by Terri Farley
“Am I like the royal taster?” I said, but my words were muffled from chewing.
“It’s not poison, if that’s what you mean,” Thelma said. “But it’s not like her own,” she nodded toward the dining room and Nana. “This is as it should be, with me cookin’, you servin’, and her as hostess. Still …”
I let Thelma talk while I savored the muffin. A thin crust made its tender inside, studded with cinnamon-spiced apples, even better. I could have eaten a hundred of them, but I managed to say, “It’s wonderful.”
Thelma watched me chew. She looked dubious as she refilled the china teapot with scalding hot water from a vibrating kettle. I brushed the crumbs from the front of my blouse before I picked the teapot up to return to the dining room.
“I know the boy you asked your Nan about.”
“You do?” Not for a second did I pretend I didn’t know who Thelma meant. Why waste time?
“His name is Jesse—”
Jesse. Perfect. The young-outlaw sound of it suited him.
“—but Jesse what, I haven’t the faintest. He comes and goes, winter, summer—he’s here, then not, and buys his clothes at the Merry Mermaid.”
Maybe his parents were some kind of itinerant workers, I thought. Or, as I’d guessed, rich. Lots of people prowled thrift shops for bargains.
“Once, he ran with Zack and his lot. Not as much now, though, and that shows sense. Zack’s turned bad, no matter how nice your Nana wants to be. Not bored, restless, or disadvantaged”—Thelma spat the last word—“That Zack, you don’t want to leave anything weak where he can get at it.”
I shuddered. It was a good thing Zack had brought out the pushy witch in me. What if he’d thought I was scared?
But I didn’t want to discuss Zack. I had to wring from Thelma all she knew about Jesse.
A bell tinkled from the dining room. I flashed Thelma a questioning look.
“That should never happen,” Thelma scolded. “You should anticipate what they want.”
“But you—”
Thelma swatted at my skirt as if I were still about five years old. I hurried back into the dining room.
It turned out to be something I couldn’t have anticipated, so that was cool.
Ms. Fortunato had been cutting a piece of cantaloupe, her knife had slipped, and her plate had skittered onto the floor. It wasn’t that messy, but she was sure embarrassed.
The Great Dane, lying at the foot of the stairs, hadn’t moved to lap it up, but I couldn’t help wondering what he would have done if we’d been serving sausage.
I cleaned things up, and Nana told me later that my “no big deal” attitude was absolutely perfect. I’d made the guest feel at home and taken care of the problem, too.
When breakfast ended and a big van with a rainbow painted on it pulled up outside the Inn and tooted its horn, it was the icing on the cake.
“The bookmobile!” I cheered, and both Nana and Thelma laughed.
Because Mirage Beach was far from a public library, we qualified for the county outreach program. I hadn’t been inside a bookmobile since I was ten years old, but it was as cool as I remembered. Sort of like a school bus, only instead of seats, there were book racks.
I used Nana’s library card and loaded up on mysteries, romances, and a book of Celtic legends. That pleased the librarian. Tickled him, Nana said when we were coming back down the steps, since he’d stuck that book on the bookmobile as an afterthought, in anticipation of Midsummer’s Eve.
Nana’s walking cast got her down the bookmobile stairs more nimbly than my bruised ankle. And of course she noticed and insisted I take two aspirin with water. She forced a baggie full of more aspirin on me too.
“Have yourself a nice cup of tea and a lie down,” she urged as I started back to Cook’s Cottage. “Thelma and I are taking the rest of the day off, and so should you.”
I wasn’t the napping type, but I could already feel my eyelids drooping.
“But if other guests show up—”
“We’ll fetch you,” Thelma said. “Have no worry about that.”
“Come back for dinner,” Nana urged. “It will be simple. Soup and sandwiches, something like that.”
“I might,” I said, yawning. “Or I might sleep through dinner.”
“There’s plenty in your freezer if you should wake for a midnight snack,” Thelma said, and I remembered the four-cheese ravioli Mandi had spotted in my refrigerator.
“Every night’s like a party around here,” I told them.
“Oh, yes, we’re quite the lively crew,” Nana chuckled.
I kissed her on the cheek and set off for home.
Already the cottage felt like home again. I checked the hedge for my industrious spider, and she was spinning away amid the ripening blackberries. A subdued flutter told me the mother swallow was in her nest.
It took me a couple of minutes to find my house key. It had slipped into the lining of my skirt pocket. When my fingers located it, I unlocked the front door and collapsed on the couch with my stack of books. I’d just put two pillows under my heel when I thought I really should make sure the spare key was hanging on the cup hook under the kitchen windowsill.
I was sure Dad would have freaked out, searching for it, if it hadn’t been there, but still.
Oh well, if I misplaced my key, I could probably get the screen off my old bedroom window and burgle my own house.
“Besides, it would be a shame to disturb the kitty,” I said as Gumbo curled up on my tummy, purring.
I read until I couldn’t stop yawning, and then I fell asleep.
Lightning and waves, sea lions, and long, tangled mermaid’s hair wove through my dreams. I don’t know how they added up to a restful summer nap, but they did.
I woke at twilight, recognized the quiet that signaled low tide, and decided I should go clamming for my dinner. I felt so relaxed and rejuvenated, I even believed it was my own idea.
APPLE BLOSSOM(Escallonia langleyensis)
Tolerates full sun and heavy doses of salt spray. This sweet, pale pink variety blooms through midsummer. Although at home in the most traditional English garden, it may sprawl as if trying to reach the gulls, broken shells, and rocks on the nearby shore. The careful coastal gardener will take charge of this variety of rock rose, lest it run wild.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Mostly, I’d be a vegetarian if I had to kill my own food. Do I eat hamburgers? Yes. Would I look into a cow’s trusting brown eyes and aim a gun between them? No way.
Call me hypocritical, but there it is. Except for clams.
Don’t discuss their nervous systems or consciousness with me, because I don’t want to know.
After shaking the nap cobwebs from my brain, I got dressed. With that aching thigh and tender ankle, my jeans were a challenge, but I got them on, along with the first T-shirt I touched. Because the beach cools off fast after sundown, I tied my hooded red sweatshirt around my waist.
I walked to the beach wearing a backpack loaded with matches, a pocket knife, a copper-bottomed saucepan, a footed rack to hold the pan above the fire, a little metal dish, and a cube of butter.
This was one beach treat I remembered how to make. Since Mom loved fresh clams as much as I did, I learned to prepare them by watching her during our shoreline cookouts when I was a kid, and more recently, when we’d driven to beaches closer to Valencia.
Striding away from Cook’s Cottage I had one twinge in my thigh and another of loneliness when Gumbo mewed from an upstairs window. I waved and kept walking, feeling self-sufficient and hungry. It had been a long time since that apple muffin.
As I walked through the beach grass, I picked up driftwood. I snagged a few knots of sun-dried seaweed for kindling too, and breathed the salt wind which had probably blown it up here.
Down from the dunes, but before the bare shore, I saw sandpipers skipping flat-footed across the beach, stopping to root out dinner.
“Save some for me,” I told them, then I knelt
, built a foot-high tepee of driftwood over the dried seaweed, and set it alight. The sandpipers were probably eating little sand crabs, not clams, but my growling stomach made me greedy.
My fire caught with a satisfying whoosh. I built a ring of rocks around it and added driftwood, feeding the flames, and listening to the hiss of steam escaping from sticks that had looked dry but weren’t.
Scanning the beach, I walked down and scooped a little salt water into my saucepan. As soon as I had done it, I saw the small rising bubbles and the first tiny hole, telling me where to dig.
I ran to it and used my foot as a shovel. The cold wavelets had numbed my ankle enough that it didn’t hurt. Setting the pot to one side, I used my hands to feel for the hard shell, then plunged in, grabbed, and dragged it out.
“Ha! Gotcha!”
When the first clam plinked into my pot, it was like a starter’s gun. I raced up and down the beach, kicking at the sand, squatting and digging like a dog until I reached each gritty prize. I scooped up a handful of long, leafy seaweed and stuffed it into the pot too.
“Don’t worry about why,” I told the clams, then pressed my lips together. It was a bad idea to talk to your dinner before cooking it.
I’d gathered two dozen clams before I settled down to cook. All of them were closed tight, “clammed up,” you might say. I’d have to steam them in a couple of batches, waiting for each one to pop open. By then the metal dish I’d placed near the fire would be awash with melted butter. I’d dip each succulent piece of meat in the butter and feast on the freshest seafood in the world.
It was dark when I ate the first one, but there was a moon. It was almost full with an iridescent ring around it. I tried to remember what that meant. I couldn’t, but I did notice how the moon’s sheen lit the waves as the tide began rolling back in.
Their crests blew back like manes on white horses. Poseidon’s horses. He was the god of the ocean. Didn’t stories say he drove his chariot up from his watery kingdom, grabbed unwary maidens by the waist, and dragged them back under the sea? Was that the myth or was I making it up? Maybe the story had been in that book I’d been reading as I fell asleep this afternoon.
I ate another clam. Because I was so focused on licking my fingers, it was too late to do anything when I saw him.
Black against the darkness, he came ashore. Bigger than the guy at the cove, I thought. I should run. Or stay very still.
Instead, I straightened my shoulders, lifted my chin, and tried to look intimidating. And then I saw it was him.
He’d stopped right in front of me when I remembered his name. Jesse. But I couldn’t seem to spit it out.
“Hi,” I managed. Didn’t he ever wear a shirt?
“Hello,” he said. His legs folded, and with an athletic grace, he sat—not on the other side of the fire—but right beside me.
His black hair dripped. Firelight highlighted his cheekbones, and I thought maybe he looked Native American.
“Jesse?” I asked, and the smile that claimed his face told me Thelma had been right. “Since you already knew my name—Hey!”
He snatched one of my uncooked clams. Before I could stop him, he’d cracked the shells apart, bitten the mollusk from inside, and swallowed it. Alive.
Uncooked, the clam must have had the texture of rubber bands.
“You’re supposed to steam them,” I said, kind of aghast. “And dip them in melted butter.” I demonstrated, and his expression flickered from confusion to disgust. “And asking if you could share would be sort of good manners.”
What was I trying to do? I sounded like my mother! I wouldn’t blame him if he jumped up and stalked down the beach, and I never saw him again.
But he only met my eyes and gave a faint smile.
“Manners,” he echoed, as if I’d reminded him of an outdated concept.
“It’s okay. I have plenty. Of clams, I mean. Help yourself.”
Really. Is it any wonder I’ve never had a serious boyfriend?
Then I blurted, “Aren’t you cold?”
He looked down, and I felt my own blush. Lucky it was dark. I mean, here’s another humiliating admission. I’d never noticed boys have nipples.
“Your fire is quite enough to keep me warm,” he said. As the flames glimmered on his eyes, he looked me over like a wolf sizing up dinner. After what happened to that clam—
As soon as the thought crossed my mind, he lowered his eyelids.
“I make you uneasy,” he said. There was real despair in his tone. “How can I stop that?”
“You could start by wearing a shirt.”
“Right!” That Celtic lilt filled each letter of the word, and he sounded as if I’d guessed a correct answer.
He moved closer, until there wasn’t a foot of sand between us.
“I’m used to swimming here alone,” he explained. “Around by the cove, actually. I leave my”—his head jerked up as if he’d heard something—“my … things … in the grotto and swim between the cove and the place with the boats.”
“The harbor at Siena Bay?” I suggested.
As he nodded, his wet black hair curved on his cheek.
Why was that so familiar? I leaned back against both hands, pretending to stare at the moon.
“You do remember me now.”
He reached out, slid his fingers around my wrist, and lifted one of my hands from the sand. I could let him have it, or fall. I shifted my weight forward, and let him hold my hand. He kept it cupped in his as his eyes locked on mine.
My stomach dropped like I was zooming to the stars.
Wind blew my hair across my lips, and he brushed it away. Not like he was grossed out that it stuck to my buttery lips. More like he’d wanted an excuse to touch me.
The ocean’s foamy fingers crept closer. Waves moved in, brushing the shore.
Any minute I’d get it together and remember how to talk. Really soon.
“From the sea lion cove,” I said. “I remember you from there.”
“And from before,” he said in a leading tone.
He released my hand so suddenly, I almost fell toward him.
“Don’t deny it,” he said, and flopped down on the sand, on his side, and then he laughed. “You remember me, and for some reason, it pleases you to pretend you don’t.”
It wasn’t pleasing me a bit. I felt like I was talking with a higher being. Every few seconds I got the feeling he could read my mind.
“Okay,” I said, crossing my arms. “Where do I supposedly remember you from?”
“Here,” he said patiently. “It was later at night, and a long time ago. You were just a pup. You got knocked over by a wave—”
My head spun. Forget that kind of Western slang about me being “just a pup.”
It was him.
The Gypsy boy.
He existed.
I exhaled so completely, it was as if I’d been holding my breath for seven years.
It was no big deal to him. He kept talking while I had a mental celebration because I wasn’t crazy.
He wasn’t an imaginary creature or a child molester or a dream formed as I’d sleepwalked across a lonely beach. I wasn’t nuts and I never had been.
But I’d missed part of what he was saying, and I tried to catch up. Paying attention to him was the least I could do.
“… habit of getting into trouble. Does it hurt?”
He touched my ankle gently, but he might as well have given me ten thousand volts. How could he know about this morning’s tangle with the kelp?
“I noticed your limp,” he explained.
“It’s a little stiff,” I said. Then I shrugged, and I must have winced, because he touched me again, this time between the shoulder blades.
“It bruised your back.” He looked a little sad.
“Maybe,” I said.
Had I been carrying myself oddly? I hadn’t looked over my shoulder into a mirror, but my back ached from where the big sea lion had slammed me free of the kelp. It probably was
black and blue, but I didn’t want anyone watching me so closely they could guess my back hurt.
“I’m fine,” I said as my excitement turned to wariness.
Even stalkers could be handsome. My dad could recite the names of dozens of sweet, helpful psychopaths.
I started gathering my stuff and putting it back into my backpack. I wanted him to leave before I started up to the cottage.
Actually, that wasn’t true. I didn’t want him to leave, but it would be best if he did.
I was about to douse the fire with sand, when his fingers caught my wrist again.
“Let go,” I said. And he did.
That’s when I should have stood up and walked away, but I didn’t.
“You remembered,” he paused to see me nod. “And you were nice. Then you changed.” He drew a deep breath and looked confused, as if the change in me was his fault. “What happened?”
“Maybe I don’t like being spied on,” I said.
He thought for a minute. “That’s fair. So what should I have done instead?”
This had to be a first. A guy was asking flirting advice from me. And really, raw clams aside, he was the handsomest guy I’d ever met.
“You could just come up and introduce yourself,” I suggested. “Like a normal person.”
That made him smile again, and I laughed.
“But I guess our first meeting wasn’t exactly normal, so what could I expect?”
Grinning, he lay full-length in the sand, head propped on one palm, as if I were so amusing he wanted me to keep talking.
“Sure,” I went on. “Just say, ‘hi, I’m the guy who fished you out of the waves when you were a kid, and I’ve come back to set the record straight.’”
“I don’t understand that part,” he said.
Setting the record straight was probably a phrase that only existed in English. Where was he from, anyway?
“When you didn’t stay around—” I broke off. Even by starlight I could see his grin fade into a vulnerable expression. “I don’t blame you a bit. One minute you’re skinny dipping alone, next you’re rescuing some little kid from drowning, and then the beach is crawling with people. I don’t blame you,” I repeated, “but people assumed I’d either imagined you, or you were a bad guy.”