by JoAnn Ross
Apparently sometime after grad school at Duke—and yes, although she hadn’t been stalking him, at least not exactly, she had kept track of him for a few years—like swallows returning every spring to the seaside cliffs, Adam Wayne had returned home.
2
Adam Wayne’s day was not starting out on a high note. After spending half the night out on a boat in an icy December rain, bucking choppy Pacific waves looking for a solitary whale that had been reported breaching off the coast, he was in serious need of coffee.
Which wouldn’t be a problem if only sometime in the past week he’d remembered to buy any.
Which he hadn’t.
Making matters worse was the power outage that had occurred sometime after four a.m. when he arrived home, which meant his bedside clock radio alarm hadn’t gone off at six thirty. His backup cell alarm had probably rung, but unfortunately he’d left the phone in the inside pocket of his parka hanging on a hook in the mudroom. It was undoubtedly still set on vibrate, which he used when he didn’t want his class lectures interrupted.
After whipping through a glacial, thirty-second sailor shower because he couldn’t take the time for the ancient, rattling water heater to warm up, he tossed on some clothes, stuffed the exam papers he’d managed to grade before going out on the Sea Wolf into his backpack, and while keeping to the speed limit—because Sheriff Kara Douchett was a stickler for law and order—headed up Harborview, then up the hills, and past the stone statue of the fisherman’s wife, who eternally awaited her husband’s return home from the sea. Someone had decked her out with a Christmas crown of candles atop her bronze head in an homage to all the Swedish loggers and fishermen who’d helped settle Shelter Bay.
Coastal Community College was set up on a bluff high on a hill overlooking the harbor. While admittedly not the largest nor the most prestigious school in the state, it suited Adam just fine. After two undergraduate years at Cal-Poly before transferring to Duke’s marine science program, he’d been lured back to the Pacific Northwest by an offer to establish a whale research program funded by a gazillionaire tech mogul who cared as much about the ancient mammals as Adam, himself did. With his hometown’s pod of resident whales and Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center just down the coast in Newport, Shelter Bay had been a logical place to set up shop. Meanwhile, his two classes at the local college allowed him to satisfy his love of teaching while giving him time for research. A definite win/win.
He pulled up into the parking lot surrounded by towering fir trees and entered the lighthouse-white science building with its red-tile roof five minutes before his first class was to begin. Which gave him just enough time to duck into the administration office.
“You’re out of coffee again,” Dee Kentta, the woman behind the desk guessed. Although her job description might technically be administrative assistant, the grandmother of five was more the admiral who ran the science department ship.
Which wasn’t easy, Adam allowed, given that the stereotype about absent-minded scientists wasn’t entirely off the mark. An avid knitter in the Coastal Salishan tradition, she’d not only made everyone in the department scarves for Christmas, she was a walking gallery of her work. Today’s red sweater bore a stylized black, brown, white, and red Native American salmon design.
“Guilty.”
“I’m going to request administration get me one of those Keurig machines,” she complained as she bustled over to the table that held a hot plate and two carafes. “That way, all you absent-minded geniuses can just put in one of those little pods, press the button, and get your own drink instead of making me get up and down all day.”
“I love you,” he said happily as steam wafted up from the cardboard cup of Cape Foulweather’s Drifter’s Blend roast she handed him. “I don’t suppose you’d marry me and let me take you away from all this?”
She planted her hands on her hips. “You just want to get my coffee all to yourself.”
“That, too. But I also have mad crazy love for your organizational skills and the fact that you’re an exotically beautiful woman who always smells like cinnamon rolls.” He leaned across the counter and sniffed appreciatively.
“Go away with you, Dr. Wayne,” she complained with a laugh. Then turned serious. “Did you hear about the whale?”
“Yeah.”
“So what are you going to do about it?”
And hadn’t he asked himself that for most of the night? “I can’t do anything if I can’t find him. If he even exists. It’s not as if there aren’t a lot of whales out there this time of year. And besides, the water was so choppy, it could’ve just been a log.”
“No one around here’s going to mistake a killer whale for a log,” she scoffed.
Which was mostly true Adam allowed. This time of year, as the migration occurred, whales were a common sight off shore. While boats made a good living taking tourists out to view the whales, most locals, accustomed to their own pod, no longer considered the towering plume of exhaled water or a breaching exotic. Which didn’t mean that even the most jaded failed to find the sight amazing. Whales were so much a part of the ocean landscape that even many school children could recognize the migrating mammals by the shape and markings of their dorsal fins. Many people kept journals of migrating whales, knowing them by official tagged numbers or more familiarly by names given to them over the years.
“It’s been foggy. And rainy.” Surprise surprise. What would have been unusual this time of year was if the sea hadn’t been draped in rain, fog, and low-hanging thick pewter clouds.
“Some are saying it’s the captain,” Dee said. “Even during his busiest season, he’d try to get home for the solstice celebration. It only makes sense he’d want to comfort his family this year.”
The captain was Joe Bayaa, whose fishing boat, The Salishan, had gone down in a storm last month in Bristol Bay while crabbing. As the boats had decks loaded with seven-hundred-pound crab pots, it was surprising that more didn’t capsize. There was a reason the TV show had been called The Deadliest Catch.
Adam also knew that despite being a woman of the twenty-first century, Dee managed to bridge modern life with the time of her ancestors, embracing many traditional aspects of her culture. Including the taboo of naming the dead, thus the use of Joe’s nickname, rather than his birth name.
Adam also knew that coastal Native Americans considered the Orca to be the wolf’s counterpart in the ocean, which put it at the top of their animal hierarchy. A position Joe had held in tribal life, as well.
“One thing working with whales has taught me is that just when you think you’ve got them all figured out, they’ll surprise you,” he said. As a scientist, Adam believed in facts. But just as he couldn’t prove whales were spirit animals, there was no way to disprove the ancient belief, either. So he remained basically agnostic on the topic.
“It’s him,” Dee repeated. “His spirit was definitely in the house last night. Everyone there felt him.” She glanced up at the large wall clock. “So there’s no reason to argue the point. Especially when you’re going to be late to class. Again.”
“Yes, Mom.” He flashed her his best grin, which only had her shaking her dark head in what he knew was mock frustration.
After walking down a hallway lined with Native American art that echoed that on Dee’s sweater, Adam was nearly to the door of his classroom when his phone vibrated. The screen showed a name that was a decided blast from his past.
After three months, he’d given up waiting for Meghann to respond to his email. What had he expected? His former tutor and fellow high school nerd was no longer that pretty girl who spent lunches sitting beneath a tree or at a table at the far end of the cafeteria, her cute little upturned nose stuck in a book.
Now she wrote books hundreds of thousands of teenagers and even many adults read. Including, he’d noticed, his own students. Her chatty YouTube videos were an internet sensation, and from what he’d read in the Shelter Bay Beacon, there w
as talk of a major movie deal in the works.
Hell, he’d told himself after three weeks had gone by, she probably didn’t even remember him. It wasn’t as if he’d been hot, like those jocks whose book reports she was always writing. He’d worn glasses for his nearsightedness before Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt had made them cool and carried a briefcase—kill me now, he thought with an inner cringe at the memory—crammed with books by Hubble, Hawking, and Sagan. That had been back in his astronomy days, before two weeks at Camp Rainbow with geography and ecology professor Fred Dalton had changed not only his view of the world but his life.
Realizing that if he stared at the screen any longer, her call would go into voice mail, he swiped the slider with enough force to bobble the coffee, which, despite the biodegradable plastic top Dee had put on it, sloshed over his hand and down the front of his jeans.
“Damn!” Making a quick decision, he dropped the phone instead of the coffee. His junk was on fire, but even he knew you didn’t grab your crotch in the hallway outside a classroom filled with eighteen-to-twenty-year-olds.
One he’d gotten a handle on the cup, thus allowing for possible future generations of Waynes, he scooped the phone from the floor.
“Uh…hi,” he said. Great opening line, numbnuts.
“Adam?” All these years later, and her voice was as familiar as his own. Which wasn’t exactly all that surprising, given that he’d been hearing it in his dreams for the past three months ever since high school physics teacher, basketball coach, and hoops buddy Dillon Slater had pushed him into contacting her.
“Yeah. It’s me. Meghann?”
“You recognized me?” She sounded as surprised as he’d been to hear from her. Then, before he could respond, she said, “Duh.” He could practically envision her slapping her forehead. “Caller ID.”
“Yeah…” A pause began to stretch out. Not that it was awkward or anything. “I didn’t expect to hear from you.”
“I’m sorry.” She sounded sincere. “I tried to call you after I finally got your email yesterday, but I guess you were out.”
“Yeah. I was.” And damn, he’d been so wiped out when he’d gotten home, he’d forgotten to check for messages. And this morning had been too hectic. “I’m sorry I didn’t get your message. And you don’t have to apologize. You undoubtedly get a lot of mail for your people to wade through.”
“My readership demographic is very vocal,” she agreed. “Which is why, if I read all my mail myself, I’d never get any books written.”
“In which case you wouldn’t have to worry about reader mail. Because you wouldn’t have any. Which becomes a classic case of temporal causality loop.”
“Like Groundhog Day.”
“Got it in one. It also happened in the season five ‘Cause and Effect’ episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.”
“I missed that one.” He wasn’t surprised. She’d never been a fan of the genre, though she had once admitted a secret crush on Mr. Spock. “In the beginning of my career, I answered all my mail. I miss that feedback.”
Adam thought he heard a sigh. Which brought back that rainy April day in his bedroom when, as a joke, he’d had a Heathcliff was a Douche T-shirt printed at a shop on Harborview, and wore it to their tutoring session. While struggling to explain the concept of an anti-hero—which, thank you, having reached epic level in Dungeons & Dragons before he’d gotten out of middle school, he was well acquainted with, it was just jerks raised up as romantic icons he had a problem with—she’d exhaled a long, frustrated sigh.
They’d been face-to-face, so close he could see her eyes glitter like green dragon scales beneath a mega sun as they’d argued about the fictional guy who’d not only be considered a douche by today’s standards, but probably a psychopath. Meghann had been so close that her breath had felt like a warm, minty breeze against his neck, which, despite what he’d learned in anatomy class, had become directly connected to his penis.
Adam had always had a better than average memory, which was why that moment over a decade ago, was frozen in amber, like dinosaur DNA from Jurassic Park.
As a slideshow of the flare of heat in her remarkably expressive eyes appeared in HD on an IMAX screen in his mind, his body responded exactly as it had that long-ago day. Unfortunately, while his autobiographical memory might be stellar, his hearing apparently didn’t work all that well during a sexual brain fog. Belatedly realizing she’d said something, he was able to rewind and pull her words back up.
“I hope I’m not too late to contribute,” she’d said.
“Not at all,” he assured her. “We had an initial fundraiser in October, which was the one I wrote to you about. But there’s going to be a silent auction at the Snow Ball on New Year’s Eve. If you’d like to donate some books for that—”
“Absolutely. In fact, what would you say to me auctioning off the opportunity to have a character named after the winner in my next book?”
“That would be great. And would probably pay for our tactile dome. Maybe even the lightning show that was planned for much further in the future.”
“Oh, that sounds like so much fun! Is the auction listed online?”
“It’s on Shelter Bay’s Facebook page.”
“Terrific,” she said after he’d given her the URL. “I’ll post the news of the fundraiser on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and YouTube this afternoon.”
“You’d do all that?”
“Of course. It’ll be such a great thing for the kids. From your email sig line, I take it you’re teaching at CCC?”
She sounded a bit surprised by that. A few years ago, he would’ve been too. “A couple courses. Mostly I’m doing research on the nighttime diving behavior of various species of whales. Which makes Shelter Bay ideal, thanks to our resident population and its location in the migratory path. We’ve been getting around fifty new whales a day.”
“I envy you. I read in the Times that we had a record number of Humpbacks here on the East Coast last winter, but I was so deep in deadline hell I barely got out of my apartment, let alone to the shore to watch them.”
“Too bad.”
“I thought so at the time. I’ve admittedly lost touch with everyone from my Shelter Bay days and hadn’t realized that you’d switched to whale research.”
“That was thanks to Fred Dalton. Those classes he taught at Camp Rainbow encouraged me to stop looking up at the stars and start observing the world around me.” By teaching, Adam liked to think he was following in Fred’s footsteps.
“Nothing wrong with stargazing,” she said.
Adam couldn’t argue with that, since it had been a way to get Meghann away from the others at night and impress her with his knowledge of astronomy. Later he’d come to realize that explaining all about the sequence of the planets and naming various stars hadn’t exactly been the coolest of make-out moves.
“True. But after two years of astrophysics, I switched to marine biology. Which is how I eventually ended up back here. Thanks to you.”
“Me?”
“Without your tutoring, I never would’ve been able to write those important essays when I applied to Cal-Poly. And no way could I have filled out all those grant proposals, which eventually landed me my dream gig.”
“That’s sweet of you to say.”
“It’s the truth.” Even though he would’ve enjoyed talking to her for hours, he glanced into the window of his classroom. Unlike the chaos his absence might have caused at the high school where Dillon taught physics, Adam’s students had so far remained in their seats. So far being the definitive words.
“I just turned in a manuscript,” she said.
“That’s going to make a lot of readers happy.”
“One can hope. What if I came out there?”
“Here? To Shelter Bay?” Adam’s only excuse for the lame questions was that Meghann had always been able to fog his mind. From that first moment she’d walked into homeroom, a transfer student from Seattle, a mass o
f curly red hair tumbling over her shoulders and gleaming like the sun setting into the sea, Adam had known what it must feel like to see the aurora borealis for the very first time.
“My best friend just decided to go to Connecticut for Christmas,” Meghann said. “The past few years we’ve spent Christmas binge-watching holiday movies and eating take-out Chinese, so I hadn’t made any other plans. So, since it was looking as if I’d have to spend the holiday with General Tso, I’d rather come watch whales and see if I can help raise more money.”
Was she saying she wanted to come watch whales with him? Damn. Despite having scored a perfect SAT score, thanks again in part to her tutoring, he still had trouble with the vague nuances women littered throughout their conversations. He’d often thought pulling off cold fusion would be a snap compared to decoding the female mind.
“It gets awfully cold out on the water this time of year,” he warned.
“It’s winter,” she reminded him. “It gets really cold in New York this time of year too.”
Was she laughing at him? Adam could practically see that dancing glint she’d get in her eyes whenever she’d teased him. They both might have been nerds, but Meghann had been light years ahead of him in social skills. Which had served her well in all those YouTube videos he’d spent too many late nights watching the past few months since writing that letter.
“There’s an early flight out of La Guardia tomorrow morning,” she said. “If I don’t get stranded in Denver because of a blizzard, I could be in Portland by noon. Then, taking time to rent a car—”
“I’ll pick you up.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“The coastal mountains can be dangerous this time of year with all those grades and curves and black ice even for a driver who isn’t out of practice.” A bus carrying the Shelter Bay Ski Club had crashed just a couple years ago.
