My Way Home (St.Gabriel Series Book 1) (St. Gabriel Series)

by Cynthia Lee Cartier

  I set a blanket next to where Cat had given birth, but we didn’t move her and the kittens back to the box. Race said she would probably move them right back again, or somewhere else, so we decided to leave them where they were, and we kept our eye on them. He also said we shouldn’t touch them until Cat was comfortable enough to walk away and leave them on their own. It was really difficult for me to not pick them up and cuddle.

  Two days after the kittens were born, the weather cleared and George knocked on the door. Race was still fighting his cold and was in bed sleeping.

  “I’m back,” said George.

  “George, come here. I want to show you something.” I took his hand and led him to the corner of the living room where Cat and the kittens were cuddled up on the blanket.

  His eyes widened.

  “Meet Mama Cat,” I said.

  It was a quick one, but he smiled. I saw it. I told him the whole story, how I found Cat in the loft and how Race had helped her to deliver the kittens.

  George patted my shoulder and said, “That’s good.” And then he left.

  Race was into the third week of his cold, and I had almost convinced him to go to the Medical Center to see a doctor when another storm blew in.

  “I am starting to feel better but when the weather clears, I’ll make an appointment.”

  I made him promise but what he was thinking, I imagined, was that when the weather cleared, he’d be better and wouldn’t need to go to the doctor.

  Again, the day when that next storm arrived, George knocked on the door and told me he’d be gone for a few days and asked if we would take care of the animals.

  “Sure, George, where are you going?”

  “I’ll let you know when I’m back.”

  At least I tried.

  Race was sleeping a lot and, except for taking care of the animals, I was staying inside and laying low too. I opened the door to the henhouse one morning and was surprised by a blast of cold air. Inside I found a clump of half-frozen chickens that were all huddled together on top of the nesting boxes. I flipped the on-off switch on the heater a few times and checked the plug. It wasn’t working.

  I ran back to the cottage in a panic and told Race the heater wasn’t working in the henhouse. He sat on the sofa wrapped in a blanket with a pile of used tissues on the floor at his feet. When I was done rambling, he just sat there staring at me.

  “What are we going to do?” I asked him.

  “I don’t know. You checked to make sure the heater is on and plugged in?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I don’t know what we can do.”

  “We can’t leave them out there.”

  “What do you want to do, Cam, bring them in the house too?”

  “No, but we can’t leave them out there with no heat. I’ll go check the heater again.”

  Which I did, but that wasn’t really my plan. I wrapped up the hens, one by one, and moved them and their food and water into the dining room in the lodge. I closed up the doors and went back to the cottage. Race was sleeping, and I hadn’t been missed.

  The next day, after I had fed the horses, I checked on the brood in the lodge. I was standing at the closed French doors to the dining room, looking through the panes at the hens and what they had done.

  The paper that had been rolled out to protect the floors had been pecked to shreds and Race’s beautifully finished pumpkin pine floors looked like a Jackson Pollock painting, a la chicken poop. The front door of the lodge opened. Race walked in and came over to stand beside me. He coughed a few times, rubbed his hands over his face, and walked back out.

  Race and I didn’t say much to each other the next two days, but the wind and a dose of wet, icy snow that slapped against the outside of the cottage kept it from being too quiet. Then there was the crescendo, not from the wind, ice, or snow, at least not directly. It was a crash that sent a vibration through the cottage.

  For the first floor porch, I had ordered willow furniture, which would be delivered in the spring. I was sewing casings for the canvas seat cushions at the kitchen table and Race was sleeping. By the time I got to the bedroom, he was holding himself up against the wall, looking out the window that faced the back of the property.

  Under the weight of the snow, the roof of the tool shed had caved in but the walls were still somewhat erect. We stood there and watched the rest of the structure continue to collapse for the next five minutes or so. Then Race crawled back into the bed. He rolled away from me, lay on his side, and tugged and tucked the blankets around him, practically covering his head.

  “The snowmobile is probably fine,” I said.

  “Uhh,” Race grunted.

  “Race, aren’t you going to say anything? Please, tell me what you’re thinking.”

  He rolled over and it seemed to take every ounce of his strength to prop one arm behind his head. “I’m thinking that it’s probably sixty degrees at home in Texas right now.”

  “Home?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “No, I don’t know what you mean. I’m sorry, Race. I didn’t order this weather you know.”

  What followed was not one of the finest hours in our marriage. Through Race’s hacking cough and my tears, we had an argument that had been brewing since the thermometer hit ten. James Alexander’s name came up as did Sarah Burns’. It wasn’t pretty.

  With the exception of the months that we had been separated, and the night Race got the e-mail from you-know-who, we had never gone to bed mad at each other, which was no credit to me. Race had always made sure our disagreements were resolved before we went to sleep. I didn’t get my kiss on the neck that night. He was so exhausted and defeated that I don’t think he really cared.

  I was in bed and wide awake. I pictured Race’s red, sweaty face as he grabbed his pillow and a blanket from the armoire and left the room to sleep on the sofa.

  I got out of bed, went out to the living room, sat on the edge of the coffee table, and watched him sleep. The weeks of being indoors had taken the warm color from his skin and the way he lay there on his side, weak and limp, reminded me of what Cat looked like after she delivered her kittens. I set my hand on his side and could feel heat through the blanket. When I touched the bare skin of his arm, it was hot to the touch.

  “Race.” He didn’t stir. “Race.” I grasped his shoulder and rocked him gently. “Race.” I nudged him harder.

  “Hmm,” he moaned.

  “Race.” I shook him. “Race, wake up!”

  He groaned and mumbled but never came to full consciousness. The phone lines had been down for a week, and I tried to call out on both of our cell phones, but we hadn’t had much reception to speak of for most of the winter.

  George was gone, the wind was whipping down the hill and it was pitch black outside, but I knew I had to get Race to the Medical Center and the horses were the only way to do that. I got dressed and went out to the barn.

  I had watched Race and George hitch up Tasha and Collard Greens but had never done it myself. Tasha dropped her head and positioned her mouth to take the bit and waited patiently while I fastened the straps of the lead. I led her out of the stall and wrapped the leather loosely to the top of the rail.

  Then I opened Collard Greens’ stall to get him geared up. He immediately side-stepped toward the back wall.

  “No, Collard Greens, come back here.” I took the tack and went into Tasha’s stall and stood on a side rail. When I reached over and grabbed his mane, he pulled away and I pleaded, “Please, Collard Greens.”

  Tasha began flailing her head and the straps came loose from the rail.

  Oh no, there’s going to be a mutiny.

  Tasha took a few steps backwards until she was in front of Collard Greens’ stall and then she turned so they were butt to butt, and she kicked him. She threw up both of her hind legs and slammed her hooves into Collard Green’s backside. He threw his head back and whinnied, and she whinnied.

  Tasha walked back to wh
ere I had left her and slowly, Collard Greens turned around and walked out of the stall and stood beside her. I got all of the tack on, hitched them both to the sleigh and drove them up to the front porch of the cottage.

  Hitching up the sleigh turned out to be the easy part. Figuring out a way to move Race from the sofa, down the icy steps of the porch and into the backseat would prove much more challenging. I realized it may be quicker and better for Race to go for help and leave him there.

  The most difficult thing I had to do that night was to leave Race alone, barely conscious. I closed the door and started praying.

  I climbed into the sleigh, and I wasn’t even to the road when I had my first collision. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I think Tasha was pulling hard to compensate for the misdirection I was giving her and Collard Greens.

  The sleigh slid sideways on the icy snow and scraped along a tree on the way down the hill. The road was no better—a sheet of ice. The sleigh fishtailed and Collard Greens lost his footing every few clops. Tasha was steady though, and she may have been the only thing keeping him up.

  We were coming around the bend below Mission Hill when the sleigh slid sideways, picked up speed on the curve and crashed into a rock-hard bank of snow. The right side of the sleigh dropped down and the horses stopped. I slid off of the seat and my head slammed into the bank.

  When I pushed myself up on the icy embankment, I saw a bloody spot between my hands where drops of blood continued to fall steadily, and I felt dizzy. At my hairline my fingers caught on a torn flap of skin but there wasn’t any pain.

  I scooted out of the sleigh and onto the bank to get to the road. The right runner had been bent underneath the body, and the sleigh wasn’t going any further.

  Of the twenty plus homes that lined Mission Hill, three had lights on inside, and the Alexander House was one of them. A flight of stairs had been built into the side of the hill, which led from Shoreline Drive to Mission Hill Drive. The steps were covered with a glazing of ice and I had to hold onto the railing to climb from one to the next. At the front door of Celia’s home I rang the bell and she answered. Before I could say anything, James walked into the foyer behind his mother.

  “James, I need help.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Timer or a Lifer

  Race had advanced bronchial pneumonia, and the doctors asked me a list of questions. Had Race been complaining of chest pain? How high had his temperature been? Had anything been coming up when he coughed? All questions I couldn’t answer, and I felt like a neglectful wife.

  Race was never one to be fussed over, and he hadn’t been complaining but rather insisting he was feeling better. I had attributed his lack of energy to the fact that he hated it when he was sick at all and actually rarely came down with anything. That in combination with a funk brought on by a winter that he wasn’t prepared for—neither of us were.

  I told the doctor what I had seen and heard, knowing full well more may have been going on that Race wasn’t telling me about.

  James had the horses and the sleigh taken to the island stables, and when the cut on my forehead was stitched, and Race was stable and resting, James drove me out to the lodge. George was back. The first thing I thought of when I saw him was the sorry sight the sleigh was when I left it crippled on the side of the road.

  “George, the sleigh is pretty banged up. I’m sorry.”

  “Just a sleigh, it can be fixed.”

  We moved Cat and the kittens to George’s place, and then James took me back into town to stay with Sara while Race was at the Island Medical Center for the next two weeks.

  One night after sitting with Race all day, I walked into Sara’s apartment and she was sitting at her kitchen table. It was covered with lists she had scribbled on sheets of yellow notepad paper, and she’d been crying.

  “What’s wrong? What are you doing?” I asked her.

  “I got a call this afternoon. The Haustermans have sold the bakery. Lock, stock, and barrel, and I have to be out by the end of April.”

  “Oh, Sara, I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  “You’ll be okay. Couldn’t you work for the new owners?”

  “It’s going to be a china shop,” she informed me as if that was the worst thing in the world.

  “You can get another job.”

  “Not like this job. I know I complained about working too hard, but I love the bakery. It’s been kind of like my own place. I did what I wanted, baked what I wanted. The Haustermans were good to me, and they paid decent and let me live here for free. Do you know what it costs to rent a place on the island, even a dump? Look at me. I’m thirty-seven years old, never finished college, I don’t own a home and have very little savings. Living for the moment works out pretty well until the future starts demanding more than you can offer. I’m broke, homeless and alone.”

  Taking stock, that’s what Sara had been doing.

  “You are not alone. You know that you can stay with Race and me.”

  She gave me a look, As if that’s going to happen.

  “Sara Strauss, quit being ridiculous. We have the room, and we’re going to need the help when we open the lodge. You can work for us. Race and I have been out there for almost a year. Has anything happened to either of us?”

  “Let’s see. Race is lying in the hospital, you were almost killed in a sleigh accident, buildings are falling apart, and you have farm animals living indoors. You guys are doing fabulously.”

  “What does any of that have to do with the lodge being haunted?”

  “So, you’re admitting it, it’s haunted?”

  “You know what I mean.” I sat down at the table and had a mini debate with myself, and then I said, “Since you brought it up, Race and I have heard a few things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Voices a couple of times and some howling-type noises from the cellar.”

  Sara’s eyes got wide. “You’re teasing me.”

  “Well, no, actually I’m not.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “I’m sorry. We were going to tell you.”

  “When?”

  “When the renovation was finished. Did you ever read the book the Ghost and Mrs. Muir or see the movie?”

  “I saw the television show.”

  “We think of it as being like that. If there are ghosts, we’re all getting along just fine.”

  “Cammy, are you jerking me around?”

  “I’m really not.” I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “I don’t know what you think is funny about this. And look, no offense, even before you shared this vital piece of information with me, I had considered a lot of options here…” she waved her hands over her lists on the table. “…but working at The Lake Lodge has not been one of them.”

  “Fine, suit yourself. But whatever you decide to do, you are not alone, Sara Strauss.”

  Two days before Race was released from the hospital, the weather broke and everyone on the island left their shelters to survey the damage.

  The day Race did get to go home, James sent one of the View Point Hotel’s enclosed sleighs to take us to the lodge. As we traveled on Shoreline Drive between the snowy woods and the frozen water, I thought of how the pain of childbirth faded to a distant memory the moment I looked into Paul’s and Janie’s newborn faces. And as I looked at the stunning scenery that day, my less-than-fond memory of the storms had faded as well. The sky was clear and blue, and the snow was sparkling as if it had been dusted with glitter.

  We walked through the front door of the cottage, and then Race held me and with a smirk he said, “It’s good to be home.”

  After I got him settled, I checked on the animals. George had moved Cat and the girls to the barn.

  “They needed more room to roam,” he told me.

  I was worried about the kittens getting stepped on by one of the horses, but
Race assured me kittens had lived in barns before.

  Cat came to me as soon as I walked through the door and rubbed up against my legs. When I picked her up, her purr was one of the best sounds I had ever heard, still is. I sat on the ground and the kittens were crawling in and out of my lap, and Cat sat and watched while she swished her tail back and forth.

  Before I left the barn, I thanked Tasha and Collard Greens for getting me as far as they did the night Race went to the hospital, and Collard Greens let me look him in the eye as I offered my thanks.

  Ralph Cummings came out to the lodge to repair the heater in the henhouse, and we moved the chickens back to the coop, but not before they had scratched, pecked, and pooped the floors to a dull, distressed finish.

  Our renovation crew came out to the lodge with their families and Larry Meaks and his parents were with them. They threw Race and me a surprise party in the lobby to celebrate our having survived our first island winter, which had been the worst St. Gabriel had seen in over fifty years. Race was sitting in a chair, still weak from his illness, and Lila Meaks came up to him and said, “Now we’ll see if you’re gonna to be a timer or a lifer.”

  Race held up his glass, clinked it against Lila’s and said, “We’ll see.”

  Our crew cleaned up the demolished shed, and Lisle and Kurt ordered materials for the new shed that I had drawn plans for while sitting with Race in the hospital. It would have a room for potting plants and storing garden tools, a room for Race’s woodworking and space for storing a snowmobile, maybe two.

  Race had to take it easy for the next several weeks and by the time the doctors released him to resume all of his regular activities, the ice crossing had already begun to thaw. The snow was melting, and Race and I hadn’t been on a sleigh ride, not one for pleasure that is. We had missed the ice skating parties and snow shoeing, and we hadn’t mastered cross-country skiing. Well, I hadn’t, but there would always be other winters, I hoped.