by Robert Elmer
“No raccoons and no bears,” Will announced with a wave of his hand, once they’d finished their quick inspection tour. They’d discovered only one piece of furniture: an overstuffed plaid couch huddled at the far side of the living room, left behind by the previous owners.
“And hopefully none of our bat friends.” Merit was afraid to look in the rafters. The old-fashioned vaulted ceilings added a touch of class if you ignored the little bird’s nest tucked above one of the beams.
Will followed her gaze. “Some people pay a lot of money to keep exotic birds,’ he said. “Ours come free with the house.”
His expression reminded her of the time Michael came home from first grade, so proud of the picture he’d painted, begging for her approval. How could she keep her heart from melting at those big brown eyes? She slipped her arms around Will’s waist.
“I think as long as you’re in it with me,” she told him, “this castle is going to suit us just fine.”
“You think so?” He smiled and turned to face her, and she met him with a warm kiss, an unexpected invitation.
“Over there,” she whispered, nibbling at the lobe of his ear. “The couch.”
“What?”
If he didn’t understand her intentions, another kiss or two helped. She motioned with her chin and did her best to steer him toward the only piece of furniture the former owners had left behind.
“It looks like there’s room for two,” she said.
“Are you kidding?” But he had to recognize the flavor of her hints. “What will the neighbors think?”
“You mean the raccoons?” She grinned, grabbing a beach towel from her bag. “I’m sure they won’t mind a couple of old people cuddling in their own house.”
Merit was right—no one minded.
When they finally emerged from their castle later that afternoon, she straightened her hair as best she could and surveyed her new kingdom.
“Where’s my royal barge?” she asked, but Will seemed to have anticipated her question. He’d already run ahead to the boathouse and was dragging out one of their rental canoes, a weather-worn, all-aluminum model with “Kokanee Cove” stenciled on the side.
“There’s two more in there,” he reported, “just like this one.”
A moment later, he had the canoe in the water and stood with his hands on his hips, a silly grin on his face. That little boy look again.
“Oh, Will, I was just kidding.” She stopped at the end of the dock. “It’s still too cold.”
“Just for a spin. We need a picture of the place from the water. And we can’t say we’ve been here if we haven’t been out on the lake.”
I can.
“Chicken.”
She sighed at the challenge. “Well…don’t we need paddles or something?”
“Right. Paddles. Excellent idea.”
He ran to the boathouse while she held the canoe next to the dock, still wondering about all this. But a minute later he returned with paddles under his arms and helped her climb aboard.
“Uh, honey.” Merit pointed at the trickle coming from one of the seams as Will stepped into the back end of the canoe. “You might want to take a look an this leak.”
“Hmm…” He squinted at it and tossed a couple of old orange life preservers in the canoe. “I wouldn’t worry about it. Hop in and we’ll take a quick ride.”
Merit tentatively placed a foot in the boat, looking for a graceful way to embark. Unfortunately, the silly canoe started rocking all on its own, and the next thing Merit knew, she was lying in the bottom of the boat, looking up at her husband, who was laughing his head off.
“It’s not funny.” She swatted at him as best she could, nearly tipping them over. It would serve him right if she had. “Don’t laugh.”
“I m sorry. You okay?”
“I could have been hurt.”
“But you’re not.” He pulled a stroke with his oar, sending them away from die dock. “So are you going to help me paddle or just lie there with your feet in the air?”
He couldn’t seem to stop laughing as she gingerly maneuvered to a sitting position. She picked up her paddle from the canoe floor.
“Don’t forget I earned a Girl Scout merit badge in canoeing, Mr. Sullivan.”
“No, I didn’t forget. But you could’ve fooled me.”
She reached forward as if to pull a long stroke, then pulled back and lifted the paddle just so, sending a wall of water—
“Hey!” he sputtered. “No fair!”
“Life isn’t fair.”
This time it was her turn to laugh as a giggly, immature water fight broke out. Good thing no one was watching.
Except a girl on the shore, standing in a grove of fir trees near the caretaker’s cabin. At this distance it was hard to tell, but she might have been laughing along.
“Will!” Merit whispered over her shoulder. He splashed her one last time. “Someone’s up there.”
“Oh.” Will straightened and looked around.
The girl on shore must have realized they had noticed her and drew back into the early evening shadows with a halfhearted wave, as if embarrassed to be caught staring at the strange people in the canoe.
“Well, we certainly made a great impression on the natives,” Merit mumbled.
“Yeah, good thing she didn’t stop by about an hour ago, huh?”
“Will!”
Merit blushed, amazed that her husband of twenty-four years could still do that to her.
An odd chirping sound made her stop paddling, and she looked for some exotic bird or more spies in the woods.
“Oh, hey!” Will brightened. “It’s actually ringing. They told me back at the store, I mean the Mercantile—whatever they call it—anyway, they said there wasn’t any cell coverage out here.”
Now she remembered him changing his ring tone in the car on the way here, a new ring tone for a new phase of their life. She hoped she hadn’t doused the phone in their water war. Will located a dry spot on his shirt, wiped the phone clean, and flipped it open.
The people at the store had been mostly right. Will paused for a moment, repeated his “hello?” and frowned. “Sorry, Michael, you’re in and out. Say that again?”
He scrunched up his face as if that would help bring in the distant signal, and he must have caught enough words to make sense of the message. “Oh. Listen, it’s okay. Really. You had every right to question our decision. It was sort of drastic, I’ll give you that. And besides, I asked for your opinion, right?”
Another pause.
“Say what?”
Another strained expression, then a nod. “Really, you don’t have to apologize. I’m just glad you can…”
Will cocked his head to the side like a puppy dog, then said “hello” a couple more times.
“Here.” Merit reached for the phone. “Let me talk to him.”
Will shrugged and handed it over. He pulled out his camera to take a few shots of the resort, and she talked to dead air for several seconds before realizing the call had dropped. She handed the phone back to her husband.
“Well, at least he got through,” she told him. “What did he say to you?”
Will snapped a couple more angles before replacing the camera in his pocket.
“He told me we should get back to Walnut Creek as soon as we can.”
“You mean the girls are being a handful?”
“No, I don’t think so. He’s just not used to babysitting for a whole weekend.”
“Anything else?”
“He hopes we have fun fixing the place up.”
“Ha! Easy for him to say.” Merit pointed down at the water in the bottom of the canoe, which had started to lap around their ankles. She shivered. “We’d better get back to the dock in a hurry, or the only place we’re going is to the bottom of the lake.”
Will looked down and lifted his feet.
“Uh-oh.” He shifted back to paddle mode and took a long stroke. “Forget the torpedoes! Full speed
ahead!”
nine
Why can’t we get all the people together in the world that we
really like and then just stay together? I guess that wouldn’t
work. Someone would leave. Someone always leaves. Then we
would have to say good-bye. I hate good-byes. I know what I
need, I need more hellos.
CHARLES M. SCHULZ
Keep your eyes closed.” Merits best friend, Cheryl Miller, held her hands over Merit’s eyes so Merit couldn’t cheat.
“They’re closed, they’re closed.” Merit held out her hands in a futile attempt to avoid running into anything as they walked through the back rooms of the Walnut Creek Public Library. She brushed against a book cart and knocked a few books onto the floor. “And you don’t need to bother with your hands. This blindfold is going to cut off the circulation in my head as it is.
Already, she could feel a faint throbbing under the folded silk scarf. If it didn’t come off soon, the throbbing was sure to grow into a major pain.
“Just want to be sure, girl.” Cheryl knew what she wanted to do, and nobody would convince her otherwise. “We’re almost there.”
They’d better be. Merit heard a giggle off to her right. She pointed toward the sound.
“It’s not funny, whoever that is. And don’t try this at home.”
“Sorry, Mrs. Sullivan,” said Juneau Likely, one of the high school kids who worked afternoons reshelving books. The sweet, litde, dark-eyed girl with the very unlikely name. Of course, with a name like Merit, she had no room to talk.
“If you were really sorry, Juneau, you’d tell me where my kidnappers were taking, me!”
Though by this time, Merit knew. If this was the back room of the library; the meeting room where the Bookworm Society met every month was just down the hallway. Cheryl wasn’t helping navigate much, though, just stumbling along Merit’s side, stepping on her shoes every few feet.
“Are you going to be happy when I fall flat on my face, Cheryl? I thought you were my friend.”
Cheryl just laughed.
“I’ll call 911,” replied Juneau, now from behind Merit and Cheryl. Someone else joined in the giggling, probably one of Juneau’s friends. Merit stumbled at the edge of a carpet but caught herself.
“You do that!” she called back. “Tell them to bring in the SWAT team!”
They finally stopped—probably at the meeting room door, if Merit had judged correctly. This would be the revealing moment when Cheryl pulled off the embarrassing, constricting blindfold. She heard shuffling in front of her, a collective gasp, and finally the “SURPRISE!” she’d suspected and even hoped for in a small way. Off came the blindfold—finally—and Merit couldn’t help blinking at the bright overhead lights.
The ladies from her book club were all there, circled around a U-shaped arrangement of folding tables covered with bright orange paper tablecloths left over from the previous year’s Halloween party. They surged toward Merit for a group hug.
Merit forgot her headache and the embarrassing hike through the library. They really shouldn’t have done this. She thanked God for her friends and their hugs.
Suddenly, her legs went weak and wooziness spun her head and churned her stomach.
She gripped Angela Cooper extra hard. “Angie, I need to sit down for a second.”
Angela, an older woman in her late sixties, held Merit by the shoulders and cocked her head in question. “Are you all right?”
“Of course, I’m all right.” Merit laughed it off as she lowered herself into a chair by the table. “It’s all Cheryl’s fault. She put that blindfold on so tight, it cut off the circulation in my cranium. You know who to blame if I start talking stupid.”
That brought a laugh and a bit of well-deserved, good-natured scolding from the group for her best friend. Merit’s head started to clear as soon as she sat down, and the headache even began draining away. No harm done.
“This is really sweet of you all,” Merit managed to choke past the sudden thickness in her throat. “Unnecessary, but sweet.”
“What do you mean, unnecessary?” Cheryl demanded. “When the president of the Bookworm Society is about to move away, what are we supposed to do?”
President twice, former secretary, treasurer emeritus, and book selection coordinator. She’d founded the club too, with help and support from Cheryl, not to mention establishing the scholarship fund and bringing in new funding for private school libraries. The only thing she’d never done? Snack coordinator. No one had yet survived any of Merit’s attempts to produce edible brownies or other baked goods. As Will could testify, she was still working on nonlethal recipes.
“And besides,” added Angie, “we couldn’t eat all these goodies by ourselves.”
Merit looked at the tables piled high with chips and salty snacks she didn’t need, carrots and celery sticks with blue cheese dip, and a steaming plate of little meatballs swimming in aromatic sauce. On a facing table crowned with a punch bowl and cups, they’d arranged cheddar and Gruyère cheese bites speared by festive red and blue toothpicks, mounds of buffalo wings, a platter of nicely arranged Ritz crackers topped with smoked salmon and herbs, and several dozen oversized, homemade chocolate chip cookies.
Then there was the mound of decadent brownies next to the large, white Costco cake, upon which the decorator had written We’ll Miss You, Merit in sky blue frosting.
It looked like more than enough to feed everyone in the room—at least fifty women—many times over. Why did they always bring so much food? No one would want to fix anything for dinner tonight.
“Sorry about the banner.” Cheryl pointed to the back wall as she plopped down next to Merit. In large blue letters, someone had printed Bon Voyage!
“You ladies do know Will and I are not going on a cruise, right?” Merit whispered back.
“Kind of a last-minute idea. We went to the card store, and it was either that or Congratulations, which we thought was even less appropriate. Christie really wanted to get you a banner, though, so we got that one.”
It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except the genuine well-wishe’s of the ladies Merit had spent every month with for the past seven or eight years. When they started telling her how much they were going to miss her, or how much their kids would miss seeing Mrs. Sullivan at school, or what a difference she’d made in their lives, Merit knew she was going to need an extra package of tissues.
Marjorie Wilson said she’d only read trashy novels until Merit invited her to the group. And look at her now!
Annie Trent said she’d brought one of Merit’s book picks home and laid it on the bedside stand, and her husband had started reading it, even though he’d never read a book for fun in his entire life, and was that a miracle or what?
And Susan DePui reminded her how her little girl—who had Down Syndrome—always came home happy and energized after Mrs. Sullivan read to her during library hour at school. Susan fanned at her face before turning away.
Merit tried to keep smiling. Did everyone have to make her feel like Mother Teresa?
“Oh dear,” Merit said to Angie, who scooped up a generous slice of brownies to go with a pile of corn chips. “I get all red and puffy faced when I cry.”
“We all do, Merit.”
The receiving line paused long enough for Merit to enjoy one of Susan’s emotionally satisfying fudge brownies, the kind with real sour cream that would have to be offset by running several miles tomorrow on the Iron Horse Trail. And when she ran out of good responses, another brownie served as a convenient mouth stopper, an excuse to chew when she should have been saying “Thanks, I’m going to miss you too” or “That’s so sweet of you to say.”
Finally, Bernice Carruthers, the oldest woman in the group by far, tottered up and took Merit’s hands in her own. Merit could feel the wrinkles. The other woman didn’t let go.
“I just wanted you to know I’ve been praying for you every day, Merit.”
That was
particularly sweet, and Merit told her so. But Bernice had something more on her mind.
“No, it’s not like that, dear.” She shook her head, obviously agitated. “I don’t sleep much, but I’ve been waking nights to pray. The Holy Spirit wakes me up out of a sound sleep and says, ‘Bernice, you pray for that young Merit Sullivan!’ So that’s what I do.”
The young was relative, but Merit counted it anyway.
“I see.” Merit cleared her throat. They didn’t talk much about their faith at the Bookworm Society, except for Bernice, who everyone knew was a fiery believer. Lutherans like Merit didn’t pray like that much, though Merit certainly wouldn’t admit it now. “I appreciate—”
“Are you and that man of yours doing all right?”
Is that why Bernice thought she was being prompted to pray at odd hours of the night? The faltering marriage of Will and Merit Sullivan?
“He’s very excited about taking on the resort. I mean, so am I, but…”
Bernice smiled knowingly at the evasive answer, but kindly didn’t force her to say how much she was going to miss her job at the school, the special-needs kids, her house, all her friends.
“My Tom was like that,” Bernice said. “Always chasing after rainbows, building things in his shop. He had big ideas.” Her face dropped. She’d been a widow for as long as Merit could remember, easily twenty years. “But you’re not so sure, are you?”
Merit choked on a corn chip. Did it show that much? Why did she have to be so painfully transparent?
“Uh…no, actually,” Merit stammered. “It’s very beautiful up by the lake. Very peaceful. And I think once I get used to the idea, it’s going to be very nice. It sort of reminds me of the camp where I met Will.”
The hunched old woman obviously wasn’t fooled by her cheery tone. She crossed her arms and leveled a stern stare at Merit. Cheryl leaned over and slipped an arm around Merit’s shoulder, coming to her rescue.
“We’re going to miss her like crazy,” Cheryl said.
“Of course, we are,” agreed Bernice. “But I’m not going to stop praying for you two. Maybe this is what you need to get plugged back into a good, Bible-believing church. They have some of those up in Idaho, don’t they?”
