Room at Heron's Inn

by Ginger Chambers

  David and Robin looked up to see Eric standing at the end of the trail. The boy tensed and the sullen look instantly returned to his face.

  “David, what did I ask you to do earlier?” Eric demanded.

  The boy said nothing.

  Eric provided his own answer. “I asked you to pick up a package in Vista Point. Why haven’t you done it?”

  “I don’t know,” David grumbled.

  “Well, I’d appreciate it if you could find the time to do it now, before you have to go over to Mrs. Wilson’s for your lesson. Do you think you can do that? I mean, it wouldn’t be too much of an imposition?”

  The sarcasm wasn’t lost on David. His lips narrowed and his fingers curled. But before he could form a hateful reply, Robin said, “David was showing me around. I’m sorry if I kept him from doing your errand. I didn’t mean to get in the way.”

  Eric’s pale blue eyes focused on her, and Robin could feel the tension mount within her, as well. During the past week, they had both scrupulously kept to their roles as employer and employee. There had been no private exchanges since her first day, no more odd little sparks of surprised awareness. Thinking back, Robin wasn’t even sure that those sparks had occurred in the first place. But the mere possibility that they had made her uncomfortable in his presence. Her sensors automatically leapt to first-stage alert whenever she was near him, and there didn’t seem to be anything she could do to shut them off.

  “David should have told you he had a job to do.” His gaze moved back to the boy.

  “I didn’t think you’d want me to be rude.”

  “Since when has that stopped you?” his brother snapped.

  Robin hated to hear them argue. “Please,” she broke in. “I didn’t mean to cause trouble. I wish—”

  David bulldozed over her last words. “There! Are you happy? You’ve made her feel bad.” He shook his head in mock disgust. “Why don’t you show a little consideration for other people, Eric? It’s what you tell me all the time.”

  “Please…” Robin repeated.

  She could see that David’s hectoring was beginning to get under Eric’s skin. Still, he managed to hold on.

  “Maybe you’d better get going,” he suggested tightly.

  David had no trouble picking up on the warning yet he clung to an edge of cocky bravado. “Yes, all right,” he agreed, “I will. But not because you tell me to. I’m going because I don’t want to see Robin upset any more than she already is. She didn’t ask for this. All she wanted was someone to talk to.”

  With that, he swaggered off down the street toward the inn. A few moments later, a late-model SUV backed out of the driveway and sped away, leaving behind a rooster tail of dust.

  Robin moved to the edge of the pier and sat down again. Only this time she sat with her ankles crossed and her arms wrapped tightly around her drawn-up knees. She stared at the water and began a gentle rocking. Her emotions were a jumble. As an only child, she wasn’t accustomed to arguments between siblings. This, however, went far beyond a simple argument.

  She became aware that Eric had been standing beside her when he, too, sat down on the pier. He didn’t say anything. Not for a long time. Then he murmured, “I always end up apologizing to you.” When she didn’t respond, he continued, “None of this is your fault. I don’t blame you for asking David to show you around. And I don’t really blame him for doing it. I would have, too, given the same set of circumstances.”

  “Why didn’t you tell him that?” she asked huskily.

  Eric ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “David and I can’t seem to admit things like that to each other anymore.”

  “You could once?” she asked.

  He nodded. “A long, long time ago, yes.” He seemed to lose himself in time. When he shook free, he glanced at her and asked, “Tell me, how are you settling in? Have you enjoyed your first week at Heron’s Inn, or have you had your fill of us Marshalls?”

  Robin let herself smile. She was still upset, but if he was prepared to make an effort, she could, too. “I like it here,” she replied slowly.

  “You aren’t lonely?”

  “How could I be?”

  “Some people think the peace and quiet go too far.”

  “But it’s so beautiful!”

  “Some people can’t see that.”

  She looked at him curiously. “Are we speaking of David, by any chance?”

  He leaned back, propping himself on his outstretched hands. “Yes,” he said, then added, “He seems to like you.”

  “Is that so surprising?”

  “He doesn’t like many people, that’s all.”

  “I wouldn’t say he likes me. We only talked for a few minutes.”

  “If he talked to you for any length of time at all, that’s something. Believe me.”

  “What about his friends?”

  Eric shook his head. “He doesn’t have any friends.”

  “But—”

  “Oh, maybe one or two that he calls friends. But I’ve never seen them. I’m not sure they even exist.”

  Robin frowned. “Doesn’t that worry you?” she asked slowly.

  “Worries the hell out of me! But what can I do?”

  “Maybe you could try not being so hard on him.”

  “You think I’m too hard on him?”

  “Well, yes, in a way.”

  “And you base this theory on one week’s observation?”

  Robin started to rock again, her gaze refocusing on the water. She couldn’t admit that she knew their past history far better than he thought she did, that she felt an almost spiritual connection with the family. “It was merely a suggestion,” she murmured.

  Long, capable fingers reached out to draw her chin around. Her internal alarm system jerked to a higher stage of alert and she stopped rocking. Her gaze fluttered to his and then away again. “What is it about you?” he asked softly a moment later. He sounded genuinely puzzled.

  Robin moved her chin away. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  He made no reply, and when she chanced another glance at him, it was to see that he was frowning.

  Her heart was thumping rapidly, and her breathing had turned shallow. She tried to tell herself she was reacting to the possibility that he suspected who she was, but that idea was inconceivable. There was no possible way he might suspect.

  She scrambled to her feet. “I think… I think I’ll go for a walk.”

  He stood up, as well. “We have several good hiking trails in the area.”

  “I think I’ll follow the cliff.”

  “If you continue that way for about half a mile, you’ll come to a fork where the path branches off to the beach. If you go straight, you’ll eventually come to the Overlook. It’s a favorite place for whale watchers in winter and spring. Unfortunately, the migration is over right now. All you’ll have is a great view.”

  “Great.”

  “It’s about five miles,” he warned.

  “I’ll decide what I want to do when I get to the fork.”

  ERICK NEW VERY CLEARLY what he wanted to do—follow her, take her hand, walk with her, be with her—and the force of the impulse shocked him. It didn’t subside until Robin had reached the headland and turned to walk along the cliff path. And even then he had a hard time calling himself to order. He’d done his best to stay away from her all week, hoping that if he avoided the problem it might cease to exist. Only his plan hadn’t worked. He would have had to move out of the house not to run into her, and adopting a formal manner only made him feel foolish. Several times he’d caught Samantha looking at him strangely. The last thing he needed was for her to catch on.

  ROBIN DIDN’T WANT TO WALK. She wanted to get in her car and drive back to her apartment in the Berkeley hills. She wanted familiar things around her. She wanted to see her friends.

  The drive to the Bay Area and back was too long and too difficult to make easily in one day, though. A narrow, twisting road following the coastline or
a narrow, twisting road through dense forests before she could finally break out onto the Interstate. It was possible to accomplish, but tomorrow she would be a wreck.

  She followed the pathway, trying not to think. And when she came to the fork in the road, she chose the branch that led to the beach. The descent was easier than she expected, fairly level in places, with a series of steps built into the steeper areas.

  The waves off the open ocean struck the shore with much more violence than in the protected cove, smashing against the tumbled rocks. Driftwood was scattered along the narrow beach’s tide line, along with bits and pieces of seaweed. Sea gulls patrolled for food on foot and in the air.

  The wind whipped at her clothes and hair while the sun remained hidden behind the bluff. She might have been alone in all the world, except for the several sets of footprints dotting the firm sand, evidence that someone had traveled this way before. Nearly washed away in some spots, the prints remained true to form in others. Robin wondered if the people had walked singly or in a group. Next, she wondered who they might be. Then part of her question was answered.

  Barbara Marshall stood just around a turn of the shoreline, as still as a statue, staring out to sea. Robin instantly halted, reluctant to disturb her, but Barbara had already sensed another presence. She broke into a smile as she greeted Robin warmly.

  “Isn’t it a beautiful morning?” she asked pleasantly. “I love the air out here. It’s so clean and clear.” She filled her lungs and blissfully exhaled. “I’m going to miss it when Timothy and I go to live in Sacramento.”

  “Sacramento?” Robin echoed. “I didn’t realize—”

  Barbara smiled wryly. “Me, neither. When we got engaged, I had no idea. But Timothy’s been offered a job in the office of our local state representative, and we can’t afford to turn it down.” She grinned. “His mother isn’t sure whether to brag or to cry. Timothy thinks that getting away for the first few years of our marriage is a good idea. I agree with him. His mother’s a dear, but she does like to run things.”

  “Sacramento isn’t that far away.”

  “Just far enough!” Barbara quipped, and both women laughed. They fell into step to walk along the beach.

  “When exactly is the wedding?” Robin asked.

  “It’s scheduled for June 20th.”

  Robin sensed an underlying concern in Barbara’s voice. “That sounds a little tentative,” she responded.

  “At the rate we’re going, Eileen—she’s Timothy’s mother—isn’t going to have any hair left by the day of the wedding! She keeps tearing it out, strand by strand, because we keep having one problem after another.”

  “Is she trying to do too much?”

  “Yes. But every time I try to help, she insists on doing it her way.” Barbara sighed. “I don’t want to create tension between us. As I said before, she’s a dear. But—”

  “But it is your wedding.”

  “And Timothy’s. Only he’s beginning to disappear the minute anyone mentions the word.”

  “Which irritates you.”

  “It’s starting to!”

  Robin smiled. “You have, what—three weeks left? It will all be over soon.”

  “I hope so. But some of the plans are beginning to look shaky. Eileen says not to worry, but I find it hard not to.”

  “If there’s anything I can do…” Robin offered.

  Barbara looked at her. “You know, you’ve only been here for a week, but it seems much longer. Before you came, things were pretty rough. I had to be away so often. Eileen insists that I come to every appointment, even though she does most of the talking. Eric and Samantha were wearing themselves out at the inn, doing all of their work plus mine. I suppose, to be fair, I should include David, but most times it’s easier to do the job yourself than to oversee him. Since you’ve been here, though, I don’t feel quite so guilty.”

  Robin nodded understanding.

  “You’ve also fit right in emotionally, if you know what I mean,” Barbara continued. “It’s as if you’re some sort of kindred spirit!”

  Robin shrugged uneasily. “It hasn’t been that hard.”

  “Eric is very pleased with your work,” Barbara confided. “He hasn’t said much, but I can tell.”

  They proceeded in silence another few minutes before deciding to turn back. Robin stooped to pick up an interesting shell, moving it this way and that in the bright sunlight.

  “I once had a huge collection of shells,” Barbara remarked. “I was eighteen when we moved here from San Francisco. Actually, that’s how I met Timothy. We were both on the beach, walking from different directions, him from Vista Point—that’s the old lumber mill town where he lives about ten miles up the coast—and me from Dunnigan Bay. We were both looking for shells. We met, and we fell in love at the exact same instant. Isn’t that romantic?”

  “Almost as if it were preordained,” Robin remarked.

  “I believe some things are.”

  “Both good and bad?” Robin asked, her thoughts automatically turning to the accident.

  Barbara frowned. “I suppose so, yes.”

  Had their father’s death been preordained? Robin wondered. It would be such a relief to believe that. But it also seemed too easy a way out, an excuse to cling to when reality became too hard to take. Robin concentrated on the present. “Why did your family move to Dunnigan Bay?” she asked. It seemed as good a time as any to ask, and Barbara the right person.

  Barbara glanced at Robin, as though trying to gauge how much she could tell her. “Because of David,” she said finally. “He was having all kinds of trouble in school and in the neighborhood where we lived. He was getting into fights. He was only ten, but he was picking on boys that were fifteen and sixteen. You can imagine the result. Eric tried everything he could to fix the situation. Nothing worked. David couldn’t get along with the kids his age, either, and the authorities at the school had had enough. They were about to transfer him to a special teaching facility. Eric thought a move might help—take David out of the city, away from the people he got into trouble with, away from the teachers who’d given up on him. So we came here.”

  “How did the rest of you feel about that? Did you mind moving?”

  “We all wanted to help David.”

  Robin hesitated. “It didn’t do very much good, though, did it?”

  Barbara shook her head sadly. “No. He just transferred his anger to Eric. I don’t know why.”

  “Has he had any kind of professional help?”

  “A score of school psychologists. Sometimes I think they made things worse. They certainly didn’t help him.”

  “No one since that time?”

  “David would never agree to go! Can you imagine if one of us suggested such a thing? He’d bite our heads off.”

  “How did it turn out that Eric was in charge? I mean…what happened to your parents?”

  There. It was out. She had to be told formally, otherwise they’d wonder why she hadn’t asked.

  “Oh! You don’t know about that, do you? Our father was killed sixteen years ago—sixteen years last month, as a matter of fact—when he rescued a young girl from drowning. She survived but he didn’t. She was just a couple of years older than me.”

  Robin’s hand had unconsciously tightened on the shell, causing its rough edges to cut her skin.

  “He was considered a hero,” Barbara continued. “We even made a trip to Washington, D.C., to receive a medal given posthum—pos—” She had trouble with the word. “One presented after his death. It was in all the newspapers and on TV.” Her voice caught. “It still hurts,” she said by way of explanation.

  “What happened to the girl?” Robin was compelled to ask.

  “I don’t know. We never met her.”

  “And your mother?”

  “Our mother died shortly after David was born. An aneurysm in the brain. No one suspected. One day she was with us, the next she wasn’t. The same as our dad.”

  “O
h, my God,” Robin breathed, stunned.

  “Eric didn’t have much of a choice. If we were to stay together as a family, he had to leave college to take care of us. We had an aunt and uncle who lived in another state, but they weren’t in a position to take the five of us who were underage. So Eric quit his senior year, and he never went back.”

  “He never married, either?” Robin asked. It was important for her to hear that he had. That he had had someone to help ease the circumstances.

  “Never,” Barbara said softly.

  Robin could think of nothing else to say. She had already learned more than she could absorb for the moment.

  Shortly afterward, they arrived at the trail that led back to the ridge. Barbara took it, while Robin continued to walk along the beach.

  This time, no footprints marked the sand ahead of her. She was truly alone.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “A LETTER FROM BRIDGET!” Samantha cried, waving an envelope in the air. “I get to read it first!” She curled into a Windsor chair beside the small table in the kitchen. The table was placed a short distance from the French doors opening into the garden.

  Eric came out of the utility room carrying freshly filled spray bottles of cleanser. “Has she found her cousin, the earl, yet?” he teased.

  “I don’t know.” Samantha busily scanned the cramped writing. She giggled. “She says she kissed the Blarney stone and almost put her back out because you have to do it lying on your back and with your head hanging down.”

  “She doesn’t need any more blarney,” Eric grumbled.

  “Wait! Wait! She does say something about the earl…” Samantha became engrossed in what she was reading and forgot to relate it to the others.

  Eric grinned at Robin. “She does this to keep up the tension.”

  Robin glanced fondly at Samantha. The girl continued to be a delight. Part woman, part child, she brightened each day with her sunny personality and hopeful outlook on life. Few things seemed to worry her.

  Robin turned back to see that Eric had not looked away from her. She concentrated on cutting the vegetables for the potpies scheduled for that evening’s meal.