Songbird's Call

by Herron, Rachael

  But that was in the past.

  He would never be his father.

  “What are you looking at?” Nikki’s look was dagger sharp. “That girl? She’s cute.”

  “No.” His protestation was too quick. Obvious.

  “Oooh. You are. Okay, she looks really familiar.”

  “Psst.” Colin smacked her hand. “Stop staring.”

  “Me? That’s you. Who is she?”

  “No one.” What a lie. Molly was someone, all right.

  “A Songbird. That’s who it is. That’s Molly Darling.”

  “Nikki…” Collin’s voice was a warning.

  But it was too late. Nikki was waving her hand and already hollering, “Molly! Molly Darling!”

  Molly, of course, looked horrified at his sister’s bellowing. She glanced behind her, as if there were another Molly to be found that she could throw into the fray. Then she gave a half-smile and waggled her fingers. It looked as if she were on a float at a parade.

  Nikki glanced at him sharply. “Do you know her? She’s looking at you, not me.”

  “Leave her alone. She probably gets that all the time.”

  “Then she’s used to it.”

  Colin leaned forward on his elbows. “Quit trying to dodge my question. What’s the next job you’re going to apply for?” She’d wriggle out of answering, he knew that. She would try to bounce her way right out the front door in T-minus-three seconds or so. He’d given her cash, and now there was no reason for her to stay.

  And right on cue, Nikki looked down at her phone. She pushed a button. “Oh, crap.”

  “Come on.” Colin was tired of it. “Don’t try to –”

  Nikki stood. “I’ll just be a minute.”

  “Wait –”

  “He’s just outside. One sec.”

  Colin didn’t have to ask who he was. Todd Meyers. Todd came with a shit-ton of natural charisma, and a rap sheet as tall as he was, which was considerable at six foot two. He liked old Camaros, evading police at high speed, and Colin’s sister. He’d been bad for her for the last three years, and Colin worried he’d be bad for her until something terrible happened, something he couldn’t bear to think about. There was no evidence Todd had ever laid a hand on his sister, but Colin and Nikki had been raised in the same household. You learned what you learned at a young age, which was the whole damn problem. Dad was dead, the rest of his side of the family was in jail – wasn’t that enough bad influence out of her life?

  Colin followed Nikki outside. He stood on the porch, three feet above sidewalk level, and listened to Todd rev the engine, gunning it as if he were about to tear off at a hundred miles an hour. Nikki was leaning in through the passenger side saying something animatedly he couldn’t quite hear. She threw a glance over her shoulder at Colin, and her face was as guilty as it had been the year he caught her polishing off the very last of his Halloween candy when he was nine and she was five.

  He opened his mouth to shout, but then closed it again. Anything he yelled at this point would be too little, too late. He knew what would happen next.

  Then it did. Nikki tossed an apologetic look his way, and tucked herself into the roaring Camaro. They blew the stop sign three seconds later.

  “Fuck.”

  From behind him, a woman’s voice said, “I’ve had bad dates that I thought would win awards, but that was seriously Olympic-worthy. I think you just got the gold.”

  Colin turned. Molly covered the smile on her lips with her fingers, as if she was worried she’d said too much.

  “Wasn’t a date. But I was about to take her out to eat because I’m starving. You hungry?” His own words surprised him.

  “Yes.”

  Her answer startled him, too. In a good way. “Fancy or plain?”

  She shook her head. “Not fancy.”

  “Hot dogs?”

  “Hell, yeah.”

  And just like that, his frustration turned into a warmth he hadn’t seen coming, winter sun breaking through the fog.

  CHAPTER TEN

  She’d said yes. That was the funny thing. Colin made her nervous. He made Molly conscious of the way her body moved, and the way her clothes hung on her frame. She pulled at her black top, making sure it wasn’t clinging to her. She thought about changing her answer.

  And then Colin shot her a dark, sideways glance, and she actually felt something burble in her chest, a cross between a giggle and a squeak.

  Awesome. Currently acting like a fourteen-year-old girl, check.

  The owner of Darling Dogs, Waylon Dunning, took their order with a pen that only worked intermittently. He’d opened the place in 1947 and hadn’t missed a day at work since the Nixon administration, and it took so long for him to write their order down that a line built up behind them. “I don’t get it,” he said. “With no bun? What kind of a hot dog has no bun?”

  “It’s just a little healthier.”

  Waylon looked at her blankly.

  “Fine, I’ll take the bun.” It wasn’t worth arguing about.

  They stepped aside to wait. The sun was setting over the ocean rather unspectacularly. The fog bank was swallowing its last rays, and the pinks and purples were muddy, like old watercolors on a plastic tray. The roar of the ocean was muted, just a low whoosh.

  Colin said, “So you haven’t gotten arrested today.”

  She liked the way his voice sounded rough and low, but with smoothed edges, like a river-tumbled stone. “So far so good.”

  “Nice job.”

  “Excuse me, can you hand me a napkin?” The voice was thin yet familiar. “Thanks, honey.”

  Eva Doyle. She hadn’t aged a day. Well, that wasn’t true – the lines that had always been there were deeper now next to her lips and under her eyes and perhaps she was a little more stooped, but Eva had always carried her years well. Molly figured she had to be in her mid-seventies by now. She could have passed for ten sun-kissed years younger.

  Eva’s face broke into an enormous smile as she wiped a bit of mustard off her top lip. “Molly Darling! Is that you? Oh my very goodness, it is. You sweet girl.”

  Molly was folded into a hug that was tight and soft at the same time. “How are you, Eva?”

  “Oh, you know, I’m doing the same as I always have. Just chugging along. Are you here to help your sister?”

  “I – ”

  “I just knew you girls would all come home eventually. Birds migrate away, but they always come home to roost. Seems like your sister Adele has a good hand on that saloon of hers. And that man, come to think of it. She’s a strong one. All of you are. Tell me you’re going to reopen the café. You have to tell me that.” Although Eva’s eyes had always been a light blue, they were paler now, as if worn away by ocean waves. “I can’t keep eating these hot dogs every night.”

  Molly laughed. “You don’t eat them every night.”

  Eva stood taller by a fraction of an inch. “You think I don’t, girl? I’m a cleaner.”

  Molly glanced at Colin. He was biting his bottom lip, as if he was trying not to laugh.

  “Sorry?” Of course Eva was a cleaner, Molly knew that. Eva had been the head maid at the Golden Spike Hotel years ago. There had been no one better in the industry, Molly’s Uncle Hugh always said. Eva could walk into a dirty hotel room, spin around while tossing sheets into the air and, Mary Poppins-like, the room would be cleaned, straightened, and perfect in what seemed like seconds. Molly had worked one summer helping in the laundry, and she knew this was no small feat.

  Eva nodded hard. “You come into this world either a cleaner or a cooker. If you accidentally get born as both, never admit it. I can boil water, make eggs, and I’m pretty good at making s’mores in the fireplace. But other than that I’ve never cooked, and I don’t mean to start now. I miss my job at the hotel, I tell you what.”

  Molly had forgotten that employees used to eat for free in the café. That had been one of the perks, along with steep discounts on liquor in the saloon. And sure en
ough she could still picture Eva sitting on one of the café stools, a carton of fries at her left hand, a People magazine at her right. “You loved the garlic fries. I remember that.”

  Eva laughed. “That I did. Tell me you’re reopening the café. You always loved being back there with Hugh.”

  Molly shook her head. “No way. I don’t have the time or the money.”

  “You’re breaking my heart, and eating this way can’t be good for it, right?”

  Waylon poked his head out the order window. “Every night. She’s here every damn night.”

  “Eva! You can’t say that to a board-certified nutritionist. I can give you some easy recipes – things that you can make with as few as three ingredients –”

  “No, honey. You can give me as many recipes as you want, and I’m never going to try them. If I did, I’d burn the house down. I like a good hot dog. It fits in my budget, too. I ate at the Golden Spike Café almost every day of my adult life, and until it reopens, this is all I can afford. You’d be surprised how many pensioners hang out here.”

  Molly had a terrible vision in her head of rows and rows of elderly men and women getting all their protein from hot dogs, their vegetable intake from sauerkraut.

  And in the next moment, she saw those same people in her mind’s eye clustered into the old red booths, lined up along the café counter. The Golden Spike Café had been a gathering point, a place for the whole town to get together. Now that she thought about it, there was no other place like it in town. There was the bagel shop, but that had standing room for no more than two at a time. There was the pizza place, but that was small and dark. There were two fancy night-time-date restaurants, but they were expensive.

  A town like Darling Bay needed a place like the Golden Spike Café.

  As if reading her mind, Eva said to her clearly, “It’s not the same here without it. It’s like we lost the heart of us.”

  Something small and cramped inside Molly’s chest unfolded the slightest bit. What if . . .?

  Eva tucked her napkin into a pocket as if it might come in handy later. “Well, sugar, I’m so glad you’re back. No matter what you end up doing. You come see me. I’ll tell you everything Rosamunde is up to, and you can give me the Darling-girl gossip.” Eva lifted herself to tiptoes to give Molly a kiss on the cheek.

  And she was gone, a short, solid, sailboat chugging down the sidewalk on her way home.

  “Oh, no.”

  Colin shot her a grin. “You have that look on your face like Nikki gets right before she does something stupid.”

  Molly blinked. Now he was calling his girlfriend stupid? Because that wasn’t okay.

  Colin seemed to realize his words might have been just shy of polite. “I mean not really stupid. What I mean is –”

  “No, I think you’re right, though. I’m going to do something incredibly stupid.” She took a quick sip of her soda. The bubbles burned her tongue. “I think I’m going to reopen the café.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Colin’s heart leaped. It actually moved in his chest, like a marlin soaring up out of the ocean and flipping in the sunlight. She might stay.

  Then someone hooked him in the gills, and he was suddenly flopping on dry land.

  If she stayed? She might be trouble.

  If she was only in town a short while, they could have a good time together. He would try to, at least. Not like he could predict his success with a woman like her – God knew she could have her pick of men – but he could try his damnedest.

  She was hot. And smart. And funny. Basically, she was his kryptonite.

  Why did that scare him so much? It wasn’t like he didn’t have company sometimes, and some women had stuck. He’d almost bought Rosa a ring, until she’d suddenly left town with Cobb, his undercover deputy who’d taken his job so seriously he’d gotten under her covers.

  Might be nice to ask Molly out on a real date. One that didn’t involve hot dogs.

  But a woman like her had a man waiting somewhere, surely. Even though her hands were ringless, that didn’t mean her heart wasn’t already spoken for. And then there was the whole fact that she was a Darling, town royalty, and he was the only male McMurtry not sitting in a jail cell at the moment.

  This all coursed through his brain in what felt like half an hour but was probably more like two seconds. “So you would stay.”

  Molly looked astonished by his words. “I guess so.”

  “We weren’t in the same café the other night?”

  “Yeah, I think we were.”

  Overhead, a seagull wheeled and cried. “Because the one I was in looked like a nuclear bomb had gone off inside.”

  Molly gave a small, unconvincing laugh. “Nah, it was practically ready to reopen.”

  Colin nodded. “Sure, all you need is a new blender for the milkshakes. Good to go.”

  “Yep.”

  Waylon called their order, and they took their dogs back to the table they’d been at. Two bites, then three. They ate in silence. He could almost feel the heat created by her brain spinning, turning the idea over and over.

  Finally, he finished his last bite and said, “You really think that’s a good idea?” Why was he still talking? This wasn’t his business. If she stayed in town, so be it.

  “I have no idea.” Molly’s eyes sparkled as she bit into her hot dog. And sparkling wasn’t a euphemism – in the increasing darkness, her eyes literally lit up. He’d never seen anything like it. Some late nights, when he was sick of paperwork and people altogether, there was a spot in the marina he liked to pull his patrol car into. It was a good hiding spot, good for thinking. It had a great view of three fishing boats, part of the old oil dock, and the water was always bright from the lights of the pier. In those lights, the water always sparkled. To him, it was prettier than any jewels could ever be. Diamonds didn’t hold a candle to the way the tops of the small waves shone at night.

  Her eyes, though? They were giving both waves and diamonds a run for their money.

  “What about your job?”

  “I hated my job.” She popped the last bite in her mouth and chased it with a long pull on her Diet Coke.

  “You get to travel.” His brain stalled. “Wait, did you say hated? Past tense?”

  “I travelled the world, and I got to see no part of it. I was queasy every single day. Every once in a while, I got off the ship long enough to get some kind of coffee drink in whatever port we were in. Every place sells the same tchotchkes. Every port has the same hucksters, the same wide-eyed tourists, the same people who want to make a quick buck off a rich tourist. A poor working girl can’t have much fun in a place like that, unless she wants to dance on table tops after imbibing gallons of cheap rum.”

  “I’ve known a lot of people who think that would be a great vacation.” Colin tried to make his voice light. He tried to look over her shoulder, past her, out to the darkening water, but those eyes of hers kept catching his like criminals caught bad raps.

  “It’s not my idea of fun.” She leaned forward. Colin could almost see her excitement in the air, a static electricity of sorts. “Eva doesn’t have a place to eat.”

  “Good God, if that’s what this is about, I’ll make her a sandwich!”

  “She needs a place to go.” Molly spoke as if he hadn’t said a word.

  She wasn’t listening to him. If a car crashed into the pier next to them, which one actually had not long ago, she probably wouldn’t notice. She had been pretty when they got here, and now she was edging close to glorious. “So, what, did you quit or something?”

  “Eva needs a place to go where she can eat something healthy. Something that isn’t a hot dog. And something that she can afford. That’s exactly my skill set. My thesis was affordable nutrition. I researched how families can live on ten dollars a day and still meet their nutritional requirements. And yeah, I lost my damn mind and quit.”

  Colin tried for a laugh to cover his shock. “Darling Bay? This town has no interes
t in nutrition. If you offered anything that wasn’t a greasy hamburger, fries and a beer, you’d be held in contempt of the town municipal code. I’m pretty sure of it.”

  “No, it could be amazing. Buckwheat pancakes with honey-maple butter. Sustainably caught seafood, from right there.” She pointed out towards the fishing boats. “I could do this.”

  “You have the cash for that?” Something flickered in the back of her eyes. No, she didn’t have it. “I guess you could always get a loan from the bank. The rates are pretty low right now, and if you turned a profit quickly, you could probably get away with not going in more than one or two hundred K in debt.”

  “Two hundred thousand?” The worry was there, deepening the brown of her eyes, and she laced her fingers in front of her on the tabletop. “It couldn’t be that much.”

  Ridiculously, Colin wanted to stand, lean over the table, and catch her mouth with his. He wanted to wrap his hand around the back of her neck and draw her in close to him. Tightly. He wanted to taste her.

  “Sounds like a great idea for a multimillionaire to invest in. You know any?”

  Molly nodded. She wasn’t listening again. This non-date, and he knew it hadn’t been one, was over. Fine. He needed to get back to his office, away from the confusion this woman stirred in him, like static on a police channel.

  He chucked his bottle in the direction of the recycling bin and missed by a mile. “Well, I guess I’m done.”

  She looked surprised but not upset. Not even a little bit. “Thanks,” she said. “I can walk myself back in a little while.”

  Colin wasn’t the kind of man to let a woman walk home in the dark. Even in Darling Bay, things could happen. “I’ll go with you.”

  Molly shook her head. “No, I’m going to sit here a bit longer. Don’t worry.” She grinned at him. “I have my badge. I’ll be safe.” She took out her phone and looked down at it. “I’m going to make some notes. I have a million ideas swimming around in my brain, and I want to catch some of them before they get away. And I have you to thank for this. If we hadn’t got hot dogs together, if I hadn’t seen Eva, I’d probably be leaving in a few days.”