Love Finds You in Carmel by-the-Sea, California

by Sandra D. Bricker

  “Hey, do you want to grab some dinner?” Annie asked, trying to sound as casual as she could manage.

  “Nah, not tonight, Annie Gray. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Once Nick closed the front door behind him, the silence in that office began screaming relentlessly, bearing down on Annie. Sitting there beneath the weight of it became unbearable. For no reason in particular, her heart pounded so hard that she found it hard to breathe. At last she pushed up out of the chair and made her way into the reception office to gather her things and leave. She sank down into the chair at her desk, yanked open the drawer, and pulled her satchel out of it.

  The rumble came first, the one that sounded like a semitruck barreling too fast down the road outside. And then came the shaking, followed by the shattering of glass somewhere nearby.

  Earthquake!

  Annie watched the supply shelf in the open closet fall and crash on top of the small refrigerator, and she dropped her bag as she and her chair rolled swiftly away from the desk and thumped hard against the window nearby. She slipped from the seat down to the floor and crawled beneath the desk, waiting there for what seemed like several minutes as the floor shifted underneath her and the desk lurched above.

  More glass shattered, and thick wood splintered noisily overhead. A framed photograph of Sherman crashed to the floor beside her, sending her thoughts hastily home. Annie said a quick prayer for Sherman and Gram’s safety.

  This has got to be at least a six on the Richter scale.

  When it finally ended, Annie didn’t move an inch. She remained frozen beneath the desk, trying to find her breath and then struggling to regulate it.

  In through the nose, out through the mouth. Then again.

  Alarms sounded all over the area, and then came the sirens. She jumped at a loud pop! and realized that an electrical line close by had fallen.

  “Annie?”

  The door banged open. Nick appeared and squatted before her.

  “Are you all right?”

  She thought so but for some reason couldn’t find her voice to tell him. She finally gave up and just nodded.

  “Are you hurt?”

  Pain throbbed softly in the back of her head, and she realized she must have hit it pretty hard when she rammed into the window. She raised her hand to where it stung, and her palm came back with blood on it.

  “I’m hurt,” she managed, showing him the proof on her hand as tears began to fall.

  “Okay, hang on to me,” Nick told her.

  She crawled out from under the desk and grabbed her leather satchel from the floor then slipped her arms around his neck, burying her face in his shoulder, as Nick lifted her and carried her straight out the front door.

  He eased her into the passenger seat of his Jeep then reached behind the seat for a black gym bag. “Everything will be okay,” he seemed to promise, as he produced a towel from inside the bag.

  He wrapped it around his hand and gently applied it to the back of her head.

  “Just let me get a look here and see how bad it is. You’re going to be fine. I don’t want you to worry.”

  Annie appreciated the soothing quality about Nick just then, and she sighed.

  “It doesn’t look too bad. Do you know what hit you?”

  “I was on my ch–chair, and it rolled me back into the wi–window,” she stammered.

  “Did you hit your head on the metal frame or the glass?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Okay,” he repeated, pressing the towel against the back of her head again. “You’re going to be fine, angel. Just relax. You’re going to be just fine. Can you tell me what day it is?”

  The corner of Annie’s mouth quivered. “The day of the earthquake?”

  “Oh, fine,” Nick replied, nodding. “I’m trying to help, and she gives me sass.”

  “I need to check on Sherman and Gram, Nick.”

  “Okay,” he answered, and he handed her the towel, got in the vehicle, and tossed the Jeep into gear.

  She struggled to produce her cell phone from her bag, finally dialing the house. No answer.

  Annie made a couple more calls as Nick drove her toward home.

  Zoey and Mateo had sustained no damage at all, and her mother seemed more shaken than anything else. Some glass fixtures had broken at the bistro, but the earthquake left Evan and his prized kitchen intact.

  She left a quick voice mail for Merideth and Frank; then Nick used her phone to check on Jenny, despite Evan’s report that she had weathered her first earthquake with nothing more serious than a case of nerves. All seemed well between Monterey and Carmel, aside from the massive, throbbing gash at the back of Annie’s head.

  Nick parked diagonally across the small driveway. “Woozy” and “ladylike” presented cross-purposes as she climbed out of the Jeep with gratitude coloring the memory of the skirt she’d been considering that morning. She was happy that she’d opted for jeans instead.

  “Can you walk?” Nick asked her. Annie nodded.

  Before they reached the front porch, Sherman’s head popped up in the bay window. He barked out a message when he spotted her, one Annie translated with no trouble at all: Something unusual has happened, and it scared me. Get in here. I want to tell you all about it.

  He practically knocked her down as she opened the door, rushing her with a childlike eagerness that spoke volumes about their relationship. Still scratching Sherman’s head, Annie sighed with relief as Gram whooshed down the stairs, talking a mile a minute.

  “Oh, Annie, that poor little dog of yours was scared out of his wits, and he’s been whining and barking ever since the quake. We’ve already had two aftershocks, you know. They were small and the newsman on the television said we probably didn’t feel them, but I’ll tell you I sure did. Goodness me! Hello, Nick. Annie, your head is bleeding.”

  Nick held the towel, blotchy with her blood, and he wrapped it around his hand and pressed it to the back of her head again.

  “Is everything all right here?” he asked.

  “I think I fared quite well.”

  “I’m going to take care of a little first aid, then,” Nick told her with a smile and a nod toward Annie.

  “I’ll get the kit and put on the water for tea.”

  “Come on, Sherman,” Nick announced, guiding Annie into the kitchen. “Let’s tend to your mom, huh?”

  Sherman bounded ahead of them, making a couple of wide circles before standing guard over the kitchen table until they reached it. His ears pinned stiffly forward, he looked curious and alert.

  “It’s okay,” Annie assured him. “Just a little bump on the head.”

  Nick guided her to a chair, and Sherman lifted his head and shot her a panting grin over his shoulder.

  An aftershock kicked in just as Gram sat down at the table and opened the kit. Nick pulled both of them close, an arm around each of their shoulders, as it rolled and shook for several noisy seconds. Sherman pressed against Nick’s leg until it passed.

  “That was a good one,” Nick commented as he resumed triage duty without missing another beat. “I’m guessing a 5.2. Maybe 5.3.”

  Annie’s scalp stung, and Nick instinctively leaned toward her and blew on the wound. “This is going to hurt when you wash your hair. Be careful to rinse it clean—and I’d suggest no conditioner or product until it has a chance to heal.”

  She didn’t use gel or mousse and the like, so that wouldn’t propose a problem. But no conditioner? Sudden visions of a small, pale Annie with twice-her-size Diana Ross hair shot across her mind.

  “Listen, I need to run over and check on things at my place,” he told her. “Will you two be all right here for a few minutes?”

  “Certainly,” Gram commented, just as Annie cried, “No!”

  The objection had hurled from somewhere deep inside of her, right out there in the air between them before she knew it.

  She sighed, modulating herself a few octaves softer this time. “Can’t you st
ay with us until the aftershocks settle down?”

  “It could be days before they stop entirely, Annie Gray.”

  “Couldn’t we come with you, then?”

  “Nonsense,” Gram said. “We’ll be just fine here. Well, you and Sherman could go ahead with him while I head down the street to check on Myrtle. I phoned her and she said she was fine, but that woman is a shrinking violet, afraid of her own shadow. I just want to see her with my own eyes.”

  Annie watched Nick as he deliberated. Finally, to her great relief, he asked, “Where’s Sherman’s leash?”

  She pointed to the hook by the back door. The instant Nick’s hand touched it, Sherman rushed toward him, his little paws scampering noisily across the checkerboard floor.

  Sherman had never ridden in an open vehicle before. The closest he’d come, in fact, might have been Zoey’s old Volvo with the sunroof. But any doubts Annie might have had about his safety were quickly alleviated as Nick adeptly converted the leash into a sort of harness and hooked the dog into the seat belt. As they flew along Ocean Avenue, Sherman sat upright on the driver’s side of the backseat, his eyes nearly closed as he leaned forward into the breeze. His long, floppy ears pelted him mercilessly, but he barely seemed to notice.

  Annie twisted her hair into a knot and leaned back against the headrest to hold it in place. Even after a lifetime in California, Annie had never gotten used to earthquakes or how they just appeared out of nowhere, unpredictable and menacing.

  “There’s some sort of something everywhere,” her aunt Henri used to say. “Quakes at your house; tornadoes at mine. When I get to heaven, I think I’ll have a chat with Him about that.”

  Annie wondered if Aunt Henri had gotten a definitive answer yet.

  From the front, Nick’s house looked perfect. Not a flower or a pot out of place. But they walked through the door to find Jenny on her hands and knees in front of the fireplace, sweeping shattered glass into a dustpan and emptying it into the small trash can beside her. The many photos Annie remembered seeing on the mantel were now gone, and glassless frames sat nestled into safe piles on the hearth.

  The moment she saw them, Jenny’s eyes darted to Nick and she burst into tears. He chuckled and invited her into an embrace that she hurried toward. Sherman and Annie just stood there for a minute, feeling conspicuously out of their loop until Nick’s arm twirled back toward her. Stepping forward, Annie joined the circle.

  “My two favorite girls,” Nick muttered. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

  Annie thought it funny how they both seemed to believe him.

  Evan stepped through the open front door, and when Jenny saw him, she raced toward him, hopping into his embrace. Seeing the two of them there like that, Evan holding her like a treasured parcel he’d long-awaited, made Annie’s heart beat double time. At that moment, she realized: Evan is really and truly in love.

  He’d been waiting for Jenny his whole entire life, without ever really knowing it. And now there she was, in his arms, looking for all the world as if she’d just settled into her own proper place. Annie had thought her heart might break over Evan finding with Jenny what he could never seem to find with her, but then she realized that she’d witnessed something amazing, firsthand. Destiny had found its place within unsuspecting lives, right before her eyes.

  Jenny is the right fit for Evan. I never was.

  Whining drew her attention, and Annie scanned the floor for Sherman. He sat regally at Evan’s feet, with not a peep out of him.

  “What is that?” Nick asked.

  “I thought it was Sherman,” Evan chimed in.

  “Where is it coming from?” Jenny inquired.

  Nick made his way toward the kitchen, and they all followed like a funny little parade with Sherman trailing at the end. When he reached it, Nick pulled back the plastic sheeting that curtained the wall he’d already torn down. On the other side, the beautiful wood flooring had collapsed in one spot in front of the window.

  “Oh, Nicky!” Jenny exclaimed. “You were almost finished with securing that floor!”

  “‘Almost’ only counts in horseshoes, I’m afraid,” he countered, hands on hips and feet planted firmly as he surveyed the damage.

  The whining started again, quickly evolving into full-fledged cries, and Nick motioned them back from danger as he crossed the remnant of the open deck and hopped to an exposed beam beneath it.

  Evan held Sherman by the collar as he squirmed, wanting to follow Nick toward the animal trapped beneath him.

  “What in the world are you doing under there?” Nick commented, reaching into the gaping hole in the middle of the collapsed flooring.

  “Nick, what is it?” Annie asked him.

  It took him several tries to get a firm grasp on the animal, but then he lifted something from the opening. Grinning, he held up a wiggling little beagle puppy and suggested, “Sherman’s little brother?”

  He held the dog close to him, stepping from the beam to the flooring and through the plastic curtain. All the while, the beagle squirmed in his arms, yipping as if he’d been mortally injured.

  Sherman whined as Nick set the dog on the floor of the kitchen. “He must have been out there under the deck when the quake knocked that part of the floor down, and then he was trapped.”

  Though barely half his size, Sherman welcomed the newcomer, and they exchanged a low-pitched growling version of the adventures of their day.

  “He’s so cute,” Jenny said. “Can we keep him?”

  “Ah, I’m sure he belongs to someone,” Nick objected. “A neighbor kid or something.”

  “But we can keep him until we find out, right?”

  “Oh, you have to,” Evan added, scooping up the dog from the floor for a quick rub.

  “He can’t be more than a year or two old,” Annie said as Evan set him loose again. Sherman led the way as the beagles romped out of the kitchen, down the hall, and into the living room. “He shouldn’t be outside by himself.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t,” Nick suggested. “Maybe there was damage at his house too, and he got out through a broken window or a fallen door.”

  “What should we do?” Jenny asked.

  “Evan, why don’t we take a walk around the neighborhood and see if anyone is missing their dog?” Nick said. “Jen, I want you to get Annie off her feet. She has a nasty gash on the back of her head and a bump to go with it.”

  Evan looked at Annie, worried. “What happened?”

  “Earthquake,” she told him. “Tossed me around like a rag doll for a minute, but I’ll be fine. Nick took care of it.”

  “You can collapse on the sofa,” Jenny told her. “I’ll make tea.”

  Ah, tea. The whole world’s answer to any trouble that plagues a person. A nice cup of tea and everything is set right.

  “Do you have any Diet Coke?”

  “Are you joking?” Jenny replied with a chuckle. “Artificial sweetener? In my brother’s house?”

  Nick placed both hands on Annie’s shoulders, a serious edge to his gaze. “Sit. Rest. Drink orange spice tea.” Looking to Jenny, he added, “She won’t make it easy on you, but give it your best shot.”

  Nick picked up the newcomer and Evan snapped Sherman’s leash into place at the back of his collar. Watching the four of them walk out the door together amused her somehow, and Annie giggled.

  Jenny brought a tray into the living room a few minutes later, and she placed it on the ottoman and poured two cups from a small ceramic teapot.

  “The kitchen seems okay,” she said. “A few broken glasses.” Dropping a perfect cube of sugar into one of the steaming cups, she said, “I’m glad we get this chance to be alone, Annie.” Annie looked up to find Jenny’s sparkling eyes pressing in on her. “I want to thank you.”

  “Thank me? For what?”

  “For introducing me to Evan,” she replied, and she placed her hand against the center of her chest. “He is the most wonderful man I’ve ever known.”

 
Annie took it all in, mindlessly dissolving the sugar in her tea with a very small spoon.

  “I really think he could be The One.”

  Annie remembered thinking that about Evan once upon a time too.

  “I can just see it so clearly,” Jenny continued, and Annie couldn’t help the surge of envy. The girl seemed to radiate with light as she told her, “I didn’t think I would ever meet someone who would make me feel like this, Annie.”

  “Well, I can certainly see that the two of you are smitten.”

  “I know. I would never have thought I could fall in love so quickly.”

  Fall in love.

  Annie’s pulse kicked it up a notch and began to race, and the bump on the back of her head expanded and contracted with every heartbeat.

  “You’re in love with Evan?”

  “Yes,” she replied. “I’m sure of it. I know I haven’t been in California long enough to call it home, but the really funny thing is that, when I’m with Evan, I just know that’s where I’m supposed to be.”

  Annie considered asking if the emotion was reciprocal, but she realized she didn’t need to ask. She’d just seen Evan’s face while he held Jenny in his arms. He undoubtedly loved her too.

  She thought about all the times she’d wished for that feeling that Jenny described, that contented feeling of home she’d found in Evan, and she remembered Zoey telling her once that the concept of home had nothing much to do with where you lived.

  “Mateo is my home,” Zoey had declared.

  Annie wondered if she would ever find that person, place, or thing to fill the gaping home-shaped hole inside of her.

  The pint-sized dog’s thunderous, bouncing return preceded Nick, Evan, and Sherman, and he skidded to a stop at the end of the sofa.

  “Murphy, come back here,” Evan called from the front door.

  “Murphy?” Jenny repeated, and she shot Annie a wide grin. “He has a name already.”

  “Murphy?” Annie tested, and the little dog cocked his head to one side. He pushed his ears forward until they appeared to be about three sizes too large for his head and caused his brow to furrow comically.

  “How do you know his name is Murphy?” she asked when Nick and Evan entered the living room. “Did you find the owner?”