Hummingbird Cove

by Giselle Fox

  Daisy took a step back and glanced around. “Shit.”

  Kirby grinned and then slid his arm around her. “Family business. I know what that’s like.”

  Daisy removed his arm as if it were a piece of lint. She took another step back. “I doubt that.”

  He leaned in closer. “A ferry dock at the marina won’t do us any good. You need to start working if our development is going to go through.”

  Our development? What the hell was he thinking? “I’ll be sure to let Colin know.” She stepped around him.

  “You do that,” Kirby hissed.

  She would have let him have it right there, but she couldn’t without Keira finding out who she was. She was hobbled—forced to play nice. She hated being trapped.

  Kirby loved it, judging from the smile he wore for the rest of the night. Daisy did what she’d gone there to do, asked the questions she was supposed to ask, raising the issues of kids without a school, residents without access to medical care, the pressing need for better roads, power, and phone lines. Despite the puzzled looks Keira gave her every time she raised her hand to speak, she kept at it, igniting others to stand up and say their part, until at last the meeting was adjourned for another night.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  They worked their way through the crowd. A long line had formed to sign the petition for the new ferry dock. A few locals came up and thanked Daisy for speaking. She smiled and shook their hands. When they stepped outside and into the darkness, Keira looked over and gave her another puzzled smile. “You enjoyed the meeting.”

  Daisy tried to laugh it off. “Seeing everyone there… I just felt like I should say something.”

  “No, you raised some really good points. I just didn’t think… since you said you weren’t interested in Kirby’s place-”

  “I’m not. I mean, I don’t know. Now that I’ve been here, I’m not sure.”

  Keira stuffed her hands into her pockets and tipped her head back to look up at the night sky. “It’s stopped raining, at least.”

  “Yes,” Daisy said softly. She wanted to tell her the real reason she’d spoken out at the meeting. She felt terrible pretending she was someone else. But what difference did it make now? With such overwhelming support, it looked like the ferry would dock straight in town. That left her brother’s plans for Hummingbird Cove a no-go. The island was years away from being able to support a development like his anyway. That meant her work was done.

  Kirby knew who she was. She couldn’t trust him to keep it a secret. Keira was still expecting her to stay the week, but she could tell her about Kirby getting handsy and be on her way home the next day. There was no point in staying, was there? “Why doesn’t Kirby like you?” she asked.

  Keira chuckled. “What gave you that impression?”

  “He’s rude and unfriendly, and he seems to think you might try to talk me out of buying his cabin.”

  Keira shook her head. “I don’t know if he mentioned it, but he owns it with his brother, Colton.”

  Kirby hadn’t mentioned it but, of course, Daisy knew it already. “Oh?”

  “Colton lives in Kelowna.”

  “Have you met him?”

  “Yeah… I’ve met him,” Keira replied. She took a deep breath. “When I first moved here, I rented the cabin for a few months.”

  “No wonder you know how to fix everything. But… why did you come here?”

  “Same reason as you, I guess. I wanted a quiet place to work. I’d never been out here before. It seemed… interesting.”

  That still didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Daisy hoped she would elaborate.

  “Colton was married to a woman I became friends with here. He worked off island—sometimes in the interior, sometimes up north. He came back for a few of weeks at a time. He and his wife, Sydney, lived in the downstairs of Kirby’s house.” Keira looked up from where they were and pointed. “It’s up there a little way.”

  Daisy looked out into the darkness but couldn’t see much more than trees.

  “Anyway, Sydney found out she was pregnant. When she told Colton, he just sort of… stopped coming home.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Yeah, it wasn’t good. Sydney’s mom was sick. The only family she had was Kirby, but then Kirby tried to…” Keira looked back at her. “He had some crazy idea one night that he could take over where Colton left off.”

  Daisy shuddered. “Gross.”

  “So, she came and stayed with me.”

  “In the cabin?”

  “Yeah, in the cabin.”

  Things were making more sense. “I see.”

  Keira nodded. “We became close, but nothing happened for a long time. Sydney was really broken up about Colton leaving her. Then, after a while…”

  “She fell for you.”

  “I guess we both fell.” Keira’s smile faded. “A part of her was still broken. By then, it was spring and the family that owned the rest of the cove came back to check on things. The dock was badly broken from a storm. I went over and talked to them, found out that the old woman that held the title had died and they were trying to figure out what to do with it. I told them to talk to me if they decided to sell. A few days later, they called.”

  To be able to buy that much waterfront property on a whim meant that Keira was a lot wealthier than Daisy had guessed.

  “I rented a place for us over in Campbell River so Sydney could be close to a hospital. When Noah was born, she was happier than I’d ever seen her. Then, she was all in. She told Kirby, told her family, this was who she was and this was how it was going to be. The baby needed two parents and she trusted me more than anyone to be that other person. It worked… in the beginning.”

  They walked down the steps to the Marina. They stood at the wooden rail and looked out over the water. “Colton came back into the picture about a year and a half ago. I’m sure it felt weird to him having this woman that no one really knew suddenly there raising the kid he abandoned; the kid that everyone on the island knew. After he got his shit together, he asked if he could have a part in Noah’s life. He said he wanted to try again. He promised he’d changed his ways. I encouraged it. I mean, whether he was perfect or not didn’t matter, he wanted to be there. The best thing was for Noah to grow up knowing he had a dad that cared about him.”

  Daisy felt Keira’s pain. She reached out and touched her arm. “I’m so sorry.”

  Keira nodded. “Yeah, me too.”

  “Do you talk to her still?”

  “No. Colton said it would be too confusing for Noah and she didn’t argue with him. He was her first love and her biggest disappointment. She wanted him back.”

  Daisy looked out over the dark water again. “This is why Kirby keeps his distance from you.”

  “Yep. To him, I’m just the home-wrecking lesbian that charmed his sister in law over to the dark side. All I did was give them the love and care they deserved.”

  They stood in silence for a long time. “How long did it take to build your house?”

  “Just under a year,” Keira replied. “Most of it was constructed on Vancouver Island and then was barged over in pieces. That’s why I needed such a big dock. There was a lot of push-back from the community. Everyone said the house would end up being a big eyesore on the point. They claimed a dock that size meant I had some secret plan to develop the cove. The conservancy got all up in arms about it. And then finally, when the house was done, and every real estate agent for miles started using pictures of it as the poster home for the area, people chilled out a little. But I still wouldn’t say I have a lot of friends. Kirby spreads his stories. That doesn’t help.”

  “It must be lonely, living in a place like this with no community.”

  Keira sighed. “It hasn’t been a great year. I went to Spain for a month, but I just felt like I should come back just in case things didn’t work out for Sydney. But it’s almost been a year.” Her voice cracked.

  “I can’t imagine what this must be l
ike for you.”

  Keira lifted her head. “I know he’s not my biological child, but I raised him, too. He’s missing me, I know it.” She sighed. “The only other home I have is in New York. If I go back there, I’ll be thousands of miles away from him, across a border, in another country. I’ll never see him.”

  “Was Sydney angry with you when she left?”

  “No, but our relationship was complicated. We started out as friends and then became lovers. It never felt like I had all of her attention. Part of her was always waiting for Colton. What we had was a working partnership.”

  “You came together to raise a child.”

  “It’s a big job.” Keira sighed. “But we did a good job. Noah is a great kid.”

  “Is that why you stay here? Do you hope she’ll come back?”

  “I’m not waiting for her... just him.”

  Daisy nodded. It all made so much more sense. “I was married, not too long ago.”

  Keira looked over at her. “What happened?”

  “He was having affairs... so I left him.”

  “That’s shitty. I’m sorry.”

  “Yes, I was, too.”

  “Do you miss him?”

  “I miss our friendship. I miss believing he was someone I could build with. I don’t miss the truth.” She looked back at Keira. “When I confronted him, the first thing he told me was that he’d always used condoms, almost as if it shouldn’t matter that he’d slept with other women and that I should thank him for not exposing me to STDs.” She sighed. “People keep telling me to date again but… I don’t know... after finding out I was married to a sex addict, I don’t exactly feel like sleeping with strange men again.”

  “Understandable.”

  “After you’ve been married, dating is...” She shook her head. “I just can’t. Not with men, anyway.” She looked back at Keira.

  “What’s next for you?”

  “That… I don’t know. I stay focused on work. This is my first real holiday in probably two years.” She thought for a moment. “More, actually.”

  Keira shrugged. “If it helps, why not? As long as you’re not using it to hide from reality.”

  “I don’t think I am. I like what I do. People don’t always believe me when I tell them that.”

  “Loving work isn’t a bad thing.”

  “Have you ever been called a workaholic before?” Daisy asked, grinning.

  “Yes, actually, quite a few times,” Keira said and laughed. “It’s different when you love what you do. It drives you. Most people don’t like their jobs enough to know what that feels like. When Noah was around, it was the first time I felt like doing anything else with my days besides work. I just really liked spending time with him, watching him, playing with him, listening to his imagination.”

  “Mmm, it sounds fun. I bet that made it hard to work.”

  “It did, but… it never bothered me.”

  “What about Sydney, did it bother her?”

  “Everything bothered Sydney after awhile,” Keira said sadly. “The first two years were a blur when Noah was a baby and we were trying to co-parent and it was all so new and like, what the fuck are we doing? It was chaos, comical, and just… Sydney and I, we weren’t perfect. I knew it wasn’t a forever thing. And a part of me even knew that what ended up happening was always a possibility. But whether I said no to her taking trips to see Colton or not, it would have happened, one way or another. I just always hoped that she would see things the way I did—that Noah needed me as much as he needed both of them. But I think it was easier for her to cut it all off as if the period of time when her husband abandoned her didn’t exist. In the end, she talked about it as if it was a separation, something they’d mutually agreed on.” Keira sighed. “That’s not how it went at all.”

  Daisy was silent for awhile. She felt bad for her; honestly bad. “After I figured out what my husband was up to, I remember actually having this moment where I asked myself if I could live with it. It would have been easier, way less embarrassing and disruptive to the people around me. It meant I wouldn’t have to confront him, or listen to him try to explain himself. I wondered if I could just… pretend I didn’t know. Never sleep with him again, of course. Maybe have my own affairs. But that delusion only lasted a moment. Then I got angry at him for ruining my fairytale of what marriage could be like. That was probably the hardest thing—losing that faith so soon.”

  Keira shrugged. “We all want to believe that happy endings are possible.”

  “We’re raised being told the most asinine things—that boy looked at you, he must like you. That boy pushed you, he must really like you. Oh, that boy definitely has a crush on you, that’s why he says the things he does. We imagine that all these things mean something and that we should encourage it. When I had that moment of imagining myself staying with my husband, a little voice inside my head was trying to tell me that even though he sleeps with everything in a skirt, I’m the one he comes home to—as if that was good enough.”

  “You really don’t seem like a woman that would put up with that,” Keira said.

  “No, I’m not. When I married him, everyone around me went off about what a great catch he was. How handsome, how successful, how funny, what nice children we would make—as if his personality, success, and looks were all that mattered. I’d think, what about me? I’m nice looking, I’m successful. I make more than he does, in fact, I just don’t show off about it because that’s not how I was raised.” She shook her head. “Anyway, I’m done with romance. He ruined it for me.”

  “Why did you marry him?”

  Daisy thought about it for a long time. “I don’t know. I thought he was special before I found out what an asshole he really was. What drew you to Sydney?”

  Keira looked out over the water. “There are a lot of different ways you can love someone.”

  “Did you love her or… feel sorry for her?”

  Keira sighed. “There was an attraction. I guess I mostly went in feeling like it was the right thing to do. She needed someone to take care of her. I felt like I had it in me.”

  “Mmm.”

  “We had something, for a while, but… it didn’t keep her from missing something else.”

  “I wonder if she’s managed to forgive him.”

  “Yeah, I wonder that, too.”

  “My gut tells me there’s no way to win when you go back to the person that broke your heart.”

  “For Noah’s sake, I hope there is.”

  Daisy smiled at her in the darkness. She was so caring and so grounded about everything that had happened, even though her little boy had been taken away from her. “You’re a good person.”

  Keira turned to her. “Why do you say that?”

  “Just listening to you, I get a sense that you have a lot of compassion, despite everything.”

  Keira smiled back at her. “Thank you.”

  Daisy looked out over the dark water again, feeling like Keira was the one to thank.

  “Maybe Jane is right, maybe it is time to go. I love New York. A part of me always hoped I’d get to take Noah there. Show him the city. Take him to shows. To a game. He loves baseball.” She sighed. “Change is coming to the island, that’s undeniable. People know it. There’s always a big brewha about development, but most of the people in there tonight need this plan to go through. A town can’t survive on craft fairs and farmer’s markets. It’s like you were saying—kids need schools, people need jobs. If the ferry comes, land value will increase. The whole waterfront in town will get a lift. People that want to sell will finally be able to. It’s a step in the right direction.”

  Daisy agreed. “You could make a lot of money if you wanted.”

  “I don’t need more money,” Keira said, shaking her head. “Hummingbird Cove is beautiful. There’s not a lot of places like it left. I want Noah to be able to come back and experience it for as long as he wants to. I know it’s just me there now but… I don’t want to sell. Even if I
left, I’d keep it for him, just in case.”

  “I understand,” Daisy said because it made perfect sense. “And anyway, after that meeting tonight, it makes a lot more sense to bring the ferry into town.”

  “More sense than what?” Keira asked, looking puzzled.

  Daisy realized the mistake she’d almost made. “More sense than not bringing it in at all, I mean. The other islands will benefit from the new service. These small economies rely on access.”

  “You’re right about that,” Keira said. She pulled her keys out of her pocket. “Ready to head back?”

  “Yes, ready,” Daisy replied.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The bumpy ride home felt like it took forever, but they finally pulled in to the covered enclosure where Keira stored the ATV. Daisy jumped off and waited while Keira rode it inside. She looked up into the trees above them and noticed a long rope ladder hanging down from one of the branches. “What is that?” she asked when Keira joined her again.

  “It’s a rope course. Noah loves to climb, so I rigged up a bunch of wires and rope ladders in the trees. It keeps going. There’s a swing at the end.”

  “I bet he liked to swim.”

  “Oh, yeah. He’s a fish. We had to keep him in a life jacket for the first four years of his life because he would just dive in.”

  “Did he ever swim with you in cold water?”

  “He wanted to but Sydney wouldn’t let him. He’d put his feet in sometimes. We used to get up early, both of us. Sometimes he’d wake up first, sometimes it would be me. We’d sneak out of the house to let Sydney sleep. Then we’d bundle up and take the boat around the point and watch the sun come up. Sometimes I’d make hot chocolate. He loved that.”

  Daisy noticed that Keira’s eyes shone whenever she talked about the little boy. “You’re a good mom.”

  “I did my best. I learned so much from him, about myself. Kids are amazing teachers.”