Herons Landing

by JoAnn Ross

  “Okay.” And could this be any more uncomfortable?

  “The same promise you made when you married Zoe in that lovely ceremony at Crescent Lake.”

  It had always been one of their favorite places. They’d always planned to return. And never had. Yet more opportunities lost.

  “Why did you leave Dad?”

  The question came out unfiltered. But it had been on his mind. A lot. “Sorry.” He held up a hand. “Again, none of my business.”

  “We’re your parents. If you were a child, we’d have to give you some reason. I was thinking this morning that we hadn’t granted you that same consideration. Which is why, when Ethel told me you were over here, I decided to drop by and let you know that whatever happens, you’ll always be our son and we love you.”

  “Now, that sounds exactly like what a mom would say to a six-year-old.”

  She laughed. Then wheezed. “Damn pollen,” she muttered, echoing his earlier thought. “But I apologize for talking to you as if you were a boy, even if you’ll always be my child. Long story short is that your father and I cut a bargain years ago, when I accepted his proposal. I’d make my life here in Washington if he promised that someday we’d take time to travel.”

  Just like the Robinsons. What the hell was it with his parents’ generation? Had they all received some memo that after spending their lives creating suburbia it was now time to hit the road like a roaming band of boomer gypsies?

  “Dad hates traveling.” They’d taken a trip to Disneyland when he was eight. The plan had been to stay in Southern California for a week, visiting other amusement parks and going to the beach. By the third day, as Seth had been riding the small waves on the new boogie board his parents had bought him at a Huntington Beach surf shop, Ben had gotten antsy and begun to worry about work that wasn’t getting done.

  Declaring the vacation over, he’d called Seth out of the water, and they’d all piled into the car and gone back to their motel. They’d packed up and headed home to Washington in the dark. “He always says he doesn’t want to sleep in some bed total strangers have slept in,” Seth reminded her.

  “I don’t share that aversion, but I’m willing to accept it’s a thing with him. Like me and spiders. So, the deal was that when he retired we’d buy a brand-new, never-been-slept-in-before motor home and drive around to all the national parks.”

  “Sounds like fun.” Living at the edge of one of those parks, Seth thought that it sounded great. A bit of a cliché. But he wouldn’t mind doing it himself someday. Him and Bandit. Like Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley.

  “Doesn’t it? When we were younger, I was thinking more along the lines of adventures to Paris, Rome and Barcelona. But life changes, and exploring my own country has grown more and more appealing.”

  “What’s stopping you?”

  “Have you happened to see a motor home in the driveway?”

  “No.”

  “He insists that he’s still working.”

  “Only part-time.” Great. Now he was throwing his dad under the bus. Could this situation get any more complicated? “And while he’s great at his work, he’s not the only guy in the Pacific Northwest who can do plaster.”

  “That’s exactly what I told him! I’ve also reminded him that Brian Murphy, over in Gig Harbor, filled in for him after his appendectomy put him in the hospital ten years ago.” Refusing to give in to the pain, his father had continued working after it had burst, finally causing him to pass out. Fortunately, he hadn’t been on a ladder at the time. “And it would be one thing if he was moping around the house, having retirement depression, like I’ve read about. But all near-retirement seems to have done is give him more time for those damn poker games and fishing.”

  She folded her arms as a bit more color came into her cheeks. “Do you have any idea how it feels to come in second fiddle to a salmon? Or those ridiculous-looking gooeyducks?”

  Seth scrubbed a hand down his face. “Have you told him that?”

  “Of course. Several times. You know your father. He only hears what he wants to hear.”

  Another statement he wasn’t touching. “Brianna Mannion’s back,” he said in an attempt to change the topic.

  “So I hear. That must be nice for you.” The frustrated lines in her face eased. “There was a time, when you played together as children, I hoped she’d be my daughter-in-law. Until you fell head over heels for Zoe, who quickly grew to be the daughter I never had.”

  “She always knew that. There were times that she said it was like having two moms.”

  “That’s nice, knowing she felt that way. Heaven knows, mothers-in-law don’t exactly get the best press.”

  “Not all mothers-in-law are you.”

  Her laugh was quick and delighted and took some of the fatigue from her eyes. “If only your father had your silver tongue.”

  Not wanting to get into comparisons with his father, Seth opted against pointing out that no one, ever, had described him that way. In that respect, he took more after his dad than his mother. Although there’d been a time when his thoughts had been a helluva lot more positive. It wasn’t as if he’d taken on his father’s negativity. More that he’d just gone numb. When you didn’t have anything to say, what was the point in trying to come up with any inane conversational filler?

  “The reason I brought up Brianna is that she’s planning to restore Herons Landing,” he said.

  “I heard that, as well. And it’s partly why I’m here.”

  Okay. Having nothing to say to that, either, he waited, hoping she wasn’t going to suggest that he might want to do something about there still being a chance that she could be Brianna’s mother-in-law.

  “I want—no, I need—you to do me a very big favor.”

  “Sure.”

  “When I say big, I mean seriously big. As in life-changing.” She took a deep breath. “I want you to fire your father.”

  “What?” At first he thought she must be kidding, but her expression was as serious as a heart attack. “You’re not joking.”

  “It’s not a joking matter. I’m fed up with living in limbo,” she said. “I thought, erroneously, that my moving out and serving those papers on him would get his attention. But apparently I was wrong.”

  “It’s gotten his attention.” How the hell had he landed in the middle of all this damn marital drama? And more to the point, how did he get out? “He’s convinced you’re coming back.”

  “Stubborn old goat,” she muttered. “Well, he may just discover that he’s wrong. My point, and I do have one, is that it’s bound to take months to complete that old house.”

  “Several weeks,” he said. “Maybe months, depending on how long it takes Brianna to pick out the finishes.”

  “She and her mother are in Seattle today, doing exactly that.”

  Something he didn’t know.

  “Well, then, if they find everything they need, we could be done in six weeks,” he said. “Now that this place is finished up, I can concentrate on Herons Landing. So, maybe eight weeks, allowing for inspection delays.”

  “That’s six to eight more weeks of my life I’ll never get back,” she said. “I can’t continue to live this way.”

  Opting not to mention that she hadn’t exactly seemed to be suffering over dinner at Leaf, Seth swiped a hand through his hair and wished he could beam himself to anywhere but here. “Don’t you have a woman friend to talk about this with?”

  “Yes. She’s currently in Seattle shopping for toilets and bathtubs with her daughter. But Sarah agrees with me. That I’ve been patient long enough and if I leave it the way it is, Ben will just keep playing cards, fishing, letting the dishes pile up and the house go to ruin, all the time having convinced himself that I’m merely having a menopausal female snit.”

  “The dishes aren’t piling up and the house won’t go to
ruin because The Clean Team comes in every Friday.”

  “Your father has hired a maid?”

  He wasn’t surprised she was surprised. With the exception of a tackle box of fishing lures, Ben Harper never spent any money he didn’t absolutely have to. He could, in fact, make Scrooge look like a spendthrift. Seth had always thought it was because he’d carried the heavy weight of not being the Harper that had allowed the family business to go under. But the truth was that business was booming, as it had even during the recession, when people were all fixing up their old homes rather than buying new. It had been his dad who’d focused the company on strictly remodel and restoration work because he’d figured out that people were always either modernizing a house they were living in, or updating one they’d just bought. New construction was riskier and more dependent on the fluctuating marketplace.

  “Dad didn’t hire them. I did.”

  Her mouth drew into an uncharacteristically firm line as she folded her arms across the front of today’s flowing tunic. “And thus enabled him.”

  “Geez, Mom.”

  “I’m sorry. But he’s a grown man and should be able to take care of himself.”

  Seth considered falling back on the “old dogs, new tricks” cliché, but kept that idea to himself because he couldn’t disagree with her point. “Would you rather the health department condemn the place?”

  “No. I’d rather he realizes that he needs me for more than cooking, cleaning and keeping the damn books.”

  She closed her eyes. Drew in a ragged breath as she put her hand to her heart as if to quiet it. Which was out of character because she’d always been the one to soothe everyone else. And not just in the family. Anytime anyone in the town needed something, she’d be there with her BFF, Sarah Mannion. The two of them had been best friends for longer than Seth had been born. They’d met that night at the Theater in the Firs, the same night she’d met his father. Their long friendship was undoubtedly another reason he and Bri had always been so close. Due to day care not being an industry business back then, like in larger cities, they’d both been dragged by their mothers to more civic events than he could count.

  “I’m not going over to the house because I’ll get pulled back in,” she said, more to herself than to him, as if deciding out loud. “I never could resist the man when he turns on the charm.”

  There were many descriptions that Seth could imagine being applied to his father. Charming had never been one of them.

  Her lips quirked in a half smile. “I know. You don’t see it. That’s because you’re a male. But believe me, I had to fight my way through a crowd of local women, who were buzzing around him like honeybees around a lavender bush, to get to your father. He was considered quite a catch back in the day. And not just because he happened to own his own business,” she said, once again demonstrating the ability to read the thought that had just popped into his mind.

  “I was used to Southern men whose never-ending compliments were as smooth as butter. A strong, silent, Western alpha male was as rare to me as a unicorn. Though,” she said as an afterthought, “I’d prefer you keep that information to yourself.”

  “Your secret’s safe with me.”

  “Thank you... I’ll text him.”

  “Good luck with that. He never turns on his phone.”

  She chewed on a nail, which brought his attention back to that wedding band. “Does he still play poker on Tuesday nights?”

  “Yeah. But they moved the game to the Stewed Clam after they got tired of take-out pizza from Luca’s.”

  “Ha! He always complained about my sandwich plates. Said they were too girly for poker.”

  The sandwiches in question were typically created from croissants and green or red pepper tortillas, given cutesy names like Highroller Ham, Texas Hold ’em Beef and Turkey Roulette Rollups. She’d also made platters of poppers, dips and deviled eggs because she’d insisted that in the South, no social occasion was complete without that special plate with the indentations for deviled eggs she’d inherited from her grandmother. It had not escaped Seth’s notice that his father’s poker buddies didn’t seem to share his complaints. There’d never be anything but crumbs by the end of the night.

  “You spoiled him.”

  She shrugged. “What can I say? It’s in my blood and it’s hard to escape my upbringing. But I’m tired of playing mealymouthed Melanie. It’s time I embraced my inner Scarlett.”

  Oh, Lord. “This could get ugly, couldn’t it?”

  She tossed up her chin and looked as determined as when Hollywood’s most famous Southern belle had held up those turnips in Gone with the Wind and sworn to never be hungry again. “That depends on your father.” Then, softening, she reached up and framed his face between her palms, the way she had when he’d been six years old, and kissed his forehead. “I’m so proud of you, darling. You’ve created the perfect home for Kylee and Mai to begin their new life.”

  “They’ll create the home,” Seth said. “I’m just fixing up their house.”

  “True,” she agreed. “If only your father understood that concept, he’d realize that a motor home could be just as much of a home as the one he’s stubbornly refusing to leave. Even better. Travel is stimulating.”

  It hadn’t been for Zoe, but then, his wife hadn’t traveled to Afghanistan on a tourism visa.

  “I hope it works out for you,” he said.

  “Oh, it will.” Her shadowed eyes flashed with a bit of her usual spirit. “One way or the other.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  FROM THE MOMENT they’d left the farm, Brianna’s mother had been snapping away with her camera, capturing the varying shades of green of the Douglas firs, western hemlock, Sitka spruce, the reddish brown bark of the western red cedar, along with the brighter hues of the leafy spring sword ferns. Fortunately, meadows, mountains and lowlands were in wild spring blooms, so the scarlets of rhododendrons and paintbrush, delicate whites of the trillium, blues of the starflower and reddish-pinks of the bleeding hearts also ended up in Sarah Mannion’s extensive photo files.

  The sky, even more unpredictable than usual this time of year, would change from gray to bright blue with all the combinations in between. The water, too, ranged in shades, and as they stood on the outer deck of the ferry chugging out of the harbor, her mother aimed her lens at the shades of white and gray in the driftwood lining the beach, and the varying colors of brown in the aged pilings.

  “I love the bright orange of the pelicans’ beaks during their breeding season,” Sarah said as a pod flew by, as if in parade military formation. “You could use that as a pop of color somewhere. Or soften it to a coral. Oh, and how could I forget?” She turned, focused on Brianna’s paper cup and snapped. “You can’t not include the Northwest’s most famous drink in its palette.” The deep, almost black-brown was added to the palette.

  Three days later, they were back on that same ferry. Brianna had often felt exhausted at the end of a long day’s work. And she was admittedly tired to the bone today. Although she hated to admit it, she suspected she might be out of shape because her mother had definitely seemed to have far more energy as they’d gone from store to store, wholesaler to wholesaler. By the time she’d collapsed into bed last night, Brianna was surprised that her credit card hadn’t burst into flames from having been run through so many readers.

  The difference between today and other times she’d been worn out was that beneath the fatigue was a buzz of exhilaration. “It’s all going to be so stunning,” she said as the gleaming white boat with its iconic green stripe plowed through the water.

  “It’s a good thing you’re doing,” her mother said. “Not just for your own business, but for the town. That poor house has stood there like a destitute bag lady for too long. Now you’re going to bring her back to life as a dowager. Not a stiff, formal dowager, but one suited for her place and time.”<
br />
  “That’s pretty much what Seth said. He called it dressing my Victorian dowager in flannel shirts, jeans and hiking boots, while keeping her good set of pearls.”

  “He’s a talented young man. Not only is his workmanship impeccable, he has an artist’s eye. Which I suspect he inherited from his mother. Mike and I were talking and I mentioned how, if she hadn’t married and settled down to work at Ben’s construction company, she could well have had a successful career as an artist.”

  “It’s not too late for that,” Brianna pointed out. “Look at you.”

  Sarah laughed. “And isn’t that exactly what your uncle said? I’m so excited for Caroline. She’s possibly going to have an exhibition at the Honeymoon Harbor Days boat festival.”

  “I saw her illustrations in Seth’s office. I was already planning to drop in to the exhibition, of course, but now I’m going to make sure I get there early so I don’t miss out.”

  “Oh, I don’t think you need to worry about that, darling. She’d be more than willing to paint whatever you’d like. You are, after all, almost family. And, although I realize it’s a topic you’re not comfortable with, I will admit that there were several times that she and I would be sitting over glasses of lemonade and shortbread cookies watching you and Seth playing in the sandbox or running through the sprinkler, and indulge ourselves in planning your wedding.”

  “Mom...”

  “I know. But since you’ve never mentioned anyone you were dating—”

  “Because there wasn’t anyone to mention. My work took up nearly all my time and with the frequent moving, a relationship didn’t seem practical.”

  “I understand your point, though I’m not certain practicality is the first thing a person should be looking for in a relationship.”