Yes, a perfect day, if she’d been alone…and still in Chicago.
“I could have rented a car and saved you the drive, Mom.” Actually, her budget had been thrilled when her mother had offered to come and fetch her. Also, once in Eagle Cove there wasn’t a lot of use for a car, except when the rain poured down. The whole town was only a few miles long and she could walk most places she’d want to go. As if there were any old haunts that she’d care to revisit. She’d made good her escape to Northwestern University’s School of Journalism at eighteen but every now and then the town still sucked her back.
“Nonsense, honey. I’m always glad to drive up and get you. Besides, I needed a few things for the wedding.”
“How many is this?” As if she didn’t know. It took much of her journalistic skill to keep “that judgmental tone” out of her voice. Something her early teachers had dinged her on until she’d learned to eradicate it. But since she was regressing as they neared the coast, it was trying to make a comeback.
“Number four.”
“Why, Mom?”
“Because I love the man.” Her mother actually glanced away from the road to offer her a scowl. “I’d have thought that was obvious.”
“It is. But you’ve divorced him three times.”
“Because your father can drive a woman crazy without even trying.” They giggled together because that was an absolute truth about Ralph Baxter.
“I meant, why marry him again? You’re both legal age, your daughter lives in Chicago,” and wouldn’t complain if she lived on another planet entirely. “Just shack up together. Then you can lock the door whenever Daddy becomes too much like himself.”
Ralph Baxter was always getting caught up in monster projects. Without a word of warning he would suddenly rip out the entire kitchen, once on the morning before a dinner party, because he’d thought of a better way to design it. Or he’d start building a new boat from scratch in the middle of the driveway, rather than in the generous side yard, which blocked parking near the house for months.
“Oh, honey. I’m too old fashioned a girl to ‘just shack up’.”
Which was almost believable, even in the twenty-first century. To hear Aunt Gina—who despite her name was as not-Italian as a pastrami sandwich—tell it, Monica Lamont had chosen Ralph Baxter as her sweet sixteen love. She’d never even shopped around. How 1950s was that for a woman who hadn’t even been born then?
Jessica had shopped plenty, or at least window-shopped. She’d found only a few men worth the cost of trying on for size. Definitely not a one worth taking home to keep. She might look like her mom, all blond, tall, and waiflike—which she kind of hated though the men seemed to like it—but inside she wanted to be like Aunt Gina.
Luigina Lamont looked nothing like her twin sister…or Grandpop…or much like Grandma for that matter. She was a statuesque redhead, in every voluptuous sense of the word and completely lived up to her name: Luigina meant “Famous Warrior.” Her merry laugh slapped up against you at the most unexpected moments and constantly poked at your ticklish spot until you were curled up on the couch begging her to stop. Unlike Mom and her serial marriages to the same man, Gina brought home plenty yet had only tried to keep one.
That “unholy disaster” (as the family tales described it) had produced Natalya Daphne Lamont—Jessica’s three-hour-older (and Natalya never let her forget it) first cousin and best friend. Just like Gina, Natalya didn’t look like either her mom or Gina’s brief husband. Maybe that was hereditary on that side of the family to balance out how much Jessica resembled her own mom and their shared grandma. Jessica had a sudden flash of her own future daughter looking just like her…and felt the world spin just a little at thinking about children at all.
“If I hadn’t seen her come out between my legs myself,” Aunt Gina would announce loudly, “I’d have thought I adopted the kid. Maybe I signed up to be a surrogate then forgot all about it.”
Mom blushed every time Aunt Gina let that one loose in public, without understanding that if she didn’t, Aunt Gina would have stopped long ago.
“Such an exotic offspring deserves an exotic name. Natalya for the Russian Bond girl in GoldenEye and Daphne for du Maurier the romance writer, not the nymph who had to turn into a tree to escape that lusty jerk Apollo.” The fact that GoldenEye hadn’t come out until Natalya had already been in grade school hadn’t changed Aunt Gina’s story one bit.
Maybe Jessica’s own child would be lucky and take after Cousin Natalya who was slender like Jessica, but had all of the curves Jessica had prayed for throughout her teenage years but never been granted. Natya was also dusky skinned like a permanent tan and leggy like some French model. Jessica’s and her mom’s fairy light hair and Aunt Gina’s mass of red curls had been transformed to a smooth cascade of dark chestnut on her cousin. Yet she and Jessica felt like twins from different mothers: one light, one dark, but much the same on the inside.
Jessica smiled at the sign as they cleared Maxine Pass: eight-hundred and three feet according to the sign. The “three” always made her laugh. It was like Becky, her other best friend from Eagle Cove, firmly insisting that she as five-four “and a quarter” as if it made a difference.
Maxine Pass was technically Maxwell Pass. Or it had been until the day that Aunt Gina had declared it just wasn’t right for all of the passes to have male names merely because men were the ones who drew the maps back in the 1800s.
For her sixteenth birthday Jessica hadn’t received her first kiss—already happened a year before—or gotten laid—two more years until that event. Instead, she’d been recruited for a “Mission!” At two in the morning on their shared birthday, Aunt Gina drove her and Natalya up to repaint the Maxwell Pass highway sign to Maxine. It had become a tradition that every time the highway department changed it back to Maxwell, the three of them would have a two a.m. gals’ outing and change the sign once again. The highway department had given up years ago. A few of the more recent road maps had even changed the name.
“Girl Power!” they’d shout after each time they finished repainting the sign, usually about three a.m. Then they’d break out the thermos of hot chocolate and drink it from a shared cup while they admired their handiwork by moonlight.
One time Martin, the town cop, had shown up while they were doing it. Jessica and Natalya had ducked, but Gina hadn’t slowed down a single brush stroke.
“Thought it would be you,” Martin had observed through his open car window, obviously talking to Gina.
“Out of your jurisdiction, Marty,” had been Aunt Gina’s awesomely calm reply. She had always been Jessica’s hero, but that totally clinched it. The town limits had been left far behind.
He’d joined them for the hot chocolate and had a good laugh at the “Girl Power!” chant.
Today Jessica just waved hello to the sign as they crested the pass and began their descent.
“Didn’t you ever bust out, Mom?” Jessica tried to imagine her doing so, but couldn’t quite conjure it up in her mind.
“Bust out? You mean cheat on your father? Never!”
“But what about between times, when you were divorced? That wouldn’t be cheating.”
Monica Lamont’s lips thinned as she tightened her jaw and finally shook her head in a sharp little snap. “I was only living in the other end of the house.”
“What about with Dad? You and Dad could just…you know?” The thought of her parents having sex was uncomfortable enough that she couldn’t quite say it aloud.
“Ralph says that if I feel so strongly about things that I have to divorce him, then I shouldn’t be expecting any special concessions while we are divorced.”
Jessica felt she had to side with Dad on that one. He’d become used to his wife’s antics, but that meant he didn’t get any either in the interims. No wandering for him—it had always been clear that Ralph Baxter was absolutely crazy about Monica Lamont. Jessica felt kind of sorry for him.
“Wait. You mean you haven�
��t had sex in two years?” This latest was their longest divorce yet.
Again that little snap that made Jessica’s neck ache in sympathy. Mom moved to the right as the road added a climbing lane to reach the six-hundred and thirty-four foot (not quite so much bragging) Rogue Pass. That name at least made perfect sense by Oregon standards…because it wasn’t anywhere near either of the two separate Rogue Rivers in Oregon. A half dozen cars roared past. Mom always drove exactly at the speed limit instead of the nearly mandatory ten over that prevailed throughout the state.
“So you’re waiting for the wedding night?”
This time her mom’s nod was a little sad.
“I’m sure tomorrow will be a great night, Mom.”
At that she smiled brilliantly. “If the past three are anything to judge by, yes, it will be. It’s just too bad we had to delay it.”
“Delay it? Wait! What?” Jessica bolted upright in the car seat and almost throttled herself with her seatbelt. The wedding was supposed to be tomorrow. She’d secretly planned on staying just one day past the wedding, and then catching the Airporter Express that wandered through the small coastal towns once a day. She’d already warned Natalya to expect her in Portland for the rest of the week until her flight back to the Windy City.
“Well, we were meeting with Judge Slater about the ceremony. As he performed the first three weddings…”
Jessica resisted pointing out that he’d done all three divorces as well. Maybe her Oregon civility was coming back. Yeah, like a toothache.
“…and he had all of the old records in a file; even had the new marriage license pre-filled out, the dear man. However, it turns out that the first time we were married was on July fourteenth, not July seventh as I had remembered. You know how your father loves the cycle of things. So we moved the wedding to next weekend to coincide properly with the original. I knew you already had your plane tickets, so I didn’t see any point in telling you.”
Didn’t see any point? She’d have moved heaven and earth to— Actually, her mother was right because she’d purchased the cheapest non-refundable, non-changeable tickets she could find.
A week! She was going to be trapped in Eagle Cove from Friday morning until Sunday morning nine days later? Oh, that was so bad.
“I can’t believe that we celebrated it wrong for all of those years,” her mother continued, completely oblivious to the panic she’d just created. “The seventh was the date that had always stuck in my head for our anniversaries.”
Mom’s dropping voice spoke volumes. She’d always been terrible at keeping a secret.
“So why did the seventh stick in your head?” Jessica kept it as casual as she could, rather than rubbing it in that her mom always gave up whatever she was trying to hide. It must be the journalist in her coming out: ask the question and then wait patiently for a reply. Not pushing was another change between them. Jessica didn’t feel as if she was mellowing with age, but perhaps she was. Being disillusioned at thirty-two was no more newsworthy than it had been at twelve or twenty-two; but a woman shouldn’t mellow until…well, maybe a hundred-and-two.
On the back side of Rogue Pass, Mom concentrated on the winding descent. Jessica waved at a massive Roosevelt elk who grazed in a small clearing beside the road. Coming back to Eagle Cove might be only one step better than a nightmare, but it was a very scenic one. The road was soon joined by a stream rushing in a deep ravine on Jessica’s side of the road; the problem was that they were both racing in the wrong direction—toward, not away from, her childhood home. The stream tumbled along almost as fast as they did down toward Eagle River which would eventually define the end of town where it opened into a broad bay before it reached the sea.
No one quite knew why the bay had been named a cove, but it showed that way on even the oldest maps. It gave the town an off-kilter personality to Jessica’s mind, as if it was always seeking to find its true identity. No bridge crossed the Eagle to the wilderness area on the other bank. To reach that required either a boat or an hour drive back up to Highway 101, across the river, and then a long crawl back to the Coast over marginal logging roads.
“C’mon, Mom, give.” Since not pushing at her mother had failed, Jessica went with regressing and shifted to the wheedling tone she’d perfected as a child. She might hate herself in the morning for slipping back into it, but it always worked. Sure enough, her mom gave in right on cue.
“July seventh was the one time we cheated. We didn’t actually wait for our first wedding night,” the blush on her mother’s fair skin was almost bright enough to lighten the dark corridor between the towering trees. “Your father made it amazing. But that’s also the day I became pregnant, though I didn’t know it until after the wedding. All those years I was celebrating the wrong date. That’s why we never fool around unless we’re married.”
“Sounds like you were celebrating exactly the right date, Mom.” She tried to pin down the exact date of her own first time, but it hadn’t been all that memorable. Good, but “earth-shattering” was just another one of those 1950s’ myths that didn’t happen in the twenty-first century. Except, apparently, for her own mother. How unfair was that.
“Maybe,” her mom admitted, “but we’re going to get married on the fourteenth anyway.”
“So, I’m illegitimate?” Not that it bothered her, but she couldn’t resist needling her mother about it. Maybe she hadn’t matured all that much.
“Yes dear, but only by one week. I swear I didn’t know.” This time Jessica heard that her mom’s confession was a sigh at Jessica’s question rather than sounding contrite. Maybe it was time Jessica grew up a bit—even when in Eagle Cove.
“Does Aunt Gina know about all this?”
“No one does, except your father and now you. You only arrived three days early, which was actually four days late. No one gave it any thought.”
Excellent! Forget being mature. Aunt Gina would love the extra dirt for teasing her sister and Jessica couldn’t wait to be the one to tickle her aunt’s funny bone.
# # #
It had been another long morning of assisting the Judge—always with a capital J. Monday through Friday, six a.m. to ten, Greg Slater helped his father. At first it had been something that Greg did to help out, but he’d come to like the simple routines and structure to his mornings.
“Ready?” he called back to the kitchen as he did every day. There was no real need to ask. The big old clock hung high on the wall said it was exactly six a.m. and the Judge was a very punctual man.
But Greg looked for the solemn nod before moving out into the diner and flicking on the fluorescents, “The Puffin Diner” sign, and the porch lights. There wasn’t much need for the last, sunrise was twenty minutes ago, but the sun itself wouldn’t clear the Coast Range ridge until at least six-thirty. For now, Beach Way, the town’s main street, was mostly cool shadows and darkened buildings.
The bell mounted on the back of the door rang almost right away as Cal Mason Jr. came in. Greg had already set a mug of coffee on the counter for him. Cal ran the Blackbird Bakery and was hours into his day. Five days a week he was as punctual as the Judge. Cal Sr. wouldn’t be in for a few hours yet.
“Your standard, Cal?”
“Double,” though Greg knew that was a joke. Cal was one of the few men in town big enough that he could have eaten two of the Judge’s generous portions. Six-two and as powerful as a bulldozer; his hands dwarfed the coffee mug.
Because Cal sat at the six-stool wooden counter, the Judge was less than five feet away through the broad service window that connected the dining room with the kitchen, but he waited for Greg to fill out the order slip and clip it to the spinner.
It was Greg’s own fault. The diner’s service had been a bone of contention, or rather “lengthy negotiation” just as most things were with the Judge.
“They can pick up their own plates at the window. Coffee pot is right there behind the counter where anyone who wants a refill can get their own.”
Greg had won that round by subterfuge. He’d numbered the tables and then only put the numbers on the order slips, making it impossible for the Judge to boom out with “Veronica, your order is up.” Customers had slowly adapted to not having to leave their tables for every little thing.
At least Greg thought he’d won, until a full three weeks later his father had winked at him while sliding across a short stack with bacon and hash browns for Karen Thompson, “Like I don’t know who orders what on a Thursday.”
Now the Judge wouldn’t cook a thing without a proper ticket. Well, he’d cook it, but he wouldn’t serve it no matter how busy or harried Greg was.
Cal’s plate came up less than thirty seconds after Greg hung the ticket just as it did every morning: western omelet, hash browns, farm sausage, and English muffin. The last was about the only kind of bread that Cal didn’t bake.
“Gotta have something that I can order out for and enjoy without baking it myself.”
Greg moved the plate across to the counter and refilled Cal’s half-drained mug of coffee.
There wasn’t much call for a judge in a town the size of Eagle Cove. Semi-retired for the last five years, he no longer spent three days a week in Newport to sit on the bench as he had throughout Greg’s childhood. Instead he’d set up a small courtroom in town. He mainly handled family matters like marriages and estates, and fines for drunk and disorderly tourists who soon learned that Judge Slater was a fierce protector of the town. There was only the occasional speeding ticket—no matter how hard Martin the cop tried to catch someone. The town was perched against the Pacific Ocean at the dead end of a winding two-lane that had left the coastal highway a dozen miles back; it had enough “Sharp Curves Ahead” signs to quell even the most lead-footed of souls.
So, “for something to keep me busy,” the Judge held office hours only in the afternoons because his weekday mornings were all spent working as a short-order cook. And ever since Greg’s return to Eagle Cove three years ago, he’d been his father’s front-of-house man: waiter, cashier, and busboy.
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