Fox Island (11 page)

“We try to slip unobtrusively into some
little out-of-the-way spot for a summer of research and writing,
then we get tied up in the lives of the people there.”

“Maybe that’s part of the Lord’s plan for
us. How do you think I would look with earrings like Melody’s?”

“Gorgeous.”

“You say that about everything I wear.”

“It’s true. I married a beautiful
woman.”

“And I married a man with poor
eyesight.”

“Are we going to continue this ridiculous
conversation or get to work?”

“You’ve got a book to write.”

“I’ve got a book to write every day of my
life.”

“Shadowbrook, are you bragging or
complaining?”

“Did I ever tell you your eyes sparkle when
you go authoritarian?”

“I know, I’m gorgeous.” Price raised her
eyebrows in the semblance of a young Lauren Bacall imitation, then
strutted back to her desk.

Mid-aftemoon Price heard a shout from the
deck. She looked in time to see Tony clutch his head with both
hands. “What’s wrong?” she called out.

“I can’t believe it!”

“Are you all right?”

“No, I’m not all right. This laptop just ate
chapter four.”

Oh, good. “How terrible. How much did you
lose?”

“The whole chapter. Why in the world did we
ever start using computers? I don’t have time for this.”

“Did you check your backup files?”

“I can’t find any backup files.”

“Maybe there was a power surge.”

“I’d like to power surge Bill Gates, that’s
what I’d like to do.”

“Hey, here’s chapter four on a backup
disk.”

Tony groaned. “But I’ve lost the last six
hours of editing. This can’t be happening. I don’t need this.”

“Where’s the manual?”

“In Scottsdale.”

Price scooted a metal chair close to him.
“Let me look at it.” While Tony prowled back and forth on the deck,
Price punched the keys of the laptop.

“There it is,” she shouted.

He leaned over her shoulder. “You got it
back?”

“Look. On the auxiliary file. Isn’t that the
backup document?”

“What’s it doing over there?”

“Nothing. I can’t bring it up.”

“What?”

“I’ve got it listed, but it won’t come up on
screen. Maybe you can print it out.”

“Great, just great! I’ll have to punch it
all back in again.”

“Why don’t you call tech support?”

“Oh, sure, and get stuck on hold for
hours?”

“What choices do you have?”

“Yo, Dudes! Can you lead me to Melody?”

Tony and Price spun around. A huge man with
shaggy, full, tightly curling black beard, wild flying hair, and a
black leather jacket flung across one shoulder bulged through the
sliding glass door. “I’m lookin’ for my woman. Does my Melody Tunes
still shack up here?”

“You mean, Melody Mason?” Price eyed the
man’s massive arms.

“Yeah. Where is she?”

“We’re renting her house for the
season.”

“Now, ain’t that a bummer? Where did that
little spitfire move to?”

“Why don’t you leave your name and number?
We’ll have her call you when she gets back,” Tony offered.

“So, she does live here?”

“In the garage apartment, but she’s gone for
the day.”

“Cool. I’ll wait.” The man lumbered across
the living room and plunked deep into the sofa. “You got anything
to eat?”

Price and Tony looked at each other.

“Look, mister,” Tony began.

“Everyone calls me Stud.”

“If you want to wait for Melody, that’s up
to you. But she might be gone quite a while. And we’ve got work to
do, so you aren’t waiting for her in our living room. You can park
yourself out on the road by the driveway, or you can give us your
phone number and I’ll have her call you.”

His burly face cowered like a massive
wounded dog as he pulled himself off the couch. “Talk about lacking
the gift of hospitality.” He rolled to his full six-foot-six frame
and stumped toward Tony who backed onto the deck and against the
railing. The man stopped midstride. “I think I’ll cruise around the
Island. Is Melody Tunes still driving that green VW bus?”

“Eh, yes.”

“If I miss her, tell her I was looking for
her.” He glanced down at the laptop and peered closer. “Looks like
your Toshiba Turbo 75 is locked up.”

“Well ... yes. Something like that.”

He held down two buttons with his left hand
and punched two others with his right. “Hey, there you go. Chapter
four.”

Price and Tony gawked in amazement.

“How did you do that?” Tony sputtered.

“Fifteen years with Microsoft taught me a
little bit. Retired on my thirty-fifth birthday. Shoot, how much
money does any one human need?”

Price studied the screen. “What did you
do?”

“Nothin’ to it. Here, I’ll show you.” He
took Price’s left hand in his and placed her fingers on the
keyboard. Then he reached around her shoulder with his right hand
and placed those on the laptop, still holding both hands. He caged
her like a helpless puppy in one smooth movement.

“You can show me.” Tony yanked the man away
from Price. “It’s my computer. I really ought to be the one who
learns.”

“My, he’s a bit insecure, isn’t he?” the big
man roared. “That’s what you get for marrying such a foxy younger
woman.” He backed away from Price, gave her a wink, led Tony
through the steps, then turned to the house.

“You’re leaving now?” Tony asked.

“Yep, just need to pick up my helmet. Tell
Melody Tunes I’ll catch her later. Say, did she ever tell you about
the time we took my Harley to Alaska?”

“Eh, no, she didn’t.”

“Well, come to think about it, maybe it
wasn’t her. Don’t tell her I said that.”

“We won’t.” As soon as the man was safely
out in the carport, Tony added, “Thanks a lot for the computer
help.”

He nodded. “Is Captain Renfold still at the
Acoustic Lab?”

“We haven’t met anyone down there yet.”

“Think I’ll go swap lies with the navy. I
built ’em a system once and they never used it. Didn’t employ
enough of their appropriations.” The roar from the motorcycle
deafened the air.

“Did some biker just appear at our house and
fix my computer?” Tony asked when the noise subsided.

“How in the world did we not hear him drive
up?”

“Next summer, we definitely need a house
with more privacy.”

“I don’t know. If we get too remote, who
will fix your computer?” Price’s blue eyes danced, a teasing,
well-aimed dance, a dance learned through nearly thirty years of
learning each other’s rhythms.

Sunset splashed with washed orange and
bright pink from the Olympics to McNeil Island when Tony lugged the
research papers and computer into the house. Price leaned over the
sink, peeling crisp, small cucumbers. “You going to call our oldest
child tonight?”

“Yeah, I’ll ask him to drive down next
weekend and help Kit find a home for that calf. Kathy said the
flowerbed’s about eaten up and the backyard’s drawing
horseflies.”

Price lowered her voice. “I think I hear
Melody. Shall I invite her in for supper?”

“Depends. Is she alone, or is Goliath with
her?”

“She’s alone.”

“Sure, invite her. I’ll call Mark from the
bedroom.”

Tony returned to find Price and Melody
huddled at the kitchen counter. Their faces glowed like sisters
sharing a secret.

“I hear you met Kenny,” Melody blurted
out.

“Who?”

“The Stud? That’s Kenny Mallard.”

“So you do know him?”

“He’s a jerk. He’s only got one thing on his
mind.”

Tony raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Yeah, computers. What a bore.”

“He helped me out,” Tony admitted.

“How were Mark and Amanda?” Price
inquired.

“The internship’s going good, but Amanda was
a little sick last week. She had to miss work and take some IV
fluids. Everything’s OK now. Mark said they’d drive down Saturday
and check on the girls.”

“Good. We’d better let Kathy know her
brother’s coming.” Tony piled a clear glass dinner plate high with
shrimp salad and Roquefort dressing and sat down next to Price.
“How’s your grandmother, Melody?”

“Still out in La-La Land. See, it all
started the other day when I told her about this Bennington guy
stopping by to look for Auntie Jill.”

“I didn’t know you told her about that. Did
she get angry, like he said she would?”

“No, she just sort of froze up. She didn’t
want to talk about it. She mumbled something about it being ‘too
late now,’ and has hardly said a word since. The psychologist
wanted to know all about Bennington. She thinks it might be helpful
for Grandma Jessie to face him.”

“We’re about a week late for that. I’m sure
he’s back home in Chestertown, Maryland, by now.”

“Is that where he lives?”

“That’s what he said.”

“Maybe we could call him up?” Melody
suggested.

“We?”

“I mean, maybe I could call him. Perhaps
he’ll be out this way again. I sure hate seeing Grandma Jessie the
way she is now.”

Price spread poppy-seed dressing on her
salad and buttered a croissant, then sliced it in half and handed
it to Melody. “I don’t think it would hurt to call. The worst that
can happen is you get some more material for your story.”

“Oh, man, this new story is so cool. You two
are really going to love this one. No fooling. It will knock your
socks off. Wait until you read the opening line. But Pm not going
to tell you any more. It’s a surprise.”

Tony glanced at Price and rolled his
eyes.

Chapter 5

In the late nineteenth century, the
isolation of Fox Island forced the residents to live
self-sufficiently. They cleared the land of evergreen trees and
stumps that blanketed every knoll, plain, and draw. This
back-breaking task readied the soil for fruit trees, berry patches,
and vegetable gardens. To supplement the diet of salmon and clams
dug at low tide, most every family raised chickens, milk cows, or
rabbits. Diversity was the key to survival.

It still is.

“It’s way too cluttered, that’s all,” Tony
insisted.

Price pulled her hair back into a large
comb. Her prescription computer glasses dropped to her chest, held
by the Navajo beaded strap around her neck. She rubbed her neck
muscles, yawned, and glanced around the room. “What’s too
cluttered?”

Tony eased beside her on the blue-flowered
couch, then yanked out several throw pillows lodged in the small of
his back. “Chapter five, of course. That’s what I’ve been
reading.”

“Do you mean parts of it, or the whole
thing?” The soft wave of her hair emphasized her raised
eyebrows.

“Well, in the first place, it’s twenty-nine
pages long. We need to cut it to twenty-five pages. Here, I’ve
redlined some things I think we can delete.”

Price pulled the pages out of his hand and
flipped through them. “What is this?” She sat straight and tall on
the full base of her authority as a seasoned university
professor.

Tony Shadowbrook cradled his stocking feet
into her lap. “You’ll have to admit there is such a thing as too
much detail. Didn’t we talk that through last summer in Utah?”

Price squeezed out from under his legs and
stood to gaze out the living room window. A lone sailboat gently
bobbed in the waters in the distance. “I do remember a very heated
discussion.”

“And what was our conclusion? That we would
jam in all the details, then thin it out a tad to make sure the
material still retained its crispness.”

Price leaned against the windowsill and
tucked a hand under her chin. She brushed her lips and noticed they
were chapped again. “I recall that it concluded in your buying me
those cloisonné earrings and a dozen roses.”

A grin broke across Tony’s face, then
receded as quickly as the tide. “Yeah, well, that’s what I did in
chapter five... I thinned it out a tad.”

“A tad? In places you clear-cut it. If it
were a forest, it would be an environmental disaster.”

“But it’s right at twenty-five pages, and I
believe it reads pretty good.”

She spread the twenty-five double-spaced
typed pages in a fan on his legs, still sprawled full length on the
couch. “Why was all the ‘thinning’ done on the part I wrote?”

“That’s not true. I didn’t even consider who
wrote the original. If it needed to be chopped, I chopped it.”

“I find it rather amazing that it’s always
my additions that need to be deleted.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Look... look... right here on page 123. See? I was describing the
difference be¬tween loganberries, blackberries and boysenberries.
But it’s not needed, so out it went.”

“Show me one other place.”

“What?”

“Where’s one other place in the chapter
where you removed your own work?”

Tony shuffled through the pages. “Here! How
about this? ‘The pink cotton candy newborn clouds hung like wash on
the baby blue sky.’ I took that out too.”

“That was my line.”

“It was?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. Well, I’m sure there’s more.” Tony
sorted through the chapter, then began again.

“Good morning, Shadowbrooks. I’m headed for
Mom’s to make some phone calls. Need anything from the store?”
Melody swung into the room, her teeth shining whiter than ever.

“Not really, thanks.” Price dropped into the
navy side chair. She ran her finger over the glass ginger jar front
of the lamp stuffed with shells and starfish and traced the
scalloped shells motif on the footed resin base.

She told Tony four years ago he wasn’t the
kind to co-write anything. She knew this would happen again. And
they had five more summers of this? They couldn’t even fight in
peace. Next year, no kids. No house guests. No interruptions. Just
the two of them, slugging it out.