Jim Rubart Trilogy

by James L. Rubart

  “My internal radar says big change is coming.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Should I notify a disaster cleanup crew about the meeting?”

  “Not a bad idea.”

  ||||||||

  At one o’clock he walked toward Julie’s office with his heart ticking at least a few beats faster than normal. It wasn’t every day you dropped a nuclear bomb on your partner’s desk.

  She didn’t look up as he walked in.

  “We need to talk, Julie.”

  “Okay.” Her eyes stayed riveted on her computer screen. “Are we still on hold? Or are you ready to give me an answer?”

  “That’s what I came to talk to you about.”

  “So this is the official breakup?”

  “Not exactly.”

  She stood and walked toward him, drumming her fingers on her arm in a staccato rhythm.

  “I’m going to start working from the beach for a while.”

  “You’re what?” Julie’s eyes narrowed. “One more time, please?”

  “I’m going to split my time between working down there and working up here, mostly down there. Work fewer hours.”

  “You are not seriously saying this.”

  He leaned in toward her. “Yeah, I am, Julie. I am seriously saying it.”

  She stalked to the window, then whirled to face him. “You’re insane. Look around you. It’s not the time to kick back. You think you’re going to telecommute? Yeah, that’ll work great. It’ll infuse the stockholders with massive confidence. Once the press gets a hold of it, I’m sure our sales will go through the roof. Plus it’ll suck the last breath of life out of our relationship.” Julie turned back to the window. “All I wanted was a ring.”

  “I’m not breaking up!” Micah said louder than he intended. He rubbed his hands on his pants and glanced at the ceiling, as if it would give him the right words. “I just need to get away from here, do some thinking down there.”

  “What will you think about? This company is your life.”

  She was right. His entire identity was wrapped up in the company, which made his choice both crazy and exhilarating. What did he have in Cannon Beach? Memories he didn’t want to face, a seriously bizarre house that nearly killed him, and a friend twenty-three years his senior. Where was the draw in all that? Yet there was a draw. Deeper and more alive than anything he’d felt in years.

  Julie lifted her palms. “Let’s pretend I agree to something that idiotic and pretend you’re not breaking up with me. What would you do with your extra time? Learn to fly a kite? Start painting again? Cook?!”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “So am I.”

  What would he do down there? He could only take beach runs and hang with Rick for so long. Three weeks and he’d go nuts. His life had been so ordered and driven for so many years he wasn’t sure what to do next. Free time? What was that? His iPhone was almost grafted onto his body. Between his to-do list and Shannon’s reminders, every moment for the past six years had been filled with goals, appointments, setting vision for the company, and worlds to conquer.

  Julie sighed, walked over to Micah, and took his hands. “It’s just me. Let’s talk. No partnership. No RimSoft. No stock options. Just me before we gained the world.”

  They stared at each other, Micah trying to tell her with his eyes why he needed this. Julie asking with hers how he could put the kingdom they’d sweated blood for on hold.

  “I need to be there. Stay a while. Figure some things out.”

  “Figure what out?”

  “I don’t know. God maybe.”

  “God? Are you kidding?” Julie pulled away and scowled. “I thought you gave up the Jesus-freak thing back in college.”

  “This place, it’s . . . I’m drawn to it. I need to . . . I want to, find out . . . Come with me to Cannon Beach.” He looked into her eyes. “See what God is up to down there.”

  “Wow. The ‘God told me to go’ argument. Insurmountable. And completely whacko.”

  “Come with me.”

  Julie closed her eyes. “You know that old Robert Frost poem about two roads diverging in the middle of the woods? You’re going down one road; I’m headed down the other.”

  “Julie, no.”

  She leaned toward him and kissed him on the cheek. “Good-bye, Micah.”

  ||||||||

  Micah made it to Cannon Beach by five o’clock, the emotion of his talk with Julie completely faded by the time he arrived. He stopped at Rick’s to gas up before heading to the house. As Devin stretched his undersized dough-boy frame over Micah’s BMW to clean the windshield, Micah snuck up on Rick who was bent over the engine of a late-model Nissan.

  Micah slapped him on his side and kept moving around to his right. “Hey, buddy!”

  Rick straightened, almost whacking his head on the car’s hood. “What’re you doing here this early in the week? RimWare handing out sick days?”

  “RimSoft.”

  “It’s not RimWare? That would be a great name for your company. Rimware, software. Get it? You’re sure it’s not RimWare?”

  “Pretty sure. Always been, always will be RimSoft.”

  Rick stared at him for a few seconds. “Right.” He motioned up the street, and they walked onto the sidewalk and strolled toward a small park fifty yards north of his garage.

  “Made a decision,” Micah said once they reached the park and could see the ocean.

  “Yeah?”

  As Micah explained his plan to work part time from Cannon Beach, a smile formed on Rick’s face.

  “You’re not surprised.”

  “The draw of this place can be powerful.” Rick’s grin grew.

  “Tell me how you knew. I’m serious.”

  “So am I. This place can be a magnet for certain kinds of people at certain points in their lives.” Rick folded his arms and turned toward the sea.

  “There’s more to it than that.”

  “You’ve got it all—looks, youth, money, fame, career.” Rick motioned wide with his arms out toward the water. “But a long time ago you had more. A lot more. You had the Lord. So much of Him in fact, you knew the other things on the list didn’t matter. Maybe He’s torching the list.”

  “Maybe I don’t want it torched.”

  “Your choice. Choose wisely.”

  Micah gave him a crooked smile. “C’mon, Rick. Don’t hold back, no time to be shy here. Say what you really think.”

  Micah laughed, and Rick joined him as they trudged back to Rick’s garage.

  “Breakfast at the Fireside on Saturday?” Rick asked as Micah got into his car.

  “Absolutely.”

  ||||||||

  Rick watched Micah’s BMW till it crested the hill and vanished from sight. “And so, Mr. Micah’s even wilder ride begins.”

  CHAPTER 12

  On Friday, Micah grabbed his mountain bike and rode north toward Cannon Beach. He took the Cannon Beach Loop Road exit and rode past fifty or so gray houses, none with the view their richer brothers west of them had of the ocean. He rode on, past the Tolovana Inn, then past the Ocean Lodge and the Stephanie Inn, luxury hotels just steps from the sand.

  The sun poked holes in the fog, warming him inside and out. Perfect day for riding. Perfect day to run into that girl from the ice cream store. He laughed at himself. Couldn’t fault a guy for dreaming.

  He wound up the hill that overlooked Haystack Rock, where houses were separated by inches, perched on the cliff leading down to the beach like rabid fans looking for a movie star’s autograph.

  The Sand Trap Inn—with the picture of a B.C. cartoon character swinging a golf club—whizzed by on his right, and then he was down the hill onto Cannon Beach’s Main Street, w
ith shop after shop filled with trinkets and books and art for the coffee table or wall back home. Some wonderful, some that would end up on a garage sale table ten months later.

  The town blurred by in thirty seconds. A minute after that, he rode over Ecola Creek, took a right-hand turn, and started up the winding mile-and-a-half road that led to Ecola State Park.

  As he leaned into the first corner, his peripheral vision caught something up ahead. Fifty yards in front of him the sun flashed against another bike, and dark chestnut hair swirled against the wind as the rider’s head turned for an instant.

  Looked like the girl from Osburn’s.

  Micah squinted and called out, “Hey, Watson!”

  She didn’t turn.

  He put his head down and strained to catch her. But Micah didn’t gain an inch as he pushed through the canopy of Sitka spruce trees lining the road.

  When the park entrance came into view, he prayed she wouldn’t ride another two miles to Indian Beach and was rewarded as she swung left down to Ecola. He coasted down the gradual decline into the parking lot and found her sitting on a picnic table, arms wrapped around her knees, looking out toward Tillamook Rock Lighthouse.

  She glanced back as his bike brakes squealed, announcing his arrival, but didn’t say anything.

  “Hey.” Micah approached her with stutter steps, his legs still straddling his bike. “We met the other day at Osburn’s.”

  “Mr. Pralines, if I remember right.” She spun to face him and flashed a smile.

  “Good seeing you again, Watson.”

  It seemed funny before it came out of his mouth. But it fell flat when she simply said, “Thanks.”

  “You ride up here often?”

  “Mostly during the off-season. Too many summer seekers driving this road during this time of the year, and it’s a narrow road.”

  “I noticed.”

  “So, are you staying right in town?”

  “No, a little bit south,” Micah said.

  “I’m Sarah Sabin.”

  “Micah Taylor.”

  Sarah nodded.

  They looked at each other a moment past awkward. Micah got off his bike, leaned it against the picnic table, and shifted his weight from one leg to the other.

  “Want to walk down to where the trail washed out?” she asked, breaking the silence.

  “Sure.”

  From the look of Sarah’s long, muscular legs and her gait, he guessed her athleticism wasn’t limited to biking.

  When they stopped, Haystack Rock, three miles south, filled their view. Below them a beach stretched a quarter mile before it stopped at a small cape jutting out into the ocean. Four otters ducked in and out of the swells one hundred feet down.

  “Crescent Beach,” Sarah offered. “You used to be able to walk down there from here. Not anymore. A winter mud slide washed out the trail back in ’94, and they never rebuilt it.”

  Bits of the old wooden railing leading down to the beach were still visible. They walked in silence until they found a flat spot of grass to sit on with a perfect view of Haystack Rock and Cannon Beach in the distance.

  Sarah rubbed her left knee, and when she took her hand away, it revealed three small scars, two on either side of her kneecap and one in the middle.

  Micah nodded at her knee. “That’s from?”

  “ACL surgery.”

  “How’d the injury happen?”

  She took so long to answer Micah wondered if she’d heard him. When she did, it was in a whisper. “Olympic trials in ’02.”

  “Winter Olympics. Skiing?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wait a minute. You’re that Sarah Sabin? Cover of Sports Illustrated, supposed to win more gold than any other American female in history?”

  She turned to him with a small smile and nodded. “After two surgeries and three years of trying to come back, I decided it was time to start another life, so five years ago I came here.” She ripped up tufts of grass, threw them up, and let them float toward the ocean in the light breeze. “Got away from the sport, the pressure, and the guilt people loaded me down with for ruining their dream.”

  “Shouldn’t it have been your dream?”

  She laughed. “It was, but others wanted to jump on board and do that whole live-vicariously-through-me thing.”

  “Your dad, right?”

  “With him, just the opposite. He was one of the few who truly didn’t care how I did on the slopes. He taught me to ski, was my coach for most of my career. He believed in me, was my champion but never once pushed me to be something I didn’t want to be. Dad loved me fiercely.” Sarah turned her head away. “I miss him so much.”

  Loved fiercely by your dad? He had no clue what that would feel like. Miss him? His dad had slaughtered any chance of having that emotion when Micah was a kid. Still, he blinked three times before he spoke.

  “How’d he die?”

  “Cancer. Four years ago.”

  “I’m sorry about your dad. Sorry about the injury, too.”

  “Don’t be. Sometimes I can’t help but wonder what might have been, but I don’t have the slightest regret.”

  “How can you not have regrets?”

  “God works all for good.” She looked out over the ocean. “If not for the accident and my dad’s death, I think I’d be in a radically different world. Not a good one. One without God in it.”

  Micah shifted his gaze to three sea lions basking on the rocks below them.

  He knew the radically different world she would have lived in. It was the one he lived in now. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea getting to know this girl. He didn’t need someone else needling him about the God-stuff.

  “So that’s my dad; tell me about yours.”

  “No.”

  Sarah laughed. “No? Just no? You have a dad, don’t you?” She leaned back on her elbows and looked up at him.

  “Yep. Still alive.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “Kind of an off-limits subject.”

  “Got it.”

  Great. First the God-stuff, now questions about his dad. Julie never tried to make him go deep like this.

  He fished a twig out of grass and tossed it toward the ocean. “If you’ve been here five years, you must know everyone.”

  “The locals still say I’m new in town, but they’re friendly, and yeah, I know most of them.” She pulled on the silver loop in her ear and smiled.

  “Maybe you could introduce me around. Love to find out about the land my house is built on. Its history.”

  “House?”

  “I inherited a home just south of Arcadia Beach State Park.”

  “There are six or seven homes along that stretch. Could you add some vagueness to your description?” She winked.

  “It’s on the ocean. Does that help?”

  “Oh, that one. Of course!” Sarah laughed.

  “It’s kinda hard to miss. About nine thousand square feet.”

  “Wow, that’s big. I’m not sure I know it.”

  He couldn’t tell if she was teasing or not. She was bright and would know if a nine-thousand-square-foot home was built in a small town like Cannon Beach.

  “You’ve got to be kidding.” Micah chuckled. “It’s probably the biggest home from Astoria to Tillamook. And I mean right on the beach.”

  “Does that make it tough when the tide comes in?”

  “Are you always that literal?”

  A grin broke out on Sarah’s face, and Micah matched it with one of his own.

  “So how’d it wind up with you?”

  She didn’t say this with envy or curiosity or even judgment. He suspected the answer wouldn’t matter to her either way. He liked that. “Long story.”

&nb
sp; “I’d like to hear it sometime.”

  It wasn’t a come-on. He knew it and she knew he knew it. Another friend in Cannon Beach. Hmm. Could be a good thing. As long as the conversations avoided God and dads.

  “How ’bout dinner on Tuesday? No charge for a tour of the house or the story.”

  “Tuesday nights I have a standing date with twenty-three men and women who aren’t as mobile as they once were.”

  “Old folks home?”

  “Mature folks home. I read to them, laugh with them.” She paused. “Sometimes cry. It’s cliché to say, I know, but I get more out of it than they do.”

  Micah wondered if he should ask for another night, but Sarah saved him the trouble.

  “Thursday night is open, if your invitation is still on the table.”

  Her dark chocolate-colored eyes twinkled at him, and he assured her it was.

  As he rode home, he thought about Julie. Was there any hope for them? Did she care anymore? Did he?

  And what about this Sarah girl? He wasn’t ready for another relationship. Micah shifted his bike into a higher gear and bore down on the pedals.

  What was he worried about? It was just one dinner.

  CHAPTER 13

  Thursday Micah woke early. He wanted the dinner to be perfect and gave himself the whole day to prepare. By the time the sun started its descent toward the sea, he was ready to entertain the mysterious Sarah Sabin.

  At 5:57 p.m. the doorbell echoed through the house like a wind chime. Micah glanced in the mirror, smoothed his hair with both hands, clipped toward the door, and opened it.

  “Hi, Micah.” Sarah smiled.

  Wow. Beautiful. Remember, pal, you’re not 100 percent sure things between you and Julie are over. Just friends with Sarah, okay? The hint of her perfume made him repeat the thought.

  “Hi, Sarah.” He tried not to stare. Radiant.

  “Can I come in?”

  “Oh, sorry.”

  After Sarah stepped inside, she drifted toward the picture windows. “Wow. That’s an amazing view.” She gazed slowly around the great room. “I love this place already. You inherited it from your uncle?”