Keepsake for Eagle Cove

by M. L. Buchman

  Devin had been here for…he wasn’t even sure. The days had already blurred together. And since he’d sent his phone to the bottom of the ocean to “sleep with the fishes” (nothing like a good Godfather quote), he’d lost track of time. He didn’t miss his phone, not a bit. He’d used the B&B’s phone to let his foreman know how to reach him, but he felt no desire to go and replace his electronic connection to the rest of the world. He had a tablet for e-mail, but ignored that as well. The company account messages were auto-copied to his foreman. The rest were all pieces of his past doing their best to yank him back to Chicago, to a life that now disgusted him.

  Time moved differently here. Rather than over-scheduled crews and massive project deadlines on a dozen houses being built at once, he had a single project and one worker: himself.

  And he had a girl. A woman.

  “What am I doing?”

  Tall Guy didn’t have any idea either.

  “You’re no help at all.”

  The dog sighed.

  Devin didn’t love Tiffany. No exactly. Not so soon. But he…cared for her. The fact that he cared for her more than he’d ever cared for Rebecca—to whom he had been misguided enough to declare his love—was all just one more sad reinforcement regarding his misspent youth. His utterly naive youth of two months ago.

  One of the kids sidled over, thinking it was being very sly, and began to nibble on one of Devin’s bootlaces.

  “Fine. Do your worst.”

  The baby goat managed to get a good hold of one lace then tried to bolt away while still clamping onto it. In the middle of its first leap, it ran out of bootlace and tumbled to the ground. Then digging in all fours, it tugged and wrestled at it, jerking Devin’s boot side to side.

  “You’ll never get that knot untied.”

  “I know,” he told the dog. “It’s like Eagle Cove is tying me up in all sorts of ways.”

  “It will do that.”

  Devin looked at Tall Guy. He hadn’t said a word.

  Then Tiffany held out a biscuit and Tall Guy sighed happily as he took it. He lay down and began crunching on it.

  “Hi,” was all Devin could manage, now as speechless as the big Kangal. Tiffany was dressed in a pretty blouse of summer-blue that the light wind pressed against her figure. Her jeans were worn soft enough to cling to every curve. There were shapes revealed that he was only starting to learn and definitely to appreciate.

  But it wasn’t her exceptional body or her amazing hair that stunned him speechless, it was the simple joy of her smile at finding him here. The bright sparkle in her blue-gray eyes.

  He pulled her in until she was standing between his knees, where he could wrap his arms about her waist and just hold on. She set her knitting bag and her bow on the log beside him and circled her arms about his head.

  “The world is so quiet when you hold me,” he told her.

  “The world is so full for me when I do.”

  “Full of what?” He placed a kiss on her sternum as an excuse to not raise his head from where it rested in heaven.

  “No. It doesn’t work that way. It’s just…full. As if, when I’m holding you, I don’t need anything else. Couldn’t need anything more.”

  Devin could tell that she was looking down at him by how her hair slid about his ears and neck. He was inside the shield, so close to Tiffany that everyone else couldn’t help but be outside. He locked his arms about her tighter and tighter as if he could find some way to hold on.

  “I’m getting lost here, Tiffany.”

  “I don’t see why,” she began scratching his head lightly with her short, practical nails. “Holding me so tightly seems more of a ‘found’ place rather than a lost one.”

  He tipped his head up to look at her, her face mere inches above his. He sang the line from “Amazing Grace.” “I once was lost, but now I’m found.”

  Tiffany picked up a sweet harmony that ended in one of her delightful giggles of joy. He’d never met someone so pleased with her life. And it showed on her face all the time.

  “This is,” he nuzzled his face back against her midriff, “a very found sort of place.”

  “Told you.”

  “Chicago isn’t.”

  “Then don’t think about it.”

  “Again that impossible simplicity you have. Your world is so clear. Mine is muddier than a construction site in a Chicago spring. We only have two seasons there, you know: winter and construction.”

  Tiffany laughed dutifully at his little joke, but her thoughts were whirling.

  Her life was so clear? What wouldn’t she give for that to be true.

  “The two-season thing is especially true when you work for a major contractor,” Devin continued talking to her belly.

  Holding her never meant anything to previous men. But for Devin, it changed him. Something about holding her close made him quiet and thoughtful. As close to peace as she ever saw him. He was good at having fun, far better than she was. But he never relaxed—she could feel his mind working ceaselessly.

  With his head against her, whether after hot, sweaty lovemaking or as chastely as now, his thoughts went quiet. They moved more slowly. More peacefully.

  Maybe her own life was clearer, at least when he was with her. The farm kept her busy. Her time occupied, but her thoughts free to lead her where they would. When Devin was with her, life seemed so right. That was it. Just…right.

  The goats circled about them, like some distant parade. Their play appearing to be but a distant image. Their bleats barely louder than the rising beat of her own pulse and the gentle wind that cooled and teased.

  Tiffany closed her eyes and held on.

  Devin was right after all. Her life had never been so clear as this moment.

  Devin slipped away at first light. He didn’t go far, just to the edge of Tiffany’s yurt deck. He wanted to see the land, watch it come awake. The night chill was still on the air but he’d grabbed a comforter off the back of the couch and wrapped it around him.

  A family of deer slept in the narrow passage between the forest and Tiffany’s vegetable garden fence just a few dozen feet away. He’d never seen them so close except in a zoo. They slept lying down, but with their heads up like a submarine periscope, wary of intruders. Only the delicate spotted fawn had lain down its head and given itself up to sleep with total abandon. Safe in the protection of its parents.

  “It’s cold out here,” Tiffany scooted under the comforter with him. A deer ear swiveled to track her, but apparently she wasn’t worrisome enough to make them wake all the way up and stand. Though, in sweatpants and a thick cable-knit sweater with a V-neck that revealed she wore nothing beneath it, Tiffany was very worth looking at in Devin’s book. She was warm and sleep rumpled. And rumpled in other ways. He could never tire of the way she gave, with absolute abandon to her own emotions. Nor of the way she inspired him to return the favor. He kissed her briefly, but she pulled away.

  “Eww! I have morning breath.”

  “Don’t care. I bet I do too. Still don’t care.”

  “I do. Besides, if I let you kiss me, I’ll miss the sunrise.” The fact that they faced west, not east, didn’t seem to be worth making a point about.

  He nodded over toward the family of deer.

  “Boris, Natasha, and Nell,” she named them.

  “Bullwinkle,” Devin nodded, recognizing the reference. “And if the fawn had been a boy?”

  “Dudley, of course.”

  Devin looked at the deer again. “Seems cruel to rescue poor Nell Fenwick from the evil Snidely Whiplash only to place her into the family of the villains. Though they don’t look very evil.”

  “Neither were Boris and Natasha. They delighted in thinking they were, but they’ll make good parents.”

  Unlike his own, or Tiffany’s. He thought about the small bits and pieces she’d dropped. The stepfather who had obviously been the abuser. The mother who had let it happen and who Tiffany mentioned even less than he mentioned his own.r />
  She pointed at a pair of large gray doves with black rings about their necks as they darted about together from one branch to the next and called Who-WHO-who-who.

  “What kind of parents will we be?”

  “You and I?” Tiffany sounded suddenly breathless.

  “Yes. No. I mean—” Devin definitely wasn’t awake yet. “I mean I assume…no. Do you want to have kids some day? Yourself?”

  She smiled tolerantly at his mangling of the question, but nodded. “You?”

  “I do. I really do. But I’m afraid that I’ll be like my parents.”

  “Don’t worry, you won’t be. No more than I’ll be like mine,” Tiffany replied complacently.

  “How can you know? What makes us any different than my parents or yours?”

  “Because, like Boris and Natasha, we care. If you need proof, just look at my girls and boys.”

  Though the goat pen was a couple hundred feet away and still lost in morning shadows, there was no doubting the occupants’ physical and mental well-being. They were a very happy family of goats and a dog.

  Devin turned to look at Tiffany, huddled so deep into the blanket and so close against him for warmth that he could see little more than her hair and her temple—so he kissed it. She was a woman who cared with all of her generous heart. He pulled her mostly into his lap and she curled up against his chest.

  “You, Tiffany Mills, will make an amazing mother.” He could see it in her.

  She leaned even harder against him for a moment under the blanket in thanks. “I have a great example.”

  “Your mother doesn’t sound like such a great example.”

  “No,” she agreed. “But my several times great-grandmother was an amazing woman. The more I can be like her, the better person I’ll be.”

  Devin knew almost nothing about his great-grandparents, never mind any generations before that except that they had once been Irish Catholics fleeing the Great Famine of the late 1840s.

  “There’s one thing that Lillian Lamont discovered far too late in life.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Come back to bed and I’ll show you.”

  “Maybe,” but her big sweater was very loose on her. “But maybe I can’t wait that long.”

  “No,” Tiffany’s delighted giggle only encouraged him.

  He didn’t stop.

  “I’ll freeze.”

  “I promise to keep you very warm.”

  She groaned as he continued caressing her. The deer startled, quickly rose, and ran away.

  Tiffany’s reactions also rose quickly but she didn’t attempt to run at all. Instead she delighted him as her gasps told him he was capable of doing some things very right.

  Chapter 7

  Tiffany sat on Mrs. Winslow’s porch and watched the McCall’s house across Shearwater Lane. Vincent was working in his garage/woodshop, finishing an ornate bedstead. He was the town’s leading custom furniture maker.

  After half an hour of her sitting and watching him shape and sand, he came over and asked if she needed anything, which was nice of him. He was covered head to toe in sawdust, only the outlines of his safety goggles and dust mask were clean. It reminded her of Devin, coming to her covered in plaster dust. It also reminded her of the first time they had made love, lying beneath the first stars on her front deck. She fought the blush that was rising fast to her cheeks.

  “I’m fine. I wanted to speak with Mrs. Winslow.”

  “She’s usually home shortly after my wife and kids. The twins are in her class this year. Shouldn’t be long now.”

  “I’ll just wait then. Thank you.”

  “Sure I can’t get you anything? A glass of water or something?”

  “Would it be filled with sawdust?”

  He laughed as he looked down at himself, “Near enough.”

  “I’ll pass, thank you.” She’d meant it seriously, but could now see how it sounded funny. Before Devin she might not have ever noticed.

  “Good choice,” he offered a cheery wave then re-crossed the street back to his woodworking.

  What else was Devin changing about her? Another week had gone by and she was no longer “in love” with him. She had begun to suspect that her ancestor had stopped short of where Tiffany was moving to. A week ago, if Devin had left, she too would have been “sore of heart.” If Devin left now, she would be lost.

  When they made love, it was like nothing she had experienced or imagined. There was a connection that emerged from somewhere deep within her and it wanted only one thing: him. But that wasn’t even the important part of what was happening.

  They made each other happy.

  Merely being in his presence, even just thinking about him, made her day brighter and happier. And she could see the same in him.

  But that had not been enough to save Lillian Lamont.

  July 1900

  My Pearl has returned to me, a mere shadow of her former self. Her pallor as pale as Chinese silk and she is so gaunt that a corset made her appear heavier of frame rather than lighter. My corset yet hid my condition though it will do so only a little longer.

  After I transported her from the dock to our home and sequestered her, I asked after her ailment.

  “I could find no trace of him,” she wailed. “I stayed an extra month to search, fearing him injured or falsely imprisoned.”

  When I asked who, she replied, “My true love. My one and only.”

  I swear that I felt a chill in that moment. Three hundred thousand they say reside in the great city of San Francisco, yet I felt a chill.

  “The father of my unborn child is gone. We were to be married. Oh, my beloved.” And she wailed upon my breast.

  My wonder at the prospect of a grandchild lasted only a moment. With her next words, she cut all the cords that bind my life together. “Tis the messenger you sent to me. My dearest Ernest is nowhere to be found.”

  The man is dead. Blessedly, none had been so cruel as to speak truth to the young woman seeking him. And the second child, which I had decided was to be the joy of my elder years, became sawdust and bitter medicine. My handsome lover was also my daughter’s. And my own child would be sibling to both Pearl and to her own child.

  A minivan drove up and pulled into the McCall driveway. Seven-year-old twins climbed out then rushed to their father. Like miniatures of their mother, they had matching brunette ponytails and sparkling blue eyes. It was an easy bet that by high school they would also have their mother’s powerful curves. Or as Tiffany’s mother would have said, “Hussy, bought and paid for.” Though there was no more question that Dawn McCall’s shape was authentic than her own mother’s—for she and Tiffany could be twins but for their age and attitude.

  Vincent had shed his dust mask and glasses and was dusting himself off with whacks of a clean towel. Soon the twins also had towels and were making a game of thwapping them against his pant legs, releasing great clouds of sawdust. Once the worst of it was gone, he hugged them both, then—rather than returning to his work—he sat down on a sawhorse. By their animated gestures, they must be retelling the events of their day though she could hear only the happiness of their tone, not their words.

  When Dawn McCall approached, Vincent moved to one side and made a show of dusting off the other end of his sawhorse. Dawn sat, slipped a hand around her husband’s waist despite the risk of getting dirty, and soon the four of them were highly animated.

  Tiffany barely noticed the car that pulled into the driveway until Mrs. Winslow came along the front walk.

  “They make a beautiful family, don’t they?”

  Tiffany could only sigh and nod. So much more than she had ever had.

  “You are still a puzzle to me, Tiffany Mills. Are you here to finally unravel the mystery?”

  She flinched. She’d completely forgotten about her unconsidered comment at the wedding and Mrs. Winslow’s interest in it.

  Mrs. Winslow sighed heavily at her response. “Then why the visit, girl?”<
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  Tiffany looked up at her. The irritation was obvious, but Tiffany couldn’t think about two things at once, especially not when one of them was so big.

  “Ms. Mills?”

  “How do you know?” She blurted it out before she could second-guess herself yet again. “Devin? Everything? How do you know when—” She couldn’t continue.

  Mrs. Winslow regarded her steadily for a long time before speaking. “You have walked all of the way from your farm on a Monday to ask me this.”

  She didn’t make it a question so Tiffany didn’t feel obliged to answer.

  “Come in now and we’ll have some tea.” With no further words, she unlocked the front door and led the way in.

  Devin had seen Tiffany quickly pass by from the second story window of the lightkeeper’s cottage. He scraped himself enough to bleed, but was unable to open the window. Too many layers of paint in the track had sealed it shut. He’d had them all replaced except this one because they’d mis-shipped it and the replacement hadn’t arrived yet.

  By the time he was downstairs, she was gone and he couldn’t follow her.

  “Well, she’s allowed a life as well,” he told the main panel as he hooked in the last of the new wiring. He’d pushed hard this week to get it done so that he’d have more time for the extra finish work he was planning. Dragon Winslow had been right—the visit to Hector’s boat gave him the interior design style that he’d been missing.

  “It’s not like we’re living together,” he mentioned to the plumbing as he set up the pressure test for the inspector, who had agreed to drive out to the coast this afternoon along with the electrical inspector. Of course he hadn’t been sleeping at the B&B. Not when Tiffany so welcomed him to her bed. He packed in some groceries and one night won her undying appreciation by delivering a Carrier Pigeon pizza. It had cooled on the hike in, but her oven had reheated it fast enough to not make him feel guilty about propane usage. Unsure what she liked, he’d made it half Hawaiian and half loaded. She’d taken a slice of each and, for New York-style pizza, it hadn’t been half bad.