The Darling Songbirds

by Rachael Herron

  Less than an hour into the hike (right after they’d left cell range), Mitch had had a panic attack and decided he couldn’t figure out what to do next. She’d had to take over the route planning and redo his poor plans from paper maps. At five days in, they’d crossed a major road, and Mitch, plagued by blisters as big as strawberries because he hadn’t done a day’s worth of training, hitched a ride back to the city. Adele had waved him off with an acute rush of relief, and then she’d continued to walk the rest of the planned eleven days. It had been gruelling, and during one particularly extended lightning storm, terrifying. But she’d been happy when she came home, alone. She’d opened her apartment door, glad no one was with her. She could have the first shower. The first lie-down on the living room floor.

  She’d opened her mail, and she’d found the eviction notice. Her apartment in Nashville, the place she’d lived for the last ten years, was half an old Victorian, and the owner had sold the building in order to make it into a doctor’s office.

  Then she’d listened to her voice messages, and found that at some point while she’d been sleeping by herself under the stars, while she’d been writing songs on the trail and singing them to herself over and over so she’d remember them until she pulled out her notebook, her uncle had been dying. And then he’d been buried. No one had Molly’s or Lana’s contact info, just hers, so none of them – not one – had been there to represent the Darling family.

  And there was nothing she could do about it. She couldn’t fix it. Nothing could make that kind of wrong right. It wasn’t planned and it wasn’t malicious. Adele and Molly had been talking about going to Darling Bay for the last couple of years. Lana had sent Molly a postcard that said she might visit Uncle Hugh on her way to Baja, but it turned out she’d gone to Alaska, instead. Adele would lay money on both her sisters being scared of going to Darling Bay, scared of being in town for the first time without their father there with them. Unbearable, really, how much sadness she’d always felt when she thought of Darling Bay.

  None of it had gone the way it should have, and there was nothing Adele could do about it now.

  So she’d held the garage sale and put the rest of her things into storage. She’d handed in her keys and gotten back her deposit. She’d bought a plane ticket and hired a car and now here she was. And surprisingly, being there wasn’t as heartbreaking as she’d imagined it would be. Every corner, every nook of the space held a memory or two. But it felt good to be here, where the air smelled right.

  Even if she was homeless.

  Funny, she hadn’t thought about that word before.

  She owned no bed at all, especially not her perfect, lost-forever-now bed. She hoped it was giving the woman who’d bought it – a new-to-town songwriter who’d had the same excited look on her face that Adele had once had – the best dreams possible.

  Adele twisted in the bed again, trying to unwind the crick in her neck. If this had been an actual hotel room currently being rented, she would have been tempted to write a review of it, telling future customers to avoid room one if possible.

  Reviews.

  Adele hadn’t even thought to check them until that moment, which didn’t make any sense. She was addicted to reviews. Something about them soothed her. When she couldn’t sleep at home in Nashville, she sometimes brought up luggage sites on her phone and read the reviews of suitcases. It wasn’t that she needed a new suitcase (she had a favourite that she owned and loved). It was more that she loved finding out what other people were lying in bed thinking about when they couldn’t sleep (because who else would leave luggage reviews?). For every bag, someone wrote that the quality of the zipper could be improved. Someone else always thought the pockets were too small, and for every review that said that, there were three other people who thought the pockets were too big. The wheels spun too freely or they were too tight on their axles.

  Everyone had a way to make things better. It was a truism wherever she went. People had opinions and they wanted to be heard.

  She pulled her cell off the nightstand and opened Yelp. The Golden Spike, Darling Bay. The wi-fi connection dropped and rebooted itself twice, and both times, Adele logged back in quickly, skimming the reviews as quickly as she could before she lost connection again.

  Holy crap. It barely had two of five stars. That was bad. If she’d been a tourist driving up the coast, she would have seen that and would have kept skimming, not even bothering to read why it had earned such low reviews. Her finger would have kept flicking the screen until something with more stars made a click seem worthwhile.

  A tightness low in her gut, she opened the page.

  Dirty.

  Old.

  Grimy.

  Grubby.

  Café – CLOSED.

  Hotel – CLOSED.

  Saloon – Not worth the time it takes to get a watered-down vodka tonic.

  Keep driving.

  I was scared I might get stabbed in this place.

  Full of locals who look like they might be missing important teeth.

  That wasn’t true – Adele bristled and rolled on to her other side, wanting to give Rellie1 a piece of her mind. The locals were cowboys, ranchers and fishermen. They might be working class, but that just made them better. Stronger. It was a vibrant, tightly knit community. They weren’t inbred, for Godsakes.

  If I could give this zero stars, I would. Beer was warm. They said they had a problem with something and they were waiting on a part, but that’s not a good answer. My boyfriend said his shot of whiskey was good, but I didn’t like the way it tasted – so yuck. Since I can’t leave less than one star and because my boyfriend isn’t on Yelp, I’ll say that the bartender was hot. Like dirty-hot, all growly and flannel-shirted and hot but only because his package is probably so big it’s getting squished by those tight Wranglers, you know? Maybe worth one star. No, definitely. I’ d go back just for him. But not for the warm beer.

  Did Nate read online reviews? Somehow she doubted it, and a mischievous part of her wanted to show him that review, just to watch his face go darker.

  But then they’d both be thinking about his package. His big package.

  The sheets were making her too hot, and she pushed them off. She needed a shower. Then she’d find out if the bagel place was still making them fresh every morning.

  Then …

  She had no idea what would follow next. Technically, she would need to contact the bank, she supposed. And Uncle Hugh’s lawyer. Figure out how to sell the property. Lord, what if it was worth so little that it didn’t make sense to sell?

  A strange feeling shot through her, electric and sharp. It took her a moment to figure out what it was.

  It was hope – just a little chip of it, but still brilliant and strange.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  It wasn’t until after Nate had struck his knuckles against her door (his door) that he realised Adele might still be asleep. It was only nine in the morning, after all. He’d been awake for hours – the floor in room twelve was harder than he’d thought it would be, even with a camping pad under his sleeping bag. It hadn’t crossed his mind that she might not be awake. But she might be jet-lagged. Maybe she was a late sleeper anyway.

  But he’d already knocked. He couldn’t undo the sound. So he stood and waited. He flipped his mother’s sobriety chip up once and caught it, slapping it on the back of his hand, like he was settling a bet.

  You better hope she’s dressed, Houston.

  And then he took that hope back, just for one sweet second.

  He leaned against the wooden post. He would give her thirty more seconds, then he’d assume she’d gone for a walk. Her rental car was still parked in front of the bar, but Darling Bay was so small that didn’t really mean anything.

  Just to be safe, he gave her a full minute. Then he let himself in. Slowly. He didn’t like the woman, but he had no desire to give her a heart attack in case she actually hadn’t heard him. ‘Hello?’

  Nothing. The bed
was empty, the sheets so chaotically arranged it looked like she’d spent the whole night spinning. With someone? Or alone? After all, she was from here. Kind of. ‘Hello? Adele?’

  Crap. The door to the bathroom was closed, and he could hear the shower running.

  Fast. He’d just be quick as lightning, grab what he needed, and then get out again. Next to the bed, that’s where he’d left it …

  ‘What the hell are you doing in here?’

  Nate came up with a shout. ‘Whoa! Library book! I’m sorry!’

  But he wasn’t. Really, he knew he should have been. But Adele was wrapped in one of the old skimpy hotel towels, wearing nothing else but a furious expression. Nate forgot how to swallow.

  ‘You might be aware of this already, but this is not the library.’

  ‘No!’ He ducked to look under the bed and there it was, his library book on artificial fishing lures. ‘This is due! Today!’

  Her eyes widened, her fist clutching the top of the towel tightly. ‘That’s the lamest excuse I’ve ever heard.’

  ‘No, really. It’s due today, and this is new. There were two people on the waiting list for it, and Mrs Purcell made me promise I’d return it on time.’

  ‘Are you eleven? Do you need a dime for your overdue charge if you get it back late? Because there’s some change right there next to the TV. Grab ten cents on your way out!’

  ‘I’m sorry for scaring you.’ He was, truly. ‘I thought you were out. Or I absolutely would have waited.’

  ‘You were snooping.’

  Nate hadn’t even thought of doing that – now he wished he had. That would have made sense. But no, like the biggest dork in the whole world, he had actually just wanted to grab his library book. He backed up. ‘So sorry, again.’

  ‘The TV?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘It doesn’t work.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. I know. It hasn’t, not since we cut off the cable.’

  ‘Uncle Hugh loved cable, though.’ Adele pushed her long hair off her shoulder. It was dry, and the shower was still running, so presumably she’d been about to drop the towel on the floor. Lord give a man strength.

  ‘He was the one who asked me to turn it off. Up here in the rooms, anyway. We have it going to the TV in the saloon, for sports.’

  ‘Why did he do that?’

  Nate didn’t say anything. Couldn’t she figure it out?

  ‘Well?’

  God, she was irritating. Gorgeous, but what a pain. ‘He couldn’t afford it. Why keep cable going to unoccupied rooms?’

  Adele looked at the floor, her hand still gripping the towel tightly over her breasts. ‘Yeah. Okay.’

  The towel was short enough that it parted high on her thigh, and Nate forgot how to breathe for a second.

  ‘Do you want to see his grave?’ It wasn’t what he’d planned on asking her when he saw her. He’d wanted to show her his business plan, impress her with his ideas for the property, then get her the hell out of Dodge.

  She took a quick breath in, an audible sip of air. Maybe, if they were both having trouble breathing, there was a problem. Maybe he should install a carbon monoxide detector. He hadn’t worried about it for himself, but better safe than sorry, and God knew the air was the only thing that hadn’t gone bad around here.

  ‘Yes.’

  In the split second it had taken her to lick her lips, he’d forgotten what he’d just asked her. Hugh’s grave. That was it.

  She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. ‘I’ll just …’ Her eyes were the same blue as the wisteria that draped over the low hotel porch railings, the wisteria his mother had planted. How had he called Adele’s eyes dirty-blue?

  ‘Yeah.’ Nate thumped the cover of the book with his palm. ‘I’ll wait for you downstairs. In the bar. I have to open at eleven but we’ll have time.’

  He almost tripped on his way down the gravel path to the saloon. He walked the path a dozen times a day, and he couldn’t even trust his own balance now? That woman was throwing him. The less time he spent with her, the better.

  Yet he’d just offered to show her Hugh’s grave.

  Behind the bar, he poured himself a cup of coffee, made in Hugh’s ancient coffee machine. He drank too fast and it burned his tongue. Was his whole day going to be like this?

  Fine, whatever, the day could go to hell as long as he got the one thing done that he needed to today: he had to get her to agree to sell to him. He was ready to say – to do – anything to extract that from her. He could be sweet as the valley’s clover honey. He could be charming as old Myra Tenbottom on a bender.

  He’d do what he had to do.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The sun felt good on the top of Adele’s head as she left her room and headed for the parking lot. She’d dressed hoping for early fall sun: a thin black button-down shirt and a short jean skirt. Black sandals with straps and a wedge heel. The way Nate’s gaze swept her body made her feel even warmer than the sunshine did.

  Maybe the warmth was affecting Nate for the better, too. He smiled and opened the door of his truck for her. He didn’t look surprised that she had her guitar with her – he just took it from her and gently laid it in the space behind the front seats.

  And he didn’t ask why she had it with her. That was nice. Adele didn’t think she could tell him without crying, and she did not want to cry this early in the day.

  He turned on the local country station and both of them hummed along to an old Willie Nelson song. They could have been any couple headed out for morning coffee.

  The thought was jarring. Adele stopped humming and ran her finger along the side of the seat, playing with a sharp place where the vinyl was cracked.

  She tried desperately not to notice how wide his hands were on the steering wheel. How he had shaved but had missed a bit just under his jawline. She pretended to herself that she didn’t feel an insane urge to touch that spot. To kiss it.

  Sweet Tammy Wynette, she was being ridiculous.

  ‘Here we are.’ They were the first words he’d said on the drive. Adele still hadn’t said any.

  She scrambled out, carrying her guitar with one hand and pulling on her red cowboy hat with the other, glad she’d brought both.

  Adele had always thought the Darling Bay cemetery was surprisingly cheerful. Far from being a spooky place of haunts and regrets, it was bright and green and open, full of rolling rises easily climbed in a dozen paces. Ornate marble crypts were on the right of the huge gate, and to the left were the old, almost-unreadable, simpler markers of the pioneers that had first been in the valley, before the town had a name. A vineyard ran along the edges of the graveyard, and the grape leaves were just starting to brown, announcing fall’s swift approach.

  It was gorgeous. Happy, even.

  But Adele had lost her equanimity on the drive somewhere, and she held the handle of the guitar case so tight her fingers ached.

  ‘This way.’ Nate pointed up a path.

  Hummingbirds buzzed them as they walked, flirting with the air and the flowers around them. One solitary hawk circled high above. It cried once, a lonely sound that carried. Why was it crying? For a mate? From anger? From dizzy happiness or from sorrow?

  Nate followed her gaze. ‘Saw one of those pick up a squirrel once. Tail whopped all over the place, even way up in the sky.’

  ‘Sounds like it might not have worked out well for the squirrel.’

  ‘I dunno. It eventually got dropped. Maybe it got a good bite in before it died.’

  ‘I hope so.’ Adele took a moment to imagine a huge pair of claws swooping out of nowhere to pick her up and cart her into the air. From up there, she’d have a view of all of Darling Bay. She’d be able to see the marina and Fenton’s Cove, not to mention the Golden Spike. But she’d be so busy punching the huge raptor that pulled her up that she wouldn’t be able to enjoy it. ‘Poor squirrel.’ Was it the imaginary squirrel that was upsetting her so much or was it the fact that she was about to come face to face with
her uncle’s grave? Adele took a deep breath and clenched her teeth.

  ‘You all right?’

  Of course she wasn’t. But still, it was a kind thing to ask. She unlocked her jaw. ‘Sure.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Nate swung ahead of her, his long legs easy, his arms loose. The back of his black shirt advertised a feed company in Fortuna, emblazoned with a picture of a longhorn behind a short white fence. Instead of the battered cowboy hat he’d worn last night in the saloon, he wore his Charlie’s Feed and Seed ball cap backward again, so the logo faced her as she followed behind him. How was it possible that he seemed like such a cowboy when he wasn’t wearing a cowboy hat? Was it his walk? The way his legs ate up the distance as if there were a horse below him?

  It was a good thing he liked his ball cap so much. The world didn’t need him looking any better than he did. It was already a sin against nature that the back of his jeans looked that good. Nate wasn’t overweight, not even a little bit, but he wasn’t skinny, either. He was tall and broad and strong, even from the back. The Yelp review was right – he filled out his Wranglers so well he could appear in a billboard ad for them. Women would make a mad rush to buy them for their men in the vain hope that their asses would look the same.

  That was not the right thing to be thinking while walking behind the man in a graveyard.

  He spoke over his shoulder. ‘You want to hear about the memorial service?’

  Of course she did.

  And the thought of him telling her about it made her want to run across the graveyard and hop the low fence and just keep running, down the hills, to the water, where she’d start swimming and never stop till she reached Hawaii.

  But she said, ‘Yes. Please.’

  He slowed so that she could catch up and walk next to him. ‘Did he ever talk to you girls about what he wanted? Or to your dad?’

  ‘Not that I remember. He never said anything to you?’

  ‘I guess it was another one of those things he just didn’t want to think about.’

  ‘It seems there were a lot of those.’