Blue Moon Bay

by Lisa Wingate

  Now, considering what Blaine had told me during our walk through the woods yesterday, I wondered how he felt about that scholarship, and the billboard, and carrying the whole town’s expectations on his shoulders. He claimed he never even liked football. It was hard to assimilate that information with the got-it-all golden boy I remembered from high school. Amazing how you could be so wrong about someone. He hid his feelings well at the time. Maybe he still did. That was one of the things that both concerned me and drew me in. I wondered who he really was.

  “My dad had a heart attack my junior year in college.” He slipped his coat on as we left the bank building and proceeded toward his pickup nearby. “I had to come home to help take care of things. I didn’t mind it, really. By then, I was a redshirt on the college team with a blown tendon, and I’d had my bell rung a few too many times. I was okay with coming back to Moses Lake for a while. Dad was in bed under doctor’s orders, my stepmother was a wreck, my sisters were just starting high school, and Mama B had started showing up at Dad’s office, trying to run the place and driving everybody crazy. I just kind of . . . fell into taking over the bank—there wasn’t any way my stepmother could handle that, Dad’s rehab, the hardware store, and the ranch at the same time. She can’t even keep the books straight at the hardware store, really. I went ahead and finished a finance degree by commuting over to Stephenville. The music major didn’t seem too practical anymore, at that point.”

  “You were a music major?” I queried, as he started the truck.

  He waited until he’d backed out of the parking place to answer. “Yeah, you know, I was gonna head for Nashville and make it big if football didn’t work out.” A soft laugh seemed to dismiss the idea as comical now. “Funny, the dreams you have at eighteen.”

  A memory teased the dust moats of my mind. I was sitting in the back row of the school auditorium. Our English teacher had dragged us over there to watch the dress rehearsals of the talent show. I just wanted to go home. The cheerleaders had finished doing some dance in spandex, and then Blaine walked on stage. Just Blaine and his guitar. “I remember you in the talent show rehearsals,” I said, drawing a breath. “You were good.”

  “Well, you know, you grow up and life gets in the way.” He paused, seeming to reassess whatever he was about to say. “Sometimes what you’ve got in mind and what God’s got in mind aren’t the same thing. They needed me here. I got to help look after my grandpa the last couple years of his life. My stepmother couldn’t have done it alone. She had all she could handle with Dad’s heart attack, and Mama B was wearing herself out, trying to take care of everything and everyone. I moved in at my grandparents’ ranch and kind of fell in love with home all over again, you know? Decided I wanted to stay. Your priorities change. You grow up and leave some things behind.”

  Main Street rolled by as I contemplated priorities while watching our reflection paint a wavy spill of color against the old plate-glass windows of the hardware store, the dime store, a couple of antique stores, the chamber of commerce. I’d never believe that Moses Lake could be anyone’s dream. “Guess that’s true. Things happen. You could still do it, though. Strap your guitar on your back and head for the big city.”

  “Nah, I’d miss my boat too much.” A glance toward the lake seemed to say that he was already fishing in his mind. “It’s good here. I can leave the ranch and be at work in ten minutes—fourteen if I get caught behind the school bus. No sitting in traffic for hours on the way to work. You city folks don’t know what you’re missing.”

  “No theater, no museums, no five-star restaurants . . .” I retorted, but I was just teasing, really. Blaine seemed so completely at home in Moses Lake, so completely at peace with himself. I envied that.

  “We’ve got Catfish Charley’s,” he countered.

  “No shopping mall . . .”

  “Thank goodness,” he answered, and both of us laughed. The rest of the way to the Waterbird, we talked about Seattle and my job. He actually seemed somewhat impressed when I mentioned the national and international clients for whom we’d designed commercial buildings. My job had taken me all over the world. I didn’t mention that on most trips I’d seen little more than the insides of hotels.

  “Sounds exciting,” he said as we parked at the Waterbird. Neither of us moved to exit the truck.

  “It can be,” I admitted. “Mostly, it’s a lot of details and a lot of chipping away at a project, but when you see the steel going up, it’s like watching something from your imagination come to life on a massive scale. It’s an amazing feeling, even with the stress factor. Projects never go exactly the way you plan them.”

  “I’ve financed enough construction to know that.” He rested an elbow on the window frame, seeming content to sit there talking.

  I sensed an open door to opportunity. I needed to bring the conversation around to Clay, Amy, and the issues in Moses Lake. “I imagine you have to be careful about what kinds of investments you take on, being a small bank, I mean.”

  “Yes we do.” His attention veered off as the little dark-haired girl who’d served us pretend tea on my last visit to the Waterbird stepped out of the building. This time an old man was with her, and both of them were carrying fishing poles. They crossed in front of our truck, hand in hand.

  Blaine opened his door and waved. “Hey, Birdie, you taking your granddad fishing?”

  “Yeah-huh.” The little girl smiled enthusiastically. “Gonna get a big bass.”

  “There a school vacation today?” Blaine leaned farther out the door, and both the old man and the little girl gave him sheepish looks.

  “Had to ugg-go to the udd-doctor today,” the old man answered, his speech strange and slow. “Purdy udd-day fer fishin’. Udd-don’t tell the uhhh . . . school ubb-board.”

  Blaine chuckled and waved. “I won’t say a word. I promise.” He watched them disappear across the parking lot. “See, that’s the beauty of doing business in a small town. We helped old Len get the money to finish fixing up his house, so he could raise that little granddaughter of his. The man’s a military veteran, injured in combat in Vietnam. He ought to have a decent roof over his head. He deserves a road to live on that’s passable in the wet weather, so he can get little Birdie to school, too. When it rains, Len has to take her three miles to the bus stop on a mule, or bring her across the lake in a boat, in the rain. That’s just not right. People wouldn’t put up with it over on this side of the lake, but the folks with money really don’t care what happens up in Chinquapin Peaks. That’s one of the reasons I put my name in the hat for county commission. Some things just need to be different, you know?”

  “That does sound wrong.” I found myself trying to jibe the mental image of the guy who was trying to steal my family land with one of this guy, who wanted better treatment for families in Chinquapin Peaks. Even I knew that the undeveloped side of the lake was like the Land that Time Forgot. That was one of the reasons I felt good about helping to bring in the new Proxica facilities. “The real solution is jobs, though. If people have income, they’re not at everyone’s mercy.”

  Blaine turned my way, gave me a long, appraising look, his brown eyes intense. I realized I’d strayed too close to the real reason for my visit here. For an instant, I wondered if he knew, but then his intensity lessened. “You’re not thinking of throwing your hat into the commissioner’s race, are you? Because I’ve already printed my signs.”

  I pretended to consider it. “I think you’re safe. I couldn’t get elected trash collector in Moses Lake, anyway.”

  He caught my gaze again. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. You’re not so bad after a while.” He grinned, and a laugh convulsed from my lips.

  I liked Blaine Underhill a lot better than I wanted to.

  The realization both tempted and worried me as we exited the truck and went into the Waterbird. Uncle Charley, Uncle Herb, Burt Lacy, and Nester Grimland were playing dominoes in one of the back booths. They registered surprise as we walked in, and
I quickly realized that coming here probably wasn’t the best idea. It would soon be common knowledge that Blaine and I were out for coffee. His stepmother would probably come after me with a wooden stake and a sledgehammer.

  Blaine didn’t seem the least bit worried. He chatted with the coffee club and the woman behind the counter, Sheila, as we procured coffee and doughnuts, and then took a booth as far as possible from the ongoing domino game. To restart the conversation, I asked how long my brother had been dating his cousin. I tried to make it sound like an innocent question.

  “A while, I guess,” Blaine replied vaguely.

  “Do you think it’s serious?”

  He scratched his head, brown curls sweeping off his forehead, then falling into place again. “Feeling protective? Amy’s a nice girl. I promise.”

  They just pulled an all-nighter, and then he got a sexy text from Tara, was on the tip of my tongue, but I didn’t say it. Ears were straining our way from the domino booth, for one thing. I wasn’t sure how much they could hear. I sipped my coffee and tried to decide what else to say.

  We made small talk about the wall of wisdom for a few minutes. Blaine’s favorite entry was May the holes in your net be smaller than the fish in it—Irish blessing. He and his grandfather had written it on the wall in 1985, a bit of homage to the old country.

  “My dad and I wrote one together, too,” I said, feeling a kinship.

  “Well, it’s kind of a tradition, bringing your kids here to sign the wall.” His cell phone rang in his pocket, and he pulled it out, sneering at the screen. “Now you see why I don’t carry one of these things in the evenings.” He answered the call, and it was clear from the conversation that he was needed back at work. While he finished talking, I bought a batch of the Waterbird’s famous bratwurst and then we returned to the bank.

  “Raincheck,” he offered, walking backward as we parted ways in the bank parking lot. “How about we finish the conversation over dinner?”

  “Sure” was out of my mouth before I even had time to think about it. It made sense, though, considering that I hadn’t been able to roll the conversation around to my brother, Amy, bank loans, and substance abuse. How did one smoothly bring up such subjects, anyway? Blaine flashed a smile, and even though I knew that agreeing to have dinner with him might not turn out to be one of my better ideas, I suddenly wasn’t sorry.

  After watching him disappear into the bank, I picked up my laptop from the gardener’s cottage, then went to the Chinese food convenience store and agonized over composing an email explaining my situation to Mel. What I ended up with was a jumble that intimated some sort of impending, but unspecified, family disaster. After promising to check in daily, I pushed Send, released my excuses into the ether, and cracked open a fortune cookie. The fortune was one of those generic types that could apply to many situations. From unlikely sources come unlikely surprises.

  I glanced toward the bank and thought, Blaine Underhill just invited me to dinner. Did that really happen?

  I found myself mulling it over, trying to discern his reasons. Was he a nice guy, a sensitive type who wanted to be a musician but grew up amid the pressures of a sports-obsessed family? Or was he a small-town playboy, just looking to score? Why would Blaine be interested in someone like me? We had absolutely nothing in common. Not one thing, other than my brother, and you didn’t have to be a genius to know that Blaine started mincing words every time I even tried to lead the conversation around to Clay. Which raised another question. Why would Blaine be keeping Clay’s secrets, if he knew them? Because Clay was dating Blaine’s cousin? What would happen when Blaine found out that Clay had interests, so to speak, somewhere in Fort Worth?

  The whole thing made my head spin to the point that I finally had to just give up thinking about it and leave for Ruth’s. I’d always been far too skilled at coming up with what ifs, at anticipating the worst. Predicting all potential forms of failure and disaster made me a good architect, but not always so winning as a person.

  The tension in my shoulders eased as I drove through the rolling hills near Gnadenfeld, passing miles of green winter wheat. Horses, cattle, and sheep grazed happily, and tall, white farmhouses built for large families languished in the winter light. On the seat next to me, the cover of Ruth’s sketch pad fluttered in the breeze from the heater. I flipped it up, looked at the drawing of the woman in the blue floral dress. She was beautiful, her long hair floating about her in a swirl, loose and free, her lips parted slightly, smiling, her eyes holding a startled but confident look, as if she’d been caught by surprise but wasn’t worried about it.

  Who was she? When had Ruth drawn her portrait, and why?

  The cows were dozing happily in the pasture when I reached the dairy. In the barn, Ruth’s relatives were processing the morning milk. The wind carried a strong whiff of cow barn as I exited the car. That smell, and the complete absence of television on the place, were two things I’d never envied about the lives of the dairy kids. Operating a farm was hard work. The kids woke early and did chores, and then many of them headed off to the public school in Gnadenfeld, where they would get a reception similar to the one I had received daily in Moses Lake.

  For the most part, the Mennonite kids in Gnadenfeld had lacked the essential coolness revered in high-school social circles. The fact that there were plenty of them, living various levels of an old-fashioned, conservative life-style, didn’t seem to matter. The whole group fell fairly low on the popularity spectrum, which was probably why the dairy kids had liked me. They thought I was cool—a strange dresser—but cool. They taught me some valuable lessons about grace, as well. Despite the ways in which the world was unkind to them, they didn’t return what they got. They were taught to give to the world what was right and godly—kindness and tolerance. Sometimes after a visit with Ruth’s family, I wore that mantle of grace for a day or two. But it was so much easier to simply hate all the kids who hated me, to hate the church ladies for trying to reform me into a proper little Southern belle, to hate my mother for failing to take care of us, to hate my father for leaving, to hate Moses Lake for being the place where he died. . . .

  As I closed the car door, Mary and Emily appeared in the barn doorway, each dangling a puppy under one arm. When they figured out who I was, they bolted across the lawn, the puppies’ plump bottoms swinging back and forth against billowing skirts. Both girls stopped a few feet away. Emily cuddled her face against her puppy, eyeing me shyly, while Mary stepped forward and offered to share.

  “I got the big one,” she informed me, holding the puppy out and trying to peer into my vehicle. “He’s just precious.”

  “I can see that.” The loaner puppy groaned as I accepted him into my hands. His eyes rolled upward in a way that said, When you’re done with me, please don’t give me back. Hide me somewhere. He grunted and rooted around as I snuggled him under my chin, taking in the sweet scent of puppy breath. “I think he wants his mom.”

  Mary’s brows drew together as if, perhaps, she’d been told a few times before to let the puppy have a break. Emily chewed her lip and looked over her shoulder toward the barn with a hand-in-the-cookie-jar expression. “The mama’s busy,” she whispered, her voice disappearing into the puppy’s dark fur as she rubbed her cheek back and forth over its head. Her soft red curls brushed the puppy’s nose, and it sneezed. Both girls laughed.

  “I brought some bratwurst for your Aunt Ruth.” I scratched my puppy’s tummy, and its little foot paddled wildly. “Want to come in and help us cook lunch? You could put the puppies away for a nap.” The puppies would thank me for this, I felt certain. During childhood visits to Moses Lake, I was always in trouble for overhandling whatever baby animals were around the farm at the time. Now let’s stop wartin’ the babies, my grandmother would say gently, and instruct me to release my prisoners.

  Emily squeezed her puppy reluctantly, but Mary nodded with enthusiasm, reaching for the one I was holding. As the girls dashed for the barn, I retrieved the bratwurs
t from the car. Then the three of us proceeded to the house together, Mary carrying the bratwurst, and Emily’s little hand in mine, making me feel welcome.

  We found Ruth in a kitchen chair kneading bread dough, working alongside Mary and Emily’s mother. She was dressed less conventionally than Ruth, in a jumper that was conservative but looked like it might have come off the rack, and tennis shoes. Her hair was pulled into a bun, covered with a scarf much like Ruth’s. She fawned over the pile of bratwurst as if I’d brought her gold nuggets. The residents of Gnadenfeld generally loved food, especially high-quality German fare. Mary and Emily followed Ruth to the cutting board to watch her unwrap the package and separate the links.

  “I found one of your drawing pads,” I said to Ruth. “There was only one page in it, though. Just one drawing. I ransacked the upstairs, and it was all I came up with.”

  A twist of Ruth’s lips formed a dimple in her cheek. “Your uncle hid them away in strange places. If you keep looking, you may find another. You can bring it tomorrow.”

  I smiled, but didn’t say anything. With Ruth, there was always a reason for another visit.

  Her eyes sparkled with anticipation as she wiped her hands on her cook’s apron, then told the niece that we were going to the sun porch to visit and watch the cows graze. The niece waved us off, saying she would put the bread in and call us when the food was finished cooking. She and the girls were singing in the kitchen as we wandered through the quiet old house with its odd collection of antiques and salvaged items that looked like they’d been rescued from someone’s curbside castoffs.

  On the sun porch, Ruth lowered herself into a chair and reached for the pad. “Who have you found?” she asked. I didn’t answer, but let her turn back the cover and discover the woman for herself.

  The blue eyes captivated me again as I sat on the settee and leaned over the end table so that I could see the drawing. Ruth breathed long and deep, studying the sketch.