Back in his lonely motel room, Nick called Martha for reassurance and love and to tell her that he would return tomorrow. He was both surprised and taken aback when she was angry. He was chagrined when he learned the reason.
Yet he could never tell Martha the reason that departing for Petersburg in such a rush was important to him. Elsa Long's health was precarious at best, and although he was sure that her grandson Billy and his wife Gloria meant well, he knew that their financial situation wasn't good. That was why he'd chosen to become so involved with them. He wanted Elsa Long to have proper health care and enough money in her declining years.
In his mind, she deserved no less. After all, Elsa Long was Davey's grandmother.
* * *
"He's invited me to spend the day with him and Davey tomorrow at Williwaw Lodge," Martha said. It was Saturday; she was taking the day off and Faye was visiting.
"So go," Faye said. She measured out brown sugar for the cookie recipe, which she claimed had become a full-time hobby for Martha. Martha was always fiddling with the amounts of the ingredients, trying to capture the indefinable flavor of those cookies from the kiosk in San Francisco. Privately Faye wondered if Martha was chasing the impossible dream, but she didn't say so. Martha needed something to do, especially if she and Nick were going to break up, which was what Faye figured would finally happen.
"I don't want to go," Martha said. She slid a tray of cookies in the oven, closed the door and began to stir brown sugar into the batch that would go in the oven next.
"So don't go," Faye said.
"I wish you'd make up your mind," Martha said. "First you say 'go,' then you say 'don't go.'"
"Martha, you and you alone can make up your mind," Faye said firmly.
"I miss him. I hate not seeing him every day. Only—"
"Only what?" Faye asked, stealing a chocolate chip from the bag.
"I wonder where he was and what he was doing. Do you realize, Faye, that I don't know if he's involved in something illegal or worse? I don't know if it's another woman or a family he has hidden somewhere in the woods or—"
"My," Faye said admiringly, "your imagination has really run the gamut, hasn't it?"
"I suppose it has," sighed Martha.
"I doubt very much that Nick is involved with anything illegal, so you can put it out of your mind. As far as another woman, somebody in Ketchikan would have heard a rumor if that were so. There have been cases before when everybody had an idea that a married man had a little hanky-panky going on the side, but with Nick that's more or less ridiculous. He's a bachelor. He wouldn't have to hide a woman away in the woods. No, whatever Nick is up to, I'm sure it's both moral and legal."
"I wish I could be so sure," Martha muttered.
"One thing I know is that you'll never find out if you don't give Nick a chance. At this point, he's not going to tell you what he's up to. He's made that clear. He might tell you, though, once he trusts you more. That can never happen if you cut the romance off now."
"That's a good point. How'd you get to be so wise, Faye?" Martha asked, her spirits lifting.
Faye laughed. "Lots of men, honey," she said. "Lots of men." And she stole a few more chocolate chips while Martha went to call Nick's office to leave a message that she would visit him and Davey at the cabin the next day.
Chapter 9
One surprise on Sunday morning, when Nick's Cessna taxied up to the dock in Ketchikan where Martha waited, was that as soon as the propeller stopped whirling, Hallie clambered out of the plane.
"I'm going to visit my sister Wanda while you're at Williwaw Lodge," Hallie said, beaming. "I'll fly back with Nick after he returns you to town this evening. I've cooked some food for your dinner. Nick says he can heat it up." Hallie waved at Davey, who had accompanied them, and hurried off to meet her sister.
Davey eyed Martha solemnly. "Hello, Davey," she said as she always did, even though he never replied. She climbed into the plane where she sat beside Nick, with Davey in the back seat.
She watched Nick covertly, searching for some sign that he felt guilty for leaving last week. She saw none. He was his normal self, friendly and likable. She had almost forgotten her anger in her happiness at being with him, near him, again.
Was such happiness logical—or even normal—under the circumstances? She didn't know. She looked away from his sinewy hands, so capable as they moved along the instrument panel flicking switches and pushing buttons. It wasn't hard to act natural around him, at least not as hard as she'd thought it would be. Maybe that was because he was helping by being ordinary. By being the real Nick, the one she'd come to know in the first place.
They took off in a plume of spray. Davey obviously enjoyed flying. He leaned forward in his seat, eagerly peering out the window as the buildings of Ketchikan grew smaller and smaller below.
Martha lost herself in appreciation of the panoramic landscape. Vertical granite cliff walls rose three thousand feet above the fjords thrusting between them. The mountains were capped with snow, and lush forests carpeted the slopes from the tree line to the salt water.
Nick pointed to a wild river tumbling through a valley. "The water is that peculiar greenish-gray color because there's what we call 'rock flour' from the surrounding glaciers suspended in it," he said, his mouth close to her ear so that she could hear him.
Nick decreased their altitude and followed the river. To Martha's amazement, salmon struggling upstream to spawn were so thick that they seemed to pattern the surface of the water with silver. Bald eagles pounced from the shallows of what, to an eagle, must have been the equivalent of a takeout window at McDonald's.
"Look, I see a bear!" cried Martha. She supposed that if she had to see a bear, the best way to do it was from a safe place in the sky.
Nick swooped the Cessna low over a grass flat where a brown bear was in the process of raking a big fish from the water. The bear raised his head when the plane passed over, then returned his attention to the fish, which was now flopping on the ground.
Nick banked over dense spruce and aspen, and soon Mooseleg Bay appeared.
"That's Williwaw Lodge," Nick said, pointing to a speck in a grassy clearing bordering the water. He soon brought the floatplane in for a perfect landing.
Nick had no sooner docked the plane than Davey scrambled down and ran up the slope and behind the cabin to play.
"Davey seems more at ease with me today, I think," observed Martha, who had caught the glimpse of a tentative smile before the boy took off at a run.
"He's used to you now," Nick said with an approving grin. He would have slid his arm around her shoulders, but she moved away too quickly.
So that's how it is, Nick thought unhappily. Martha walked briskly to the back of the cabin where Davey was digging among Hallie's carrots, onions, and cabbages with a small trowel. Martha knelt down beside him. On the damp ground beside him were two earthworms, which he apparently had dug up.
"Worms, huh?" she said.
Davey widened his eyes. Finally, cautiously, he nodded, yes.
"I suppose there are lots of worms in Hallie's garden," Martha observed. She sat next to Davey and picked up a stick. She poked the ground with it a few times and pulled out a worm. "See? Here's another one."
Davey looked at it. He picked up his two earthworms and put them on the ground beside Martha's.
"Now we have three worms. Let's find more."
Nick had silently joined them and sat on a rock to watch. He wasn't about to interrupt. It pleased him that the two were communicating.
"I know another word for earthworms," Martha said. She spared a sidelong glance to see if Davey was listening. "They're called night crawlers. Isn't that a neat name?"
Davey rested the dirty tip of his trowel on the ground and stared at her. Martha pretended not to notice and went on talking.
"In some parts of the world, earthworms get to be about eleven feet long," she said. "That's about as far as the distance from you to Nick. I certainly h
ope we don't find one as big as that!"
She laughed, suddenly aware of Nick's eyes upon her. He smiled, but she looked away quickly.
Soon Martha and Davey had seven or eight earthworms writhing in all directions on the ground between them. Davey tried without success to keep them in a straight line.
"Let's get a glass jar," Martha suggested. "We'll put dirt in it and you can keep your worms in the jar and watch them. They'll dig tunnels next to the glass and you can see them. That'll be fun, won't it?" She was enjoying this, almost as if she were a kid again herself.
"Okay," Davey said.
The word was so unexpected that Martha gaped at him. That was the first word he'd ever spoken directly to her. She glanced at Nick. His expression, astonished at first, turned to one of triumph.
"I'll get the jar," Nick said, heading toward the house. He felt as though he could perform handsprings all the way to the back stoop. He couldn't recall Davey's speaking directly to anyone except Hallie and him—not his cousins, his aunts or uncles or any of Hallie's numerous family members, including Wanda's five grandchildren. But now Davey had spoken one word of his limited three-word vocabulary to Martha—this was indeed a sign of progress. It pleased him immensely to see Davey and Martha having fun together.
Nick returned with a clean pickle jar he'd found under the sink, and with Davey's avid participation they shoveled dirt into it and set the earthworms on top of the dirt. Then they took the jar into the kitchen and covered it with paper held fast by a rubber band. They set the jar on a kitchen windowsill and Davey sat entranced, watching the worms wriggle their way below the surface of the dirt.
"Hallie will be delighted, I'm sure, to see her new terrarium," Martha said wryly.
Nick only laughed. "Hallie won't mind," he said.
They washed their hands at the kitchen sink, and when they had finished Nick peeked into the refrigerator to take stock of the meal Hallie had left.
"We'll eat around six," Nick said, glancing out the window. "I'll want to get you back to Ketchikan before eight. The weather service is reporting a squall line out to sea, and I won't be able to fly when it comes into the area."
"When will it arrive?" Martha asked.
"You can never count on what the weather's going to do, but I checked earlier, and the weather service was forecasting good weather until after ten o'clock tonight. Come on, I want to show you those photographs of the mountain chickadee that I took the first day you visited here. I printed them out for Davey, and they're terrific."
They sat side by side on the couch, and Nick pulled an album out of a trunk. He opened it to a page displaying the chickadee photos and some others he'd taken.
"When did you get interested in photography?"
"I guess it was when I was a teenager. My friend Hank bought a camera, and I borrowed it. When I was out on the boat working with my father or brothers we'd see whales and sea otters, all kinds of wildlife. I finally bought my own camera to help me while away the time on long wheel watches. I've been a photography buff ever since."
Martha's gaze flew involuntarily to the picture on the wall, the one of the nude woman silhouetted against a rock, and it occurred to her to make a wisecrack about the amazing diversity of Alaskan wildlife, but as she was opening her mouth to say it they heard a crash in the kitchen and Davey called, "Nick! Nick!" Nick immediately pushed the album into Martha's lap and rushed to find out what was wrong, which Martha figured was just as well. Sarcastic remarks from her probably wouldn't help their relationship at this point.
Evidently Davey had spilled something when he was pouring it, and Nick stayed in the kitchen to clean it up. While he was gone, Martha idly flipped through the pages of the album. She saw many family pictures that Nick had taken of his father and his two brothers. She hoped to find a picture of Nick's mother, who had died when he was a boy.
She turned another page, and the loose color photograph of a woman fell out of the book. Martha bent to pick it up before holding it up to the light from the window to study it further.
The woman was obviously pregnant. Her abdomen was big and round beneath the shapeless garment she wore, and she was laughing into the camera lens as though she hadn't a care in the world. But this woman could not be Nick's mother. This woman was an Indian.
She was beautiful. She sat on the bow of a boat, and spread out behind her were a sky fleeced with clouds and a sea of silvery blue. Her teeth were white and straight, and there was something familiar in the way her high cheekbones rounded into the planes of her face and in the way her thick hair tumbled over her forehead.
This was Davey's mother. There was no doubt in Martha's mind about that. Martha felt a blank, numb chill stealing over her as she continued to look at the picture. She swallowed and blinked away sudden stinging tears. To her way of thinking, there could be only one reason Nick Novak would have a picture of this pregnant woman in his photo album.
She shut the album quickly, blindly. She didn't want to look at the photo any longer. The woman's happy, smiling face and her look of total well-being were imprinted on Martha's brain forever.
There was nowhere Martha could go to think this over. She couldn't run away as she had in the restaurant. She'd have to tough it out for the rest of the day because she couldn't leave until Nick flew her home in the plane. At present she was in an emotional ferment and didn't know what to think. She loved Nick, and despite his disappearance last week, she wanted to believe that double-dealing and deception were not part of his character.
But as Faye had said, how would Martha find out the true story if she called an end to her relationship with Nick now?
Her mind raced to form a conclusion that would get her through the rest of the day. Martha could confront Nick with the picture, point out the woman's marked resemblance to Davey and ask him point-blank what his relationship with her was. She was sure she knew what response this would elicit in Nick. He would clamp his mouth tightly shut and refuse to answer the question. He would repeat that she must not ask questions about certain parts of his life. She knew that was what would happen. She knew Nick Novak.
Or she could curb her impulse to ask, stay here and play the part of the Martha who knew nothing, who suspected nothing. She could continue to give Nick the impression that she was recovering from their quarrel last week, and in that way perhaps she could get him to open up, to tell her something about Davey and his mysterious origins. She already knew in her heart that Davey and this woman in the photograph were mother and son.
"Martha?" Nick stood at the door to the kitchen. Her heart jumped at the sight of him, and she felt the instant attraction that had bowled her over the first morning she'd seen him leaning against the lamppost, drinking coffee from a plastic cup. Compared to falling in love with Nick Novak, the experience of being struck by lightning would have been relatively mild.
And so she only looked up innocently, concealing her true feelings. Then she went to help him heat up Hallie's pot roast. They ate in the big kitchen, Davey kicking the legs of his chair until Nick told him to stop, Martha feigning bright conversation, and together they cleaned up when they'd finished.
How many ways human beings find not to communicate with one another, mused Martha. In order to get along with others we pretend we're something we're not, or we pretend we're not something we are. We retreat within ourselves, become defensive and aloof, anything to keep a distance. We even use noncommunication as a tool to foster eventual communication, which she realized was what she was doing. Did any of it make sense? Maybe not. Time would tell.
Later, as they flew back to Ketchikan early in order to beat the squall line that was advancing in the form of a pewter-colored glaze on the horizon, Nick congratulated himself on how well the day had gone. Martha and Davey seemed to have achieved a rapport at last, and Martha had apparently recovered from her fit of pique over his disappearance last week.
Everything was all right. And it would stay all right, he supposed, unless Elsa Long g
ot sick again.
* * *
"Dump him," Lindsay said.
"That's easy for you to say," Martha said with feeling. She had called Lindsay as soon as she'd gotten home from her visit at Nick's.
"What do you mean?"
"Lindsay, you've got Sigmund, who lives in your house. You're madly in love and he's practically eating out of your hand. Why, his favorite crystal sits in the middle of your coffee table. He's not going anywhere. But I've hardly had a chance to get to know Nick."
"I'd say you know enough about him right now. He's unreliable, and there's no telling what he's doing when he goes off somewhere."
"He likes chocolate-chip cookies and he doesn't smoke."
"He keeps a picture of a pregnant woman who is obviously Davey's mother in his photo album. I'd say get out before you get hurt any worse."
"I'll be leaving after Labor Day anyway," Martha said unhappily. She bit down into one of the latest batch of cookies. It tasted pretty good, almost as good as the ones she used to buy in San Francisco.
"Right. According to statistics, there are nine other men in Alaska looking for you. Why hang out with a loser, Martha?"
"Nick isn't a loser," protested Martha after swallowing quickly. "He's built up his family business, and he's very smart. He's also wonderful with Davey. He takes his responsibility to that little boy quite seriously. Anyway, Nick makes the hair on my arms stand on end. That must mean something."
"It must mean you're shivering in an icy blast from the North Pole," sighed Lindsay.
"Clever. But I'm not that far north."
"Martha, you're not making good sense. You're obviously seriously confused by the whole mess. What you need to comfort you is some of those cookies from that kiosk where you used to buy them. Want me to send you some? Maybe a few chocolate chips will straighten out your thinking. I could even throw in a jar of my favorite hair mousse. To keep the hair on your arms in place, you know."
Kisses in the Rain Page 12
