Room at Heron's Inn

by Ginger Chambers

  Robin didn’t know that Eric blamed his father for leaving them. She wondered how David knew that? She doubted that Eric would have told him anything. But David was very perceptive. Possibly too perceptive for his own good.

  “Is that the reason you want to become a chef?” she asked. “Because you think you can’t do anything else? Becoming a chef isn’t easy, David. My friend—” She hated to continue to lie to him. “My friend said it was a lot of hard work. You have to study if you want to be accredited. It does mean more time in school.”

  “I’d rather learn about cooking than algebra and French.”

  Robin smiled. “If you learn classical cooking, you’ll use plenty of French terms. Mirepoix, that’s what these vegetables you’ve been preparing are for—the vegetables used in making a stock. When you cut vegetables in one-eighth-inch cubes, it’s called brunoise. When you cut them in one-sixteenth-inch cubes, it’s called fine brunoise. See what I mean?”

  “How do you know all of this?”

  She shrugged. “I helped him study.”

  “Was he your boyfriend?”

  “Just a friend, okay?”

  “Maybe I should tell Eric he has competition.”

  “Maybe you’d better not.” She switched quickly to a different topic. “Tell me, did you have a good time last night?”

  David went back to cutting carrots. “It was tolerable.”

  “What did you have to eat?” She bit her tongue after asking that question. It was too revealing of her keen interest in what people were served in various restaurants. And she’d already given away enough.

  “Some kind of poached salmon. It was pretty good.”

  “Did everyone treat you better?”

  “I suppose. No one said anything to irritate me.”

  “Not even Eric?”

  “No.”

  “Did you get any presents?”

  “Benjamin gave me a wallet. It’s pretty nice. Eric, Barbara and Samantha bought me a pair of in-line skates, with all the gear that goes with them.”

  “That sounds like fun.”

  “Not a lot of places to use them up here.”

  Allison came into the room frowning. “Have either of you seen Colin and Gwen? They seem to have disappeared.”

  “They went with Eric to Mrs. Carter’s,” David answered. “They found a hurt bird.”

  “Oh?” An eyebrow disappeared into Allison’s perfectly feathered bangs as she watched her youngest brother work.

  “David is helping me,” Robin explained. She couldn’t help being uneasy around Allison. She hadn’t needed David’s assessment to know of his sister’s suspicious nature. The woman had admitted as much earlier, when she’d issued her warning.

  “So I see,” Allison said, and had the good grace not to say anything more.

  David was at a delicate stage. Any offhand comment could be taken the wrong way and destroy the fragile confidence that Robin was trying to build.

  “Well, when they get back, will you tell them I’d like to see them upstairs?” Allison requested.

  “Certainly,” Robin replied.

  Allison gave a short nod and turned back into the hall.

  “The brats are in trouble,” David murmured after a moment.

  “What makes you say that?” Robin asked.

  “She keeps them on a pretty tight leash.”

  “But I thought—”

  “They manage to get into trouble anyway.”

  “Maybe Eric can intervene for them.”

  David laughed mockingly. “Sure, Saint Eric.”

  Robin stood up. “You’re being too hard on him, David.” She pushed several stalks of celery toward the cutting board. “Cut these about the same size as what you’ve already done.”

  David’s technique was improving. As a result, he didn’t take long to complete the assignment. When he was done, Robin swept all the diced vegetables into a tall pot in which she’d already placed the bones of several chickens. She then added water and the sachet of spices she’d prepared earlier, and adjusted the flame on the stove for a quick boil.

  She turned back to David. “Don’t you think he should stick up for the kids, especially considering the circumstances?”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” he admitted.

  “You would, wouldn’t you?”

  David studied the floor. “Yeah.”

  She came to stand beside him, copying his stance by leaning back against the counter and folding her arms. “Aren’t you curious about what we’re having for dinner tonight?”

  “I thought we were having boiled chicken bones,” he teased.

  Robin thumped him lightly with her elbow. “We’re making chicken stock. It’s to use with the recipe for corn chowder I found in Bridget’s cookbook. The corner of the page was folded down, so I thought it must be a favorite.”

  “It is.”

  “In a couple of hours, would you like to help make it?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  “I also thought we’d have apple pie for dessert.”

  “Better and better,” he said, licking his lips.

  “I’ll see you at three, then.”

  “I’ll be here,” he said.

  Robin found herself humming as she cleared the counter in order to make several round loaves of hearty wheat bread to accompany the meal. She paused, registered the fact that she’d been humming, then gave herself permission to continue.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THAT EVENING THE CHOWDER won high praise, as did David when Robin informed everyone he had assisted her. David tossed his head and acted as if he didn’t care what the others thought, but Robin could see that, deep down, he basked in the approval of his siblings.

  “What about the sea gull?” Barbara asked. She had come in late to the meal after an afternoon spent chasing after more last-minute wedding details. “Before I left, I heard you took one to Mrs. Carter.”

  “She thinks it will be fine,” Eric answered. “In a few days it will be back out with all the other birds, right, kids?”

  Colin and Gwen nodded enthusiastically.

  “She has a baby deer that hurt its leg and a falcon with one eye and a whole lot of other animals and birds.”

  “It’s like going to a zoo, only different!” Colin added.

  “Someone still should have told me what you were doing,” Allison complained. “Rather than make me search all over, thinking the worst.”

  The twins looked down at their dessert plates. Obviously they’d been chastised.

  “They didn’t have time, Allison,” David surprised everyone by saying.

  “That’s right,” Eric agreed, trying not to look too startled. “Every second counts in an emergency.”

  “Robin knew,” Allison charged.

  “Robin was there.”

  “Someone still should have told me.”

  “If it happens again, we will. That’s a promise,” Eric said.

  Allison looked somewhat mollified as she ate the last of her pie.

  “What’s next?” Samantha asked, breaking into the remaining cloud of discontent. “The rehearsal dinner is Friday. What’s left?”

  “The earliest out-of-town guests planning to stay at the inn will start to arrive Thursday,” Eric said. “Robin, this is your last chance if you’d like to spread out a little. You can have one of the large guest rooms in front for a few days, if you like.”

  “I’m happy where I am, thanks.”

  “Has Aunt Rachel decided to come?” Samantha asked.

  “The last I heard, yes,” Barbara answered.

  “She’s our only close relative,” Samantha explained to Robin. “She lives in Idaho.”

  “She’s our batty aunt from Idaho,” Benjamin corrected, laughing lightly.

  “She writes poetry,” Samantha retorted.

  “Weird poetry,” Benjamin said. “But it was worse when our uncle was alive. He used to publish her work and give it away. Then they started to make these pottery balls
that had her verses inside. Remember when they sent us a box full of them one Christmas? It took us ages to figure out what they were.”

  “I remember we found out when you snuck up behind me while I was cleaning the big mirror in the front room. You scared me half to death!” Samantha grumbled, pretending to still feel aggrieved. “You were wearing a costume from a play you’d been in at school. Only you’d altered it until you looked like some kind of hideous monster. I screamed and jumped and knocked off two or three of those pottery balls Allison had set out on the mantel.”

  “I thought if we kept them out for a respectable period, we could put them away without guilt,” Allison said.

  “I got the idea to scare you from some TV show I used to watch,” Benjamin said.

  “I always knew you watched too much TV,” Allison grumbled.

  “Maybe it was a ‘Partridge Family’ rerun,” Benjamin mused.

  “It certainly wasn’t ‘Law and Order’!” Samantha said laughing.

  “No, ‘Law and Order’ came later, after I’d decided I wanted to be a lawyer.”

  “What’s ‘Law and Order’?” Colin piped up.

  “My children aren’t allowed to watch TV,” Allison explained to Robin.

  “Which is probably a good thing,” Eric said. “Just imagine what things they’d get into if they did.”

  Colin turned to Eric. “What is it?”

  “It’s a show about cops and lawyers on that funny-looking box you sometimes see in other people’s living rooms.”

  “We know what a TV is!” the twins exclaimed, defending their degree of sophistication.

  “We watch it over at Billy Winslow’s house,” Gwen added, then clapped a hand over her mouth as her brother turned to glare at her.

  “I’ll have to have a little talk with Billy Winslow’s mother,” Allison remarked.

  “Give the kids a break!” David admonished, once again surprising them. Surprising even himself, it seemed. He shrugged and mumbled, “You can’t hide them from the world.”

  Allison stared at him, uncertain whether to snap back or smile at the fact that he, David, had acted like a participating member of the family.

  “I agree with David,” Barbara said. “When Timothy and I have children, we plan to monitor what they watch, but we aren’t going to keep them away from it totally.”

  Eric reached out to cover one ear of each twin. They sat on either side of him, so it was easy. “I agree with both of you,” he said, then grinned at the children and removed his hands. “But Allison sets the rules in her house. If she says no TV, then it’s no TV. And you kids should do as your mother asks.”

  “But we don’t watch it at home,” Colin responded with the crystal-clear logic of a child. “We watch it at our friend Billy’s house.”

  Everyone at the table started to laugh. Even David.

  Colin and Gwen were a little mystified at first, but they soon joined in, Colin with added gusto because everyone seemed to think he had made such a fine joke.

  As the meal drew to a close, Robin pushed away from the table and began to gather dishes, starting with her own.

  Eric stopped her. “I told you when you first came here that whenever the house is full of family, we all pitch in. You and David cooked the meal, the rest of us will clean up.”

  Robin looked up at him. It was difficult for her to hide her feelings. All through dinner she had studiously avoided giving him more than a quick glance. Yet she’d been keenly aware of him. Aware of the way he quietly headed the family. Aware of the way he interacted with the twins—humoring them, teasing them. If he had children of his own, he would undoubtedly treat them the same way.

  “That’s right,” Barbara agreed. “You should take the evening off.”

  “But I have all of tomorrow free.”

  “And this evening, too!” Samantha said with a grin as she eased the plate from Robin’s hand. “Isn’t that lovely?”

  Robin glanced at David, who gave her a bored shrug. The boy seemed to be beating a hasty retreat behind his accustomed wall of sullenness. But Robin didn’t feel any sense of disappointment. It was only natural that he would seesaw back and forth. For two days, his life had followed an unexpected path. It would be unrealistic to expect miracles. Progress could be measured only one step at a time.

  Her gaze returned to Eric, and she felt the now familiar tug of attraction toward him. She wanted to be near him, stay near him. Stay very near to him. But not a muscle moved. “Lovely,” she repeated quietly. “I—I think I’ll take a walk.”

  “Good idea,” Eric said. But that wasn’t what his eyes said. His eyes asked her not to go, not to move away from him. Not to tear them apart.

  Suddenly Robin started. She had no idea how long they’d been standing there, staring at each other, with everyone else moving about them to clear the table. When she looked around, Samantha winked at her, and David was nowhere to be seen.

  Robin ducked her head and hurried upstairs for a sweater.

  A LIGHT FOG HAD ROLLED IN, making it difficult to see the twin pillars of rock at the entrance to the bay. Robin snuggled closer into her sweater, slipping her fingers into the sleeves to protect them from the moist, chilled air. She walked to the end of the pier, then restlessly moved on to the trail leading to the rim of the cliff.

  From the top of the cliff, she paused to look behind her. Through the misty veil, she could see the lights that had been switched on early in the houses of Dunnigan Bay, soft yellow beacons that signaled home and safety. Toward the ocean, she could see nothing past a certain point, the white-capped breakers seeming to appear as if by magic.

  Robin sighed and kicked a loose stone. What did she do now? What was her next move? From the beginning—when she had first talked to Eric on the telephone, when she had hesitated to take that first step across the inn’s threshold, when she had shared in their first shock of mutual awareness—she had sensed that everything could easily spiral out of control. Now it had.

  Love wasn’t something that came easily to her. She couldn’t think, “Oh, I love him!” and then forget it. She had thought she might be in love once or twice in her life, but she had always found a reason not to be. Now that it had finally happened, irrevocably, she wasn’t in a position to accept it. Her entire existence here was based on a lie.

  And the truth shall make you free! For her, truth would be the end of everything.

  Robin started to walk along the path. At the fork leading down to the beach, she turned back. The fog was getting thicker as the day’s light rapidly dimmed, and she didn’t want to miss a step.

  A form emerged out of the grayness along the path. At first she thought it was Eric, and her heart missed a beat. But as they drew closer to each other, she recognized Benjamin.

  “Eric had a panic call from Eileen Clarke, and he had to rush over to Vista Point,” Benjamin explained. “He asked me to see that you made it home safely. He said to tell you he didn’t want you to pull a Frank Whittaker. That you’d understand what he meant.”

  Robin laughed even as she felt a rush of pleasure at Eric’s thoughtfulness. “He’s referring to a guest we had last week. Everyone wanted to chuck him off the cliff.”

  “Then you definitely don’t want to be Frank Whittaker.”

  “For more than one reason.”

  “I could make a rather risqué joke about that, but I won’t…seeing that we’ve barely met.”

  “Does that usually stop you?”

  “Rarely. But in this instance…”

  He fell into step beside her, following through with Eric’s request by choosing the side closer to the cliff’s edge for himself.

  Robin thought about the heartbroken young boy he had once been and compared him to the fine-looking young man he had become. On the surface, he seemed to be the most satisfactorily adjusted in the family, always good for a laugh. But jokers sometimes hid behind their jokes, presenting a happy front but hurting privately. From her previous conversation with Da
vid and her silent observation at dinner, she realized Benjamin was not a man to be easily pigeonholed.

  “You’re in law school?” she began, for something to say.

  “You need a lawyer?” he quipped, but there was a little sting behind the words, as if they were probing more deeply than they first appeared to be.

  “Not really, no,” she replied, giving an uneasy little laugh.

  They continued in silence for several steps.

  “You’re an excellent cook,” he said at last. “That chowder was delicious.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Samantha tells me everything you make is delicious.”

  “Samantha is easy to please.”

  “So does Barbara, and so does Eric. And Eric isn’t easy to please.”

  Robin searched for a reply. What he’d said seemed more like an accusation than a compliment. “I—I try,” she stammered.

  “This is an odd place for someone like you,” he continued.

  “Like me?” she repeated. “Should I be insulted?”

  “Only if you want to be. Where have you worked before?”

  “A number of places.”

  “Name one.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’d like to know.”

  “In San Francisco?”

  “That’s a good start.”

  “Umberto’s in the Marina District.” She stopped walking. “Would you like to see my references?”

  He faced her. “Would you give them to me?”

  “If you have serious questions about my abilities, yes.”

  “It’s not your ability I’m questioning,” he said quietly.