Sunshine Cottage

by Barbara Cool Lee

  She could feel her pulse begin to slow down, until she eventually began to feel more exhausted than shaky.

  "Man, I could use a cup of coffee," Logan finally said.

  She smiled wanly.

  "Hold on," he said, and headed to the kitchen.

  She looked at the tiles of Logan's mother surrounding the fireplace. He was her son, there was no doubt. He belonged to this world of sunshine and good health and happy places. Not the darkness that had just touched them, the darkness that felt too familiar to her.

  When he came back with two mugs of steaming java, she wondered what to say after how she'd behaved out there. But after handing her a mug and going back to his chair behind the desk, he was the one who started talking.

  "You are amazing," he said, lifting his mug in a salute to her from across the desk. "I've had the training, but you acted like it was second nature. How did you know what to do?"

  She wondered exactly how much truth to tell him. Then she just blurted out: "My mother is an addict. I've done it for her twice."

  "Twice? I'm so sorry."

  She shrugged. "I've never really known her to be sober. It was alcohol or drugs ever since I was small. My father always handled her."

  "You said that he passed away. What happened?"

  Arrests. Prison. Death alone in a cell. She said aloud, "he had a heart attack."

  "How terrible. He must have been young."

  "Only thirty-two," she said, not bothering to explain how the long-term drug use and terrible prison conditions probably killed him as much as any heart condition. "So when he was gone, I had to learn how to help my mother."

  "How old were you?"

  "Seventeen."

  He looked down at his coffee. "At seventeen I was dreaming of a baseball career. I'm sorry you had to go through that. So who is taking care of her now?"

  She felt herself begin to tear up and cleared her throat to ward it off. "My older sister. But she's not—" She wondered how to explain the world she came from. "My sister's not a lot of help."

  "I'm sorry," he said again.

  Teresa took a swig of the coffee. "Don't be. It's just life. That's how things go." She said it briskly, and then, looking at his expression, realized she must sound completely unlike the sweet teacher she was supposed to be.

  She shrugged, wondering how to get out of the conversation, to steer it back to some neutral territory where her true nature as a hard-edged, world-weary hooker wouldn't show so much.

  But he said, "you've had to be really strong, haven't you?"

  "I guess."

  "The way you took charge out there—it was really impressive. I've had the training classes, but I've never had to actually use what I learned. You're tough."

  "That's me," she said acerbically. "A real tough cookie."

  "I admire that."

  "You think it's admirable?"

  "That you're able to still be so caring. You still see the good in people after what you've experienced."

  She didn't dare tell him that the Hooker With A Heart Of Gold was a cliché out of a book.

  "You make me feel very spoiled."

  "Spoiled?"

  "To have lived a pretty uneventful life. The worst thing that ever happened to me is blowing out my knee and ending my dreams of big-league baseball. Seems pretty silly by comparison."

  She had thought that about him just yesterday, but realized it was unfair. "Didn't you say you majored in social work after you couldn't play?"

  "Yeah. I had to do something."

  "Why not business? Or computer programming? Why social work?"

  "Because I wanted to help people." He chuckled. "I sound like a cliché."

  Not as much as I do, she thought.

  "Everyone has to play the hand they're dealt," she said. "You're trying to help these kids. I find that admirable." She raised her coffee mug in a salute like the one he'd given her.

  But he didn't smile back. "Trying and failing. What if I drove him to this? I always believed in second chances, and then I didn't give him that chance."

  "Don't think that!" She reached across the desk to take his hand. "There's always a chance to start over."

  "If he lives, maybe."

  "Yes," she said. "But I was talking about you."

  "Me?" He pulled his hand away and ran it through his hair. "It's not about me."

  "Sure it is. Not being an expert is no excuse for giving up. If you want to teach these kids to believe in second chances, then how dare you give up? How can you look at your life, with all your benefits and opportunities, and decide that you will just throw up your hands and stop trying? Don't you dare be less brave than these kids."

  He put his head down. "I don't know…."

  "A friend of mine told me that you can't fix someone who doesn't want help. You can just be there for them, and hope they are able to save themselves. That's all we can do."

  "But that's easy for you. I don't have a clue what I'm doing here. And after this…."

  "Don't you dare feel sorry for yourself, Logan. Don't you dare think that you should give up before you even try. These kids need you."

  "But I can't help them. I don't know anything."

  "Then start there. Start by admitting you don't know anything. Listen to them. Learn from them. See if you can find a way to take all that good stuff your parents taught you and pass it on to these kids." She sat back in her chair. "Do you realize that many of them have never had a good man talk to them? Ever. You are a good man. Don't you dare decide they aren't worth fighting for. If you give up, with everything you have going for you, where does that leave us? If you can't pull through, how can we?"

  He lifted his head. He had tears in his eyes, but he smiled at her. "You're a very special person, Teri Forest."

  Teri Forest. She was Teri Forest to him. "Yeah," she said. "I'm special. Now let's get to work, okay?"

  Chapter Twelve

  Teresa left the office and almost ran right into Pamela in the hall. The strain on her face must have still been obvious, because the older woman grabbed her by the arm with a surprisingly firm grip.

  "What's wrong?" she asked. "What happened? Are you okay?"

  Teresa shook her head and Pamela let go of her arm. "Yeah. I'm fine. We just had a bit of a scare and I guess I'm still recovering from it."

  She explained about Austin, and Pamela looked sad. "That's too bad," she said. "No, I didn't hear him playing guitar, but this is only my second time coming in to teach."

  Then she looked Teresa over with a keen expression. "This has really upset you."

  Teresa nodded. "I just… I have seen this kind of thing before. It brought it all back."

  Logan came out of his office and joined them.

  "I'm so sorry," Pamela said. Then she smiled. "So tell me about your breakfast."

  "My breakfast?" she said, totally lost.

  "I had steel cut oatmeal with sliced bananas," she said brightly.

  She turned expectantly to Logan, and he said, "cereal. This time with milk."

  "You're not getting into the spirit of the thing," Pamela scolded. "You'll never win the best breakfast prize that way."

  "What can I say? I'm boring."

  They both turned to Teresa. "Breakfast burrito from Santos' Market," she said, trying her best to let them jolly her out of her funk. "With chorizo and chopped onions inside. It was pretty good."

  "I think you win," Pamela said. She patted Teresa on the back.

  "Not so fast," said the handyman.

  They all turned. He was wiping off a wrench with a dirty rag, and he pursed his lips and gazed up at the ceiling. "Omelet," he said reverently. "With Monterey Jack cheese, mushrooms, and avocado. Applewood smoked sausage and a buttermilk biscuit on the side."

  "Wow," Pamela said.

  "And coffee," he added.

  "All right," Teresa said. "You beat us again. But tomorrow we'll get even."

  "That a girl," Pamela said, and patted her on the back again.<
br />
  After her first appointment (a woman hoping to improve her reading skill so she could help her son with his homework), she headed back downstairs to Logan's office.

  "I need to run down to the market for a minute, if that's okay," she told him.

  "Sure," he said. "Is there any problem?"

  "No. Just need to use their pay phone to make a call. I'll be right back."

  "Use my phone for your call," he said. He stood up and gestured to his desk. "Take as long as you want."

  He left the office and closed the door.

  She sat in the quiet den with the dark walls and sunny fireplace and the light streaming in the windows and made the collect call to Sacramento PD.

  When Detective Graham came on the line he sounded stressed. "Are you okay?"

  "Yes, I'm fine," she said. "I'm sorry to bother you."

  "Don't be sorry. I just heard from Ryan. He said you saved a kid's life this morning."

  "Well, I wouldn't put it that way. But…it was an OD. Did he tell you that?"

  "Yup. And I just got off the phone with a patrol unit. Your mother and sister are fine. Your mother was sitting on the front steps smoking when he drove by."

  She leaned back in the desk chair and stared up at the deer heads. They glared down at her reproachfully. "You knew I was going to call."

  "I figured you would be thinking about your mom. If I didn't hear from you, I would've called you at work. But I'm glad you got in touch with me first. I wasn't sure how I was going to convince your boss I was your girlfriend Sandra."

  She chuckled, then asked again, "you're sure she's okay?"

  "I'm sure they were both fine an hour ago." He hesitated. "Listen, kid…." He let it trail off.

  "What? What do you want to say?"

  She heard a heavy sigh over the phone line. "One of these days she won't be. Word on the street is she's scoring fentanyl like it's powdered sugar."

  The tears stung at her eyes and she brushed them away angrily. "I should come back. Maybe I can stop her."

  "No. You shouldn't come back. You couldn't stop her when you were here before. You can't do it now."

  They had talked about it so many times. All the months she was in the safe house she had fussed over her mother, wondering how things were going at home. And Detective Graham would talk her into staying by having the cops drive by, or do a welfare check, or send an undercover cop to knock on the door pretending to be a salesman. "But you can't keep doing this to yourself," he would say. "You can't fix someone who doesn't want to be fixed. You can't save your mother from herself."

  "I have to try," she whispered into the phone.

  "This boy," Detective Graham said. "This one you saved. Do you think he'll make it?"

  "I don't know," she said. "He's alive. But he has to stop using. I can't be there 24/7."

  "No," he said pointedly. "You can't. Not for him. Not for your mother. Not for anyone. It has to come from them."

  "You can't fix someone who doesn't want help," she whispered. "I get it."

  After hanging up the phone she headed upstairs. Rationally, she knew Detective Graham was right. She couldn't fix her mom. She couldn't fix Austin, either. She couldn't force anyone to take care of themselves if they didn't want to.

  At least her sister could watch her mom. She wasn't much help, and was a user, too. But at least it wasn't like Austin, ODing under a tree with no one who cared for him, no one he cared about.

  She froze, one foot poised on the next step. She turned and ran back down to Logan's office.

  "Alastor!" she said when she burst in the door.

  "Alastor?" he asked. He looked up from a spreadsheet.

  "Alastor is Austin's dog. He told me about him. Where is he?"

  Logan shrugged. "I have no idea. I never saw him with a dog—wait a minute." He stood up from the desk. "When he was busking at the wharf, there was an old dog wandering around nearby."

  "What did it look like?" she asked.

  He shrugged again. "I didn't really notice. I figured it belonged to one of the guys fishing off the pier. It was just a big old black dog. It had only one eye. That's the only reason I even remember it."

  "That's Alastor! The wharf, huh?" She headed for the door.

  "Wait, Teri!" He came after her. "That was a couple of days ago. And I checked the wharf for Austin last night. There was no one around—not even the dog."

  "Oh, yeah."

  "If he still has the dog, it would be at his camp, probably."

  "The homeless camp down by the railroad tracks?" she asked. "Where is that?"

  "Oh, no," he said firmly. "You aren't going down there. That's not the kind of place for someone like you."

  Right. Someone like her. She glared at him, annoyed that he had such a distorted view of her, then realized that of course he did. She was the one who had given him that view.

  "I'll be fine," she said more calmly. "I only have one more student late this afternoon, so I'll find the dog and be back in plenty of time."

  "Hold on a minute and I'll go with you," he said. He went back in his office, grabbed his keys and phone, then went to the office manager and told her where they were going.

  Then they headed out. "I can't let you go by yourself. You'll be safer with me," he said.

  She didn't dare tell him that she had known men far worse than anybody hanging out at a homeless camp. "Just hurry," she said.

  The place was just as dismal as Logan had always imagined it would be.

  After they parked his car on the turnout at the nearest road, they scrambled down a long hill to the abandoned railroad right of way. They found an appalling number of people there. At least twenty, all shapes and sizes and ages.

  Most looked like drunks, or addicts. There were some who were obviously mentally ill, muttering to themselves.

  This was where so many of the more grungy looking people who'd been visiting the community center came from.

  Fearlessly, Teri just walked up to the nearest person and started asking about Austin.

  When the first man shook his head, she thanked him and went to the next.

  He admired her bravery. He'd been noticing that quality in her: the way she'd choose to do something and then just go for it. He was like that himself, in some ways.

  When it came to playing sports, or going to school, or looking for a job, he was willing to put himself out there.

  But he had learned in these last couple of months that he'd never really been challenged. He had never faced a place like this, or people who were cynical and suspicious.

  It didn't seem to bother her. She just went for it.

  Another reason to like her.

  She asked a fourth person her questions, and must have finally gotten the right answer because she turned back toward Logan and gave him a big thumbs up and a smile.

  He didn't need any more reasons to like her. He was already falling for her, even though it had only been a couple of days.

  He followed where she was going, heading out into a little tree-filled area away from the main camp.

  They walked for a while. She noticed Logan was pretty quiet. "The guy said he was living in a tree somewhere up this path," she explained.

  "In a tree?"

  "That's what he said."

  The kept walking, and his hand reached out for hers. She took it, and noticed how holding hands just kept happening to them, every time they were near each other.

  "Why do these people do this to themselves?" he said, and she heard his disgust.

  "Because they've given up all hope," she said. She took her hand away and kept walking.

  They heard a bark, off to the left.

  Logan took off at a run, outpacing her.

  When she came to the spot, Logan was on his knees, and the dog was licking his face. "Hey, old fellow," he said, hugging the big dog close. He laughed when Alastor put his paws up on him, and Teresa felt her heart melt. She wished she didn't like this guy so much. He was totally clueless
about life outside his safe little small town. He was absolutely the wrong person for her, and he would never understand her life or her choices. He would never like her—the real her—if she ever showed him who she really was.

  But then Alastor rolled over on his back and Logan bent down to give him a belly rub, and the sun peeking through the tree branches glinted Logan's hair, and he oohed and awed over this horribly ugly old dog and told him what a wonderful boy he was, and her heart melted, and she went over to help him gather up Austin's things.

  Austin's little camp was in the hollowed-out trunk of a dead redwood tree. He had made himself a little nest there out of sleeping bags and blankets and a tarp. There were two of the Santos' Market doughnut boxes, empty, and a chipped enamel bowl with some dirty water in it.

  They carefully gathered all his special possessions: his beautiful guitar in its battered case, a single worn-out change of clothes, and a little wooden box.

  Logan opened the box. Inside were a few concert tickets from several years ago, along with a couple of photographs of Austin as a child riding a bike. There were some guitar picks, and a pretty piece of amber with an ant embedded inside, and three marbles.

  "Two cats eyes and a steelie," Logan said softly.

  Teresa noticed a tear running down his cheek.

  "He was just a boy," Logan whispered. "Just a boy who got lost."

  Teresa rubbed his back. "Yeah."

  Alastor walked back to the car with them. He was a gray-muzzled black lab mix with the famous one eye, and quite a few old scars. He had a bad limp, but gamely followed wherever these new people were leading him.

  "He must be hungry," Logan said. "I wonder what Austin was feeding him."

  "Didn't you notice the boxes?" she said. "He's been eating doughnuts."

  "I was wondering where all the doughnuts at the community center were going. Austin must have been taking extras back to camp for the dog."

  "He was shorting himself to feed the dog," she said. She reached down to pat Alastor on the head.

  When they got to Austin's car they had to help Alastor into the back seat.