by Janet Spaeth
“I don’t suppose in Boston they do much business at the kitchen table,” Hayden said as they sat at the red dinette set.
Livvy laughed. “Some. But you’re right, usually I’d invite you to my office and we’d draw up the paperwork there.”
“You’re still interested? Even after seeing the rest of Sunshine?” His tanned forehead furrowed into a concerned frown.
“Especially after seeing the rest of it.”
Gramps’s fingers traced a groove in the tabletop. “This has been our life for many years. Decades, in fact. It’s—” His voice broke, and Hayden covered his grandfather’s hands as the old man gathered himself. “It’s hard, letting this go into a stranger’s possession. It was everything to Ellie and me. Now she’s gone, and I’m going to lose Sunshine, too.”
“Gramps—” Hayden began, but his grandfather shook off the interruption.
“I need to say this.” He took a deep breath and exhaled. “I hope you understand that I want a few days to absorb this, to make sure that we’re doing the right thing.”
“It’s our only choice,” Hayden said gently. “We can’t do this any longer. Not this way. We have to let it go.”
Livvy fought back the tears that suddenly choked her. She’d arranged many sales of family homes, some of them foreclosures, and most of them had torn at her heart, but none of them had been as personal as this. She’d never been the buyer, the one who was taking the property.
She reminded herself that this was a business transaction. They would receive payment for it, and it would probably be enough to keep them solvent for years to come. It was their choice. They had put the property up for sale. They had done it. Not her. She was merely the one who had come to their aid.
So why did she feel so terrible?
“Gramps, tonight we will pray about it,” Hayden said, and his grandfather nodded. Then the old man pushed his chair back and stood up.
“I’m very tired. I hope you’ll excuse me, Livvy, but I need to lie down.”
She nodded. “Of course.”
Hayden’s eyes followed his grandfather’s steps as he left the room and went into the living room. Neither of them spoke as they listened to the man’s heavy tread as he climbed the steps to the second floor.
“My grandfather means everything to me,” Hayden said at last. “Everything. It’s important to me that he is at ease about this. Before we make any agreements, I want to make sure he understands.”
“Certainly.”
“Plus I know you’d like to see the house, too.” He glanced upstairs, as if he could see right through the ceiling and into what must have been his grandfather’s room, judging from the footsteps that she could hear through the plaster. “That will have to wait until tomorrow.”
“I understand.”
They stood up, and together they left the kitchen. In the living room, Martha Washington had woken up and was following Gramps up the stairs.
“She’s his cat. No matter what he says, she is his.” Hayden watched the cat climb the steep staircase. “The other cats have been adopted out, so she’s the only one left. Despite what he said earlier about her coming with the property, Gramps won’t let her go—he can’t let her go.”
Livvy didn’t know what to say. The entire thing—the decision to quit her job, put everything she owned into storage, and come to a state she knew nothing about—was overwhelming. Intensifying it all was seeing the interaction of the two men as they bid good-bye to a family treasure.
At the front door, he pulled a baseball cap from the coat tree there and shoved it on his head as soon as they stepped outside. She smiled as she read the printed words over the bill: COOTER’S HARDWARE.
Outside, he paused to move a chicken from in front of the doorway. It flapped its wings and objected strenuously as he placed it onto the ground. “We’ve managed to get our animals down to Martha Washington, who is about as much a barn cat as I am, and this hen. I suppose you could technically call her free-range, but it’s mainly because she refuses to listen to us and stay in the coop area.”
As if understanding exactly what Hayden was saying, the chicken glared at him with her beady eyes, clucked, and strutted right back onto the porch.
Livvy and Hayden looked at each other and laughed. “See what I mean?” he asked. “Not only has she made this entire place her home, she has attitude. At least she does go back to the coop to lay her eggs, although once in a while this old lady”—he pretended to scowl at the recalcitrant chicken—“she’ll think she’s funny and plop an egg in a lawn chair, so you’d be wise to check before you sit down out here.”
“It’ll be hard for you to part with Sunshine, won’t it?” she asked.
He turned his head and studied the horizon, with the irregularly shaped buttes notching into the sky. “This has been part of life since I was an infant,” he said at last. “Oh, I was born in Bismarck, and I went to college in Grand Forks on one end of the state and Williston on the other, but Sunshine was where my heart was. My grandparents ran this place from the time they were married, and the highlight of every summer was coming here. And then when my parents died, Gramps and Gran took me in and I moved to Sunshine permanently.”
“It’s part of your family,” she said softly.
He tugged the baseball cap off and ran his hand over the top of his head. The sun caught his golden hair for just a moment before he slapped it back on and moved off to shoo the chicken away again.
“It is. Gran died two years ago, and Gramps lost his heart. He decided to close Sunshine then. He said he couldn’t have one without the other.”
Livvy wished she had her sunglasses with her to hide her eyes, which were once again filling with tears.
“One day,” Hayden said, “one day I want to have what they did.”
“Sunshine, you mean?”
“I mean their love. They not only finished each other’s sentences, they often spoke together. I remember being a kid and watching them sit next to each other. They breathed in unison. My mom used to say that their hearts beat as one. When Gran died, Gramps …”
His words trailed off, and she put her hand on his arm. “It must have been really difficult.”
He nodded. “He’s gotten vague and forgetful now. It’s for the best that we sell Sunshine. I can stay with him in the summer, but I teach in Obsidian in the winter, and I can’t always get out here to check on him. It’s a trek in the winter as you might imagine. The road gets pretty nasty when the snow comes, and I worry about him. He can’t drive anymore. And with our winters here, somebody can’t always get to him.”
“It’s the sensible thing to do,” she said.
“Sensible—but horrendously painful.” He straightened his back. “Well, as we know, we can want what we want, but that doesn’t mean we can have it. Meanwhile, do you have lodging in Obsidian?”
“I’m going to be staying at the Badlands Vista Motel.”
He winced. “You’ll want to move out of there rather quickly. Lu and Ev, the owners, are as honest as the day is long, but they haven’t upgraded anything there in at least twenty years, and that includes the mattresses, I’ve heard. How long are you planning to stay?”
Livvy leaned against the side of the house and studied the man in front of her. He really was amazingly good-looking—his face was tanned, his eyes were an astonishing bright blue, and his legs were long and rangy in the denims he was wearing—but had something gone wrong with his brain?
Hadn’t they just spent most of the afternoon discussing her buying the old resort?
“I am planning to stay here,” she said, her voice sounding, to her relief, sure and strong.
“Here? Oh no. No. No, that won’t work.” He looked quite distressed.
“Well, not here. Not right away, that is. You and your grandfather will need some time to find a place to stay, and I don’t know how long you’ll need because I’m not familiar with the housing situation in Obsidian, if that’s where … you’ll be �
� staying?” Her words faded away as he began to laugh.
“ ‘Housing situation’? Obsidian has one apartment building, which is where I live in the winter. It’s got four units and is nearly as bad as the Badlands Vista Motel, but not quite. It’s cleaner, for one thing. I don’t know what we’ll do.”
“I have no intention of kicking you out of your home. There are still many dotted lines to sign on—inspections and assessments, transfers and titles—before the deed changes hands.” She knew from her experience working for Mr. Evans that one could never plan definitively on moving in quickly. There was almost always some snag somewhere. Paperwork didn’t arrive on time, floodplain issues appeared, a banker was on vacation—they’d all happened.
“This is really sudden,” he said. “I have to say that when Gramps and I put the advertisement in the Bismarck Tribune, we never thought it would travel all the way to Boston, and certainly we hadn’t even dreamed that someone would take us up on it. If you don’t mind, I’d like to take a little time to consider this.”
She clutched the edge of the railing that ran around the porch. He couldn’t back out of it. The tumbledown resort, with its crazy assortment of colorful sheds and the rainbow of cabins and the dusty canteen, had taken root in her heart.
“We have no choice except to sell,” Hayden continued, his voice so quiet that it seemed as if he were talking to himself. “We have no choice.”
“I don’t want to rush you, but—” She stopped before saying what was obvious to both of them, that he and his grandfather needed to sell, and she was a ready buyer. In any market, a decrepit, closed-down resort in the middle of nowhere would attract few buyers, and in this market, anyone showing even a faint glimmer of interest needed to be kept close to the deal.
He pulled the cap from his head and once again smoothed his hair and shoved the cap back on. “Tomorrow let’s get you set up with a decent place to stay. I think this will all work out. If it’s His will, it’s my will.”
She nodded. “I’ll see you in the morning, then. Here? Or in Obsidian?”
“Meet me at Clara’s Café, at eight?”
“I’ll see you then.”
She climbed back into the truck Trevor had rented to her, and she was aware that Hayden was watching her as she tried several times to start it. Just when she thought she’d certainly flooded the engine, it caught in a great blaze of muffler sounds and backfires, and she waved as she pulled away from the resort and onto the county road to Obsidian.
So this was Sunshine.
Her mind was spinning with the possibilities of what could happen with it. Given the proper amount of love and care, it could come to life again. She was sure of it.
An idea had started to take root. Maybe it wasn’t possible, but maybe it was.
The vision of those little shacks scattered around the house poked at her mind, begging for her to pay attention to them. Could she do it?
Fishing.
Hayden hadn’t mentioned it during the tour, but the advertisement had touted it. If the fishing was good, then maybe, just maybe, it would work.
The idea wandered around in her brain, picking up momentum as she began to see the possibilities.
A fishing resort. People loved to fish. On the Travel Channel, she’d seen shows about folks going deep-sea fishing to get marlins or some other huge fish. Of course, there wasn’t a deep sea around here, but there had to be something swimming in that river.
It was good. It was. It would take a lot of work, but she wasn’t above that. If she did most of it herself, it wouldn’t cost a horrendous amount.
She’d never swung a hammer but just the thought of it sounded wonderful. Nailing boards into place, putting up drywall, even plumbing. None of it was too much for her.
Yes, she was headed into the construction business. She patted the book beside her. The Complete Guide to Home Construction and Repair. It would be her Bible.
Her Bible.
She remembered the faith she’d seen displayed. Hayden and Gramps hadn’t said much, but their belief was clearly the cornerstone of their existence.
She’d gone to Sunday school and church when she was young, in the little town on the western edge of Massachusetts, but when she got to be a teenager, overnights and weekend getaways with her friends had taken precedence, and she’d never gotten back to it.
She pulled at last into the motel parking lot, and let herself into her room. She picked up the remote control for the television and clicked it, but nothing happened. The batteries were probably dead.
It was all right. She wasn’t in the mood for watching television anyway. Instead, she sprawled across the bed, the pillows bunched under her, and opened her laptop. The motel, as old and decrepit as it was, managed to have a fairly good wireless signal, and soon she was connected with her mother.
“Hey, Mom. It’s Livvy. You’ll never guess where I am.”
“Livvy! Are you all right? What happened? You’re in North Dakota? What’s it like?”
“It’s incredible. It’s just incredible. I don’t know any other way to say it. It’s incredible.”
“And what’s this place like? The place you want to buy?”
“Sunshine is incredible. The owners are incredible. Mom, am I saying incredible enough?”
Her mother laughed. “I’m just guessing, but I gather the place is incredible? I’d love to see it, and I wish your dad and I could get there to help you, but we’re stuck here until December. I’m sorry, hon. I feel bad, but we’re tied up with our teaching.”
“I understand, Mom,” she said.
“You’re not in over your head, are you?” her mother asked, suddenly serious. “This isn’t really like you. Usually you’re such a quiet young woman. I expected you to be working for Mr. Evans forever.”
“That’s just it,” Livvy said, noticing a water stain on the ceiling over the foot of the bed. Luckily it looked old. “I needed a change.”
“There’s a boy, isn’t there?”
“A boy? Mom, I’m twenty-five years old!”
“Okay, a man. A young man. There’s a young man involved with this, isn’t there?”
Livvy thought of Hayden as he stood on the porch, his gaze fixed on the Badlands silhouetted against the sky, his hair as golden as reflected sun, and the tenderness in his voice as he talked about his grandfather.
She changed the subject. With mothers, it was the safest thing to do when young men were involved.
Hayden sat on the porch, ignoring the chicken that pecked at his shoestring. This day, which had started out dealing with the endless supply of boards, had moved into the promise of fishing, and then ended with a flourish when Livvy Moore had driven up in Trevor’s truck, which had more filler than original metal.
He shook his head. That truck—he’d have to have a talk with the young Trevor about putting a city woman into it and then sending her out on the county roads, some of which were so washboarded that you risked your teeth driving on them, you’d be so jarred by the unevenness. If the truck had broken down, what would she have done?
She probably had a fancy cell phone, but coverage was spotty out here, and only one company provided any service. If she wasn’t with that provider, the only thing her phone would be good for was—well, he couldn’t think of anything it would be good for.
He sat forward suddenly, startling the chicken so much that it squawked at him and flapped off to sit on the railing and watch him with a wary eye.
What bothered him, what he needed to know for once and for all, was why she was there, wanting to buy Sunshine.
She had told them the story of the windblown newspaper and he had no reason to doubt its veracity. But there were many unanswered questions. What was a Bismarck newspaper doing in Boston? Why did it blow up against Livvy’s car? Why hers?
He stared at the chicken, which walked sideways along the railing while clucking to itself.
“Do you have any ideas, chicken?”
Apparently i
t didn’t, for with a flap of wings, it propelled itself from its perch to the seat of the chaise longue on the other end of the porch.
“Don’t even think about laying an egg there,” he warned, but the chicken settled in, still keeping watch on him. He’d have to check the crease in the cushion later in the day.
The front door swung open, and his grandfather came out and joined him on the porch.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Gramps said. “Kept thinking about this whole thing, and then I thought Ellie was making a peach pie. It sure smelled good.”
Hayden patted his grandfather’s hand. He didn’t trust himself to speak.
Gramps continued, “But then I remembered that she was gone, and you know, I guess maybe I was asleep and just dreaming, wasn’t I?”
“Maybe.”
“When you were just a little pup, Grub, you came to your grandmother and me and asked how we knew that this life wasn’t just a dream.”
“And what did you say?” Hayden knew the answer, but he loved to hear the story.
“I did what any sensible grandfather would have done. I yelled, ‘Wake up!’ at you as loud as I could.”
Hayden laughed. “You nearly scared me into the next year!”
Gramps shrugged. “Made my point. If that didn’t wake you up, it wasn’t a dream.”
Hayden let the afternoon breeze drift over him as he sat next to his grandfather. How often he had taken these moments for granted, but now each second seemed precious, measured as it was.
He was not only losing Sunshine, he was losing his grandfather.
A scratching at the door broke into his train of thought. He got up and let Martha Washington out. She waddled over to Gramps’s feet, and he scooped her up and placed her in his lap.
She stretched out, draping herself across his thin and bent legs, and shoved her head under his hand so he would pet her. Her purr filled the air, and Hayden shut his eyes.
He wanted to savor this moment, a time of perfection, a—
It all happened at once. The cat screeched and tore across his arms and knees, claws out, while the chicken attacked it with beak and talons. Hayden reached into the skirmish and separated the two.
