Boardwalk Cottage

by Barbara Cool Lee

  Horses, Hallie thought. It had been years since she'd ridden.... Her girlhood obsession with horses was another one of those childish things she'd given up since her divorce. But Windy—knowing her weakness better than anybody—had been quick to point out to her that the Madrigal ranch had a motley assortment of animals just waiting for her attention.

  Hallie reminded herself that this was supposed to be her summer vacation. She just needed a good night's sleep, and then she'd be ready for horseback riding and working at the amusement park and all kinds of fun. When Windy got back from her research trip they'd have the best summer ever.

  The next message came on the answering machine. A different voice said: "Kyle, come get me already. It's after four. I just got off work and Zac's off somewhere goofing around, so hurry up. I'm starving." The machine beeped once more, then stopped.

  Hallie sat back. On the wall next to the fridge she saw a big bulletin board covered with children's drawings and a couple of newspaper clippings—one with Chris's name highlighted where he'd scored points in a basketball game at the high school, another where Zac's name had been circled in red on the listing of honor-roll students. She could hear Kyle moving around in the next room, the rattle as he picked up his keys, the creak of the worn oak floorboards under his feet. Hallie felt the tension between her shoulder blades ease.

  There was a sound at the back door. A black and orange tortoiseshell cat pushed its way through the cat door and then paused. It looked her over, apparently found her completely unimpressive, and sat down in the middle of the kitchen floor and began to wash itself.

  Kyle came back into the kitchen. "Chris is starving." He rolled his eyes. "He'll eat anything, so it's your call. Anchovies or no?"

  She grimaced.

  "I take that as a no," Kyle said, and laughed. "Hey, you pest," he said, leaning down to rub the tortie cat under the chin. "I know you'll always vote for fish, but you'll have to wait here for leftovers." He glanced at Hallie. "Have you two been formally introduced?"

  "Not yet. Is this my namesake?"

  Kyle picked the cat up. She immediately began to knead his chest with her paws. "Boy, Windy's told you everything about us, hasn't she?"

  "She was homesick for this place, and everything in it, right down to your Halloween cat." Hallie went over to where Kyle stood with the cat.

  "She doesn't bite," he said softly.

  Hallie pulled her hands out of her pockets and ran a hand over the tortie-cat's sleek fur. "Hello, Miss Hallie," she whispered. Halloween just dug her paws into Kyle's chest and purred louder. We have more in common than our names. She can't keep her paws off his chest either.

  Kyle set the cat down. He grabbed a second jacket from the peg by the door. "This isn't quite your size, but it'll keep you from freezing." He helped her on with it.

  "Are you sure this isn't bigger than the one you're wearing?"

  He chuckled. "It's the smallest one I've got. Honest." He looked her over. "Maybe I can find one of the boys' around. I think all of Windy's stuff from college is still in the dirty laundry pile. She brought home a truckload of laundry."

  "I know. I share a closet with her." She began rolling up the sleeves. "It'll be fine, as long as we aren't going to a formal-dress pizza parlor. And as long as you're not too embarrassed to be seen with me."

  "Not likely," Kyle said quietly.

  He turned out the light and opened the back door. "Let's go."

  "Why are we pulling over?" Hallie asked.

  Kyle pulled his red pickup as far onto the shoulder of the road as he could, and turned on the emergency flashers in the fog. "Returning to the scene of the crime, my dear."

  Hallie looked around her. "This is it?"

  "Yup. You want to wait here?"

  "I'll come along. I'd like to see what happened, too."

  When they got out, Hallie could see the broken railing, with the truck's flashers reflecting on the bare, twisted metal.

  "Hold my hand," Kyle said. Hallie instinctively shoved her hands in her pockets. "I'm serious." His breath made white puffs in the headlights' glare. "I don't want you tripping going down the hill. You've been dizzy." Reluctantly, she gave him her hand.

  She knew her hand must feel weird to him, all rough and twisted, but he didn't comment on it.

  He led the way down. As they walked, Hallie could see she must have travelled through the broken railing and down a grassy hill that sloped gently for about fifty feet until it reached the wet field, where the shiny pink Bug now sat, splattered with mud.

  When they reached the bottom, she got her backpack from the front passenger seat. Meanwhile, he picked up the two cardboard boxes out of the back seat, and relocked the car.

  Kyle picked up both boxes, stacked one on top of the other. "I see you travel light."

  "Yup. Nothing more than I can carry."

  "You must have left a lot of stuff in storage. Windy came back from college with more dirty laundry than this."

  She didn't say anything, feeling for some reason ashamed to admit that these two battered cardboard boxes contained everything she owned in the world.

  He was standing there holding the boxes and looking at her. "Lead the way."

  Hallie slung her backpack over one shoulder, then reached to take a box. "Don't be ridiculous. I can carry my own stuff."

  He stepped back. "I don't want you to hurt your hands."

  "I'm not a victim. I can do it myself." Her voice came out sounding angry. She wasn't angry, she told herself. It was just that her hands weren't a subject she wanted to discuss with anyone, especially not him. She reached again to take the box.

  She snatched the box away from him more roughly than she meant to, and lost her balance. He reached out to steady her with one hand before she could fall in the mud.

  "It's all right. You won't fall." The voice was soothing, and the hand on her shoulder was gentle. She felt an urge to relax into his arms and let him make everything all right, but she quickly shook it off and backed away. She didn't need his help, she didn't need his reassurance, and she didn't need him making her feel like he was going to take care of her. She knew far too well that knights in shining armor got tarnished real fast.

  "Come on," she said gruffly. She headed back to the road, leaving him to follow in her wake.

  At the top of the hill she set the box down and stopped to catch her breath. She leaned against the hood of the truck, and took deep breaths to calm herself while she listened to the incessant ticking of the truck's emergency flashers. Her hands ached from that little show of bravado. Stupid. She had nothing to prove to Kyle.

  It wasn't his fault he reminded her of things she'd rather forget. He wasn't offering to be her knight in shining armor. He was just a friendly guy who was trying to be a good host to his kid sister's roommate. "I'm sorry," she said when he caught up to her. "I didn't mean to snap at you."

  "No problem. You've had a rough day. I'm surprised you didn't slug me." He smiled. What was with these Madrigals? Didn't they ever get upset about anything?

  He picked up both boxes, and this time she didn't protest.

  He put the boxes in the back of the truck while she got in the cab. She watched while he walked across the road and slowly examined the dirt and weeds, then came back and did the same on the side with the broken railing.

  "Nothing," he said when he got in the truck. He started the engine. "I guess we're left where we started from. A lot of questions and no answers."

  Hallie looked at her own reflection in the side window. No answers.

  Matteo's Oceanside Pizzeria seemed an apt name for the place, though it wasn't really at the ocean, but actually out on the ocean itself, planted at the very end of the Pajaro Bay wharf. Its walls of plate glass windows captured views of the open water on the bay side, and of the town on the inland side. Their booth faced toward the shore, and Hallie found herself gazing out the window, fascinated. A thin fog covered the land and water, but she could see blurry lights through the
mist. Brightly lit cottages dotted the cliff's edge above the beach, and the wharf itself was a ribbon of light snaking back toward the shore. But the village, in fact the entire skyline it seemed, was dominated by the multicolored, constantly swirling glow of the massive roller coaster and towering Ferris wheel of the amusement park right down on the sand itself.

  "You really own it?" she asked.

  "Yup. We own half the town," Chris said cheerfully. He was a slender echo of his big brother, tall and lanky, but without lines around his eyes. He sat drumming on the tabletop with a pair of breadsticks with the same restless energy that Hallie supposed time and responsibility had muted just a bit in Kyle.

  Kyle raised his eyebrows at Chris, and Chris immediately put his "drumsticks" back on his plate.

  "If you own half the town how come you work sweeping floors for minimum wage?"

  "We're flat broke," said Chris. "Well, not really," he amended after a glance at Kyle. "We're pretty comfortable. But we're land-poor, you see. We'd have money if we sold something, but what could we sell?"

  "The unicorns or the roller coaster. Yeah, I see what you mean."

  "Exactly."

  "The land this town was built on was originally part of the Madrigal Rancho, but our ancestors sold it off in chunks over the years," Kyle explained. "Now we're left with about 800 acres of the ranch itself up on the mountain, a few downtown businesses, and the amusement park." He smiled. "Don't take Chris's sob-story too seriously. We're turning profits on both the ranch and the park—he's just got Ferrari tastes and a '78 Datsun budget, and he's not getting anything he doesn't work for."

  "Spoken like a responsible guardian," Hallie said.

  "Hmph," Chris snorted. Then he added, "Kyle was gonna sell the amusement park. When we were just kids. But he changed his mind."

  "After the fire," Kyle said. "Did Windy tell you?" She saw sadness in his eyes; for the first time his unstoppable good cheer gave way.

  "Our parents died, you know," Chris said. "When we were babies. The fire wiped out the whole south half of the park—the log ride, an antique Ferris wheel and carousel, some funky old bumper cars." He munched on his breadstick. "It's all been rebuilt now, of course. That big Ferris wheel's new." He pointed out the window.

  "Doesn't it bother you to work there?" she asked.

  "Of course not. Their ghosts are there."

  "Ghosts?"

  Kyle's smile was back. "My great-grandmother planted the cherry trees—remember, the ones the white deer was munching on?—just before she died. Our barn is filled with all kinds of odd stuff our grandfather collected—Windy'll corral you into a tour of her favorite bits of it before the summer's over—"

  "—And the park was our great-grandfather's grand scheme to get tourists to come here back at the turn of the century," Chris finished the thought. "The merry-go-round he ordered from back East arrived the day his first son was stillborn, in 1927. Then our parents died trying to save the park he built. See? We're surrounded by ghosts."

  "How sad."

  Kyle smiled. "Life goes on. You can't mourn forever. We're all surrounded by the ghosts of our pasts."

  "What's that a quote from?" Chris asked idly.

  "Heck if I know. Hey, Matt," Kyle said. A man with long black hair pulled back into a ponytail and somber brown eyes looked up from across the room. "What's a guy gotta do to get something to eat around here?"

  The man came over, an intimidating, almost ninja-looking guy. Hallie sat back in her chair and put her hands in her lap.

  "You might try introducing me to the lovely lady." He smiled, but his eyes, fathomlessly dark, just frightened her.

  "Ah. Matt DiPietro, this is Hallie Reed."

  Hallie tried to smile at the scary dude. "Nice to meet you."

  "The pleasure's all mine, Hallie. Listen," he added in a stage whisper, "you wanna dump these bums and run off with a handsome restaurateur?"

  She looked down at the table.

  "I can offer wealth beyond measure and extra cheese on every pizza, what do you say?"

  Kyle waved him off. "She's had a rotten day, give her a break."

  "Okay, I give up. You're stuck with the worthless bums. Now, what'll it be, guys?"

  "No anchovies, right—what about onions?" Kyle asked Hallie.

  "I love onions—if that's okay?"

  "Whatever you want's okay—I told you, Chris has a cast-iron stomach."

  Chris chuckled.

  Kyle turned to Matt. "You heard the lady."

  "Yup. One extra-large with extra everything—and onions—coming up." He disappeared into the crowd.

  Kyle watched Hallie as she ate. He watched her delicate hands, covered in thin white scars like a cobweb etched across the translucent skin. He watched how she wrinkled her nose when she took a bite of peppery sausage, and how she listened with rapt attention while Chris told her one after another of the far-fetched stories of local heroes and rascals. He noticed the way her eyes widened in childlike wonder as she looked out the window at the lights of the amusement park. There was a gentle, innocent dreamer inside that tough shell, but the ghosts of her past were crowding close around her, stopping her from giving in to her true nature.

  He thought about her namesake, the fearless and arrogant tortoiseshell cat they'd found orphaned years earlier. Its mother had lost a horrible fight with a raccoon, and the kitten had survived by burying herself deep in a woodpile until the predator had gone. When he'd let the little fur ball loose in the house, she'd given him one last scratch to add to the rest she'd inflicted during her capture, and then scrambled for cover behind the washing machine, apparently never to be seen again. He'd tossed a fluffy towel behind the machine for her to sleep on, placed food and water and litter box close by, and bandaged his wounds.

  For weeks the only signs the little creature was alive were the empty food dishes and dirty litter box. Then, after a while, they began to hear noises in the house during the night. When anyone had gone to investigate, they'd seen a black-and-orange streak heading for the washing machine.

  Slowly the kitten grew more trusting, and eventually allowed herself to be held and petted, but she'd still struggle wildly and scratch if she was startled.

  Months later, Kyle had caught the cat with one of his socks in her mouth, cheerfully tearing holes in it with her teeth. He'd yelled at her, but Halloween just stared at him, as if to say, "you've gotta be kidding, mister. I know you're all bluff," and ripped another hole in the sock, purring all the while.

  Kyle watched Hallie finish the last of her pizza.

  "Do you want another slice?" Kyle asked.

  Hallie shook her head. "I couldn't eat one more piece if my life depended on it. Oh, my poor stomach. Give it to Chris."

  "He's busy," Kyle said with a smile.

  Chris was staring at another booth across the restaurant. Kyle and Hallie both turned to see half a dozen teenagers crowding the booth, including one slender blonde who smiled shyly back at them.

  "Don't look, guys!" Chris whispered. "You're embarrassing me!"

  Kyle chuckled. "So go talk to her."

  Chris took a swig of his soda like a gunslinger downing one before the big shootout. "Okay," he said. He didn't move.

  Kyle laughed. "You want me to go over and break the ice?"

  Chris stood up abruptly. "I'm going, I'm going."

  Kyle watched Hallie turn to her cup of coffee, taking a sugar packet from the dispenser. He said nothing as she struggled to open the packet. Her fingers didn't seem to cooperate, but she was persistent, and he didn't dare offer to open the sugar for her. Finally, after what seemed a long time, she succeeded, and tore the paper packet open, poured it into her coffee, then took a sip.

  She glanced up at him. He looked away so she wouldn't see he'd been watching her. She could take care of herself, she'd said, and she was right. She'd survived whatever vicious predator had taken away her trust, but most importantly, he knew that the gentle, innocent part of her, the part that made her
special, the part that seemed to draw him closer with every breath, had survived. It was buried deep inside, but it was still there. He vowed then and there that one day she'd show the world that part of her, without fear, and he'd be there to see it.

  "Chris is a good kid," Hallie said, and he noticed she was watching him.

  "They all are," Kyle agreed. "Wait'll you meet Zac...." His voice trailed off.

  "What?" she asked. "Tomato sauce on my chin?"

  He laughed. "No. I was just thinking. You remind me of Zac, somehow."

  Hallie raised an eyebrow. "If he's Chris's twin, I don't see the connection. I'm nothing like Chris." She tapped her fingertips on the table. "See? No sense of rhythm."

  Kyle laughed again. "Yeah. I can tell. No, Zac and Chris are fraternal twins, not identical. They're really different from each other." He took another drink of his soda. "It's the hardest part of parenting—letting each one find his own way without my interfering too much."

  "Oh. The 'mission in life' thing." She smiled as she said it. Somehow the good meal and warm restaurant had relaxed her.

  "Yeah," he said. "That silly old thing." He winked. "It's really true, you know. No two people are alike. Zac is almost as tall as Chris, but he'll never be a basketball player."

  "So what'll Zac be? An over-age college student like me?"

  "I don't know," Kyle said, watching her, entranced. Her brown eyes sparkled in the lamplight, beautiful yet wary. "He has the soul of a poet."

  She laughed. "Oh. Just like me." She picked up a stray slice of pepperoni from her plate and bit into it. "I've never written a poem in my life."

  "That's not what I meant," Kyle said seriously. "Zac's a dreamer—"

  "—well, if you're going to be insulting...."

  "That's insulting?" Kyle wondered again what had happened in her life to make her so cynical. "Sorry. Maybe I'm wrong. It's just an impression I got from the way Windy described you, and from watching you."