by Lyn Gardner
“No, you took the little bastards with you,” Declan grumbled. “I can forgive you for leaving, but you didn’t have to take the cats.”
“They’re my cats, Declan,” Robin said with a laugh. “And you can visit them whenever you’d like.”
“Suppose that means I’d have to see you, too—huh?”
“Yep, afraid so.”
Declan let out an exaggerated sigh. “I guess I could put up with you for a few days for the sake of the cats since they’ve always liked me better than you.”
“They do not!”
He was trying to keep the conversation light because the sadness that had crept into Robin’s tone months before still seemed to be lingering like a bad cold. Even when she was feigning shock, melancholy lurked just under the surface.
“All right, Robbie, all joking aside. Are you really okay? If you want, I can catch a flight—”
“Don’t you dare, Declan. I’m fine. I just needed to hear your voice.”
“If you say so,” Declan said as he stood up, and going to the window, he pulled back the drapes. “Jesus-flipping-Christ!”
“Oh, my God, what’s wrong?”
“It’s fucking blinding outside,” he said, recoiling from the sunlight. “What the hell does a person do at this hour of the morning anyway?”
“Well, if I’m not mistaken, we used to get up and go to class.”
“That’s true, but if you remember I didn’t like it back then either,” he said, closing the drapes. “So, what do you have planned for the day?”
“I’m meeting the lawyer at noon and...” Robin looked at her watch. “Crap, Declan I need to get a move on. I have a boatload of stuff to get done before then. I’ll call you when I get there. Okay?”
“Or you could just text.”
“Yeah, that’ll be the day.”
“I tried.”
“There are some things you just need to let go of, Declan,” Robin said, grinning as she began stuffing things into her suitcase.”
“Robbie?”
“Yeah?”
“Right back at you.”
***
“Well, I think that’s about it,” Howard Underhill said as he placed the last piece of paper in a folder and handed it to Robin. “Like I told you on the phone, your aunt had set up the living trust a few years ago so you should be set.”
“I still can’t believe she did that. I never even knew about it,” Robin said, slipping the folder into her laptop case.
“Some people don’t until it’s all said and done,” Howard said as he gathered up a few loose paperclips and dropped them into a tiny crystal bowl. “Adele always struck me as a very no-nonsense kind of woman. She knew what she wanted. She knew who she wanted to give it to, and she was smart enough to research everything before she called me. Adele knew by setting up this trust and adding your name to her accounts and the deed to the Inn, when she passed away, it would automatically transfer to you without the courts having to get involved. Less paperwork, less money, and a lot fewer headaches.”
“Wow,” Robin said, shifting in her chair. “So, that’s it then?”
“Yes, except for these,” Howard said, handing Robin a set of keys. “Those will get you into the Inn. The rest you’ll find inside.”
The jumble of brass and nickel was weighty in her hand, and as Robin read the words Safe Harbor Inn engraved onto the silver surface of the anchor-shaped key fob, she got to her feet. “I’m confused about one thing though.”
“What’s that?”
Robin put on her coat and dropped the keys into her pocket. “I’m embarrassed to say this, but the last time I visited my aunt was over thirty years ago. She owned a small house up on a hill, but you keep referring to it as an inn. I was wondering why?”
Howard’s mouth dropped open, and as it closed, a smirk formed. “Oh, to be a fly on the wall today.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Robin said, eyeing the man. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Do you like surprises?”
“I suppose,” Robin said, cocking her head to the side. “Why?”
“Well, you’re about to get one, and I’m not going to ruin it,” Howard said, and getting to his feet, he walked toward the door. “And I apologize again for not being able to take you over, but I handle divorces, too, and right now my client is involved in a messy one.”
“That doesn’t sound like fun,” Robin said, slinging her laptop bag over her shoulder.
“No, but it beats flipping burgers,” Howard said, reaching for the doorknob. “Leo is going to meet you and get you where you need to be, but if you need anything, anything at all, you have my card.”
“But an explanation as to why you keep calling my aunt’s place an inn isn’t one of them?”
Howard’s grin reached his eyes and then some. “Trust me, you’ll understand soon enough.”
Before Robin had walked into Howard Underhill’s office, she already knew she was going to like the man. Over the past two weeks, they had had many conversations, and not one had been texted via the smartphones they both owned.
Robin was as techno-savvy as the next person, but having been burned by more than one woman hiding behind coy texts and well-thought-out e-mails, Robin was now wary of tiny typed messages. Voices, Robin believed, were more easily read than rapidly typed words, shortened to acronyms or misspelled entirely. With the right inflection, the spoken word can become a question or an answer. It can be happy or sad or somewhere in-between, and at times, it can prove intelligence or the lack thereof, but with Howard Underhill, it proved even more.
They had traded over a dozen calls, and while the multi-syllable words he had often used proved his education and profession, his tone had never held a hint of arrogance when she had asked a question. He was courteous. He was accessible, and on more than one occasion, he was downright funny, so her smile wasn’t the first she’d worn when dealing with Howard. It was just the first he had seen.
“Well, you haven’t given me a reason not to trust you, so I guess we’ll just leave it at that,” Robin said.
“Good idea.”
“And again, I can’t thank you enough for all the help,” Robin said as she walked into Howard’s outer office. “You’ve been great.”
“Any time,” Howard said, but as he watched Robin walk toward the exit, he blew out his cheeks. “Robin, hold up for a minute, will you?”
Robin stepped away from the door and waited for Howard to come over. “What’s up?”
“Look,” he said, lowering his voice so his secretary couldn’t hear. “Um...you know how they say you can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family?”
“Sure.”
“Well, Leo, he’s my brother-in-law, and God help my sister, she loves him, but...” Howard stopped and hung his head for a moment. “But he can somewhat...somewhat pushy.”
“Pushy?”
“He sees himself as the be-all and end-all when it comes to realtors, and when he finds out you’ve inherited Adele’s place, well...”
“Ohhhh,” Robin said with a wink. “Gotcha.”
“He doesn’t mean any harm, but I thought I should at least warn you.”
“Well, since I don’t even know what I’ve inherited, he’s not going to get very far.”
***
Robin sat near the window and stared out the glass. Her breath was steaming, and flipping up the collar of her navy blue pea coat, as she filled her lungs with the fresh autumn air, she thought back to her childhood. To piles of leaves in need of raking and to rainy fall mornings with skies the color of ash. To pumpkins on doorsteps and bags filled with candy, and to sleds and hills monstrous in the eyes of a child of three or four or five. Dressed in a snowsuit of yellow and her mittens tied on a string so they wouldn’t get lost, she would giggle as her nose became red and her cheeks grew rosy, oblivious that her plastic boots were filling with snow. Her mother would call her inside, and wearing a frown, she would tut at
Robin and then laugh, finding it impossible to discipline the gaiety that comes from innocence. After the layers of protection were removed and feet and hands were warmed, Robin would sit at the kitchen table and drink hot chocolate while her mother prepared a lunch of tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for two.
A chill ran down Robin’s spine, and she rubbed her hands over her arms to ward it off. Glancing at the carrier at her feet, she knelt to look inside, smiling instantly when she saw her cats doing an excellent impression of the symbol representative of Yin and Yang.
“We’ll be there soon. I promise,” Robin whispered, and covering the crate, she stood back up and looked once again through the water-spotted glass. How many times had her mother sat like this, staring out across water glistening from the sun? How many times had her mother visited this place only to return home somewhat sad, yet somewhat happy? How many times did her father visit or had he ever?
Robin’s recollections of her father had been thinned by the passage of time, and it was only on the rarest of occasions when he came into her thoughts. She’d see a stubbly-faced man in a commercial or on a billboard, and she’d get a flicker of an image of her father’s face, his chin shadowed by whiskers unstoppable, and his eyes, dark brown and penetrating. In a crowd, she would sometimes catch a whiff of an aftershave, classically blue and crisp in scent, and she didn’t have to look to know the man wearing it would be old just like her father would have been…if he hadn’t died.
He had been born and raised on a farm in southwest Indiana. The son of a corn farmer, his days had been long and hard, helping to grow a crop that would eventually be used as feed. His father loved the feel of earth in his hands and sun on his face, but he did not. He didn’t want to rise before dawn or slumber with muscles aching and brow burned, so instead, much to the disapproval of his father, he became the first in his family to attend college. He hadn’t told his father he had no intention of returning to till the soil again or repair tractors in rain or shine, but he never got the chance to break the old man’s heart. An aneurysm had done that on a balmy, sunny day in April, just like a heart attack had taken his mother four years earlier. Less than a year after burying his father and graduating from college, he sold the family farm and stocked the money away for his retirement. His parents had worked themselves to death, and he had no intention of following in their footsteps. No intention at all.
Having earned a degree in accounting, he took a job at Newberg Wire and Cable in Fort Wayne, Indiana spending his days punching numbers, tallying columns, and making sure debits and credits balanced behind the short walls of the newest in business furnishings—the cubicle. The faux office, while tiny, was better than the open floor plan the company had used before, and hidden behind the panels, he could do his work without being disturbed by gum-smacking typists and other pencil-sharpening accountants. There was only one problem. Directly across from his cubicle was another and its occupant was blonde, blue-eyed, and beautiful. Like him, she also had a degree in accounting, so casual conversation came naturally, and so did what followed. In less than a year, they were married, and ten months to the day after Constance Novak and Billy Cook said their vows, Robin Catherine Cook was born.
A mini-me of her mother, Robin’s hair was the color of corn silk and her eyes, the shade of the sky. She was a happy little baby as most babies are, cooing and gurgling and wanting nothing more than her mother’s breasts and a heartbeat to listen to as she fell asleep. At such a tender age, she had no idea there was an undercurrent of tension between her parents, arguments over money becoming forefront in Constance’s and Billy’s daily conversations.
Determined never to end up like his father, working into his sixties with nothing to show for it except a bent spine and calloused hands, Billy squirreled away every penny he could. His wife and daughter never went without. There was always food on the table and heat in their apartment, but more often or not it was casseroles stretched by the addition of rice or potatoes, and temperatures requiring more than one layer of clothing to ward off the chill.
Constance wasn’t accustomed to this level of frugality. She had lived on her own before marrying Billy, and she was used to watching her pennies, but Billy was taking it to the extreme. She would turn up the heat, and he would turn it down. She would say they needed something at the grocery store, and he would dart out the door, worried she would spend too much of his hard-earned money, and when Robin began to grow, Billy started bringing home clothes purchased at the local thrift stores, circumventing the shopping trip to Sears Constance had planned.
Yet, even though their relationship was becoming more strained as each month passed, neither had ever let their true feelings show around their daughter. They both adored Robin more than life itself, and while Billy was genuinely cheap, the love he bestowed on his daughter was not. All anyone had to do to get Billy to smile was mention his daughter’s name.
Robin grew from one to two and from two to three without a worry in the world. Her parents loved her, and she loved them, but a few months after her third birthday, her mother grew sad. Robin didn’t understand the tears or the visitors who seemed to walk over their doorstep for days on end, and her little brow wrinkled during a gathering at their church on a blustery Sunday. Why was everyone dressed in black, and what was in that box?
Late on a Thursday night as Billy traveled familiar roads returning from a quick trip to the grocery store, another man who had spent his evening swallowing gin and tonics ran a stop sign. Billy barely had time to utter an expletive before the Cadillac T-boned his faded green 1974 Pontiac Ventura, and in a blink of an eye, Billy was gone, leaving Constance to raise their daughter on her own.
The next few months were rough on Constance. No sooner had her daughter begun to accept that her daddy wouldn’t be coming home when Constance had to explain that she no longer could spend her days with Robin. She had managed to get her job back at Newberg Cable and Wire, which meant Robin had to go into daycare, and it wasn’t a smooth transition. More than a few mornings had been filled with tantrums and more than a few nights overflowed with tears, but slowly Robin adapted to daycare just as she had adapted to no longer having a father, and eventually, they settled into their new routines.
The following year, Constance bought a small two-bedroom house in Monroeville, a little town just outside of Fort Wayne. It was all the mother and daughter needed, and while its size usually deemed it a starter home for couples just beginning their lives together, it would remain Constance’s home until the day she died.
Chosen by Constance for its hometown values and its small population, Monroeville was a place where everyone knew everyone, and everyone liked it. Neighbors helped neighbors. Churches were filled with familiar faces, and on warm Saturday nights, crowds would gather outside the soft ice cream shop at the end of the street, and under buzzing street lights, people would lick swirls of vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry while they caught up on each other’s lives.
The years went by, and as they did, Constance watched as her daughter grew into a profession that was inevitable. As soon as Robin had learned how to read, books held her interest like a swinging pendant transfixes those hypnotized, so it was no surprise when Robin announced over dinner one night she wanted to be a writer when she grew up.
It’s a parent’s job to listen to their children’s dreams. To smile and appease their offspring’s aspirations to become astronauts, doctors, superheroes, or ballerinas, but Constance had never placated Robin, and she wasn’t about to start. Instead, she asked Robin to explain why she wanted to be a writer.
Robin’s exuberance bubbled over in an instant as if she needed to get all the words out or explode. She said she wanted to spin tales and keep readers on the edge of their seat. She wanted to weave her words much like the yarn her grandmother had used for the afghans draping the backs of their chairs and sofa, and she wanted her stories to be as complex as geometry, yet as addicting as chocolate-chip cookies fresh out of the oven.
Her breath taken away by her twelve-year-old’s words, Constance gazed in awe at her daughter. It was the first and last time she ever questioned Robin about her career choice.
The sound of the ferry’s horn jolted Robin from her thoughts, and looking around, she saw the other passengers beginning to gather their things. She peered back through the glass to the place she was about to call home and waited while the ferry came to a stop.
Unlike a few of the travelers who didn’t seem to care about the instructions to remain seated, Robin did just that as the workers rolled all the carts off the boat. Stationed toward the back, each held the luggage and belongings of those traveling, but once the last was moved onto the dock, Robin got to her feet and took a deep breath. She slung the strap of her laptop case over her shoulder, and picking up the cat carrier, made her way off the boat. She stopped on the dock and squinted up at the brilliant blue fall sky. The sun was shining. The breeze was brisk, and suddenly Robin’s face spread into a smile. She felt alive for the first time in months.
Chapter Three
At the eastern end of the Straits of Mackinac, between the upper and lower peninsulas of Michigan is an island not quite four square miles in size.
It had been home to the Ojibwa and the Huron tribes before being discovered by the French in 1634 when Jean Nicolet passed through the Straits in search of the Northwest Passage. Because of the hump-backed appearance of the island, its bluffs rising one hundred and fifty feet in the air, the Indians had named it Michilimackinac, meaning large turtle. The French, however, feeling the name was far too long, shortened it to Mackinac and while the name of the island ends in nac, keeping with the French pronunciation, it would be forever known as Mackinaw.
From the time the French traders and Jesuit missionaries arrived in 1670, the island had been claimed by many. The French discovered it, but the British took control after the French and Indian War. The United States acquired it through the Treaty of Paris in 1783, and then promptly lost it back to the British during the War of 1812. However, in 1815 the Treaty of Ghent forced the British to return the tiny island measuring a mere eight miles in circumference back to the United States of America.
