Bunny Elder Adventure Series: Four Complete Novels: Hollow, Vain Pursuits, Seadrift, ...and Something Blue

by J. B. Hawker

  Max had returned to Texas and was working as a consultant for one of his former employers.

  Although the two exchanged almost daily emails, and an occasional phone call, Bunny was determined to take it slowly. She wanted to get things right, this time.

  Having become aware of her own susceptibility to self-delusion, she knew it was important to test her reflexive emotions, before acting on them.

  Bunny twice married unwisely.

  She set her mind and heart on Max when they were still children and never once questioned the wisdom of that decision.

  She agreed to marry Eustace as a refuge, after her marriage to Max failed.

  She was a new believer back then, he was a clergyman. Bunny mistook his lack of passion for steadfast, mature love and lived many lonely years paying for her error in judgment.

  For all her life, Bunny compared every man she met to Max and it was time for her to get over that.

  He was not the paragon of her fantasies, but just a flawed man, like all the others.

  Bunny needed time to get to know the real Max before she could genuinely love him.

  She was beginning to see she spent her youth in a fairy tale, thinking of herself as the hapless princess.

  Once married to Eustace, she became the quintessential Pastor’s Wife, finding her identity and social life in the church.

  In Italy, she experienced the vero, or true, pizza.

  It was time to discover the authentic Bunny.

  Vero Bunny remained a mystery, even to herself, for far too long.

  She closed her email program and began to browse the Internet for information on housing on the northern Oregon coast.

  She remembered a charming little fishing village near Tillamook called Bannoch-by-the-Sea. It would be beautiful there in the springtime.

  She decided to stop looking for a man to rescue or complete her.

  Bunny wanted to discover her own strengths and passions, to know herself more accurately.

  She wanted to be able to give to a relationship, rather than respond to whatever a man offered.

  Bunny consoled herself over the years with reminders that, even though she never experienced a happy marriage, there were many truly horrific experiences she was, blessedly, spared as well. When she was tempted to whine that her life wasn’t fair, she told herself to accept that things tended to balance out.

  Even so, Bunny still hoped someday she would know that special joy.

  She had rubbed Juliet’s bronze bosom, after all.

  With a look of determination on her face, Bunny shut down her computer.

  She was through dithering and was ready to act.

  She called her sister to let her know she would be away for a few days.

  Hanging up the phone forty-five minutes later, after hearing all about Linda’s decorating finds, happenings on Tim’s dairy and more than a few words of admonition, Bunny quickly packed an overnight bag.

  Driving away from Boise for a weekend exploring the Oregon Coast, she sang along loudly with the radio as it played a favorite old song by the Kinks.

  Singing helped to drown out her fears at striking out alone on this new adventure.

  

  Max reached for the phone on his desk to try, once again, to call Bunny. He had made up his mind to go to Idaho that weekend and see if he could help her to clarify her feelings.

  He wished she would catch up to the cell phone age, or at least get Call Waiting on her landline.

  He hated getting a busy signal.

  Max had been trying to connect with the silly creature all afternoon, in between meetings with sales associates.

  As soon as he reached her and let Bunny know he was coming, he would book his flight, then head home and pack.

  Bunny’s “take it slow” business was getting on his nerves and it just made no sense at their age.

  He loved Bunny, but sometimes she got some weird ideas into her head.

  It didn’t help his mood to have to admit he was at least partially responsible for the complication, this time.

  Max was never one to procrastinate. He was a man of action. When he made up his mind, he felt a compulsion to translate the decision into action as soon as possible.

  The situation with Bunny was no different.

  He was confident once he had her in his arms, he could convince her to see things his way, just like always.

  Max had made some tentative overtures to a large community church in his neighborhood of Houston.

  The upbeat social messages, great entertainment and lack of any mention of sin or salvation seemed like just the ticket.

  He would be able to tolerate attending church with Bunny there, so it should satisfy her religious conscience.

  Hell, he might even marry her again, if that’s what it took.

  He was eager to get Bunny to sunny Texas and integrate her into his life.

  Shared history added a unique dimension to their relationship he couldn’t find with anyone else.

  He enjoyed the symmetry of his life coming full circle, back to his first love.

  Max was certain this weekend would change everything.

  Now, if Bunny would just answer her friggin’ phone…

  Ω

  Seadrift

  Book Three, Bunny Elder Adventure Series

  JB Hawker

  Copyright © 2013 J.B. Hawker

  All rights reserved

  ISBN-13: 978-1438220529

  ISBN-10: 1438220529

  For Debbie and Donna

  Great editors and even better friends

  Prologue

  Waves explode furiously against the shore, clawing at the sand as they are dragged back into the roiling sea.

  Shells, sea creatures and refuse swept up from the ocean floor dash helplessly against rocky outcroppings before being sucked back into the maelstrom.

  Lightning sparks the crests of the waves as the tempest moves on, reluctantly releasing its hold, and the frenzied surf’s passion wanes.

  Ripples slide back down the beach, lacking the strength to carry their burden of flotsam with them.

  Moonlight reveals kelp, broken planks and detritus littering the shore and befouling the tide pools.

  A tangle of seaweed and debris bobs gently in the foam.

  Small ivory fingers curl up from the tangle, as though still seeking the comforting clasp of a guiding hand.

  Chapter One

  God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good. - Genesis 1:10

  Her bare feet buried up to the ankles in warm dry sand, Bunny Elder stretched both arms overhead and leaned back onto a plaid stadium blanket, reveling in the delightful weather after three days of wind and rain.

  Warm, sunny days are rare on the Oregon coast, even in late May.

  Bunny moved to Bannoch-by-the-Sea only a few months before, but she already knew enough to take advantage of these precious golden days, when they arrived.

  Waking that morning in her rented cabin to bright sunshine and blue sky, Bunny quickly revised her schedule.

  Right after breakfast she packed a lunch, grabbed sand gear and her laptop and headed for the beach.

  It was a struggle trying to make her latest writing assignment interesting, while still sticking to the manufacturer’s specifications.

  Bunny had discovered, although her heart was in fiction writing, these non-fiction articles and even technical manuals were going to be her bread and butter as a free-lance writer, at least for now.

  Rationalizing a change of scenery might be inspirational helped to muffle her guilt at playing hooky, instead of sitting down at her desk from nine o’clock until noon, as was her usual regimen.

  So far, she had not even opened her computer.

  Bunny’s attention was diverted by the scene playing out a few hundred yards down the beach from where she sat.

  A knot of people gathered by a rocky outcropping near the tideli
ne and both a sheriff’s office vehicle and an ambulance were now parked on the hard packed sand.

  She supposed someone must have drowned.

  It was unfortunate, but even with all the signs posted along this beach warning about “sneaker waves,” tourists and other daredevils continued to ignore them. From time to time, someone would inevitably be knocked off their feet and pulled under.

  People miscalculated the power of the ocean at their own peril.

  Bunny prayed for the rescue workers, the unknown victim, and then, since there was nothing else she could offer, idly watched the action unfolding.

  Above the beach on the shoulder of the highway two men were also observing the activities. Bunny supposed they were passersby curious about the emergency vehicles and commotion, until she noticed they were using binoculars to survey the scene more closely.

  “Curiosity is one thing, but that’s just voyeurism,” she murmured.

  Deciding not to be a party to such intrusiveness into what might well be a tragedy, Bunny gathered up her things and slogged up the beach away from the activity.

  After settling her blanket in the shelter of a grass-tufted dune, she decided to stretch her legs a bit more before finally tackling her current uninspiring writing assignment.

  The thought of stretching her legs made Bunny smile.

  At just over five feet tall, longer legs would be a welcome improvement.

  The sea breeze blew her gray-blond hair into her eyes as she rounded a clump of boulders and she almost blundered into a knot of seaweed and driftwood.

  What looked like the corner of a box was poking through some netting entangled with kelp. She nudged it out onto the sand with a piece of driftwood, to avoid any surprises from hidden crabs or other sea creatures.

  After rolling the box over and determining it was free from tiny life forms, she picked it up and brushed off the sand and bits of seaweed.

  What she’d found was a reddish-brown wooden chest about the size of a large shoebox.

  She immediately began to think of it as a sea chest and to invent stories about the swashbuckling sea captain who might have lost it long ago in faraway waters.

  Holding it in her hands ignited just the sort of creative spark she was looking for.

  Bunny took the box back to her blanket, gathered up her things and headed to her car.

  She wanted to get home where she could start writing without distractions, before the muse deserted her.

  The patrol car was still on the beach and had been joined by another, although the ambulance was gone.

  The two rubberneckers were still there, their spyglasses now trained in Bunny’s direction.

  It made her uncomfortable to see them focus their interest on her, but she supposed the men had gotten bored with the lack of activity on the shore and were drawn to any sort of movement.

  She was unused to attracting the attentions of strange men.

  Like many of her sex, Bunny had been bestowed with a cloak of invisibility on her fiftieth birthday. With it she had gained the power to become a part of the scenery, like a movie extra in a cast of thousands.

  It was no wonder many women adopted extreme or eccentric styles as they aged. The poor dears were simply trying to get noticed and to have their existence affirmed in any way possible.

  Bunny rather enjoyed the anonymity most of the time.

  She certainly didn’t like being the object of these inquisitive strangers’ regard, just now.

  She packed her things into the car’s trunk and drove home, dismissing the nosy men from her mind, as she conjured up a rollicking romance full of pirates and mysterious treasure chests.

  When she got home, she was eager to begin writing, so she parked in the driveway to take her things from the car.

  She shook out her sandy blanket and stashed it, along with the sea chest, in the empty washing machine in the garage, before toting her laptop and supplies into the cabin.

  She wouldn’t bring the sea chest into the house until she had a chance to clean it up.

  Bunny had created an entire outline, plus the biographies of three main characters, for her romance novel and then used her momentum to carry on through several pages of the more prosaic instruction manual before she noticed she was hungry and stopped to eat.

  She took the lunch she had packed that morning out to the picnic table behind the cabin, where she could enjoy the warm sunshine on her back and hear the breeze rattling the branches of the trees.

  Bunny loved the smell of sun-warmed pine and fir needles. She thought they smelled like fresh-baked soda crackers.

  Their fragrance always reminded her of the rare summer camping trips of her youth.

  A sweet little pine squirrel chirped at her as she set out her food, then clambered farther up the tree, where it sat watching her with its orange-colored chest contrasted against the dark greens of the pines.

  She bit eagerly into her crunchy sandwich of tuna, black olives and chopped dill pickle tucked into a whole wheat pita pocket ruffled with a crisp kale leaf.

  As she enjoyed her lunch, Bunny reflected on the past few months and the remarkable changes taking place in her life.

  Not long ago, she was facing a dreary future as companion to her older sister, Linda; two lonely widows marking time together, dwelling on memories of the past, and awaiting the blessed release of death.

  While she was pretty sure she still had the option of going to live with her first husband, Max, the man she thought she still loved, that prospect was tarnished by some unpleasant revelations about their past relationship.

  Even so, Bunny had been sorely tempted to give in to Max’s urgings and join him in Houston, especially when he told her he joined a church and was seeking a closer walk with God.

  A conflict of beliefs caused the failure of their brief reconciliation following the death of her second husband, Eustace, but it would have been so easy to slip into a life with Max, if only he had not forced her to take a good hard look at herself, when their paths crossed unexpectedly in Italy.

  They became accidentally caught up in a desperate situation, inspiring Max, uncharacteristically, to talk about his feelings.

  His disclosures forced Bunny to see herself in a harsher and less flattering light than she was used to.

  She was compelled to see she’d been filtering life through her own fantasies, and reacting only as necessary to whatever bits of reality intruded into her world, and attempting to please others, but without sensitivity to their needs, or to her own.

  Bunny had become a detached observer of her own life, spending so much time inside her own head, she’d lost touch with her heart.

  Now, she wanted to learn who she was, with her eyes wide open and only herself and God to please.

  She was a pastor’s wife for many years before her second husband’s death and had molded her life to the role, without a second’s hesitation. She’d never even tried to tailor the part she played to fit her own personality.

  Eustace’s murder left her adrift, with no income and no identity.

  In the few years since, she had been peeling back the people-pleasing layers, in an attempt to find the real Bunny.

  She feared joining Max, now, would derail her journey of self-discovery.

  He was not happy when she told him of her plan to move to Oregon to try to make a living as a writer.

  Max mocked her need to “find herself,” like some acolyte of Betty Freidan and Gloria Steinem of the 1960’s. He accused her of trying to live a latter day sequel to “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.”

  Bunny tried to explain.

  Her desire to get to know herself didn’t mean she wanted to break off their relationship. She was hoping they would be able to come back together, eventually, as whole individuals. They might have a richer, more honest life together, if only he was willing to give her a chance.

  The last time they spoke, Bunny invited Max to come for a visit.

  He was not very gracious
in his refusal to come to the cold and damp Oregon coast.

  Max always preferred warmer climates, but she still felt this was an excuse, rather than the real reason.

  It was disappointing, but she remained resolute in her decision to get to know who she was when she wasn’t being a distorted mirror of someone else’s desires and expectations.

  If it meant Max was out of her life again, so be it.

  Bunny noticed the lengthening shadows and stopped woolgathering.

  There were errands to run before dinner and choir practice at her new church that evening.

  She scattered her sandwich crumbs for the birds and squirrels then went inside to clean up and grab her shopping list.

  When she stepped out the front door, she was surprised her car was not in the driveway where she thought she left it.

  Had she parked in the garage, after all? Surely she wasn’t becoming so forgetful.

  Opening the garage door relieved her fears of early-onset dementia, but failed to answer the more compelling question: where was her car? It couldn’t have just disappeared.

  She was faced with the unhappy explanation that while she was working inside, or lounging in the backyard, someone quietly made off with it.

  It wasn’t a fancy new car, just an eight year-old Chevy Malibu with 60,000 miles on it, bought used in Idaho before she moved to Oregon.

  She hadn’t left the keys in the ignition, either, so why would anyone steal it? Especially here, on such a lightly traveled mountain road.

  This is unbelievable! It can’t be happening.

  Bunny struggled to come to grips with the sense of violation and loss.

  Emotions washed over her in waves, reflected in her rapidly changing complexion: ashen with shock, flushed fuchsia with anger, paling to the rose of loss, followed by gray-tinged fear and a sense of defeat.

  She took a deep breath to calm herself.

  With shaky fingers, she pulled her new cell phone from her purse to call the sheriff’s office and report the theft.