by Karis Walsh
“No.” Casey paused. Would every local jump all over her if she told the truth about why she was here, or just Iris? “I’m from the UW seismology lab. Here to study the earthquake.”
“Seems you people do a lot of studying, but not a lot of predicting.”
“Oh. Well. We’re trying to get better. That’s why I’m here.” Casey felt strangely as if she’d been chastised by a teacher for not doing her homework.
“Then you’ll need some food before you get started. I’m Jasmine Gray, but everyone calls me Jazz. Come in.”
Jazz had the authority-figure act down pat. Casey trailed after her reluctantly and was surprised to find herself standing in the kitchen of a pub. The vague but unmistakable smell of fried food assaulted her as soon as the door closed behind them. She was about to make an excuse to leave and find somewhere less artery-clogging to eat, but her stomach rumbled loudly. She looked around for the entrance to the public dining area. “I’m glad to find an open restaurant,” she said, unable to see a clear way out of the kitchen. “I haven’t eaten a meal since yesterday.”
“I’m not technically open,” Jazz said. “I was just making my own lunch and I might as well feed two. Sit.”
She pointed at a stool next to the metal island, and Casey sat obediently. Iris should send her new charges here for training—they’d be sitting and speaking and doing tricks before the day was over. Casey wondered how Iris had fared as she disembarked with her pack of dogs and the howling cat. Casey would have willingly helped her move the menagerie to the dock if Iris hadn’t sniped at her.
And if she hadn’t sniped right back.
Jazz turned to her gigantic black oven and seemed to forget Casey was there as she got to work on their lunches. Casey watched the preparations with half of her attention—she wasn’t usually interested in cooking since she had practically grown up on packaged meals and had never gotten out of the habit of using only the microwave and coffeepot in her kitchen. Soon, though, Casey was caught in a web of fascination as Jazz transformed from bossy, nondescript pub owner to something graceful and masterful. She slathered thick slices of white bread—probably homemade given the irregular shape of the loaf and the plain plastic wrapper—with deep-gold butter and put them on the flat grill. Two hefty fillets, the glossy coral color of wild-caught Pacific salmon, joined the sizzling bread. Once the toast was brown, Jazz topped it with mayonnaise, a layer of basil leaves, and the darkly singed salmon.
Casey was nearly drooling when Jazz pulled a basket out of the deep fryer and tipped a pile of homemade potato chips onto a plate next to the sandwich. The scent of dill mingled with the sticky odor of frying oil.
“Eat,” Jazz directed, putting the plate in front of her and sitting down with one of her own. She pointed at a small tub of tartar sauce. “Dip the chips in this.”
Casey fought the rebellious urge to salute because she was afraid any sign of sarcasm might result in the food being taken away from her. She picked up a chip that was still hot from the oil and dropped it again, wiping her smarting fingers on her napkin. Jazz just shook her head and popped a boiling hot chip in her mouth without flinching. Casey wanted to rise to the challenge, but she picked up the sandwich instead and took a huge bite. The contrast of crispy bread and sharp basil with salmon so tender she barely had to chew it was divine, and she closed her eyes as she swallowed.
She paused for a moment, savoring the taste and trying to figure out why this setting felt familiar to her. The tang of lemon in the mayonnaise, the smell of flavorful food cooking on the stove, and the cozy feeling of eating in the kitchen. She frowned and opened her eyes before she ate more of the sandwich. Her childhood memories were full of meals served in plastic trays, eaten in the living room while she, her father, and his parents watched some documentary or other on television. Casey paused before she put the last bit of sandwich in her mouth.
Her mother, that was it. Standing in the kitchen and making something delicious while a very tiny Casey sat on the counter next to her. Casey swore she could hear the rhythmic tap of her younger self’s heels against the cupboard as she swung her legs back and forth and watched her mom chop an herb and add it to a simmering pot of soup.
Casey chewed the rest of her food, but the flavor had disappeared. She had lost her mother when she was only four, and memories of her were few and far between. Casey was never sure if she was glad when they unexpectedly arrived, or if she’d rather they disappeared forever. They always left a gaping hole inside. She hadn’t known how to grieve when she was young, and she felt as if she was back in the middle of an unfinished process every time she thought of her mother.
“Do you mind telling me about yesterday?” she asked Jazz as she used a potato chip flecked with bits of dill to scoop up some tartar sauce. She’d do what her grandparents told her to do every time she cried about missing her mom during that first year without her. Work. Pick up a book, solve a puzzle, do some homework—yes, the accelerated school they enrolled her in gave homework in kindergarten. By the second year after her mother’s death, Casey had become an expert on refocusing her attention whenever it wandered toward sadness.
“No, I don’t mind,” Jazz said, setting down the second half of her sandwich and wiping her hands. She stood up and got two Cokes out of the fridge while she talked. “I was serving lunch—we had a big crowd because the weather is warm for this time of year. I was carrying a tray of beers to one of the tables, and everything started to shake. The glasses fell, people were screaming. It takes the brain a few seconds to realize what’s going on, you know?”
“I do,” Casey nodded. She ate another chip and was relieved to find her sense of taste was functioning again. She washed away the heaviness of the fried food with a swallow of Coke. “I was on a plane taxiing to the terminal. I wasn’t sure if we had run over something, or another plane had hit us. What did the motion feel like to you?”
“Violent. Like we were in a carton of orange juice and someone was shaking us real hard.” She paused. “I remember a big quake about ten, eleven years ago. I had just moved to the island. That one was different—the earth was rolling like a huge wave had come out of the Sound and was washing over us. It didn’t feel as rough as this one, although the damage was still pretty severe. We must have been farther from the epicenter back then, I guess. You’d know better than I.”
Casey shook her head. She was picturing Iris and her shelter. She must have been feeling terrified and helpless, with so many animals under her care and no way to protect them until the shaking stopped. “You’re right about the epicenter being miles south of here a decade ago, but that isn’t what causes the different kind of movement. The rupture in the Devils Mountain Fault was deeper in the earlier earthquake. That’ll give you the smoother rolling sensation, even though the magnitude was almost the same as this one.”
Jazz leaned forward and stared at her, as if searching for something. “Does it help you? To be so clinical about it, I mean.”
Casey crunched on another chip before answering. “No. And yes. It doesn’t make me less scared or less in danger when there’s an earthquake, but I think I recover faster than other people. Once it’s over, I have a job to do, turning something frightening into a collection of data to be studied.”
She looked around the kitchen again, thinking about what she had just said. Was it true? Had she bounced back from yesterday’s fear and become the cool-headed scientist she was meant to be? She wasn’t sure. Would she have been as easily provoked by Iris today if she was completely in control again? Probably. She held most people at a certain distance, but Iris had somehow wedged her way under Casey’s skin, touching her where she was too sensitive to handle contact and somehow making her crave even more. She pushed her plate away, her stomach finally full, although her insides still felt hollow.
Casey was accustomed to noticing major damage from the earthquakes she studied. Cracked walls, broken windows, caved-in roofs. She saved her detailed examination for nature,
minutely looking at fractures and patterns. But here, in Jazz’s kitchen and with Iris’s accusations ringing through her head, she saw smaller signs of yesterday’s disaster. Tubs of ruined produce, shelves in disarray. One of the refrigerators leaned at an odd angle, obviously broken. Even discounting major damage, Jazz had hours of work ahead of her just to get the kitchen organized and to replace food and dishes that had been lost.
She reached for her wallet. “Lunch was delicious,” she said, pulling out a couple of twenties. “I’ll be in Friday Harbor for a few days. I’ll have to spend a lot of my time on the east side of the island, but I can come by and help you—”
Jazz covered her hand and pushed it away. “You keep your money,” she said. “I enjoyed having a little company today. Come back anytime you need a meal, but don’t you worry about me. Those of us who’ve stayed will be organizing work parties this afternoon. We’ll take care of the ones who need the most help first, and then work together to get the rest of the businesses up and running. You just figure out how to let us know in advance next time this is going to happen. The lot of you dropped the ball on this one.”
“Sorry,” Casey mumbled, apologizing for the entire community of seismologists and the capricious events they studied. She could predict without a doubt that there would be several earthquakes of varying magnitudes over the next month—most too subtle for the average person to notice—and she was sure more high-magnitude seismic events would take place along the Northwest’s fault lines in the future. But saying exactly when, exactly where, and exactly how powerful they’d be was far beyond anyone’s abilities right now. Soon, she hoped. She would do whatever it took to help make predictions more reliable and accurate.
Jazz gave her hand another pat. “I’d offer you a place to stay, but my little house is a mess. I’m staying with a friend, and he already has a houseful of us refugees. The fire officials are making rounds all the time, otherwise I’d let you sleep in here.”
“I’ll be fine,” Casey said with a confident smile. “There are plenty of hotels and guest houses on the island. One of them is bound to be open, or at least willing to let me have a room for a week or so.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Jazz said with a nod and a smile, although her expression seemed to say the opposite.
Chapter Four
Iris got out of Agatha’s car and reached into the backseat for the shepherd and the cat crate while Agatha retrieved the two Chihuahuas. The old white Buick wasn’t as fancy as Iris’s sportier little coupe, but it came in handy when they needed to transport animals. Agatha had met the ferry when it arrived, and while they got the dogs and cat situated, Iris had surreptitiously watched Casey drive a big, beat-up Toyota truck past her and into Friday Harbor. Confused by the angry way she had treated Casey—so unlike her usual interactions with other people—she had been tempted to flag her down and apologize. Instead, she had stubbornly refused to do more than glance Casey’s way.
As soon as the car doors shut again, the resident dogs that were already in the kennels sensed the newcomers’ arrival and started barking in a chaotic chorus, and Iris lurched forward as the shepherd tried to drag her toward the other animals. She didn’t want to terrify the cat by taking her into the dogs’ area, so she held her ground until Leo, Agatha’s husband, came and took the crate from her.
“Thanks,” she said, relieved to have help. “She can go in Christine’s bungalow for now. She’s pregnant, so she needs more peace and quiet than she’d get in the cat rooms.”
Once Leo had taken the cat toward the little house closest to Iris’s, she took the shepherd to the main kennels. She knew she could trust Leo to get the mama cat settled with a bed, food, and water. When Iris bought the shelter, Agatha and Leo were already living on the property and working with the animals. Iris had been reluctant to have a ready-made staff, preferring instead to have a choice in the people she hired, but she hadn’t had the nerve to make the retired couple leave the place they had made into their home. After about a week, she was ready to beg them to stay if they ever tried to leave her. They worked tirelessly and selflessly to help every dog and cat that came through the shelter, and they had taken Iris under their wings as well. Christine, the summer intern, had recently gone back to school, leaving the three of them to handle work that was tiring on a good day and backbreaking after an event like the quake.
Iris walked the dog down the main aisle, bordered on each side by large chain-link kennels. The barking seemed loud from the parking area, and once she was right in the midst of it, the noise battered her without any buffering walls or distance. Iris liked the sound—luckily—and she was able to pick out every individual dog’s voice, but the sheer number of animals made her shoulder muscles tighten with stress. They were always overflowing with miscellaneous pets in need of homes, even in this small community of islands, and they had added nearly a quarter again of their current population since yesterday. She felt like a turtle trying to pull its head into the safety of its shell, and she made a conscious effort to relax her shoulders and stretch her neck a little taller. She might feel like curling in a ball and hiding from the shaken world, but she could at least look like she didn’t.
A double-sized kennel in front of the office served as a holding area for recent arrivals, and Iris put the shepherd inside it with the two smaller dogs since the three had gotten along okay in close quarters during the trip here from Lopez. Iris walked into the office and flipped on the light switch automatically before remembering that the electricity had been out since the day before. She was surprised to see the lights come on.
“Oh,” she said. It was such a small sound, but the relief and gratitude it contained made her feel close to tears. “The power is back.”
“They started working on clearing the lines on our street just after you left this morning,” Agatha said. “I thought it would be a nice welcome-home present for you.”
“One of the best I could have imagined,” Iris said. She dropped into her desk chair and felt her shoulders curl forward again. No electricity had meant no water because they were on a well. They had a powerful generator—a necessity out here where the ocean-borne storms could do serious damage—but the beast guzzled fuel faster than Iris could keep it filled, sucking up money that was needed for the animals. Iris appreciated having the machine when she needed it, but she was always happy to turn it off again.
“We had an owner show up,” Agatha continued. She lifted a fat calico off a pile of papers and relocated her to another part of the desk. The cat—aptly named Lazy Susan—barely opened her eyes long enough to give Agatha an indignant glare before falling asleep again. “Those two shih tzus you found near the post office got loose when a tree fell across her fence.”
Iris sighed. Wonderful. Two dogs out and three in. The equation didn’t balance, but it was better than she had expected. Agatha shook her head.
“Don’t get too excited. One of the workers from the power company found a stray in the woods a few blocks from here. Some kind of hound mix. Looked like he had crawled through a swamp to get here, but underneath all the muck he’s healthy and has a nice coat. Belongs to someone.”
Agatha continued to gather papers and put them in front of Iris. She was as efficient as always, despite the earthquake and its frenetic aftermath. At first glance, Iris had thought Agatha looked like the grandmotherly, bridge-playing, cookie-baking type, but she had been mistaken. Agatha had spent decades running a wholesale nursery, and she did most of the maintenance at the shelter. Just last night, she had been wielding a chainsaw and hacking through some of the debris from fallen trees. Iris had tried to stop her and do the manual labor on her own, but Agatha had been relentless, as usual. Still, even with the two of them working, they had managed to clear only a small section of the property.
Iris filled out the four intake forms Agatha gave her while she cringed inside at the thought of all the work still in front of them. The shelter’s three acres were thick with fir trees,
making it secluded and peaceful most of the time, and a big mess after the tremors had tossed every loose branch and needle to the ground. A few of the trees had fallen, blocking walking trails and destroying one of the exercise pens.
Iris signed the last form with a flourish, out-processing the shih tzus. Most of the new arrivals would have owners who had lost them during the confusion of the quake and were looking for them. She would do whatever it took to reunite them.
“We can leave the three Lopez dogs where they are for now,” Iris said, mentally touring the kennels. “Since Jack and Gus will be in the infirmary for a few days, I can get their runs repaired and then we can move the three out of the intake pen. Oh, wait. Sasha hates little dogs, so the Chihuahuas can’t go there. Maybe if we move Jupiter…”
Iris unpinned the kennel schematic from the wall behind her desk and she and Agatha erased and penciled in names until they were accommodating every dog’s needs and preferences. As soon as another animal came to the shelter, they’d have to go through the same process yet again.
Agatha went outside to help Leo move the dogs while Iris got her tote box of tools and headed out to the damaged runs. She stopped by the small infirmary to see the two dogs that had been injured yesterday when trees had crashed down on their runs. The room was basic, but filled their needs for most of the routine injuries and illnesses they encountered. For more serious problems, the animals would stay with the vet. A large shelf held various first aid supplies, and a fridge full of vaccines and puppy formula stood next to it. A simple metal table was in the center of the room, and the far wall was lined with four narrow indoor pens.
She went into the first one and knelt next to the black-and-white freckled dog that was lying on a round corduroy bed. He gently licked her hand as she peeled back his bandage and checked the gash on his leg. A neat row of stitches—courtesy of Iris’s friend and vet, Bianca, who had taken time out of her harried night and made a house call—stretched from Gus’s shoulder nearly to his paw. She stuck the bandage back in place and scratched behind his ears with suddenly shaky hands.