Songbird Cottage

by Barbara Cool Lee

  She shook her head and gestured for him to go first, in what she hoped was a cool and controlled way.

  His surprised expression told her she wasn't fooling anyone.

  But he just shone the light through the doorway, then went in ahead of her.

  She followed, flicking her flashlight on when she stepped through into darkness.

  The one window he'd uncovered let in a bit of light, but they still needed their flashlights to see the whole room.

  And it was a room. There was no longer any doubt about that. This was no barn.

  The floors were a continuation of the brick from outside, all red, but still in the herringbone pattern. Inside, where they'd been protected from the weather, they were still vibrant, and the grouted lines were crisp and fresh.

  The walls were cream plaster, the color of newly churned butter. Dylan's flashlight beam swept across the walls, and she saw there were several windows, each in the same whimsical style as the one he'd uncovered.

  In the center of the building, serving to divide the downstairs in half, was a massive brick fireplace, with its chimney rising up to the beamed ceiling overhead.

  She pointed her light up.

  The half of the house they were standing in soared up two stories to the peaked roofline, with redwood beams criss-crossing in the darkness fifteen feet above them.

  At the center line where the fireplace stood, a wall divided the space.

  There was an arched opening on this side of the fireplace. She got a glimpse of cabinetry and countertops and the glossy rectangle of a refrigerator in the dimness beyond.

  She walked farther in the living room, and saw on the other side of the fireplace there was a closed door in the dividing wall.

  If this was a Stockdale—she had to stop the thought there, because it was becoming impossible to believe it was anything else. If it was a Stockdale, the little door would lead to the downstairs bedroom. Then there would be, most likely, a single bedroom and a bath directly above it upstairs.

  She went over toward the door and saw, sure enough, at the far end of the room, beyond the door, a set of stairs was tucked in under the eave.

  She turned back to face the fireplace.

  She could see Dylan's flashlight bobbing in the kitchen, but she didn't go there yet.

  Dylan came back in to the living room and stood watching as her flashlight roamed over the surface of the fireplace. The brickwork formed a star pattern, with the firebox in the center.

  There was a redwood mantel, and though it had gathered dust from the years the house had been closed up, it was a beautiful piece, a work of natural art in itself. Stockdale had probably chosen this board as the best of the wood he used in building the house, and had made it the focus of the fireplace design.

  Being typical for Stockdale, the slab of wood wasn't chosen for its perfection, but instead had an interesting crack across the face, as if the tree had been struck by lightning centuries ago, and had grown in a twisted, unique way as it adapted to the damage it had suffered. The result was a gnarled and curved board that the builder had polished flat on the top, while leaving the bark, and the twisting curve of the crack, to face out into the room.

  The mantel was held up against the brick of the fireplace by two big wooden corbels.

  They were in the shape of birds, with the big board resting on top of their carved, feathered heads. She recognized them, and wondered, as she had as a small child, why they didn't get a headache from holding up such a heavy weight.

  That was the moment when it came together.

  The déjà vu she'd been feeling.

  The uneasiness about this house.

  The stubborn refusal to admit what was right in front of her.

  She felt herself starting to cry, but held it in. She was not going to be weak in front of Dylan.

  "Nice fireplace," he said, in a choice bit of understatement. "I imagine it burns good and clean, too. The Stockdales always had a good fireplace."

  "Not a Stockdale," she said softly, in a strained voice. It couldn't be.

  "Still not sure?" he asked lightly, with a smile.

  She turned to face the fireplace, not wanting him to see the vulnerability she felt.

  It couldn't be a Stockdale. Because if it was, it would change everything. Everything she believed. Everything she'd convinced herself.

  "I moved to Pajaro Bay for this," she whispered.

  "I know," he said. "You've become the expert on every Stockdale cottage in the village. That's why I knew you could help me with this."

  "No," she whispered. He didn't understand. She had moved to Pajaro Bay because of this house.

  In the five years since she moved here, she'd convinced herself that her memory, the one memory of her early childhood, the one memory of her mother, the memory she had held close to her heart, and had treasured and locked away like a pearl deep inside her, had been just a dream.

  It must have been a dream, she had told herself to explain the illogic of it. It was something out of a small child's imagination, some conflating of her early memories of her mother, mixed up with childhood drawings of a crayon house with a peaked roof and stick-figure people, and maybe adding in some confused flashback to an apartment they had lived in when she was a baby.

  But not a Stockdale.

  Not something real. Not something she could touch.

  She put her hand on the brick fireplace surround, felt the rough grout under her nails as she gripped at it to hold herself upright.

  "Not real," she whispered. It couldn't be a real memory of herself, at the age of three, sitting on a herringbone floor in a little cottage by the sea, while her mother stood over her, crying out a bone-deep grief her child's mind couldn't begin to understand.

  Chapter Four

  "What's wrong?" Dylan asked, coming up closer to her. Still not reaching out to touch her, but keeping a respectful distance, in that way he had ever since she'd told him she had no interest in him romantically.

  She wished she could just throw herself in his arms and cry her eyes out.

  But she wasn't that person. Not the kind of person who would do something like that.

  She stood up straighter, throwing her shoulders back.

  "Let's see what the rest of the house looks like," she said briskly.

  She went over and opened the door next to the fireplace and shone her flashlight all around.

  It was a bedroom, sure enough, but there was a surprise in there. "Wow," Dylan said. The big stack of turquoise glazed barrel tile explained the papered roof outside.

  "Unfinished," he said. "So this was the plan for the roof, but for some reason, he never completed the job."

  They came out of the room, shutting the door behind them.

  "That's the last piece of evidence. The Robles roof tiles. It's definitely a Stockdale," Dylan said.

  Robin shook her head. All the cottages built by Jefferson Stockdale and Ramona Robles Stockdale were accounted for. All of them. Several had not survived the many years since they were built. A few had been destroyed by fire, or had even been torn down by idiots before their value had been fully realized. But there weren't any secret, unknown Stockdales. She knew this better than anyone.

  "It just doesn't make sense, Dylan," she said, desperately trying to disprove it in her own mind. "There are books, and documents—I mean, the Stockdale-Robles Room!" The room at the village library dedicated to the famous cottages contained all the papers on the subject. The cottages had been examined, written about, documented. Simply everything that could be known about the history of the builders and their creations was already known. There was no missing Stockdale.

  "It's unfinished," he said, musing. "Maybe that's why no one realized it existed. I wonder what year he died."

  "1967," she said automatically. "His son died in Vietnam and then he had a heart attack. I remember that, because it was so tragic."

  "This could date from that long ago. What would that be? About fifty y
ears?"

  "But he wasn't building cottages in his final years. Just the one commercial building, and some remodels."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Of course I'm sure," she said. "It's not like I wouldn't know."

  She said it in an almost flippant tone, then realized it sounded like she was being arrogant. But she wasn't. She wasn't trying to be a know-it-all. She was trying, as hard as she could, not to let Dylan see how emotional she was getting.

  Don't open up, something inside her said. Don't let him see you break down. Then you'll have to explain.

  So she went over to the fireplace and commented on the brickwork. It was not a Stockdale feature, she told him firmly, trying to deny that this was, despite the brickwork everywhere, a typical Stockdale layout. And the beams had the look of the man's handiwork, for Jefferson Stockdale always did the woodwork himself, by hand, eschewing every modern construction shortcut. No purchased millwork, no contractor-approved drywall, none of the modern improvements in the building industry that would allow him to crank out multiple cottages per year.

  No. Each of the Stockdales was made by hand. By the man himself. No two alike. And when he died, his style, for all intents and purposes, died with him.

  Builders tried to imitate it, creating an assortment of pseudo-Stockdales in the village that added charming style to all the little side streets, though they were always too big, too fancy, and too cookie-cutter to ever be mistaken for the real thing.

  And there was an entire network of experts on call to Pajaro Bay for the inevitable maintenance of all the windows, plaster, roofing, siding, and every other part of the original, famous cottages.

  But no one else had been able to capture the spirit, the essence, of a Stockdale. The 47 surviving Stockdale cottages possessed some inimitable combination of craftsmanship and silliness, houses that should be absurd, should be terrible in their illogical and odd construction, but were somehow, some way, like Goldilock's cottage, "just right."

  She said those last two words aloud, and Dylan responded, "it is, isn't it?"

  He went back to the kitchen, and she followed. There, as everywhere, the floor was brick.

  He pointed with the flash beam at an electric stove with old-fashioned black coils. It was enameled in a startling shade of teal.

  She ran her flashlight across the surface of a refrigerator placed in a niche across from it. It was a squared-off style, in the same color as the stove, and had shiny chrome trim.

  "Old, but it looks brand new," Dylan said. He opened the door. On a shelf inside was a manual, which he glanced through and then set back on the shelf.

  "Wow," he said, holding up a receipt. "Four hundred bucks. Paid cash, so there's no name on the receipt. But look at the date."

  He handed it to her.

  "January 1967," she said. When in 1967 had Stockdale died? She couldn't remember.

  "That might explain why it was never finished," he said, echoing her thought. He took the receipt back and placed it where he'd found it in the fridge. Then he moved on to look at the rest.

  When he shone the flashlight around the room she saw that the cabinets were stained a soft blue-green, with the grain of the wood visible through it.

  He began examining the kitchen cabinets.

  She went over to where he was opening and closing drawers. "See the corners?" he pointed out. "The drawers have dovetail joints." He closed the drawer, and it seemed to slide home into the surrounding cabinet like a hand into a glove. "The fit work is incredible. It's been years since this drawer was opened, and yet there's no slippage, no sticking."

  He opened the drawer again. "He stained the inside to match the outside," he pointed out. "Every detail done to perfection." The inside was as perfectly smooth and sleek as the outside, and looked, as all of the woodwork did, like a piece of fine furniture instead of a utilitarian cabinet.

  "How many hours did it take, I wonder," Dylan said quietly. He moved to an upper cabinet, which was open, with no door covering it. "See the shelf? Sliding dovetail instead of dado joints." His voice held wonder. "I've seen them before in Stockdales, of course, but this was the peak of his artistry."

  He slapped the shelf with his hand, and Robin jumped about a foot.

  "Doesn't move an inch," he said. "Just beautiful work."

  He turned to Robin, a big grin on his face, which faded when he saw her expression. "What's wrong?" he asked.

  She shook her head, unable to speak. She couldn't explain. She didn't know where to start, and she wasn't about to collapse in a heap of tears at Dylan's feet.

  She straightened up and sniffed, determined not to give in.

  There was a door to one side of the stove.

  "I wonder what's in here," Dylan said.

  "A red step stool," Robin whispered.

  He opened the door, and shone his flashlight on the red stool that stood there.

  He turned back to her, shining the flashlight on her face. "How?"

  "I moved to Pajaro Bay because of this house," she said.

  "What do you mean? You know this place? Then why didn't you say?"

  She shook her head. "I didn't know it was here." She stopped. "But I did. It's hard to explain."

  "Try."

  She shook her head. "Let's go look at the upstairs," she said suddenly. She almost ran to the far end of the house, wiping at her eyes as she went.

  Robin went first up the stairs, and Dylan followed behind, in the trail of her bobbing flashlight. Whatever was bugging her, he knew enough not to push. Give her time. Let her decide if she would share it with him, or—as she so often did—just keep it bottled up inside.

  At the top of the stairs was a landing, just big enough for the small chair placed there. The chair was upholstered, and covered with dust, an abandoned relic sitting in darkness in this spot for untold years.

  She moved the beam of her flashlight over the tapestry seat, the walnut frame, as if it might be important. Then, with a tiny shrug of her shoulders, she moved on.

  Ahead was a short hallway, with a closed door on each side. That was it. The upstairs was about half the size of the main floor, and again, that was common in Stockdales. The other side of the building held the soaring two-story living room with its cleverly arched beams.

  The walls in the hall were wood paneling, in the same clear redwood as outside. But here, away from the light and the elements that had worn down the exterior, the paneling was still rich red, and silky smooth.

  He shone his flashlight on the paneling, noticing the same woodworking techniques as outside, this time in a tongue-and-groove pattern. But there was no doubt: the same hand had built this.

  The two doors were also of the same redwood, and the heavy iron latches and hinges had the familiar feel of the Stockdale design. Robin still wouldn't admit that this was a Stockdale, though, and Dylan wondered why.

  She stopped in the hallway, not going ahead. When he cleared his throat she silently stepped aside to let him pass.

  He opened the first door, on their left. He smiled at the sight: there was a standard bath all tucked in there under the eave, with a pedestal sink, toilet, and built-in tub.

  But the fixtures were vibrant aqua, and the floor was made up of vintage-style octagonal tiles in a pattern of white and sea blue.

  There was a window over the tub. No light shone in because of the plywood covering it on the outside. But the window, like the others they'd seen, was made of tiny panes divided by leading. This time the frame was an almost perfectly formed octagon. The octagon had a "flaw" at the bottom, where the glass panes spilled out of the octagon shape, creating the impression they were tumbling down the wall into the bathtub.

  He stood there for a minute or two, just admiring it, and wondering how someone came up with ideas like that—much less brought them to life.

  He turned around in the narrow doorway and saw that Robin had already gone into the room across the hall.

  He followed her in there.

  S
he was standing over by the window. This was boarded up, like the others, but the plywood covering had dried and cracked, allowing a slim beam of sunshine into this dead space. The light came and went in the room with each stirring of the breeze outside.

  The window Robin stood in front of was perfectly round, and centered in the peak of the roof, so from the outside it would look almost like the round opening in a birdhouse.

  He laughed out loud.

  "What?" she asked, but didn't look at him.

  "The beam sticking out from the wall outside," he said. "I'll bet it's right below that window. Like a perch for a bird to land on outside the round opening to its little birdhouse."

  Jefferson Stockdale built this house. He was sure now. He couldn't imagine anyone else would have gone to the trouble to create such a ridiculous and impractical feature as a landing perch for a mythical bird.

  A gust made the plywood outside bang against the side of the house, and in the light he was able to see the window glass was formed, not into diamond shapes like the other windows, but in triangles. These were leaded together to create the circle, like spokes in a wheel. There was a turquoise ball of iridescent glass like a bird's egg right in the center.

  Every once in a while the moving light pierced the center of the glass, and a gleam of rainbow color swept across the attic floor.

  Robin said nothing. She just stood there by the window, looking at the room, as if in a daze. He watched the glimpses of sunlight come and go in shimmers across her silk shirt. Still she stood, as if not even noticing. She just stared at the room. He could see the glisten of tears in her eyes with each sparkle of light that hit her, but she didn't cry.

  The room was open-beamed, and the walls were plastered—real hand plastering, another Stockdale signature. And the color was a signature, too: a very pale creamy yellow that the builder had achieved by adding a tiny touch of turmeric to the plaster. No one had been able to reproduce the formula until Robin had found the proportions scribbled in one of the Stockdale notebooks at the library. She'd shared it in a letter to the editor in the local paper last year, to the gratitude of all the cottage owners in town who'd been tearing their hair out trying to match their old walls.