by Robert Elmer
As Merit pushed open the screen door, a pickup pulled in the little gravel parking lot, followed by a few cars and an older couple on an ATV. A tall man with enormous eyeglasses and not much hair on his head disembarked from the pickup and led the parade. A pleasant-looking woman and a college-age girl joined him, each carrying a towel-draped load in their arms. Something about the girl looked familiar.
“Welcome to Kokanee Cove!” boomed the man. His thundering bass voice perfectly matched his ample frame, the kind of voice that used car dealerships would hire for their radio ads.
“I’m Pastor Bud Unruh, Kokanee Cove Bible Chapel.” The man’s smile wrapped around his face as if his lips had been unzipped a couple inches wider than normal. “My wife, Bonnie, our daughter, Stephanie. And…”
He waved his hand at the advancing invaders, all of them carrying picnic baskets, coolers, or grocery sacks in their arms. The pastor’s wife gripped Merit’s hand between her own and finished his sentence for him.
“And we brought a few of our church families with us.”
M’erit didn’t realize until too late that she’d shared a paint smudge with her new neighbor.
“I’m terribly sorry.” Merit looked for a rag or a handkerchief. “I’m a mess. I’ve been painting.”
“So you’re an artist?” Pastor Bud asked.
His wife scolded him. “Bud! These people don’t appreciate your odd sense of humor yet.”
Yet. Merit smiled at the exchange and wiped off her hand before shaking any others. “Not a problem,” she said. “Actually, my husband is trying to fix something under the cabin. Will?”
Will appeared a moment later, inching out of the crawlspace. Cobwebs wrapped his head like a turban, and his dusty faced appeared several shades darker even in the noon sun.
“Oh!” He patted the dust off his work clothes and blinked his eyes. “I thought I heard someone drive up.”
That signaled the start of another round of introductions, not just from the Unruh family, but from everyone in the welcoming party. Several of the ladies parked overflowing plates of poor boy and tuna fish sandwiches with pickles on the picnic tables, along with bowls of chips, slices of bright red watermelon, and pitchers of lemonade spiked with tangy huckleberry juice.
“I’m really glad we caught you all here,” Pastor Unruh said. “Because if you weren’t—”
Bonnie chimed in. “We were going to have to eat all this ourselves.”
“Actually, we’re still waiting on our son, Michael.” Merit explained about the rest of the equipment and tools on their way and how Michael had agreed to help them out for a while. “He’s about the same age as your.
She looked at the Unruh girl, who had taken a quick liking to Abby and Olivia.
Bonnie laughed. “She’s mature for her age,” explained Bonnie, “except when it comes to taking care of younger kids. I don’t think anyone ever explained to her that twenty-one-year-olds don’t usually get down on all fours and pretend they’re turkeys or…”
Her voice trailed off as they watched Stephanie pull herself up into the branches of the old maple in the corner of the lawn, then reach high for an abandoned bird’s nest.
“I’m sorry,” Bonnie whispered. “Like I said, she’s otherwise really very mature for her age.”
Merit grinned as her own girls followed Stephanie’s example, and soon all three girls were swinging from branches.
Another truck came chugging down the gravel path. Someone else from the church welcoming committee? Will craned his neck and squinted.
‘I think it’s M ichael,” he said.
That would have been good news, except that the top of the tall rental truck was raking the bottom branches of the trees lining the drive—including the one Stephanie and the girls were in.
“Girls!” Will shouted and waved for them to get down. “Out of the way of the truck!”
In a moment, the two younger girls had swung down and scampered safely back to the picnic. Stephanie, however, didn’t seem to notice the danger as she swung off a large branch—right into the middle of the driveway and directly in the path of the oncoming truck.
How had she not heard it coming?
The truck barreled down the hill, and by the time it rounded the last corner, Stephanie still stood planted in the gravel road, staring into the startled eyes of the driver. He skidded to a stop in a cloud of dust.
Now she knew how deer felt. She moved to the side of the drive, still clutching the bird’s nest she had retrieved for the two Sullivan girls. Possibly a robins nest, judging by the size of it—about five inches across. The driver, a boy about her age or maybe a little older, leaned out of his window, elbow first.
“You always stop trucks like this?” He grinned as though disappointed he hadn’t plowed her down. And still she dumbly clutched the nest.
“I was just showing Abby and Olivia a…a robin’s nest up in this tree.” She hid it behind her back.
“Oh. Well, I’m Michael,” he told her as he looked at the picnic crowd. “Michael Sullivan. And except for my parents up there by that cabin, I’m not sure if I’m in the right place.”
“You are. They said you were coming.”
“That’s good.”
She thought he would pull the truck ahead now, but his two little sisters raced their way, waving and shouting.
“Michael!” Abby and Olivia shouted in chorus.
“We thought you were never going to make it,” Olivia told him.
“What are you talking about?” He yanked at a brake lever and hopped out of the cab. “I had to come visit my two favorite little sisters, right?”
“Visit?” Olivia picked up on his choice of words as she gave him a hug. “Aren’t you coming to stay?”
Stephanie noticed he didn’t answer her question directly, just laughed and wrestled his sisters out of the way.
“This a friend of yours?” he asked them, indicating Stephanie with a nod. “She never told me her name.”
He looked like a soldier or a professional wrestler. Hadn’t his parents mentioned he was just out of the service?
“Stephanie.” She shifted the nest to her left hand before holding out her right and bracing for the bone-crunching squeeze that was sure to come. “Stephanie Unruh.”
He took her hand but didn’t squeeze too hard. Big grip, but gentle. In fact, very gentlemanly. And very…something else that she wasn’t quite sure of.
“Pleased to meet you, Stephanie Unruh. I’m really glad I didn’t run you over before I even got your name.”
“Uh, right.” She backed up and nearly squatted on a tree stump before catching herself. “Me too.”
She shook her head. She sounded like an idiot, but no one seemed to notice her twitterpated tumbling, least of all Michael Sullivan. She noticed something in his gaze, though—a flash of disapproval as he looked at the resort, at his parents, at the rest of the church people.
But only for a second, and then he turned his attention back to her.
“You work here, Stephanie?”
“Actually, no.” She shook her head. “I used to. Before your parents got here, obviously.”
“Hmm. Right. Well, between you and me,” Michael leaned in, away from his sister‧s ears, “I have no idea what they think they’re doing here. My dad’s not exactly a handyman, and even if he were, this place needs more work than two people can do in ten years.”
“They told me you could fix anything.”
“Anything?” He chuckled. “Maybe they don’t know me very well. And they think they’re going to open in a few weeks? This is nuts.”
“It’S not nuts,” Stephanie said. “They’ve been working hard.”
“Yeah, killing themselves.” He chuckled again but didn’t smile. “So anyway, I got here just in time for the party, huh?”
She didn’t answer, and he didn’t notice the frown that crept across her face. If that’s all he came for, then fine. He could come for the party while his parents
killed themselves working.
“Come on, Michael.” Olivia jumped into her brother’s arms and let him swing her around. “We’ll show you where all the bird nests are. There’s some down on the docks.”
“Okay, Lady O. Show me.”
And with the thought of bird’s nests, Stephanie needed to return hers to it’s place in the lovely old maple. She didn’t watch as Michael Sullivan’s little sisters hustled him away.
thirteen
There’s nothing written in the Bible…that says if you believe in
me, you ain’t going to have no troubles.
RAY CHARLES
He’d been in the military, right? So he was twenty-six or twenty-seven, she guessed. Maybe older, which surely made him too experienced. He certainly looked like it. He’d probably had a string of girlfriends, left the requisite trail of broken hearts. Maybe he was even divorced and had kids. She wasn’t about to ask.
Stephanie continued pedaling, taking a deep breath of fir-scented morning air. A chipmunk scolded her from it’s perch in a tree.
And what about the little tattoo of an eagle on his arm? That didn’t make him a birdwatcher. He probably didn’t know the difference between a canyon wren and…
Not that it mattered. And it didn’t matter how good-looking a person was. He wasn’t her type.
His parents, on the other hand, had taken on an impossible job, trying to fix up the resort in a matter of weeks. Despite his lousy attitude, Michael was right about one thing: they were going to kill themselves trying to get that old place renovated in time for their first customers.
She hadn’t had a chance to talk much to Mr. Sullivan, though he seemed nice, but something about Mrs. Sullivan made her pause. Something made her want to pray for the woman, the way she would for a bird with a broken wing. Stephanie knew something was very broken about Merit Sullivan. Her certainty of it made her wonder how she could be so sure about something like this when she had so much trouble deciding what shoes to wear in the morning. Even so, the odd assurance remained: behind Mrs. Sullivan’s warm face and grateful eyes laid a secret that hurt.
Stephanie knew her little gesture wouldn’t help one way or the other, but she gripped her package as tightly as she could under one arm anyway. She trundled past the lakeside Navy Acoustic Research Center and it’s secret test equipment on her well-used, around-town mountain bike. The road clung to the side of the hill, keeping a respectful distance from the tall, barbed-wire fence that spelled the bases southern boundary.
“Take the truck, Stephanie. “
Her mother always said the same thing. Stephanie appreciated the concern, but her mother couldn’t fathom the idea of good exercise, honest sweat, and the feeling of mounting the top of Cape Horn on her own aching legs, up where the huckleberries grew so profusely she sometimes had to whistle to shoo die bears away from their lunch.
“At least carry some pepper spray, girl!”
She’d resisted that idea too, but gave in when Mom got her a little can and planted it on her dresser. Though Stephanie doubted she would ever have occasion to use it, she had to admit that she had checked her belt clip once or twice, just to be sure she still carried the compact little spray can. It wasn’t the bears that made her do it, though. The higher-elevation forest north of Cape Horn was also home to cougars. Once, she thought, she’d heard a growl, though it had sounded pretty far away.
No, her mother would never understand why Stephanie always hiked on her own or why she chose to ride her mountain bike around town instead of taking the truck like everyone else. But Mom didn’t have to understand everything.
Stephanie glanced up at the gathering clouds, the dark ones that could sweep in from the west and overtake a sunny day faster than—
The deep report of a thunderclap rolled across the granite face of Bernard Peak, echoing and crackling across the near-vertical face that ringed the lake at its southern end. When one followed the severe slope of the surrounding hills as they dashed into azure water, it wasn’t hard to see how depths could easily reach a thousand feet or more.
Stephanie quickened her pace. She might have misjudged this storm. It was coming in faster than she expected, and she was concerned about making it to the Kokanee Cove Resort before the impending thundercloud dumped a big load of wet on her. She could nearly smell it—a rolling wash of cool damp moisture that prepared the way for a summer storm. Gasping for breath, she pushed the pedals, hanging on to the package like she was a Pony Express rider delivering the United States mail.
She hadn’t quite reached the resort when the first curtain of cool rain swept across the treetops and pulled her into it’s undertow. She could hear a freight train coming—the real rain shower—and the thunder and pyrotechnic flashes of lightning buried her in their grand show.
“Not good,” she mumbled and wondered if the paper sack would keep her cargo dry until she made it to the resort.
The full force of the storm hit her, and it took only a few moments to feel as if she had stepped into a full-blast shower with all her clothes on. She might have turned back if she’d been closer to home, but she coasted down the hill, brakes squealing, rounded a bend, and finally bumped down the gravel road that led to the Kokanee Cove Resort. She remembered the exact spot where Michael Sullivan had nearly flattened her in his truck earlier that day.
She continued right up onto the porch of the caretaker’s cabin, and in one fluid movement, she bailed from the bike, let it park itself under the cabin’s eaves, and stumbled to a stop by the front door.
For a minute she caught her breath while the rain pelted the metal porch roof in a staccato rhythm. Rain, like drumsticks on a snare drum, madly kept time to a wild beat, faster and slower, louder and softer. Thunder added it’s kettle drum; lightning, it’s cymbals. Stephanie didn’t knock on the door, just leaned on the front porch railing, listening and watching.
The church folks had left a few hours ago, or their welcoming picnic would have been washed out. As it was, purpose-driven rain rivers rushed across the yard, past the cabin, and down the hill toward the lake. If it kept up much longer, this mountain downpour would take the Sullivans’ meager little patch of grass and transplant it right down into Kokanee Cove.
But it wouldn’t keep up. These things never did. So she drip-dried a bit and unwrapped the package, checking to make sure it wasn’t as damaged as she feared. With the racket overhead, she almost didn’t hear the friendly screen door screech behind her.
“Well, look who’s back.”
Stephanie turned to see Merit had joined her on the porch. “A little wet out there.” Stephanie didn’t need to explain further.
“Yeah, I can see. Do you always go out in this kind of weather? Pardon me for saying, but you look like you could use some drying off.”
“It kind of caught me off guard.” Stephanie smiled and swiped a strand of wet hair from her eyes. “I should have known better.”
Merit invited her inside, and Stephanie followed her into the living room. Boxes still lined the walls, even more now, Stephanie imagined, after Michael’s arrival, though much had already been unpacked.
“The boys are down at the boathouse with Abby and Olivia,” Merit said, “if… “Her shy look hinted that she might have seen more than she let on earlier in the day. But Michael wasn’t Stephanie’s type.
She held out the package, soggy wrapping and all. “Actually, I just came to bring you this.”
Merit unwrapped it with a question on her face.
“It’S an old painting somebody did of Kokanee Cove,” Stephanie explained. “See the mountain up there in the corner? That’s Bernard Peak. It used to hang in the snack bar—the store—when I worked there. When the other owners left, they said I could have it, but it seems like it really belongs here, so…”
“That’s very sweet of you.” Merit beamed as she held the painting to the light. Even with the cracks and fading, it was easy to make out Bernard Peak and the lake below. Stephanie guessed the p
ainter had been a fairly accomplished amateur. “Are you sure? You should keep it.”
“No.” Stephanie shook her head, and she meant it. “It was hanging in the same spot on the wall behind the counter for years and years. Ill bet there’s still an outline on the wall so you can see where it was. People who come back are going to expect to see it there. Besides, I didn’t really have any place for it at home.”
“Tell you what.” Merit brightened even more as she settled on a flowered couch. “We’ll accept it on one condition.”
Stephanie shifted her feet. “What condition?”
“You know we’ve only been here a few days,” Merit went on, “but Will and I can already see we’ve bitten offa little more than we can chew.”
At least they weren’t fooling themselves. Stephanie sat next to her and nodded as Merit continued. She really did have a nice smile, but there was that something behind it again.
“We talked last night about maybe getting more help. To tell you the truth, I haven’t been feeling very energetic lately. I’m not sure what it is. Flu bug, I thought, but it’s a little different. I’m just weak and achy. Maybe it’s the stress of moving.”
“I’ve never moved before, but I can imagine,” Stephanie said.
Merit smiled. “You’re lucky. But here’s the thing: you and your parents coming by today, and all those sweet people from your church, I just felt as if…I don’t know. I know it’s kind of a cliché, but it seemed so much like a God-thing to us. And then Michael showed up in the middle of it all.”
“But you were expecting him to visit, right?”
“Oh, yeah. That’s not what I meant. It just seemed like God was bringing it all together in our life. I mean, finally. We’ve been in kind of an odd funk for the past few years. Always busy, always late for something, but more in a treadmill kind of way, if you know what I mean.”
“Sure,” Stephanie said but had no idea. She let Mrs. Sullivan talk for a while, about the move and how it worked out for Michael to join them for his vacation, after all. God’s hand. Merit even explained how her book club friends back in California had given her several boxes of books to set up a little lending library here in Kokanee Cove, and how she was missing the people but not California too much—she straightened.
