by Noelle Fox
“Uh…” Why did he care? “Not sure.”
“Okay. Well.” He scratched his head. “Thing is, I’m leading a kayak trip to the caves in the morning. Don’t know if that interests you.”
“Huh. I didn’t see that on the activity sheet.” She would have jumped on it.
“No, see, that’s why I’m here. To tell you about it.”
“Oh.” She didn’t see why he couldn’t have it printed on tomorrow’s schedule, handed out at breakfast or put under people’s door if they weren’t going to the dining room. “Okay.”
“Yeah, see, actually. I was wanting to get the chance to talk to you.”
She stiffened. “About…?”
“Your dad.”
“Oh him.”
“Yeah, well, I’m thinking I might be able to, you know, help you get to know him a little better. Than you do. Now.”
“Ah.” She bit her lip. “And the others on the trip want to get to know him better, too? A Dick Wiggins Kayaking Special?”
He grinned, a sudden wide, toothy smile, gone as soon as it peaked, unexpected and somehow familiar, making him look not creepy at all, but friendly and fun. “Actually it’s kind of a private tour.”
Her left eyebrow traveled up. She tilted her head. “How private?”
“You and me.”
“Uh… Derek…look…”
His face registered alarm. He took a step back, waving his hands. “Oh no. God. No, no. I’m not…that isn’t it at all. I swear.”
Grace believed him instinctively. Huge relief. “Good.”
“Geez. No. Your dad was…he was not always the greatest person. But he grew up pretty good. And I think you should know about that. And maybe why he was so stupid so young.”
She felt unexpectedly emotional, a wave of it that came out of nowhere. “Thanks. Thank you. That’s…really nice of you.”
“Yeah, well, I’m a nice guy.” He rolled his eyes. “Sometimes.”
“So I hear.” She gestured up toward the street. “From Connor.”
“Yeah?” He looked surprised. And like maybe he was trying not to look pleased. “I’ll meet you at Andromeda Rentals tomorrow morning. Early? Late? What’s your preference?”
“How about nine?”
“Perfect. Seeya then.” He grinned. Reached out and punched her shoulder, then reacted by looking crestfallen, as if he’d just realized that was a really dorky thing to do.
“Bye.” She watched him walk down the path, shaking her head.
What kind of weird adventure had she gotten herself into this time?
Chapter 6
Grace closed and locked her door behind her, already fond of the intimate, comfortable cottage. Her life, her business failure, both seemed far away, not only in space but time as well. It was even possible to believe someday she might want to try again, open another restaurant and set herself up for more bitter failure and humiliation.
Oops. Not quite ready yet.
The air was soft, the sky clear, the sea smelled divine. Yesterday’s Day of Sloth had been healing and fabulously self-indulgent, the kind of day she enjoyed pretty much never, given that the life of a chef consisted of long hours on her feet, concentrating intensely. Now she was ready for action. Ready to hear about the father she never knew, though she wasn’t sure how open her mind would be. Derek, being a friend of Dick Wiggins—Ugh, she hated that name—was likely to present a much different picture from her mother’s. The drinker. The cheater. The emotional abuser. The man Mom had escaped from only through planning and cunning, to protect herself and her baby daughter. A noble plan. The part that hadn’t worked out so well was that Mom immediately ran into the arms of another drinker, cheater, abuser, and when that didn’t work out, then another…
Someone had to break the family cycle, and that someone was going to be Grace.
She set out on the path that curved along the harbor toward the kayak rental building, on the opposite side of the cove from the fishing boats and ferry. The more isolated site must have been chosen to protect launching kayakers from competition with motorboats and their wakes.
The day couldn’t be more perfect for boating, tide high, waves lazy and low, breeze gentle. She’d done a fair amount of lake kayaking—enough to be decently confident facing the ocean, but…oceans were bigger. A lot bigger. And deeper. And less predictable. And in this case, a lot colder.
However, she wasn’t going to turn her back on the chance for a day of adventure, even with a guy old enough to be her father, instead of—
Oops.
Instead of whom, Grace? Anyone maybe you had an erotic dream about last night?
Argh. She hated those dreams. Who had injected her brain with fabricated emotions she decidedly didn’t want there? Especially with such realistic and detailed clarity. For example, the image of Connor, not only splendidly naked and sexually, er, adept, but also so sweet and tender…
Grace quickened her stride, arms pumping furiously, adrenaline pushing her nearly to a run. Yeah, she was awake now, thankyouverymuch, and was going to do her best to erase that picture and those emotions from her subconscious or wherever they originated. She’d need absolute objectivity in judging Connor if she spent any more time with him while she was here.
She reached Andromeda Rentals, a one-story yellow building with a concrete platform facing the harbor on which lay rows of colorful kayaks, longer and slimmer than the ones she was used to, with rudders that folded neatly up above their sterns. An aluminum ramp extended from the platform out and down into the water—at low tide it would save boaters a long scramble over the rocky shore carrying heavy equipment. A woman in shorts and a loose T-shirt was stepping between the kayaks, using one of those big puffy natural sponges to clean off whatever flaws she saw. From what Grace could tell as she approached, the boats were gleaming and already spotless.
“Hi.”
“Hey, there.” The woman turned. She was probably about five-two and all of a hundred pounds, with dark eyes, deep golden skin and dark hair up in a careless ponytail. She looked like she belonged on a movie screen, or in a gown and jewels on the arm of a billionaire. “You must be Grace. Welcome to Polaris and Andromeda Rentals. I’m Sofia Martin. You having a good time so far?”
“Yes, thanks.” She was almost used to being recognized. Almost.
“Looks like a good day to go out. Do you have experience kayaking?”
“Lakes only.”
“Uh-huh, okay. It’s not that different. Biggest change will be using your rudder, here.” She gestured to the back of a kayak, her short sleeve exposing the kind of muscle definition Grace would kill for, then she pointed inside the boat. “Foot pedals that control it are here. You push your right foot forward to turn right, push your left foot forward to turn left. You can play around in the cove here until you get it. Not hard. Main thing, in rough weather you want to hug the shore. Water is cold here, and cold water is dangerous unless you get out of it quickly. You can get serious hypothermia in less than an hour. But you won’t have to worry about that today. You’re going with Derek?”
“Yes.” Grace was nearly out of breath from how fast Sofia talked.
“Here he comes. Hey, boss!”
Derek bounding up the steps, looking fit and animated. “Hey, Sofia. Morning, Grace. Ready to go?”
Grace nodded. “I’m just getting some training.”
“Ah.” He waved the idea away. “You don’t need training. Sit and paddle. Easy as pie.”
“Ha. You ever tried to make pie?” Sofia put her hands on her hips, scolding him. “Crust from scratch? On a hot day? Forget it. Nothing easy about that.”
“She’s got a point,” Grace admitted. “The expression should be, ‘Easy as peanut butter sandwich.’”
“Yah, see? She knows. She’s a chef.”
“Okay, okay.” Derek was laughing.
“Like anything, you gotta practice before it’s easy. I’ll get you set up.” Sofia lifted a kayak out of the lineup and
strode with it toward the ramp, walking as smoothly as if she were carrying a cashew.
Grace tried not to gape. The woman had some serious muscle. If she tried that she’d be in bed for a week.
“I’ll get us paddles.” Derek disappeared into the main building and came out with paddles and life jackets, while Sofia set another boat into position at the top of the ramp.
Grace had only gotten into kayaks from nice soft sand at a lake’s edge. She wasn’t sure about this whole shove-you-into-the-water thing, but it turned out to be easy. She was able to climb into the boat while it was stable on the ramp, stow her paddle and, when she felt ready, slide herself and the boat down until the kayak gracefully entered the sea. From there, she retrieved her paddle and was off. Sort of.
Sea kayaks were definitely more tippy than lake kayaks. And until she got the hang of the foot pedals for steering, her boat felt clumsier, less responsive. But it didn’t take more than fifteen minutes of experimentation close to the shore before she took to it.
“Feeling okay now?” Derek asked. “It’s two or three hours to the caves, but I’ve arranged for us to be met and driven back in case we’re not up for a round trip.”
“I’m ready.” She smiled at him. He was not exactly a chatterbox but didn’t seem as shut-down as on their two previous meetings.
“Let’s go!” He pivoted his boat and positioned himself a few feet from hers, heading them toward the other side of the cove, then, she assumed, around the northern end of Polaris Island. She hoped Derek wouldn’t suggest going inside any caves. Grace had trouble not freaking when a walk-in refrigerator door closed behind her. Crawling through a narrow rock passage? Not going to happen.
Lifting her face toward the sun, she paddled blissfully across the harbor, shaking her head at gulls lining the ferry dock as they passed. Why would any bird want to be on land when there was all this wonderful water to play in, and all this fabulous air to float through?
For the next couple of hours they glided smoothly, almost effortlessly on the quiet water along the spectacular thickly wooded island coast, a nearly vertical drop down to the sea in spots, in other places broken up with coves and tiny fjord-like inlets. As they neared the northern end of Polaris, Derek turned suddenly.
“You want me to just tell you about your father or do you want to ask questions?”
Grace jumped, then laughed nervously. “Wow. You get right to the point.”
“It’s what we’re here for.”
“True.” She took a few more strokes, wondering how she wanted him to begin, finding the conversation a bit surreal. Her father was a stranger, but also a blood relative. Somehow she felt she should care more about him. “Why don’t you start with how you met him?”
“How we…met?”
She gave him a worried look. He seemed confused, staring into the distance with a slight scowl. “Yes.”
“We were friends for a long time.”
Grace nodded. “Got that much. How did you meet him?”
“I…lived next door to him. Best friends until forever. Until he died.”
“So you knew my mother, too?”
“Oh. No, not really.”
Grace peeked over at him. That was odd. Did he know her or not? Maybe he had unkind things to say about Mom and wasn’t sure if he should share. Silly dude. He could go right ahead and say whatever he wanted to about her mother, even stuff her dad told him, even if it was horrible. Grace would figure out some way to sink his boat. Couldn’t be that hard. “Go on.”
“Your dad was a good guy. I mean deep down. He had his problems certainly. Everybody does. But he wasn’t all bad.”
“What kind of problems?”
Derek glanced at her, then turned his head deliberately back toward the shore. “Drank too much, for one. Back then anyway.”
“Yup. Knew that.”
“Your mother told you.”
“And plenty more.”
He scowled. “He cut down considerably after she left him.”
“That’s good. It’s not a healthy habit. Doesn’t do much for good communication in a relationship either.” She waited for more, but apart from a grunt of agreement, it seemed he was not going to produce a perfectly narrated A-Z version of her father’s life. What was she supposed to ask about someone she had no memory of? “How did he die? Of what?”
“Oh. Of…bad things.”
She couldn’t believe he’d said that. Was he protecting her or didn’t he know? “Bad things?”
“Heart. A heart attack.”
How hard was it to come up with the phrase ‘heart attack?’ Maybe Derek was getting emotional talking about his friend’s death. “What about the cheating?”
“Cheating?” His kayak pulled ahead, reminding her of her near-sprint to Andromeda Rentals when the memory of her dream about Connor had upset her. “He did not cheat on your mother.”
She dug in her paddle to keep up. “How would you know?”
“He would have told me.”
“Oh what, ‘Hey, Derek, gotta tell you, I’m cheating on my wife and it is spectacular?’ Come on.”
“He didn’t cheat.” Derek set his jaw in a way that clearly told Grace she wasn’t getting anything more on that topic. Probably nice he persisted in believing good about his friend.
“What about the abuse?”
“Abuse? Are you kidding me?” This time he paddled as if he were trying out for the Olympic team.
“Hey.” She couldn’t keep up. “Where are you going?”
Derek stopped paddling, then resumed at a normal pace after she pulled alongside. “Dick Wiggins would never abuse anyone. He was drinking too much, he was young and immature, he ignored your mother’s needs in favor of his own, he did all that. But he did not cheat, and he did not ever lay a hand on her.”
“Emotional abuse, I meant.”
His shoulders jerked and he looked as if he was holding back another angry outburst, but at least he kept his pace reasonable. “Your father’s drinking did not bring out the best in him, I admit. But your mom was expert at pushing his buttons.”
That part Grace believed. She’d lived it herself, many times.
They went on in silence for a bit, close to rounding the tip of the island. The wind had come up some, but she was delighted how stable the kayak was, and how easily it rode the waves. “Mom told me she had to leave him for her and my emotional well-being.”
His snort was loud enough to carry over the ten feet between them. “I’m sure she did.”
“You’re sure she left for her emotional well-being, or sure she’d tell me that?”
“Let’s just say…” He swung his paddle back and forth across the empty horizon looming as they made the turn. “There is plenty of salt in this ocean, which is good because you’d need to take that statement with all of it.”
Grace was about to become supremely pissed off. Both because she didn’t like hearing her mother spoken about so rudely, and because, given her mother, it was entirely possible Derek was right. “You’re saying she lied?”
“Your mother left because she’d—” He stopped suddenly, shaded his eyes and pointed. “Whale.”
Grace’s head jerked around so fast she got a twinge in her neck. “Where? Where?”
“I saw it spout. Look around…there.” He pointed toward the open sea. “Looks like a little puff of fog.”
Grace peered intently. “I don’t see—Oh, my God! There it is! I saw it! A whale!”
“First one?”
“Yes!” She laughed in sheer delight, did a little back and forth butt-wiggling dance and nearly tipped over. “Look, there it goes again!”
“If we’re lucky we’ll see more of it soon.”
“Can we get closer?” She was already increasing her speed toward it. This was so thrilling!
“We can try.”
“While we’re trying, will you still tell me why my mother left Dick?”
She cringed immediately. Her poor father. He
could not have a worse name.
Derek joined her, paddling hard out into open water. Unfortunately, as soon as they got going, the wind became significantly stronger, with occasional gusts that took a lot of work to get through. “Your mother left because she met someone else.”
Grace forgot the whale, the wind and the waves. She stopped paddling in shock, and immediately started drifting backwards when a big blow hit. “What?”
“Your dad came home from work one day and his wife and baby daughter were gone.”
“That’s bullshit.” She was breathing hard, but not just from the extra work the wind was making for them. His words had produced a burst of rage she could barely control.
Derek bunched his mouth, looking dark and angry, too, almost scarily so. “I’ve never seen him like that. It was as if someone had gutted him with a dull spoon.”
“Ew. That’s disgusting.” But effective. Except that it only made her more livid. “My mother did not cheat on my father.”
The second the words flew out of her mouth, she felt sick. Her mother cheated on every husband. Katherine Janowicz, who had once been Katherine Brown, and before that Katherine Taft, and before that Katherine Cooper—either she never changed her maiden name for Wiggins, or she never admitted it to Grace—left every husband for another man. Why would Dick Wiggins get special treatment?
Grace wanted to dive into the water and never come up.
“It’s not bullshit, Grace.” Derek had to raise his voice to be heard over the wind. “Your mom met whatsisname at a bar, where she’d gone with friends. She could drink pretty handily herself.”
That was true, but Grace was furious enough she wasn’t going to say so. In fact she wasn’t going to say anything. Everything inside her hurt right now.
“She married him. Mr. Whatsisname. I’m telling you the truth, Grace.”
Grace watched a wave break over the bow of her kayak, too shattered to be concerned. She didn’t like this story. But she hadn’t liked the one about her father being a total jerk either. In a flash she thought of the situation between her and Connor. Also ancient history, but apparently more complicated than it first appeared.
