“Well, that’s dinner,” she said abruptly. “If you don’t mind, I have some things to do.”
He was being asked to leave. Even he could figure that out, but he was confused. He’d thought they were getting along well. Had he offended her in some way?
He stood up uncertainly. There was nothing friendly about Maggie now, and she seemed disinclined to chat. He tried to think of something to say, but he failed utterly in the face of her stony expression.
“What are you going to do about my canoe?” she asked as he stood there wondering what he was supposed to do next.
Suddenly he didn’t want to do anything next. He’d had enough. He wanted to be out of there. Gone was the wish to drag this out; he wasn’t going to get anywhere with Maggie Macintyre. He had no doubt that she was the woman in his dream, but the dream had lied. There must be another Margaret somewhere, one with long flowing blond hair like this one, one who liked him.
“I’ll replace the canoe,” he said.
“It was a Coleman. I bought it at the Little Deer River Outfitters.”
“I’ll see that you get one as much like it as possible.”
“Okay.” A baffled look crossed her face, and then she cried, “Oh, no. Oh,” and she clapped a hand over her mouth before bolting for the bedroom, her pale hair swinging against her back. She slammed the bedroom door behind her.
Tate, who had been about to walk out the front door, was taken by surprise. He heard the unmistakable sound of her being sick followed by water running from a faucet. He didn’t know whether to stay or to go. Finally he decided to stay, pacing nervously back and forth on the living room rug and glancing anxiously now and then at the closed bedroom door. Was he responsible for her being sick because he had precipitated her being dumped into the river? Should he knock on the door and offer help? Should he call out to her? He didn’t know.
When Maggie finally returned after several minutes’ absence, she looked pale but composed.
“A slight stomach upset,” she said tersely. “Nothing to worry about.”
“Are you all right? Is there anything I can do?” Tate felt helpless and in the way.
She managed a thin smile. “Just replace my canoe so I’ll have somewhere to go when I get cabin fever,” she said.
He felt troubled about her. “If I can do anything to help you,” he began uncertainly, knowing even as he spoke that the offer sounded shallow and insincere.
“I’d say you’ve done quite enough for one day.” She delivered the words without humor.
“Anytime you want me to ‘drop’ by—” he said, hoping to get a smile out of her, but she wasn’t having any of it.
“Sorry, but I’m not in the mood for jokes,” she said.
“Yeah, well, I guess it was kind of a bust.” He opened the door and looked back at her. Her face seemed haloed in the light from the lamp above the dining room table. She looked inexpressibly lovely and lonely. His heart went out to her, but at that moment she raised her chin and he caught a glimpse of the steeliness behind those pale gray eyes. It was a side of her that he hadn’t seen before, and it surprised him. However, it didn’t change his mind about leaving this place where things had gone so wrong and where he felt as if he weren’t quite seeing things out of the corners of his eyes and not quite hearing things that were just out of range.
“Good night, Maggie Macintyre,” he said softly.
“Good night,” she said, and after he left, she closed the door with a definitive click.
At the edge of the woods, Tate looked back at the cabin. The light of Grandfather Moon seemed to wreath the clearing in magic, but it was not the right magic—not for him, and not for her.
I won’t be coming back here, Tate thought as he slipped into the profound silence of the waiting forest. A soft voice whispered, But you will, and at that moment, he thought he saw a pale female figure flitting through the trees. When he looked over his shoulder at the cabin, Maggie was standing at the window looking out, and he decided that the figure he’d seen was only a wisp of the fog that often rose from the river.
As he made his way back up the mountain to his camp, Tate thought he could hear the Little Peoples’ laughter ringing in his ears as they rolled down the hills in their hidden glens, and he shut it out, pushed it away. The night was clear, calm and cool. As the pungent scent of cedar and sweet wild honeysuckle filled Tate’s nostrils, he inhaled deeply, becoming one with nature again. Ah, well, what did he need with a woman at this stage of his life? At thirty-two, he was desperately hoping to regain his spirituality. He wanted to clear himself of problems; he did not wish to take on those of Maggie Macintyre. The thing to do was to deaden his feelings. That shouldn’t be so difficult. It was a skill that he had perfected long ago.
All he needed in order to be happy, he reminded himself, was a warm blanket and a full belly. But when he rolled himself in his blanket in front of his asi, or sleeping lodge, and tried to sleep, he couldn’t stop thinking about how soft Maggie’s skin had looked and how much he had wanted to touch it. And as he drifted off to sleep, the wind in the trees sighed Margaret, Margaret, Margaret.
MAGGIE FOUND THE NEST containing a single robin’s egg on the windowsill the next morning after being awakened by dulcimer music so faint that she’d decided she’d been dreaming. In Atlanta she wouldn’t have let it disturb her sleep; she would have pulled on the black satin sleep mask she kept in a bedside drawer and rolled over to catch a few more Zs.
That was impossible in the mountains, however. For one thing, she hadn’t brought the sleep mask. For another, there were birds outside, and they made an awful racket with their infernal twittering and chirping. There was no sleeping late in the country.
Having resigned herself to this depressing truth, Maggie was walking around bleary-eyed in her nightgown drinking a glass of orange juice and eating a banana while she contemplated measures to make the birds shut up. When she saw the tiny pale blue robin’s egg glistening in the first slanting rays of the sun, her first thought was that a bird had managed to get in the house. Her second thought was that this was ridiculous; it would have had to be a nest builder extraordinaire in order to complete construction overnight.
Suddenly the hair on the back of her neck stood up. Someone was watching her. She whipped around, knowing that whoever it was would be standing directly behind her, but no one was there.
Silly me, she thought sheepishly. Maybe I have been by myself too long.
She bent over to inspect the egg, which was a real robin’s egg judging from the shape and delicacy of it. She set her glass down and poked at the egg with a fingernail. It wobbled slightly in the artfully woven nest. She was sure that the nest containing the egg had not been there yesterday morning when she had opened the window; she would have noticed. And she had stood at the window for a long time last night after Tate Jennings left, staring out at the forest that had so quickly enfolded him. Neither the bird’s nest nor the egg had been there then.
It was a puzzlement. Like other things. Like Tate Jennings. Maggie still couldn’t make any sense out of the man’s dropping into her canoe yesterday.
The phone rang, startling Maggie out of her thoughts and drawing her away from the window. A ringing telephone was something new; yesterday, it hadn’t been connected yet. She ran to answer it and wasn’t the least bit surprised when the caller was Bronwyn.
“Maggie? Oh, I’m so relieved. I’ve been so worried! Why don’t the phones work up there in the mountains? Why haven’t you called?”
“I’ve been busy,” Maggie said.
“How are you, anyway?” Bronwyn demanded.
“Pregnant,” said Maggie, sitting down on the stool in front of the breakfast bar and propping her feet up on the one next to it.
“Oh, is that all? Gosh, Maggie, at least pregnant is better than comatose! I didn’t know what had happened to you. You promised to call every couple of days or so, remember? I was ready to hop in my car and drive up there just to make su
re you hadn’t died or something.”
Maggie was used to Bronwyn, but since she hadn’t talked to her in a while, she’d forgotten how Bronwyn could carry on. Not that Maggie was any slouch in that department herself, but still.
“What have you been doing?” Bronwyn wanted to know.
“Well, apparently the phone company has hooked up the phone, which is a major breakthrough. And yesterday I met a half-naked man,” she said.
Dead silence. “You’re joking,” said Bronwyn.
“I thought he was joking when he jumped into my canoe.”
“You haven’t mentioned why he was half-naked.”
“He’s a Cherokee who is reclaiming his native heritage. This requires that he run around in the woods wearing a loincloth.”
“Maggie. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“No.”
“He didn’t hurt you, did he?”
“Of course not. I invited him in for dinner, and after we ate, he left,” Maggie said.
“A man wearing only a loincloth jumped into your canoe and you asked him in for dinner,” Bronwyn repeated slowly.
“Well, I had all this spaghetti in the fridge, and it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“Maggie, my dear flibbertigibbet friend, are you making this up?”
“No. But I’ve thought of a great ad for men’s underwear. ‘Why wear briefs when it’s more fun to be brief? Try our new formfitting loincloth. One size fits most.’ How does that sound?”
Bronwyn snickered. “Like the same old Maggie. Too bad that our illustrious firm of Mickle, Martyn, Baffin and Ousley doesn’t have an underwear account. When are you coming back, anyway?”
“I have another two weeks’ vacation coming to me,” Maggie reminded her.
“I know,” said Bronwyn. “But aren’t you planning a vacation in the south of France this year?”
“I was. With Kip.”
“Oh. Right. Say, Maggie. Maybe this guy in the loincloth qualifies as your next main man.”
“Sure, that’s what I need, all right—an involvement with another man. Get real, Bronwyn.”
“It was only a thought.”
“Seriously, I’ve decided that I won’t have a steady relationship for a long time. Maybe not ever. After what Kip did to me, I know better than to make that kind of commitment again,” said Maggie.
“Hmm,” Bronwyn said. A pause. “We miss you around the office, Maggie.”
Maggie was loath to say so, but she didn’t miss the hustle and bustle of the MMB&O office at all. The urban life-style she’d been living for the past few years was beginning to seem empty and pointless, and along with it, so was her job. This was not the time, however, to mention this to Bronwyn.
“Now that the phone here is working, I’ll call you often,” Maggie promised.
“I’m sure we’ve got a lot to talk over. Like what you’re going to do about your Awful Predicament.”
“I think I already know.”
“Good! So do you want me to ask a representative of the adoption agency to call you? I’m sure—”
“No, that won’t be necessary.” Maggie had an idea that Bronwyn would go through the roof when she heard that she planned to keep her baby. Fortunately the matter became irrelevant when Bronwyn said quickly, “Uh-oh, got to go, Mags. I have an important call. It’s that Irwin guy who’s been stringing us along about those ads we’re trying to sell him for his twine company.”
“Twine company…stringing us along. Bronwyn, I think you’re finally getting the hang of writing scintillating ad copy.”
“I’ll talk to you soon—if I don’t get tied up”
“Right,” Maggie said, and she was laughing as Bronwyn hung up.
Maggie stared at the receiver in her hand before slowly lowering it to its cradle. She was glad she hadn’t had to tell Bronwyn about her decision.
Heartened by this conversation with her dearest friend, Maggie dressed in shorts and a pullover shirt and quickly cleaned up the kitchen. She’d only been here for a week, and the place was a mess. She’d told herself she needed to make more of an effort, but she really hadn’t had the energy to do anything about it.
Well, she was through being depressed. This morning, she decided, she’d drive into Scot’s Cove to buy groceries. She’d cook good, nutritious meals for herself and eat them by candlelight. She’d figure out how to hook up the TV antenna so she could watch her favorite programs and keep up with the news. She’d get more sleep. Her life had not ended when Kip walked out; perhaps it had just begun.
“Now where did I put my boots?” Maggie muttered to herself, finally spotting them where they’d fallen in front of the fireplace. When she sat down in her mother’s old rocker to lace them, the quilt squares that she had folded over the arm of the chair fell to the floor.
She picked up a few of the pieces and laid them out on the coffee table. Each square was an appliquéd scene, the colors bright and cheerful. The first square depicted a cabin— this cabin, or at least the original section of it—and showed a family of three, a mother, a father, and a young girl. The mother was hanging clothes on a line strung between two saplings, and the girl was gazing into the distance toward what was clearly the distinctive shape of Breadloaf Mountain. The father was hoeing corn in the garden.
The quilt, never finished, had been her mother’s pride and joy. “It’s going to tell the story of Peg Macintyre, who is your namesake,” Mom had told Maggie enthusiastically as she was cutting out the fabric. “Each square will show another scene in her life.”
Maggie had yawned. “Why would anyone be interested in the life of a woman who lived a zillion years ago?” she’d asked, and her mother had tsk-tsked impatiently and said, “She didn’t live quite a zillion years ago. Peg was born around 1820, and anyway, she’s a local legend.”
At the time, Maggie, who had just graduated from college, had been able to muster no interest in legends, local or otherwise, and she’d forgotten about her mother’s ambitious project until she’d found the squares packed away in a box on the top of the bookshelves a few days ago. Her mother had never had the chance to finish the quilt. During the winter after she’d started the project, Mom had become sick and had died the following spring.
Maggie ran her fingers over the one of the quilt squares. To do so made her feel closer to her mother; that must be why she felt such a sense of well-being when she looked at them. If she had a needle and thread, Maggie could perhaps finish her mother’s project as a kind of memorial to her. Suddenly, she felt compelled to do it. But why? She wasn’t much of a seamstress.
Dulcimer music filled the air, a plaintive tune that tapered off into silence. Just do it, said a voice, and then she heard a peal of silvery laughter.
“Me?” Maggie said out loud. The word was a mere squeak, and she looked around the room for the person who had spoken to her. Her gaze fell on the robin’s egg in the nest on the windowsill. It seemed to glow in the sunlight pouring through the windowpane, but when Maggie blinked her eyes, it was just an ordinary robin’s egg reposing in a nest that was sitting on the windowsill. And no one was in the room with her.
The voice had been inside her head. So had the music. They couldn’t have come from anywhere else.
Did pregnant women hear voices inside their heads? Was she going crazy?
Disconcerted, she waited to see if she heard anything else. But she didn’t. Okay, so she was imagining things. No need to be frightened, no need to freak out over it.
Maggie stared down at the quilt pieces for a long moment before returning to the kitchen to get her shopping list.
“I’ll buy sewing supplies so I can finish the quilt,” she said out loud before she left, surprising herself. She couldn’t have explained why she felt it necessary to speak the words to the empty room, and after she’d done it, she felt confused and more than a little ridiculous.
And she was more than grateful when no one answered.
Chapter Three
&
nbsp; Maggie and her parents had been trading at Pinter’s General Store and Sundries since before she could remember. All the local people shopped there; the place functioned as an informal town meeting hall. None of the old-timers in Scot’s Cove felt comfortable in the new Piggly Wiggly supermarket out on the highway where the Conso executives’ wives shopped, and there was a tacit understanding that locals were loyal to the general store.
Today, unlike most days, Maggie didn’t see the usual group gathered around the old cast iron stove in the back. Today only the aged proprietor was there.
“There you are,” declared an affable Jacob Pinter as he rang up Maggie’s groceries, sewing supplies, a craft book about quilting and a pamphlet published by the local historical society. “That’ll be $45.26.”
Maggie counted the money into Jacob’s hand. “You going to be here all summer?” he asked.
“Only for a couple more weeks.”
“Going to rent your place for the season?”
“If I can find a tenant,” she said. “It seems as if I can never count on the same people to rent the cabin for more than one season.”
“Could be they don’t like to be alone out there. The place is kind of isolated.”
“Yes, but the cabin has all the modern amenities. It’s comfortable, and I charge a reasonable rent. Let me know if you hear of anyone who needs a place, will you?”
“Sure,” he said. He flicked his eyes toward the craft book, which was sticking out of one of the bags. “You interested in crafts?”
“I need something to do while I’m here. I thought I might finish the quilt my mother started a long time ago.”
“I remember your mother when she was a little tike, your father too—and you as well. You’ve become a fine young woman.” He thumped his finger against the historical society’s pamphlet. “Glad to see you’re interested in local history,” he said.
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