Return to the Beach House (25 page)

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Carrie said. “I’ll bet you didn’t figure in morning sickness either.”

“How did you ever get your doctor to approve that schedule?” Bridget chimed in.

The long silence that followed was all the answer they needed.

“Alaskan women are used to hard work,” Angie said. “It’s part of our nature—like the pioneer women.”

“Who had ten children in order to wind up with two or three who survived,” Carrie said.

“So I screwed up,” Angie said. “I’ve never been pregnant before. That doesn’t solve my problem now.”

Danielle came back into the room, radiating a look of disbelief. “He said he’s thinking about it. Which, for Grady, all but means it’s a done deal.”

“For sure?” Angie was afraid to let herself get too excited. “No trial period, or ‘we’ll see how it goes,’ or ‘we have to sell the house in Denver first’?”

“Oh, there’s some of that. He wants to fly up there and meet everyone and look around. In the meantime, he bought an armload of books and has been reading everything he can find about Anchorage on the Internet. He’s even arranged to have lunch tomorrow with a friend of a friend who lived in Palmer for several years.”

Angie let out a squeal and threw her arms around Danielle. “I can’t tell you how much this means to me.”

“I think I have a pretty good idea.” Danielle dug her phone out of her pocket. “One more thing before we start the movie. Puppy finally has a name. Sanuk. It’s Alaskan for—”

“Fun and happiness,” Angie filled in.

Danielle found the picture and turned the phone around. Sporting what was impossible to interpret as any other expression, Sanuk sat at the back door, his jowls lifted, his eyes opened wide in an ear-to-ear grin.

“I know exactly how he feels,” Bridget said softly.

PART THREE

January

Chapter 1

Matthew Stephens pulled his rented Prius into the parking lot at the Monterey Regional Airport. The tires squealed in protest as he swung around a corner and dove into the first available slot. He was late, but hopefully not so late that he’d missed Lindsey getting off the plane.

He reached for his camera—a world-weary Canon 1D that was almost as familiar an extension to his hand as his fingers—and sprinted toward the terminal, stopping to scan the people in the lobby. Not seeing her, he headed for the arrival board. Rarely did he leave for an airport anywhere in the world without checking arrival times first, but there was always the exception, and this was it. With the predictable consequence. Lindsey’s plane had been delayed an hour.

Matthew checked his phone. There was a text from her that he’d missed when he was climbing rocks along the shoreline photographing a couple of sea lions chasing each other in the surf. He was still operating on bush time, where checking for messages was useless.

Lindsey had told him that she’d call when the plane landed, but he’d waited so long to see her that even the forty-five minutes it would take him to get there from Santa Cruz seemed an eternity.

And now it was out of his hands. He headed for the stairs that led to the second-story viewing platform.

Monterey Regional Airport served a small, almost exclusive destination clientele. People who had business in Silicon Valley or farther up in the Bay Area didn’t fly there—only those who came to play golf at Pebble Beach or to vacation on one of the most spectacular coastlines in the world. Or those who were lucky enough to call one of the towns that lay scattered around the Monterey Bay shoreline home.

The airport had the charm and friendliness that bespoke pre-9/11, when flying was still an adventure. Matthew could get candid shots there of people doing their jobs in a laid-back, friendly atmosphere without automatically becoming a terrorist suspect.

Stepping outside, he hunched his shoulders against the wind stealing up the hillside. It whistled through the bent and twisted cypress trees, gaining force as it raced across the tarmac, pushing and dragging leaves and bits of debris in an eerie display of visibility.

Matthew took several pictures, trying to capture the wind and cold. One shot had potential—a worker with leaves swirling around his feet, his collar turned up, his hat worn low over his ears—while the rest were only a small cut above mediocre.

Glancing at his watch, he was disappointed to see how little time had passed and decided to head inside for a cup of coffee. He ordered it strong and black and thought back to the days when he’d used equal parts coffee, sugar, and cream in a drink Lindsey insisted was more dessert than beverage. She’d eventually weaned him off both the sugar and cream, insisting he would thank her the first time he was given a cup of bush coffee. A handful of grounds tossed into a pot of already brown water, brewed over an open fire until it was reduced by half, was guaranteed to get you moving in the morning. It was not the kind of drink that took well to cream or sugar.

She never doubted and never let him question whether he had the talent to become the wildlife photographer he envisioned being. In the beginning, when he was still regularly losing assignments to older, more experienced photographers, she would wait until the magazine or newspaper or charity brochure was published and then go over it with him, photograph by photograph. He learned how to judge his work dispassionately and what to do to make it better.

He told her she was a natural. She insisted it was his love that inspired and supported her.

How had they drifted so far apart?

With the coffee in one hand, a recycled
Monterey County Herald
tucked under his arm, and his camera slung over his shoulder, Matthew looked for a place to settle and pass the time. He saw a woman watching him and returned her smile. She opened her hand in invitation and indicated the chair next to her. She had short hair, more pepper than salt, and a trim frame. Her eyes were sharp and questioning, her clothing expensive and understated.

“I’m here at least once a month, and this is the first time I’ve seen it so busy,” she said as he settled beside her. “Seems none of us had sense enough to call before we came, and now it’s hurry-up-and-wait.”

Matthew held out his hand. “Matthew Stephens,” he said.

She slipped her hand into his. “Alison Kirkpatrick.”

“Are you waiting for friend or family?”

“Grandson,” she said. “He took a year off before he started college to see the country. He was supposed to be in Texas by now, but met a man who was rebuilding a house in New Orleans for a displaced family and decided to stay around to help.” She broke off a piece of her bagel and added cream cheese. “And you?”

“Girlfriend.” Over the years he’d tried several different ways to describe his relationship with Lindsey, and even though he wasn’t crazy about it, he’d finally settled on “girlfriend.” He wanted more than the term implied, but how did you build a home on a constantly shifting foundation?

“I don’t know much about cameras, but yours looks impressive—and well used.”

Matthew put the camera on the table between them and smiled. “There’s a story attached to every ding and scratch.”

“Which means photography is how you make your living?”

“Some years that would be a generous assessment.”

“Fashion?”

He chuckled. “In a way. I photograph the most beautiful fur coats in the world—on their original owners.”

“A wildlife photographer?”

“And occasional landscapes when the magazine I’m working for needs illustration to go with an article.”

“How exciting. I’ve always wondered about the people behind the pictures. It’s hard for me to imagine what it must be like to sit and wait for just the right moment.”

“Disappointed?”

“Well, I have to admit I’m a little let down that you’re not wearing a safari hat.”

He laughed. “Only in Africa.”

“I’ve always wanted to go there. Is it as spectacular as I’ve heard?”

“Depends on where you are. Much of the continent is at war, and there’s nothing beautiful about people killing each other. Botswana is the most stable country on the continent, both politically and economically, and is doing what it can to preserve its wildlife, particularly in the Okavango Delta. I don’t think you would be disappointed if you made that your first trip.”

“What about the Congo? I’d love to see the gorillas in the wild.”

Lindsey had spent the last seven months going from an assignment in Libya to one in the Congo. It was the primary reason they’d missed their month in July at the beach house. It would have been the first time in over a year that they’d spent more than two weeks together. The coin they kept flipping, with hope on one side and disappointment on the other, was wearing thin, the letters designating the value having all but disappeared.

Matthew put off answering by taking a drink of coffee. It wasn’t the worst he’d consumed in the past six months. That title went to the swill he’d been given in a kahve shop in Istanbul, one that catered to tourists looking for a genuine Turkish experience to share with their friends back home.

He put the paper cup back on the table. “About the Congo—I understand the draw. I did a piece for a German magazine several years ago after a mountain-gorilla family was slaughtered by the locals so that they could cut down the trees to make charcoal. I fell in love with that gorilla family. They really are gentle giants. But the natives who kill them aren’t. You need to understand the politics in a country before you go. Right now the United Nations considers DR Congo the rape capital of the world.

“Now, that said, if you’re still interested, you could do some research on tour outfitters in the neighboring countries where the mountain gorillas wander and go with the best company you can afford.”

“I appreciate the advice. I knew some of this, but not all of it.”

“Will you be traveling alone?”

This brought a huge smile. “I’ll be on my delayed honeymoon. My grandson is coming here to walk me down the aisle this Saturday. The whole marriage thing came together so fast that we didn’t have time to plan a real trip, so we’re going to go to Africa as soon as I can figure out exactly what I want to see.”

“Sounds like a shotgun wedding,” he teased, fighting an insane feeling of jealousy.

She grew serious. “When you’re sixty and you’ve lost people who mean the world to you, you realize how foolish it is to waste time. You should savor every moment.”

It was a song he could sing without missing a note. Before he could comment, a voice came over the loudspeaker announcing the arrival of Alaska Airlines flight 2436.

“I’m going to the viewing platform,” he said, standing. “Want to come?” He never invited people who weren’t photographers to accompany him when he was working. He’d missed too many shots when his concentration was broken by questions. But seeing her grandson’s plane dropping out of the air and taxiing toward her would be worth whatever shot he missed.

She declined. “I have this thing about watching airplanes,” she said softly and stood. “But I appreciate the offer.”

Impulsively, he hugged her. “Congratulations on the wedding. I’ll look for you in Africa.”

She smiled. “Stranger things have happened.”

Matthew grabbed his coffee and sprinted up the stairs. As he passed the trash can he stopped to take one last swallow, but his throat tightened and then closed before the cup reached his lips.

He tossed the coffee and positioned himself on top of a concrete bench that allowed him to shoot over the Plexiglas barrier. The plane circled and landed, swung around until its nose pointed toward the ocean, then slowly taxied toward the terminal, where it would stop and disgorge its passengers on the tarmac.

Now blanketed by a mantle of dark clouds, the ocean had changed from deep blue to slate gray.

A portent?

He shook off the dark feeling and scanned the porthole windows on the plane knowing the odds were less than a quarter in his favor that Lindsey had bagged a window seat on the left side of the plane.

No one waved. But then, it wasn’t her style to draw attention to herself. Even knowing this didn’t stop him from imagining her seeking him out, a smile lighting her eyes when she spotted a not-very-imposing figure, jean-clad and wearing a quarter-century-old blue peacoat that he’d inherited from his father.