Keepsake for Eagle Cove

by M. L. Buchman

  “What do you want?”

  “Is that any way to talk to your fiancée? No, sorry. I don’t want to fight.”

  That was a good thing. Her method of fighting was shrill or tear-laden or with her claws out (though always careful not to chip a nail). He’d never been much good at fights and tended to fold to avoid them no matter what form they took.

  “I miss you, Dev. I know that you had to have your little pout, but I’m sure you’re ready to come back now. We need to pick a date.” He could actually hear Rebecca’s mother in the background, coaching her softly to say the last line. No surprise there; they thought exactly alike.

  Devin pulled the phone away to stare at it for a moment. The screen reported, “Rebecca Monica Monash.” She’d insisted that he program her full name into his phone when she’d spotted that it only said, “Rebecca.”

  This was real, not some nightmare.

  Tiffany was trying to get up, but she was all snarled in the goat’s lead, and was trying to figure out how to extricate herself without waking Shprintze.

  Devin, in turn, attempted to rise, but the goat had somehow wrapped her lead string around both of his ankles. He motioned to Tiffany that it was okay to stay and she subsided back to the deck.

  He put the phone back to his ear, “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Oh Dev. You know Mikal was just payback for that little spat we’d had.”

  He didn’t recall “a little spat.” Actually there’d been any number of them, but he had no idea which one she was referring to. Rebecca’s relationship tactics included always being on the offensive; something he hadn’t understood until this moment. Maybe he could play this game too, for once.

  “Mikal moved on, didn’t he?”

  “No man ever leaves me,” her denial was emphatic. Yet he knew Mikal had.

  “And you discovered that Dad isn’t letting him have any piece of the business.”

  Her brief silence confirmed that.

  Dad might have no morals about what women he bedded, but he protected CMC like the shrewd CEO he was. He and Devin had had frank discussions of Mikal’s inabilities in business of any type. He could lose money sitting alone in a quiet room.

  “It’s not that, Dev. I miss you. I want you back.”

  “Not going to happen.”

  “But Dev-vin,” she always said it that way when she was frustrated enough to use his full name. “You know what I can do for you.”

  And he’d expected her to start listing some vacation or—

  “Magnuson,” she named one of the biggest real estate speculators in Chicago, “has always been sweet on me. You know I could get an exclusive contract for CMC. And that’s not all. There are others.”

  Sure. Others she or her mother had slept with. If they couldn’t deliver the contracts with offers of sex, or perhaps more sex, they’d probably blackmail the men by threatening to reveal themselves to the men’s families.

  “Goodbye, Rebecca.”

  “Oh come on, Devy. You know that you’ll never have a woman half as good as me. I can do things for you. Or…I can do things to you. Is that what you want? A little S&M? I’ve got this black-leather lingerie and cuffs in my bottom dresser drawer. You can use my riding crop and we could—”

  Devin yanked the phone away from his ear. He didn’t want to hear it. He could hear that she was still going on.

  He couldn’t even stand to touch the disconnect button below her name.

  At a loss for what else to do, he heaved the phone as high and hard as he could. It arced up into the sky, tumbled in the wind, flashing as it reflected sunlight, then disappeared into the face of a rolling wave without a sound.

  Devin could only stare straight ahead and wonder at the narrowness of his escape. He had almost married that.

  “From the half I could hear,” Tiffany said softly, “I’m guessing that didn’t go well.”

  He turned from looking ahead to looking at her. “My wedding was six weeks ago today.”

  Tiffany flinched.

  Devin caught at her arm to keep her in place. “I didn’t go through with it.”

  “You were almost married and then—what? Go bounce the poor girl who lives alone in the woods?” Fury. He’d never expected Tiffany to be capable of fury.

  “No. I— Just hang on and—” Then he groaned and told her the whole sordid story. Not about who his family was, but about the wedding, his brother, the social media, and their reactions, all telling him he was wrong. Right down to his father offering to share his secretary with him. He had to look away while telling the story to hide his own shame.

  Tiffany calmed and listened and, by the end of it, was even looking sympathetic, once it was clear that she wasn’t just some rebound girl.

  “I couldn’t stand it anymore. And then that,” he waved toward where he’d thrown his phone overboard. “She offered to— Let’s just say that your goats have more morals than anyone in Chicago.”

  “Even when they’re rutting?” Tiffany teased him.

  “Especially then. Rebecca just offered to deliver me anybody needing a building contractor by sleeping with him.”

  “You were right. Maybe they should meet my mother.”

  “Part of the reason she’s so mad is you’ll never guess who my brother bedded next.”

  “Your father’s secretary?”

  “Nope, turns out he’d already been there and done that. Rebecca’s married sister was next—the two can’t stand each other, rivals since they were toddlers. When Rebecca caught them together in the sauna, Mikal started comparing their private performances in some detail. ‘So that they could learn from each other’s shortcomings how to better please a man.’ He, of course, had to tell me all about it.”

  “Eww!”

  “I couldn’t agree more. That was when I took the job rebuilding the lightkeeper’s cottage.” Devin slumped low enough to rest his head back against the cabin and stare up at the sky. “And now a week later I’ve met dozens of people, people who I wouldn’t introduce to my family for fear of alienating them.”

  “Of alienating your family?”

  “No. Of scaring off the wonderful people I’ve met here.” Then he turned and looked at her for the first time since he’d started the story. “I especially don’t want them scaring you off.”

  “Ha!” Tiffany practically laughed in his face. “You can’t scare me with family. Someday I’ll have to tell you about mine. Starting with my stepfather who—”

  He could see the shift in her face. “Don’t!”

  “Don’t what?” Tiffany blinked at him caught halfway to inner fury.

  “Don’t tell me about it.”

  “Why not?”

  “That’s past. I don’t want you to have to remember a single thing from your past. But mostly because I don’t want you to feel utterly sullied the way I do right now.”

  “That did it,” Tiffany whispered.

  “Did what?” Devin looked at her, puzzled.

  In answer she pulled him to her, pulled him down to kiss her. She could feel how stiff and angry he was, but slowly, ever so slowly, he shifted out of his past and into their present.

  Their kiss was different this time. It wasn’t about heat, need, passion, or just feeling so incredibly good. It went deeper. It was about meaning, joy, and connection. Had Lillian and Ernest felt this, or had they only had heat and need? If so, for the first time Tiffany pitied her ancestor rather than envying her.

  Devin slipped his arms about her, careful not to disturb the sleeping kid still warm in her lap. Devin saw her as a beautiful woman—who wasn’t a basket case-recluse-unholy mess—and for him, it became true.

  She felt like all of the things he’d called her: beautiful, strong, powerful. Born anew. A woman with no past except what she chose. For Tiffany now understood that she had the power to choose.

  When the kiss finally ended by some mutual agreement, he still held her close, tucked under his arm and facing the wind and the future t
ogether.

  Yes, that absolutely did it.

  Tiffany hadn’t understood. Not by watching Jessica, Becky, or Natalya fall in love and marry. Nothing that had happened for Peggy or Gina had taught her what to expect. Not even reading Lillian’s diary.

  Tiffany breathed in deeply as she faced whatever was to come. She no longer felt any fear, because now she knew what love felt like. Really knew.

  And whether Devin stayed for just the summer or for a lifetime, he had changed her for the better. Forever.

  Chapter 6

  Okay, perhaps not forever.

  Tiffany sat in the brewery with the rest of the knitters on Tuesday and still couldn’t seem to find her voice. There was merry chatter going on about the circle as always, but silence had wrapped around her so tightly over the years that she had as little to say as ever.

  Yet when Devin had come to her, walking her home last Sunday night and again returning with the evening light on Monday, she hadn’t been able to stop talking.

  They spoke of growing up in different parts of the country, of people they’d met, of goats and dogs and farming. It was as if all the silence that had stoppered her for a lifetime now spilled forth. They made love then would talk for hours, after all, they had to keep their priorities straight and she could never tire of Devin’s strong hands and gentle touch.

  Sleep? She’d never slept so little since she used to cower in the dark, waiting in terror. And she’d never felt so awake. In Devin’s presence she had become the manic version of herself and had kept apologizing, but couldn’t seem to stop, even after the times that he laughed more at her than with her. She would try to be angry about that, but he laughed at his own shortcomings just as easily, and his laugh inevitably called forth her own.

  There were things Devin wasn’t saying. Which was only fair; there were things she wasn’t either. Deciding she was in love with him didn’t mean that she’d gone stupid or incautious. It just meant that she was wallowing in the joy of it the way a newborn goat wallowed in discovery of tall meadow grass bathed in warm sunlight.

  But as much as she was transformed in his presence, she was still very much herself around others. Mrs. Winslow couldn’t have missed that kiss, the boat wasn’t all that big. But then neither had Tiffany missed the rather more than neighborly kiss that Mrs. Winslow left with Hector in thanks for the day’s sailing trip.

  At Tuesday knitting, she and Mrs. Winslow didn’t exchange so much as a word, though they did end up sitting side by side on one of the couches. Dragon Winslow was just as gruff, taciturn, and roughly affectionate to everyone as was her norm.

  And Tiffany was as silent as ever, despite the transformation Devin had wrought inside her.

  “I can’t even see my knitting. My belly pushes it too far away,” Jessica was complaining. She was propped in a big armchair, cushioned by pillows and with an empty beer keg pushed close beside her seat. Becky had placed a scrap of plywood on top of it as an impromptu table that was kept stocked with tea, finger sandwiches that May Conklin had made up at the Plover Inn, and cookies that Natalya had swiped from the bakery.

  “Can’t wait,” Becky chimed in.

  “Are you…?” Half a dozen of the women spoke at once.

  “Not yet,” Becky’s sigh was splendidly dramatic.

  Why couldn’t Tiffany be more like that?

  “We’re not even trying, though we’re certainly practicing often enough,” she offered one of her cheery laughs that spread among the women. “I promised Harry that he’d get a year of peace and quiet for his first year as a judge. Seven months and counting.”

  “But you’ve only been married for three months so far,” Natalya pointed out. “Come on, Becky. Basic math. Ten months is not a year.”

  “What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Becky giggled happily. “I don’t know if I can stand to wait even that long. Besides, who says it happens the first time you try?”

  “Me,” Jessica groaned from her chair. “I thought it might take months, or years. Nope.”

  “Lucky!” Becky declared. “You were always the lucky one. You got married first.”

  “And pregnant first,” Natalya put in.

  “And you had a fine writing career,” Mrs. Winslow said approvingly.

  “You only say that because she followed in your reporter footsteps,” Gina teased her.

  “She always was a smart girl,” Mrs. Winslow countered. Which nobody could argue with because she’d been class valedictorian and was now excelling as Eagle Cove’s marketing manager.

  “If I’m so almighty smart, how come I can barely count stitches anymore? Every time I get to eight, I think of how long I’ve been pregnant. Fourteen since Greg first kissed me.”

  “Now she’s just bragging,” Natalya reached out a hand to brush it over her friend’s hair.

  “Show off!” Becky agreed.

  “Feed her some orange juice,” Tiffany suggested quietly.

  Mrs. Winslow actually snorted with laughter and several others joined in.

  “Egads no!” Jessica held up her hands in terror. “I can’t get within a dozen feet of the stuff without this one breaking into a conga dance around my innards.”

  A hard-learned lesson from a few months ago that had been fascinating to be a part of. Jessica had drunk deeply from a glass of orange juice at knitting, and her child had awoken with a deep and great vengeance. Tiffany had never felt a life inside another woman. A goat, yes, but that was so different. Jessica had guided Tiffany’s hand onto her belly just as a hard kick made her grunt. Even now Tiffany could feel the memory of that tiny footprint upon her palm. It was surreal and miraculous, and had made them both smile at the time.

  June 1900

  Ernest, the ship’s captain told me, has jumped ship in Eureka, which made little sense to me as it is not a normal port of call for the big lumber schooner. The First Mate, Albert Slater, later told me the truth. Ernest died in a brothel during a knife fight after beating a Chinese whore to death.

  So he has paid the price of his deeds as have I. I had thought that, at forty, I was long past conceiving…I am not.

  My daughter sends word by Albert—a far more trusty man than my Ernest it seems—that she had to miss this ship, but shall return upon the next to sail. It saddens me, for I miss her so.

  I would hate this child growing within me if I could, but such feelings I am unable to discover. I can only feel love for it.

  Though how to tell Pearl of her sibling to be, God alone knows.

  Tiffany looked at Jessica as she scowled down at her own bulging belly.

  “You will take such joy in this child, Jessica. You will not be able to help yourself and you will guard her as you would no other, not your husband or even yourself.” It was a direct quote, but for the name change, of Lillian’s instructions to herself.

  The only sound in the room was the distant rattle of the bottling machine in the back of the brewery, muffled by the glass-and-wood walls.

  “Did you ever…” Jessica asked softly.

  Tiffany pulled herself back. “No.” She placed a hand on her own belly. “No. Though I have imagined it.” So clearly described by Lillian Lamont. Tiffany felt it as if she had lived through an entire pregnancy herself—the joys and the fears.

  Had her own mother hated Tiffany as she grew in the womb? Despised her for ruining her mother’s figure? Her governess had told Tiffany years ago that she had not been nursed, even once, because her mother feared even more damage.

  Lillian Lamont had loved her children, both of them.

  “You are a very strange woman, Tiffany,” Jessica regarded her levelly.

  Tiffany squirmed in her seat.

  “I knew there was a reason I liked you.”

  Her tease startled Tiffany into looking back up at Jessica. “Takes one to know one, I suppose.” And Tiffany could not believe the words that had just come out of her own mouth.

  Natalya’s laugh sounded first. As others joined in, Natalya
winked at her and nodded that she too was a friend.

  Tiffany’s smile didn’t feel tentative on her face as she winked back. Though conversation soon shifted to the next upcoming town festival, just two weeks off, Tiffany could feel the change. For perhaps the first time since her arrival in Eagle Cove, she didn’t sit emotionally outside the circle while she physically sat within it. She belonged here. A surprising place where friends cared for her.

  There was only one better feeling.

  There was also a man waiting for her.

  Devin sat on a handy log and Tall Guy sat on the ground beside him, which placed their heads at roughly the same height. The goats milled about nibbling at the flake of hay he had tossed down for them. Beth—at least he thought it was Beth—had, in her patient way, adopted Shprintze along with Chava. The orphaned kid was visibly thriving though she was less than a week old.

  The afternoon was fading to evening but Tiffany wasn’t here. He’d forgotten it was Tuesday. One of her knitting days. At least he’d showered off the day’s work at the B&B before climbing the trail this time.

  “A lot of fair ladies here,” he told Tall Guy.

  The dog studied him silently.

  “Wrong species for either of us, I know.” Then he felt bad because Tall Guy had no one of his own breed to be waiting for, whereas Tiffany would soon return.

  Devin watched as one of goats lay down to rest and then one of the kids used her as a platform to leap for the log. A sharp bleat, first from the goat-as-launching-platform, then from the kid as it failed to achieve orbit, scrabbled briefly at the log’s bark, then plopped down on the ground.

  “I’m losing my mind. Do you know how many goats we have in all of Chicago? About twice as many as you guard, my friend. That’s it. And they’re all safely in the Lincoln Park petting zoo. You’d hate it there.”

  Tall Guy snuffled at his pockets again, but he had no dog biscuits. He didn’t even know where Tiffany kept them, so he scratched the dog’s ear, which was apparently a distant second as far as pleasures went, but was considered better than nothing.