting and make sure they saw eye to eye on quality and design. He shrugged, “Not that big a job.”

  Mrs. Winslow stared at him blankly while Greg delivered a menu, only to him.

  “Aren’t you eating?” Devin didn’t want to be the only one eating at the table.

  Mrs. Winslow nodded, “My usual if you please, Greg.”

  Devin stared down at the menu and ordered the first thing he spotted. “Western omelette, but without the onion.”

  “Nope,” the waiter gave him a smile.

  “Nope?”

  “Nope. You order it and the Judge cooks it however he wants,” then he winked. “Hasn’t changed the menu in the six years since he retired from judging. Except the waffles, but they’re back now.”

  “Okay,” Devin sighed. Who was he kidding? He wasn’t going to get another chance to kiss Tiffany again. The way things were going, he’d be glad to just see her again before he left town at the end of the summer. “With the onions is fine. On the side I’d like—”

  “Nope,” Greg again said with that smile.

  “No options there either,” Devin could feel his own smile starting up. “Is it okay if I put sugar in my coffee?”

  “Sugar in your coffee, yes. You put ketchup on Dad’s eggs and you’re outta here.”

  “Deal.” Which left him once more facing Dragon Winslow. He’d heard the nickname only the once when Vincent had called her that, but it fit. If he wasn’t careful, he’d be saying it aloud.

  The bell on the back of the door tinkled.

  Dragon Winslow didn’t even turn. “Over here, Hector.”

  “Just let me get my crossword,” a tall, spare man in his sixties with thinning silver hair riffled through a copy of The Oregonian by the front door and brought one of the sections over to the table.

  “Morning, Maggie. Hi,” he held out a hand and offered Devin a crushingly powerful grip. “I’m Hector Jackson.”

  “Yow!” Devin did his best to shift his own grip to take the unexpected squeeze, but he was too little too late. “Devin Robison.”

  “Heh! Love doing that to young folk,” he told the Dragon as he sat down. “Can’t let them think that old people are, well, you know, Maggie.”

  “Old?” Devin offered.

  Which earned him a cheerful, silverware rattling thump of agreement from Hector. Dragon Maggie Winslow gave him a chilly look. But he noticed that she offered Hector a smile just a moment later.

  “Well, as I was telling…” he hesitated to make sure he chose the proper honorific, “…Mrs. Winslow.”

  A darting, dark-eyed glance told him that she hadn’t missed his hesitation and probably not what was behind it either.

  “I’m still tearing out the old interior. The plaster is too brittle and what’s behind the walls needs a lot of work.”

  “Never worked on a house before. Wasn’t exactly planning on starting now.”

  “Then—” Devin stopped in confusion.

  “Do you sail, Mr. Robison?”

  “Sure, I’ve been out on Lake Michigan a couple of times in a sailboat. Though usually on my family’s—” he bit that off “—power boat.” Chicago Master Constructors, Inc. kept their ninety-foot motor yacht for entertaining at the family dock during the summer. In the winter, it was driven out through the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway down to the Caribbean for entertaining top clients there. It was the only real travel he’d ever done, hopping the company jet down to the boat, and he hadn’t done that in years. Oddly, the Oregon Coast looked far more foreign than a Caribbean island viewed from the sweltering deck of the big yacht.

  “Stinkpotter,” Hector and the Dragon exchanged smiles.

  “What?”

  “Boats that need engines aren’t boats. They’re floating pots that make a stink. It has to have a sail, buddy, or it’s not a real boat.”

  Devin couldn’t help but smile as he imagined how his father would react to the slur; he loved his yacht more than his wife, and probably more than his mistress. Thank heaven these people knew nothing about that connection. There was no more than a shared last name with CMC’s CEO to link him with one of the biggest contractors in the Midwest. And at the moment he wished there wasn’t even that. DR Builders was his own firm, even if he’d left it in his foreman’s hands for the summer. He liked it that way.

  “I believe that you need to fix that,” the Dragon was still talking to Hector.

  “Fix what?” Devin had missed something while watching the approach of their breakfasts. He could only goggle at the omelette slid in front of him. It was a four-egger, overflowing with red and green bell pepper, cheese, and sautéed onion. And the sausage and ham in the omelette apparently hadn’t been enough meat, because there was a healthy serving of farm patty sausage and hash browns on the side. He wouldn’t be hungry for a week if he could even finish this thing.

  Dragon Winslow’s and Hector’s portions were significantly smaller.

  “Dad knows that contracting is hungry work,” Greg explained. “He also appreciates the runway work you did for his wife.”

  Devin turned to wave his thanks to the Judge, but only received a level gaze in return. He could imagine Peggy and the Judge trading that exact expression back and forth across the dinner table—mutually unreadable. Except perhaps to each other?

  �
�You’re looking at his thanks on the plate.” Greg shrugged as if to explain that was typical and was gone again. Devin kept an eye out on the next couple of services as the diner was over half full despite the early hour. His meal was all out of proportion with the still generous servings that were sent out to other tables.

  The Dragon was watching him.

  “What?” Devin had lost the thread of the conversation.

  Hector was the one who answered, but continued talking to the Dragon. “Won the Judge’s respect his first week in town. Hard to do.”

  “Peggy walked Devin’s new road above Gina’s. She said it was respectably done.”

  News to Devin.

  Then the Dragon turned to face him. “Nine o’clock on Sunday. Be at the docks unless there is no wind.”

  Devin had been here long enough already to know how unlikely that was. Wind appeared to be one of the constant features of the coast.

  Then something shifted in her stern face. The Dragon faded and for the first time he saw deep tenderness that he’d wager she revealed to few.

  “I think, young man, that you should bring that girl with you on Sunday. If anyone can coax her off her mountain, I suspect that it is you.”

  “Sunday?” Devin wondered what possible power he had over Tiffany. Or what strange insight did Mrs. Winslow have that he didn’t? “She’s invisible. I might not see her before then.”

  “Oh, I would not worry about that. She never misses Friday knitting. Now, Hector,” she picked up her fork, “what is the first clue on your crossword puzzle this morning?”

  Devin spent the early part of Friday afternoon loading debris into his truck so that he wouldn’t miss Tiffany’s passage down to the B&B for knitting. He was white with plaster dust by the time he was done but he’d seen no sign of her. The tiny nails in the lath strips had caught his clothes and skin, tearing holes in the former and leaving him scratched and scraped. It stung, but it was also comforting in its familiarity. Demolition of plaster was a familiar part of renovating older homes.

  He checked the trailhead before leaving for the dump, but there were no new footprints coming out of the woods.

  On his way back from the dump, he pulled into the B&B, ostensibly for water and an energy bar, though he had both in his truck. He didn’t know how he’d speak to Tiffany in her circle of friends, but he had to at least see her.

  In complete contrast to the damp morning, the afternoon was warm, almost hot, and the breeze still. The knitters sat out on the porch. A quick scan—no Tiffany. No empty chair with a pile of elaborate “anti-trip” knitting resting on it, awaiting its mistress’ return.

  Then Mrs. Winslow looked up from her own knitting and spotted him. With pursed lips, she shook her head ever so slightly. It was impossible to miss the look of concern, which slammed him from cheery to fearful.

  He scrambled back to his truck with the barest of courtesies and headed up to the lighthouse. The fact that she was obviously a very capable woman did nothing to turn aside his fear. A bear got her. Or she’d broken a leg and couldn’t get up. Or…

  Devin slammed the truck to a halt close by the woods. He rummaged among the tools in his truck and grabbed a crowbar for defense before plunging into the woods. After the first dozen paces he was hopelessly entangled in the low, dead branches sticking out from the Douglas fir trees. They broke off easily enough, which said that Tiffany had never passed this way.

  He traversed back and forth, looking for some sign. On his third try, he spotted a footprint on a muddy spot among the ferns and branches that littered the forest floor. Once he turned onto the track, he could see a clear passage, but not before. It weaved and veered, but it led in the right general direction for the overlook above the lighthouse meadow.

  The shadows jumped at him. A squirrel, far smaller than the big grays of the Chicago parks, chittered at him angrily from where it clung upside-down, far up a tree. Birds scattered away in front of him as if he was hunting them instead of a missing woman. He scanned side to side, at first for signs of Tiffany, then also for signs of bears as he plunged deeper into the woods—he kept his crowbar at the ready.

  The forest was bewildering. He’d thought he had a feeling for it from driving through it and working alone at the lighthouse meadow. But nothing prepared him for walking beneath its canopy. The sunlight, almost hot in the still meadow, was a shadowy memory. The occasional glistening shaft would pierce down to illuminate a few square feet of moss, growing on a fallen log, but even that was shadowed by splayed branches. Looking at the sunny spots was a mistake as it darkened the rest of the forest.

  Trees soared upward to bewildering heights. The lower branches sported little greenery, leaving bare trunks to reach forever upward. Smaller trees struggled in the darkness. Ferns grew around fallen trees. Some of the fallen had tipped their roots with them, exposing labyrinths of twisted roots and shedding soil two or three times his own height. At one that looked fairly recent, he looked to see if Tiffany lay beside or partly under it. The trunk ran for a hundred feet or more off into the distance; smaller trees were flattened to either side by the blast zone of the giant’s crash.

  No Tiffany. He hurried on.

  He was moving so fast that he almost ran off the cliff at the overlook. It was a narrow ledge over a hundred-foot fall. Not that narrow, but enough to stop him cold. And she passed this way every day?

  Devin had walked the ironwork on plenty of his father’s skyscrapers but hadn’t felt as exposed as he did at this moment. The sweeping hundred-and-eighty-degree view took his breath away and the hundred-foot fall into Terra Incognita nearly took away his nerves. He edged around the curve until he once again picked up the trail.

  And now his goal was clearly in sight. A neat area the size of two city blocks had been carved into the wilderness—ten acres or close enough. Much of it was in meadow. But a circular building with a pointed roof was tucked up against the far trees. It was so incongruous that it took him a moment to identify it as a yurt, which he’d only ever seen in photos of the Mongolian nomads. Near it lay a massive garden laid out in neat rows behind a tall fence. There were a few small outbuildings that looked like garages. A large set of solar panels stood on the south slope. The view, he looked over his shoulder, was a massive south and west vista of untouched wilderness backed by ocean.

  He wondered how much help she had tending to it. Some man who took care of it, and her?

  No.

  Not with the way she’d kissed him. He refused to believe that someone who was two-timing him, like his ex-fiancée, could have kissed him like that. Rebecca Monica Monash of the Winnetka Monashs certainly never had.

  Devin hurried down the trail. It plunged back into the forest but was far better groomed on this side of the ridge, as if she had nothing left to hide. A wide lane of tamped earth let him move quickly. In a few places, logs had been chainsaw split and buried flat side up as steps. A small bridge crossed an active creek rushing down a narrow gully from somewhere higher up in the Coast Range mountains.

  The woods ended abruptly, practically launching him into an open meadow. And there he nearly flattened her.

  Tiffany yelped in shock as a man burst out of the trees. He was filthy, his clothes torn, his face looked as if some woman in her last desperate moments had dragged her nails over his skin, and he held a weapon high in one hand.

  Her past had come back!

  Somehow it had found her here in what she’d always thought of as her maiden’s mountain fastness, safe from the cruel world.

  She dropped to the ground, beside the hole she’d been digging, and huddled there in the dirt.

  Her final thought was how appropriate it was that she’d dug her own grave.

  “Tiffany?”

  She kept her head covered, waiting for the blow, the inevitable crashing slap her stepfather had so loved before the true horror began.

  “Tiffany?” This time a hand touched her ever so lightly on the shoulder.

  When she
flinched it jerked away rather than pinning her harder.

  “Tiffany, it’s…”

  Devin.

  “…Devin.”

  She knew the voice. Not her past—no flashback of foul memories. But she couldn’t move. Not yet. Though she managed not to flinch when the hand once more brushed her shoulder.

  “I’m sorry I scared you.”

  Which didn’t begin to explain what he’d done. Scared and stark terror had no more relation that a smile and ecstasy. It was a black pit from which there was no return. No way back to—

  She did her best to shove that aside.

  “Devin?” She hadn’t meant it as a question, but her throat was too tight to control.

  “Yes.” And he was helping her to sit up in the dirt.

  Her hands remained clasped protectively across her chest, but her feet swung down into the hole. Into the grave. Into Flo’s grave. The little goat had fought bravely through the night and the day to bring her kid into the world. She’d succeeded, but in the end it had cost her own life and it had been beyond Tiffany’s skill to save her. It was only the second goat she’d ever lost, and it felt as if a piece of her heart had died along with it.

  Her hands were still bloody, her jeans and shirt dark with dried stains of a blood loss she hadn’t been able to stop.

  “Devin?” This time she managed to turn and face him as he sat on the grave’s lip beside her.

  “Right here.”

  He too was a mess. Covered in plaster dust. His face bore a half dozen scrapes that she would now see were minor and not the parallel claw marks left by a panicked woman. One had released a small trickle of blood that had run down his cheek like a tear before it dried.

  She’d never seen anything so wonderful in her life and buried her face in his shoulder.

  When his arm slipped tentatively around her shoulders, the tears began to flow. And she couldn’t stop them. Soon she was weeping for her failure to save Flo and then for her past and then simply because she couldn’t stop. Her sides ached with the release, yet Devin simply held her.