Kiss River (15 page)

O
n Sunday morning, Gina found herself entertaining Henry Hazelwood in Shorty’s back room. She visited with him any chance she got in between waiting on her customers. The back room was crowded, as usual, but Walter and Brian had not yet arrived and Henry sat alone at the chess table, in his white shirt and dark tie, his hat in his lap. She bought him a paper so he’d have something to do.

“This happens every Sunday,” he said to her as she poured his coffee. “They come late, I come early. And Clay’s picking me up at noon so’s we can get my groceries, so I’ll probably miss them altogether today.”

He looked so glum at the thought that she leaned over to give him a hug. She gave him her pencil to use on the crossword puzzle and brought him a piece of lemon meringue pie on the house, and he seemed grateful for her attention.

Clay arrived at noon to pick him up. Gina was balancing a stack of dirty dishes up the length of one arm when she spotted
him, but she managed to catch up to him as he walked toward the back room.

“He’s been alone in there all morning,” she said. The scent of fish was strong in the air where they were standing, and Gina wasn’t sure if it was coming from the kitchen or the group of fishermen sitting at the counter. “Walter and Brian haven’t gotten here yet and he misses seeing them. Any chance you can bring him back later?”

Clay smiled at her. “You’re a soft touch,” he said.

“If you can’t, maybe I could pick him up and bring him back here when I’m done with my shift.”

He shook his head. “I’ll bring him back after we drop off his groceries and I fix his railing,” he said. “Thanks for caring, Gina.”

A little more than an hour later, Lacey arrived at Shorty’s, and Gina remembered that today was the drawing for the raffle. Lacey disappeared into the kitchen, carrying the huge glass jar that had been gathering bills on the counter next to the cash register. When she appeared again, she was holding a thick envelope and a box filled with the raffle tickets.

Nearly everyone at Shorty’s had put money into that jar, and they watched with interest as Lacey and Frankie stood near the cash register, ready to pick a winner from the box of tickets. Gina leaned against the doorway leading into the back room, while Frankie drew a name from the box.

“And the winner is…” Frankie said dramatically as she looked at the ticket. She broke into a smile, her gaze shifting from the ticket to Gina. “Gina Higgins!”

Gina sucked in her breath, then laughed. People applauded, especially those regulars who had gotten to know her in the five days since she’d started working there. She walked toward the center of the room, where Lacey gave her a hug as she handed the fat envelope to her.

“Half the take,” Lacey said. “Four hundred and ten dollars.”

“Thank you
so
much.” Gina slipped the envelope into the deep front pocket of her apron. She could get the air conditioner in her car fixed and maybe have that rattle looked at. If she had anything left over, she would treat her landlords to dinner out.

She was just finishing her shift when Walter Liscott and Brian Cass arrived, coming in through the kitchen door as they always
did, since that was where Clay had built the ramp for Walter’s wheelchair. Walter wheeled himself through the crowded main room, declining Gina’s offer to push him. The decoy in his lap was finished, and Gina took a moment to admire the realistic paint job.

“Our Gina won the fifty-fifty raffle,” Frankie said to the two men as they passed the cash register, and Gina felt herself glow, not over winning the raffle, but over being referred to as “our Gina.” She pressed her hand against the overstuffed envelope through the cloth of her apron.

“Hey, that’s great!” Walter said, twisting in his chair to look up at her. “Are you going to buy the first round?” he joked.

“Gee, I would,” she teased back, “but my shift is over and I’m leaving.”

“You can’t leave yet, girlie,” Brian said, “’cause we got some other good news for you.”

“Her name is Gina,” Walter said with annoyance. “Is Henry here?”

“He was here this morning, and Clay’s bringing him back soon.” She looked at Brian. “What good news?” she asked.

“Don’t tell her till we get to the back room,” Walter said, pumping furiously at the wheels of his chair.

She followed the two men and sat down with them at the chessboard.

“Congratulations!”

She turned to see Brock Jensen at the pool table. He waved one tattooed arm at her. “I hear you were the big winner,” he said.

“Yes, thanks.” She smiled, although she never felt completely comfortable around Brock. She didn’t understand why anyone would want his body covered in ink.

“Here’s the news.” Walter set the beautiful decoy next to the chessboard and leaned toward her across the table. “You’re meeting with Alec tomorrow, right?”

“That’s right.” She was nervous about the lunch date with her nemesis.

“So, Brian and I have been thinking how you could persuade him. And Brian made a phone call down to the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum in Hatt’ras, and they want it. The lens. I know
you were hoping to keep it up north here, but we thought it best you find a home for it quick as you could so you’d have some ammunition to use with Alec.”

“They’d display it?” she asked.

“Right. Of course, there’s nothing in writing or anything yet, but they said they’d be thrilled to have the lens. They have the space for it, too.”

“This
is
good news,” she said.

“You still probably want to see if there’s a place for it up here,” Brian said, “but at least now you can tell Alec it has a home.”

“And tell him he won’t have to do a damn thing,” Walter said. “Won’t have to lift a finger. You and me and Brian can take care of everything.”

“He doesn’t even need to know when it’s happening if he doesn’t want to,” Brian said.

“You guys are great,” Gina said. “I appreciate your help so much.” She stood up, anxious to use the ladies’ room before taking off. “I’ll let you know how it goes,” she said.

She had finished in the ladies’ room and was walking back down the long, narrow hallway toward the restaurant when Brock Jensen came racing around the corner. Before Gina could get out of his way, he crashed into her. She fell to the floor hard with Brock nearly on top of her.

“Oh, shit!” he said, slowly raising his body from hers to sit with his back against the wall. “Are you all right?”

She wasn’t sure she
was
all right. She was lying on the floor on her side, and she stayed that way for a moment as she tried out her wrists and elbows and ankles and knees. Her ankle hurt, but only a bit.

“I think so,” she said.

“I’m so sorry.” He had his hand on her arm, trying to help her up. “I had to pee and that was the only thing on my mind.”

She was able to smile at him despite her annoyance. “I know the feeling.” She stood up, leaning against his tattooed arm. “I’m fine,” she said. “Just had the wind knocked out of me for a minute, I think.”

He peered into her face. “You’re sure?”

She nodded. “Yeah, I’m okay.” She motioned down the hallway toward the men’s room. “Go ahead,” she said.

She walked carefully through the restaurant and out to her car, testing her sore ankle, still amazed that she’d broken nothing in that wild collision. She was absolutely fine. It wasn’t until she had pulled out of the parking lot that she touched the pocket of her apron again. The money! Swerving to the side of the beach road, she stopped the car. She took off her apron and felt in the pocket again, as if she could possibly have missed that bloated envelope. There were dollar bills in the pocket, and coins, but they were her tips. The envelope was gone.

Quickly, she drove back to Shorty’s and ran inside to the hallway where she’d fallen. The wooden floor was hardly clean, but it was bare. The envelope was not there. In the ladies’ room, she searched the stall she’d used and the grimy floor beneath the sink, as well as the small plastic garbage can.

When had she last been aware of the money in her apron pocket? She recalled feeling it there when she’d walked through the main room with Brian and Walter. She retraced her steps through the crowded restaurant, but found no envelope. Frankie was at the cash register, busy with her customers, and Gina couldn’t bring herself to ask her if anyone had turned in the money. She couldn’t admit that she’d been careless enough to lose it already.

In the back room, she found Walter and Brian deep in a game of chess.

Her gaze fell to the floor beneath the table.

“You lose something?” Brian asked her.

“An envelope,” she said. “You didn’t happen to see one, did you?”

Walter peered beneath the table. “Don’t see anything,” he said.

Neither did she.
Damn.
She would have to say something to Frankie. She turned to leave the room, but saw Brock looking at her from the pool table. He held her gaze for a moment, and on his face was an unmistakable smirk. She thought back to his out-of-character offer of congratulations and to the collision in the hallway. How hard he’d smacked into her, how he’d fallen on top of her. How it had taken him a moment to get up. He had planned the whole thing.

She marched over to the pool table.

“Could I see you outside for a moment?” she asked.

“Be right back,” Brock said to his pool partner.

She walked outside through the side door of the room, and he followed her. Standing on the pea gravel outside the door, she turned to face him. “I don’t think that was an accident in the hallway near the rest rooms,” she said.

“What was it, then?” He cocked his head to one side and she wanted to rip that smirk off his face.

“I think you took the raffle money out of my apron pocket,” she said.

He held his painted arms out straight from his shoulders. “Why don’t you search me?” he asked, raising his eyebrows at her.

She thought she might cry. She was no good at the tough-guy routine. “I need that money, Brock,” she said. “Please. Just give it back to me and I won’t make an issue out of it.”

He leaned toward her, his face close to hers. “I don’t have your money,” he said. “If you lost it, don’t come crying to me.”

He turned on his sandaled heel and walked back into Shorty’s.

She didn’t know what she would say to Lacey, but she sat with her on the couch in the living room later that afternoon, pretending to read, while Lacey opened utility bills that Gina was doing nothing to help her pay.

“I have to tell you something,” she said, suddenly getting her courage up. She closed the book in her lap.

Lacey looked up from one of the bills. “What?” she asked.

“I really screwed up, Lacey,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

Immediately, Lacey moved the bills from the sofa to the floor and turned to give Gina her full attention. “It’s all right, whatever it is,” she said, and Gina knew she was lucky to have this incredibly kind woman as her landlord and her friend.

“I lost the money,” she said.

Lacey gasped, leaning back from her. “Oh no!”

“I think Brock Jensen might have taken it. He crashed into me when I was leaving the ladies’ room. We both fell down, and I’m not sure, but I think maybe he planned it to happen. I confronted him, but he denied it, of course.”

“We’ll call the police.” Lacey started to get up, but Gina grabbed her arm.

“No,” she said. “I don’t want to create a huge deal out of it. Maybe Brock
is
innocent. Maybe I did actually lose the envelope. I just don’t know.” She shook her head. “I’m so sorry, Lacey,” she said. “The raffle was a terrific idea. I just wish I hadn’t been the one to win it.”

Lacey leaned back in the sofa with a sigh. “Well,” she said, “maybe whoever has the money needs it more than you do. At least we can hope for that.”

Gina nodded, pretending to agree, although she couldn’t help but think that no one needed money more than she did.

G
ina Higgins was waiting for him in the Sea Tern Inn. Alec spotted her the moment he walked through the heavy double doors. The restaurant was packed with the summer crowd, but she was a woman who stood out. She sat at a table near the windows and lifted one long, bare arm to wave to him. He returned the wave, but spent a moment talking to one of the waitresses, a woman he’d known for years, before walking over to the table and sitting down across from her.

“How are you?” he asked, struck again by the delicate beauty of this young woman. There was no trace of makeup on her fair-skinned face, no noticeable attempt to pretty herself up in any way other than running a comb through her long, dark hair and doing whatever she’d had to do to get those teeth such a sparkling white. Yet, she made a couple of young men turn their heads as they passed the table. She seemed completely indifferent to their interest.

“I’m fine, thanks,” she said. “And thanks, also, for agreeing to have lunch with me.”

He nodded. “No problem,” he said, although he would rather
have a root canal than be badgered about raising the lens again, and that was certainly what this meeting was about.

Gina lifted her napkin from the table, and he noticed that her hands had a little tremor to them. She was nervous, as she had been when she’d come to his house to speak to him. “Is your office…your animal hospital near here?” she asked, smoothing the napkin over her lap.

“Just a couple of miles,” he said.

A waitress took their drink orders—water for her, iced tea for him—and then they studied the menu for a moment in silence. The menu was familiar to him, and he was anxious to order. The sooner they did, the sooner they would be served. And the sooner he could get out of there.

“So,” he said, after the waitress delivered their drinks and took their orders. “Have you decided how long you’re staying in the area?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “I have the summer off, so I’m taking it one day at a time, really. As I mentioned to you the last time I saw you, I wanted to explore the lighthouses in this area, but I’ve gotten a bit sidetracked by Kiss River.”

He ignored the mention of Kiss River. “Lacey said you’re from Bellingham,” he prompted.

“Yes.” She played with the napkin beneath her water glass, folding one edge of it, then the other. “Do you know the city?” she asked.

“Not really. My wife and I toured the Pacific Northwest a few years ago, but we didn’t get to Bellingham.”

“Where did you go?”

“Seattle and then up to Vancouver and Victoria,” he said. “It was beautiful. Didn’t even rain too much while we were there.”

“You were very lucky,” she said.

“We did get a good look at Flattery, though.”

“Flattery?” She frowned.

“The lighthouse at Cape Flattery,” he said.

“Oh! Right.”

He recalled his initial suspicions about Gina. He’d wondered how a lighthouse historian, amateur or not, could not know that the tower at Kiss River had been demolished a decade earlier.
He’d forgiven her ignorance at the time; after all, she was not that familiar with the lighthouses on the East Coast. But shouldn’t she know that Flattery was a lighthouse in the Pacific Northwest?

“You’ve been there, too, I suppose?” he asked.

She nodded. “Of course.”

“You must have a favorite lighthouse,” he said.

“Oh.” She drew the word out as if thinking through her answer. Her gaze rested on the salt and pepper shakers at the side of the table. Somewhere, he’d heard that if a person looked down and to the left—or was it down and to the right?—when answering a question, they were most likely lying. He had not meant the question to test the veracity of her interest in lighthouses, but he was wondering now if a test might be appropriate.

“I’d have to say New Dungeness,” she said, looking at him squarely then.

“Ah,” he said with a nod. “We were able to visit there as well. The house was being restored.”

She looked surprised. “Did you walk in?” she asked.

“We kayaked.” It was impossible for a visitor to drive to that lighthouse. You had to either walk in or arrive by boat. “How about you? You’re probably very familiar with it.”

“I’ve visited it several times,” she said. “I always walk in. It’s more than five miles, but it’s worth the walk.”

“Is the house still being restored?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “It might be finished by now.”

“There’s certainly a colorful history to the lighthouses in that region,” he said.

“The history’s pretty colorful here, too,” she said, gamely trying to shift the topic to the East Coast lighthouses, but he didn’t bite.

“Well, our early keepers didn’t have hostile American Indians to cope with. And that bit about the smallpox.” He shook his head, irked with himself that he was intentionally trying to trip her up now.

“Smallpox?” She looked at him blankly. Her eyes were so dark, they appeared to lack pupils.

“You know, infecting the Native Americans as a way to get rid of the problem.”

“Oh, right,” she said quickly, then smiled. “That’s one little fact I like to block from my mind.”

The waitress brought her Caesar salad and his crab cake sandwich. He put his napkin on his lap and lifted the sandwich to his lips.

“How are things at the keeper’s house?” he asked before taking a bite.

“Good.” Gina tossed her salad a bit with her fork. “Lacey and Clay have been wonderful to me. You have terrific children.”

He nodded in humble agreement. “Thanks,” he said.

“Neither of them is home much, really,” Gina continued. “Lacey’s unbelievable, the way she works part-time with you and then runs off to her volunteer jobs and makes all that stained glass, too.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I wish she’d slow down a bit, actually, and get a social life.”

“Oh, she goes out,” Gina reassured him, and it bothered him that she seemed to know more about his daughter’s life than he did. “When she’s not tutoring kids or making stained glass or donating her bone marrow or reading to people at the old folks home, that is.” She laughed.

The words had almost slipped by him, but not quite. “What did you say?” He lowered his sandwich to the plate. “What was that about bone marrow?”

“She donated her bone marrow,” Gina said between bites of salad. “You didn’t know?”

“No,” he admitted. “I didn’t. When did she do that?”

“I don’t know specifically. Sometime last year.” Gina looked worried, as though she’d let something slip. She had. “I can’t imagine a more generous thing to do,” she said.

He was quiet. He could picture Annie on the plane ride home from Chicago after donating her bone marrow, smiling bravely despite the pain in her back. A few years ago, Lacey had told him that she was on the donors’ list, and he’d argued against it, probably surprising her with his vehemence. No wonder she hadn’t told him she’d actually been called to donate. She was just like Annie. And just like Annie, she was keeping things from him.

“There’s such a thing as being too generous,” he said, more to himself than to Gina.

She didn’t reply, and for a moment they ate their lunches in awkward silence. Then he sighed. Might as well face the inevitable.

“I know you’ve invited me here to try to persuade me to help you raise the lens,” he began. “And I—”

“Dr. O’Neill,” she interrupted him. “I’m well aware that I’m an…an interloper,” she said with a self-conscious smile that made him like her in spite of himself. “It’s hard to explain. I just don’t feel as though I can walk away from this. There are a lot of people willing to help me if you would just give me the go-ahead. Brian Cass and Walter Liscott and Nola Dillard. The lighthouse association. They’d all like to see it salvaged.”

“And I’m standing in the way.”

She nodded. “Brian Cass spoke with someone at the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum. They’d like to have the lens there when it’s raised.”

He suddenly felt very tired. He was done with his sandwich, ready to leave. He pushed his plate away an inch or two. “I know there would be a place for the lens, Gina,” he said. “That’s not the point.”

“Why are you so against it?” She looked justifiably perplexed.

“Why are you so dead-set on doing it?” He turned the tables on her.

Her gaze dropped quickly to the salt and pepper shakers again, and it was a moment before she answered. “Because I care about lighthouses and the preservation of history,” she said.

“I was thinking about what shape it’s in down there.” Alec folded his arms across his chest. “I know you’re hoping the light will still be in one piece. But the fact that it has a missing panel makes that even less likely, don’t you think?”

“What do you mean, ‘a missing panel’?”

If she didn’t know what he was talking about, she had not done her homework well at all. “The one destroyed in the storm in the sixties.”

She couldn’t mask her surprise.

“Did you think the lens was whole?” he asked. The lighthouse
guide she was using had to be quite extraordinarily old to have left out that small detail.

“I’d completely forgotten about that,” she said. “It doesn’t change how I feel about it, though. I’d still like to raise the lens.”

He looked at his watch, then at her. “Gina,” he said, “I understand all about being obsessed by lighthouses. I truly do. And I actually feel sympathy for you, because I know what it’s like to try to save something that isn’t easy to save. But…” He wanted to simply say, “I won’t help you, and that’s final,” yet he thought she deserved more of an answer than that. He did not believe she was much of a lighthouse historian, but she sincerely cared about raising this light, for whatever reason. “The lighthouse meant a great deal to my first wife and me,” he explained.

“Oh.” Gina sat back in her chair. “Clay told me about…how you lost her. I’m so sorry. It must have been terrible for all of you.”

He nodded. “I met her at Kiss River,” he continued. “I was just twenty-two and I was working construction for the summer. Working on the keeper’s house. I helped paint the lighthouse.”

“I didn’t know that,” she said. “No wonder you loved it so much.”

“My wife and I would sit up on the gallery and watch the stars at night.”
And make love,
he thought. Suddenly, he recalled the times he’d sat up there after Annie died. It had been his escape, his place to grieve. “So, I certainly understand what it means to care deeply about a lighthouse,” he said. “But I’m not with Annie—my first wife—anymore, and our…connection with the lighthouse is all in the past. It needs to stay in the past. I don’t want anything to do with it now.” He knew his obstinancy must still sound strange to her. “My reason for leaving the lens where it is probably sounds as irrational to you as someone from Washington State wanting to raise it sounds to me,” he said. “All I can tell you is that you can’t count on me for support. I’m sorry. And I have to request that you please don’t ask me again. I don’t want to talk about it.”

She looked apologetic. “All right,” she said in a near whisper. “I’m very sorry if it’s brought up painful memories for you.”

He offered to pick up the tab, but she insisted on paying it herself.

“I invited you,” she said. Her voice had become flat, and he knew he had disappointed her greatly. He felt strange around her,
drawn in by her beauty and her passion one minute, suspicious of her the next, and irritated by her the entire time. She was making him remember things he didn’t want to remember.

They walked together out to the parking lot, neither of them saying a word. Alec felt weighed down by a sudden sense of isolation. He would love to talk to Olivia about this whole situation. Olivia was his rock, his link to sanity. He could talk to her about anything—
anything
—except Annie. He wished that when he got home tonight, he could tell her that Lacey had donated her bone marrow the year before, but he knew how Olivia would react to that. Every time Lacey did something that was Annie-like, he could see his wife flinch. She thought his children should know the not-so-pretty truth about their mother, although she had learned not to argue with him about it. She knew he would never hurt their memory of Annie that way.

He was being stubborn about the lens, and he knew it. It reminded him too much of that crazy time in his life. If there was some compelling reason to raise that lens, if someone’s life depended on it, for example, he would certainly agree to it. But an outsider with a questionable role as a lighthouse historian and an irrational desire to raise the lens did not compel him in any way. It made him even more resistant to giving in.

“There’s my car,” he said, pointing to the second row of cars in the parking lot.

“Okay,” she said, starting in the opposite direction. “Thanks for meeting with me.”

“Gina?” he called as she started to walk away.

She turned to look at him.

“You obviously have a great deal of energy and passion,” he said. “It would be much better spent on something else.”