Songbird's Call

by Herron, Rachael

  All Molly knew was that she’d been trying to get out of the room, and then she’d suddenly been smack-dab in the middle of kissing a man who had a starring role in her most recent humiliation.

  Kissing him hard.

  Seconds later, it seemed, she was settled deeply into the leather seat of a gold-colored muscle car, and Colin was next to her, his arm so close to hers that she could feel the heat radiating from his body.

  “What –” She started to ask a question, and then, as he took the curve going past the marina, she forgot entirely what she was going to say. Awesome. Great conversationalist.

  “Sorry?” Colin’s voice was almost as low as the rev of the powerful engine.

  “Um. What…what kind of car is this?” She didn’t give one single rat’s ass. She couldn’t tell a Dodge from a Chrysler (or were they the same?).

  “Nineteen seventy Chevelle Super Sport four-five-four.” Pride filled his voice.

  “Ah.”

  “It’s fast.” They reached the straight section of the road and he punched the gas, making the engine roar. She was pressed backwards into her leather seat, the thrumming of the car rumbling through her.

  “Feel that?” He glanced at her, and as they passed through a streetlight’s glare, she could see he wore a small smile. Everything south of her bellybutton tightened in awareness. She tucked her hands under her thighs.

  “You want the seat warmer on?”

  “God, no.” Her nether regions would spontaneously combust if they got any hotter.

  He laughed, low in his throat.

  His driving was fast and precise. Molly got the feeling from the way he handled the wheel that he liked speed – maybe loved it – but wasn’t driving fast to impress her.

  On the contrary, it felt as if he was driving safely. Slowing exactly enough for the curves so that she wasn’t thrown against her door (or against him). Speeding up until the white lines were a blur, and slowing again and lowering his lights when an old pickup truck rattled by in the opposite direction.

  “There’s no one out tonight.” All she could come up with was the tiniest of small talk, apparently.

  “Never is. You’ve forgotten what Darling Bay is like.”

  What was she doing? Riding in a strange car with a man who had just kissed her after arresting a man who had insulted her.

  Maybe it was appropriate they were going to see the folly.

  Colin turned left on the old fire road that led out to Stine’s Cove. It was more rutted than she remembered, and he took it slowly now. “You mind if I put the top down? You’re really not cold?”

  She would never be cold again, probably. “Do it.”

  With a sound barely louder than a purr, the top opened to the night sky, folding back upon itself. The windows lowered.

  “Oh, my.” Overhead, a million stars shone as if just for them. “Oh, my,” she said again. Inanely.

  “You forget when you’re in town, how bright they are out here on a clear night.”

  In town? She’d noticed every night since she came back to Darling Bay how dazzlingly the stars shone. And that was in town, around the “light pollution’, such as it was. Sure, the stars had been bright out at sea, but out there the sky was so vast and enormous that the night sky had looked like a heavy blanket of ink poked with bright holes.

  Out here, the stars danced more than they did at sea. They seemed brighter somehow. She could probably read a book with small print, just by the light of the stars and the bright half-moon. Not that she’d want to hold a book, not when his hand was so close to hers – she wanted to touch him, to put her hand under his on top of the gear stick. But she wasn’t quite brave enough. The car purred throatily as it rumbled down the hard-packed dirt road, the stars dangling so low overhead she imagined reaching up to grab one. She would tuck it in her pocket next to the plastic badge.

  At the end of the fire road was a small parking lot. To the right, there was nothing but a walkway that wound its way along the edge of the cliff that looked over Stine’s Cove, the destination she and Adele had ended up at earlier in the day. Straight ahead was the wooden marker for the trail that led down to the beach. And to the left, surprisingly, ran what looked like a private driveway. A mailbox stood at the end, and a power line trailed away to the west. She didn’t remember that from the old days. “Someone lives out here now?”

  “Yep,” Colin said. “But we’ll try not to let them know we’re here.” He killed the motor and turned off the headlights, and then there was no noise except for the ticking of the cooling engine and the roar of the surf below. Nerves prickled her, running from her scalp to her fingertips.

  The car’s doors slammed closed heavily, solid thuds. They walked to the trail marker.

  “I don’t remember that, either.” She pointed to the “Private Property” sign. “Are we going to get in trouble?”

  “I know a guy,” Colin said. “I can get us out of any trouble we fall into.”

  “Okay, you sound like a mobster.”

  He held out his hand. “No swimming with the sharks, I promise.”

  Molly, her heart in her throat, took his hand and followed him down the trail. It was just wide enough for the two of them walking side by side, although the recent El Niño rains had washed out parts of it. For these sections, Colin was careful to go first, pointing where she should put her feet. The stars and moon gave just enough light – Molly could make out the side of his jaw. Then, recklessly staring at him and not at her feet, she stumbled a little and swore.

  He tightened his grip on her hand. “I’ve got you.”

  Overhead, the willows made an arch, their bare branches tangling. If they’d been clothed in leaves, the path would be pitch dark. As it was, it was like walking through a narrow, downward-sloping cathedral. Molly caught and held her breath as she looked up. “It’s gorgeous.”

  Colin nodded, and put a brief hand on her waist as he guided her around another rut. “Careful here, make sure you go slow.”

  But Molly was better at running down trails to the beach than following direct orders (now, anyway). She released Colin’s hand and darted around him. With a laugh that came from high in her chest, she picked up her pace, hearing his footsteps fall behind her.

  It felt enchanted – the moonlight streaming through the bare branches, their shadows chasing each other. Molly remembered the fork in the path and took the left one, scrambling around the last big rock.

  Then they were on the long, low dune, and the folly rose in front of them like a fairy castle.

  Molly stopped and stood in place, her hands at her mouth.

  Colin stood a breath behind her.

  “Look at it.” She stretched an arm to point, as if there were any way he could miss it. It was a rotunda, two stories high. It had been built, if she remembered correctly, from ironwork left over from building the rails into Darling Bay at the end of the nineteenth century. There had never been walls – both round rooms stood wide open to the salty ocean air. The folly’s second story was held up by lace ironwork that reminded her of New Orleans in its ornateness. Or maybe it was more like the pattern of surf, as it traced itself along the water’s edge. The wind picked up, and a sweet, mysterious tinkling could be heard over the waves breaking a hundred yards down the sand.

  “Oh, it’s even prettier than it ever was.”

  “I think so, too.”

  But it seemed as if he was looking at her, not at the folly.

  Hurriedly, Molly said, “What’s making that tinkling?”

  “Let’s go see.” Colin smiled at her, and his eyes were warm in the moonlight. She had a sudden urge to lunge at him, to kiss him the same way he’d launched himself at her in the door of her room, but then heat hit her cheeks. For all she knew, he was regretting what he’d done.

  No. Better to explore. Safer to ignore whatever – this – was between them.

  “Oh, look.” She stepped up onto the step that led to the open lower level. “It’s halfway sw
ept by the wind. I would have expected the ocean to have buried it by now.”

  “Not quite yet, looks like.”

  “And those!” She pointed upwards, to the many pieces of wire that were tied to the decorative holes in the ironwork. At the end of each was a piece of weathered, rounded glass, and as the wind moved through the wires, they hit each other, clinking musically. “It’s like a beaded curtain, only prettier.” She looked down at the floor, at its wide wooden beams. “Someone must have replaced these, don’t you think?”

  “Probably.”

  She looked through the open walls to the south. On a rise stood a small, dark house. The shape of it was black against the lighter sky, and two trees tall enough to be cedars stood at its eastern side, growing straight as if the house took the brunt of the ocean wind. “I don’t remember that house, either.” She squinted, but it was just too hard to see the details. “It looks old, though. Did I just forget it?”

  “It was a falling-down shack for most of the last century. Just got fixed up in the last ten years or so.”

  “Who lives there?”

  “A crotchety old guy, the same dude who works on this place.”

  She moved to the middle of the round floor and reached to touch the pillar, the one that went up and through to the upper level. A wood-and-iron circular staircase led up through the hole in the floor above. “Do you think it’s safe?”

  “I do, actually. The floor’s pretty newly redone up there, too.” He gestured. “Ladies first.”

  The metal was cold and slightly damp from the night air, but the steps felt sturdy under her feet. The second level had the same lace wrought iron and had a waist-high balustrade. Down the beach, the waves were pounding, the break in the surf bright white in the moonlight.

  Colin stood next to her. He put his wide hands on the metal and leaned forward. “One night I was out here and the sea was bright green. The water was just lit up with it, halfway to the horizon.”

  “Oh…”

  “Yeah. A friend told me it was phytoplankton bioluminescence.”

  “I saw it once, on a ship near Bali.” Molly had been stunned by the eerie, silent beauty of it. She’d been surrounded by gasping couples clasping either each other or drinks with umbrellas from the Holiday Deck bar. She’d stood alone, trying to impress upon her memory the look of the waves moving in color.

  “Then you know. It felt like –” He broke off.

  “Like what?”

  “Eh, it’s silly to say.” He cleared his throat. “But it felt like magic.”

  Molly looked at his profile in the moonlight.

  She was an inch from being in serious trouble.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  She was this close. She could fall for a guy like this.

  And she had absolutely no intention of falling for a guy who was as bossy as they came. The boss of a group of mostly men, who had the capability of bossing the whole town.

  That was the reason she told herself, anyway. The voice that told her she wasn’t brave enough to do so was the same voice she was used to squashing.

  So she lightened the mood, for her own sake. “I suppose you don’t want me to laugh at you.”

  The corner of his mouth twitched. “I really, really don’t. I don’t think big, tough guys are supposed to say things about magic. Next I’ll be talking about fairies and invisible people that wear, I don’t know, little green hats.”

  “Leprechauns?”

  He snapped his fingers and his smile was soft. “Those are the ones.”

  “But it is magic, I can’t disagree with you on that.” She leaned forward and smelled the night. “There’s nothing better than this air, is there? When I was a kid in Nashville, I used to dream about this smell. You can’t describe it. It’s like if electricity were softened. If you could touch current and, you know, not have it kill you. That’s the way I feel when I’m here. Like I’m plugged into something amazing.”

  “That’s a great way to describe it.”

  “My mom loved it out here.” Molly had forgotten that completely. Till that exact moment. She had a sudden stunning memory that fell into her head in one piece – she and her two sisters up here, lying on the floor where the hole for the staircase came up, gazing down to the floor below as their mother and father danced to a song they sang in low tones to each other. “I can’t believe I’d forgotten this so completely.” Except for that one concert when she’d kissed the boy with the corn-nut breath, she hadn’t thought she had any other memories of the place. What had the song been, that her parents had sung to each other? Something Mama had written, probably. She’d had a million of those tunes, carried around in her body, ready to sing at any moment. The original Songbird.

  “It’s a special place.” He ran his hand along the metal. “Full of memories. My mom loved it here, too. We used to have picnics here. My dad called it his third favorite folly.”

  Molly reached to set a piece of glass swinging on its wire. “I don’t think I even know what a folly is, really.”

  “A folly’s a building that’s built for no purpose other than just to be beautiful. It’s useless.”

  “So he had two other favorite ones? Where?”

  Colin blew out a breath. “In his house. His wife and daughter.”

  “Oh, damn.” Molly stilled the glass with her hand, stopping its tinkle.

  “My mother was known for being the prettiest girl in the county. You’ve seen my sister. He didn’t think they were worth much, though, and he didn’t mind saying it.”

  Shock jolted through her gut. “That’s pretty harsh.”

  “He was, yeah.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I actually don’t know why I’m talking about him.” Colin sounded startled. “It’s okay. He’s good and dead, and I’m fine with that.”

  Molly recognized bravado when she heard it. She turned her back on the surf and looked upwards. The open metalwork overhead made lace of the sky, and starlight sparkled through. “You know, my mother told me that once there was a grand piano up here.” She pictured people standing near a piano under the open sky, holding martinis and glasses of wine, as below couples whirled as her parents once had. “That can’t be true. Can it?”

  “This floor has been rebuilt a few times. Once was in nineteen thirty-seven, after the piano crashed through the salt-rotten wood to the level below. Luckily no one was below when it happened.” Colin reached out to touch a piece of glass hanging from a wire, sending it tinkling against its neighbors. “This is salvaged piano wire, and this old glass is from a couple of old windows that didn’t even make it through five seasons.”

  “All of this took someone so much work. So much love was put into it. And it takes work now, to keep the sand mostly out, to rebuild it. Who does it all?”

  He didn’t need to answer – his face gave it away.

  “I knew it.” Molly pointed to the house. “You’re the crotchety old guy.”

  “Not quite sure what a crotchet it, but I think I might be it.” There was something new in his voice – happiness. That was it. When Colin looked up at the house, he was happy. It felt good – right – to hear him like that.

  “Why do you do it?”

  “Because.”

  “Because why?” she pushed.

  “Because my mother loved it here most of all.”

  And he’d loved his mother. She laughed. “You’re a big softie.”

  He shot her a look then. His eyes were so dark she couldn’t read them. “I am, huh?” He stepped forward just as a gust off the water caught Molly from behind.

  She sucked in a breath, unsure what would happen next. She didn’t know what she wanted to happen, but she wanted something to. That much was true. Her heart pounded. Fear? Excitement? Did they feel the same?

  Colin reached for her right hand, and then took her left, too. He held both of her hands wrapped in his big ones, and stood in front of her, stock still. He was only inches from her. The wind blew her
hair forward, slapping against her cheeks. She was grateful for the relative darkness.

  “I’m not soft.” His voice was amused. The double entendre was intentional and direct. But he wasn’t going to close the distance between them. She could feel that he was giving her that.

  He’d made the first move.

  Now Colin was waiting for her. It was up to Molly to make the next one.

  She should break this off. She should stop it in its tracks. She didn’t need to be involved with anyone, and certainly not the sheriff. She didn’t want to think of anyone except herself in the next few months.

  But this man did something to her.

  He drew her like no one else ever had.

  Colin’s eyes held hers, and it felt like a touch, a stroke.

  That was the problem.

  In her mind, over the pounding of the surf behind them, she heard what the man at the bar had said. The fat one. Oh, God, was that why Colin was out here?

  Because he was sorry for her?

  Because he wanted to make her feel better?

  He was that kind of guy – Molly knew that from working with Nikki and the treats he’d quietly left them on the table outside. Once it hadn’t been cookies or coffee – it had been a thick, warm fawn-brown coat. Nikki had laughed. He’s always telling me I’m going to freeze to death, but I just don’t like wearing jackets. We live in California! It’s cold, but if a sweatshirt is good enough for the surfers, it should be good enough for me. Molly had noticed she’d shrugged it on as she’d left, pulling the arms of the jacket around like a hug. He’s so bossy. But her face had been pleased. Happy.

  Bossy.

  He liked to make women feel better about themselves.

  Had the kiss at her room been a pity kiss? A be-nice-to-the-chubby-girl kiss? Oh, God, that couldn’t be it – she could feel the heat between them. Panic rose in her chest anyway. Her jaw tightened painfully. She retrieved her hands, dropping his gaze. “Well, okay.”

  “Molly –”

  Then, before she even knew what she was doing, she was running down the spiral staircase so fast she slipped on the last two steps. She tried to regain her balance, wheeling her arms and grabbing at the railing, but the metal was so cold and wet she found no purchase. The panic flared higher.