Far Harbor (3 page)

“Not at all.”

“Good. Because I’m going to make this lighthouse beautiful again, and when it’s done I’m going to throw the biggest blowout grand opening party Coldwater Cove has ever seen.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

He made another of those long, silent assessments that made her feel as if he were evaluating her for jury duty, then, just when her nerves were on the edge of screeching like banshees, he picked up the flat of glossy-leaved, dark green plants. “Guess I’ll be seeing you tomorrow, then.”

“Tomorrow?”

“I handle all of Henry Hyatt’s legal affairs, including property sales, and while I don’t want to scare you off, if you happen to have a suit of armor in your closet, you might think about wearing it for your meeting with the guy.”

Dan’s tone suggested that negotiating with Henry may prove nearly as difficult as refurbishing the buildings. Before she could respond that she was certainly capable of doing business with a frail old man, he flashed a quick grin that was even more charming than it had been back in those long-ago days of her adolescent crush, then sauntered away, his cheerful, off-key whistling drifting back on the fir-scented breeze.

The following morning Savannah lay in bed, futilely chasing sleep. She’d left the shade up so the stars that she’d never been able to see while living in California could shine into the room. A full white moon floated in the center of the darkened rectangle of the dormer window. The ring around the moon meant something, but she couldn’t remember exactly what. Magic, perhaps? Or trouble?

The moon drifted by, eventually slipping out of sight as she struggled with her churning thoughts. By the time a shimmering lavender predawn glow revealed the violets that blossomed on the wallpaper she and Raine had compromised on so many years ago, she surrendered to the inevitable. There’d be no more sleep tonight.

Untangling herself from the twisted sheets, she pulled on a robe, went into the adjoining bathroom, splashed cold water on her face, brushed her teeth, and clipped her unruly red-gold hair into a quick twist. Then, not wanting to wake her grandmother, who was sleeping across the hall, she crept down the stairs to the kitchen, where she made coffee in the snazzy red coffeemaker she’d sent Ida last Christmas.

Drawn by the lure of birdsong, she went out on the front porch and sat down on the swing where she’d spent so many lazy summer afternoons daydreaming. Cradling the earthenware mug in her hands, Savannah breathed in the fragrant steam. As she thought back on those days, she decided that despite her mother’s marital instability and gypsy lifestyle, her own life had certainly seemed a great deal simpler back then.

A few stars still shone on the horizon. After an early sprinkle that was more mist than rain, the day was dawning a gloriously bright one. Despite the popular stereotype of gray clouds, sunny skies weren’t that uncommon during late summer. Since the Puget Sound cities of Seattle, Tacoma, and Olympia were being flooded with new residents, content with their remote peninsula town just the way it was, Coldwater Cove’s residents tended to pray for rain whenever tourists were in town.

Ida Lindstrom’s Victorian home was set atop a hill overlooking the town that could have washed off an American primitive painting of New England. The flagpole in the grassy green town square at the end of Harbor Street was surrounded by a blaze of color Savannah guessed was another example of John Martin’s green thumb.

Those same vibrant blooms encircled the clock tower, which was made of a red brick that had weathered to a dusty pink over the century and could be seen for miles. Its four sides had each told a different time for as long as Savannah could remember, which didn’t prove any real hardship, since things—and people—tended to move at their own pace in Coldwater Cove.

As she watched a white ferry chug across the sound, which was as smooth as sapphire glass this morning, her mind flashed back to a long-ago evening when choppy waters had caused her to throw up the hot dog, barbecue potato chips, and Dr. Pepper Lilith had fed her for dinner shortly before they’d all boarded the ferry that would take them from Seattle to Coldwater Cove.

She couldn’t remember what, exactly, her mother had been doing during the short trip, but the memory of Raine dragging her out of the glassed-in observation desk into the fresh air, pushing her onto a wooden bench, and wiping her face with a wet paper towel was as vivid as if it had occurred only yesterday.

Her four-years-older half sister had always been there for her, hovering over her like an anxious mother bird, taking on the role of surrogate mother. Fate may have given them different fathers, but love had made them sisters of the heart.

Savannah couldn’t count the number of times Raine had come to her rescue, banners flying, like bold, brave Joan of Arc riding into battle. Now, despite being grateful for her sister’s unwavering support, she’d begun to suspect that perhaps she’d been overprotected.

Perhaps, she thought as she sipped her cooling coffee, if she’d been forced to fight a few more of her own battles, she wouldn’t have so blithely ignored marital warning signs that only a very blind—or naive—woman could have missed.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she said into the still air perfumed with late summer roses. The scarlet blossoms drooping with the weight of diamond-bright dew were as large as a child’s fist and as velvety as the formal gown she’d worn to the Coldwater Cove high school’s winter festival.

She’d made the dress herself, laboring over the rented sewing machine late into the night for two weeks, buried in a pile of velvet and white satin trim that took up the kitchen table and had all of them eating on TV trays for the duration of the project.

Listening to Ida’s grumbling and giving up sleep to baste and hem had proven worth it; when Savannah entered the gym that had been decked out in white and silver crepe paper for the occasion, with the crinolines that showcased her legs rustling seductively and her long hair, which she’d managed to tame with a curling iron, bouncing on her bare shoulders, she’d felt exactly like a fairy-tale princess.

The velvet fantasy of a gown was gone, but not forgotten, turned into pieces of a memory quilt she’d hung over the tester bed a Melrose antique dealer had assured her had once belonged to Lilian Gish. The quilt, which had also incorporated white lace squares from her high school graduation dress, a piece of shiny black silk from a negligee her mother had worn in a movie about female vampires that had opened on Savannah’s tenth birthday, and ivory satin ribbons from her wedding bouquet, was currently packed away with other sentimental items in a cedar trunk at Jack Conway’s U-Store-It on Spruce Street.

Fat black-and-yellow bees droned lazily around the roses. Next door the neighbor’s cat was returning from his nightly rounds of the town. Ignoring Savannah, the fat old tom curled up into a ball in a slanting sunbeam on his owner’s front porch and began washing his marmalade fur.

A familiar car turned onto the road leading up the hill. A minute later, it pulled to a stop in front of the house; the driver’s door opened, and Lilith emerged in a graceful swirl of skirt the hue of crushed blueberries. Along with the silk skirt and tunic she also wore a necklace of hand-strung crystals, a pair of lacy webbed dream-catcher earrings and a frown that made Savannah’s stomach knot.

Having already pinned her hopes on her admittedly ambitious project as a means of reinventing herself, Savannah didn’t know what she’d do if her mother had come bearing bad news about the lighthouse she’d already come to think of as hers.

“Y
ou’re certainly up and about early,” Savannah greeted her mother with far more aplomb than she felt. “I thought we weren’t scheduled to meet with Mr. Hyatt until late this afternoon.”

“Your grandmother’s on the committee for this year’s Sawdust Festival,” Lilith divulged as she climbed the front steps, bringing with her the exotic scent of custom-blended perfume that always made Savannah think of gypsies dancing around blazing campfires.

“She roped me into helping with entertainment, so we’re going to Port Angeles this morning to check out a couple bands and have our fortunes told by Raven Moonsilver. Raven’s a friend of mine, and since the committee’s split on whether or not to hire her to read palms, as chairman, Ida gets to cast the deciding vote.”

Her mother’s gaze took in Savannah’s blue mug. “Thank God you’ve made coffee. While I try to stick to herbal teas these days, my system definitely needs a jump start at this ungodly hour of the morning.” She disappeared into the house.

The thought of the always practical Ida Lindstrom having her palm read was nearly as difficult to accept as the idea of this glamorous creature, who’d periodically blazed through Raine’s and Savannah’s lives like a comet, turning her creative talents toward something as prosaic as a small-town logging festival.

Lilith returned with a mug of steaming coffee liberally laced with cream and sat down on the top step.

“I ran into Dan yesterday at the lighthouse,” Savannah divulged. “He’d come with John Martin to plant flowers. He mentioned something that’s been worrying me.” She paused, hoping as she had all night that she was making too much of Dan’s remarks regarding the lighthouse owner.

“What’s that, darling?”

“That Henry Hyatt might prove a problem.”

Lilith took a careful sip of coffee before answering. “I’m not certain
problem
is precisely the word I’d use.”

Concern stirred again, along with a niggling suspicion. “What are you holding back?”

“Absolutely nothing.” Lilith toyed with her necklace. “The Board of Realtors would take away my license if I failed to give full disclosure on a property.”

“Okay. Perhaps you’re not hiding anything about the lighthouse. What about the owner?”

“You always were my more intuitive child.” Lilith’s pansy blue eyes gleamed with affection. “I believe you take after the same Celts who gifted you with all that lovely Titian hair. After all, it’s common knowledge that the women from that branch of the family all possess second sight, and—”

“Mother.” Savannah cut Lilith off and looked her directly in the eye. “We’re not talking second sight here. It’s merely the process of elimination. If there’s some impediment to my buying the lighthouse, and it doesn’t involve the property itself, then it would stand to reason the problem is with the owner.”

Lilith slid her veiled gaze out over the sparkling bay. “I don’t believe Henry really wants to sell the lighthouse.”

There had been several times over the past days when Savannah had questioned the practicality of attempting to refurbish such a ramshackle property. Still, her heart sank at this news.

“Then why on earth would he list it in the first place?”

“Because he doesn’t want it any longer.”

“I don’t understand.”

Another sigh. “The problem is, he doesn’t want anyone else to own it, either. Not so long as his mother’s spirit is still there.”

“I should have known you’d believe in the ghost.”

“I’ve never seen her. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t exist.”

“Well, if she does, I certainly hope she knows how to use a paint brush, because her former home is in definite need of a new coat of paint.”

Lilith waved the comment away with a graceful, beringed hand; her recently acquired wedding band—engraved with wolves because they mate for life, she’d explained—gleamed in the morning light. “Well, whatever Henry’s feelings, you shouldn’t have any problem convincing him to sell. He may be getting up in years, but he’s still a man.”

“A bitter, dried-up old man,” a voice offered from the doorway. Ida Lindstrom’s head was barely visible over the huge cardboard box she was holding. “He was never all that much of a charmer, but after his wife died, he turned downright ornery.”

Savannah’s grandmother was a small, wiry woman known throughout the county for her seemingly endless trove of energy, her dedication to her former patients, and her strong, often controversial opinions.

In contrast to her glamorous daughter, she was wearing baggy jeans and a T-shirt that read Of Course I Believe You, But Can I Get It in Writing? The message was pure Ida, which Savannah feared didn’t exactly bode well for Lilith’s palm reader friend.

“It must be eight years since Ruth passed on,” Lilith reminded her mother. “Which means that Henry’s been without female companionship for a very long time. I can’t believe that he wouldn’t jump at the chance to spend the afternoon with our Savannah.”

“I refuse to stoop to using feminine wiles to talk Henry Hyatt into selling me his lighthouse,” Savannah insisted.

“Of course you wouldn’t,” Ida agreed briskly. “You’re my granddaughter, after all, and everyone knows that rolling stones don’t fall far from the trees.” Along with her bumper-sticker T-shirts, the retired general practitioner had long been Coldwater Cove’s queen of malapropisms.

Lilith rolled her expressive eyes as she rose from the step, handed Savannah her empty mug and took the box from Ida’s arms. “This weighs a ton,” she complained. “What do you have in it, rocks?”

“Of course not. Why would I want to be mailing rocks to anyone?” Ida was looking at the box as if seeing it for the first time. “Who’s it for, anyway?”

Lilith exchanged a brief, puzzled look with Savannah. “Since it’s addressed to Gwen, I assume it’s for her.”

“Well, of course it is.” Ida’s brow cleared. The momentary confusion in her eyes was replaced by the usual bright intelligence that reminded Savannah of a curious bird. “When she called last night from science camp, I could tell she was homesick, so I’m sending her a bunch of her favorite things. Wouldn’t want the girl to get so upset she starts shoplifting again.”

Knowing that they were the first reasonably stable family Gwen had experienced during her rocky sixteen years, Savannah could understand how hard it must be for her to be away from Coldwater Cove for any length of time, even if the teenager who dreamed of following in Ida’s physician footsteps was doing something she loved—something Savannah dearly hoped would help keep her mind off the baby she’d recently given up for adoption.

“Well, the day’s not getting any younger, and neither am I,” Ida announced suddenly. “If we’re going to get our futures told, we might as well get going.”

“Please promise that you’ll keep an open mind,” Lilith asked her mother with a deep, exaggerated sigh.

“Does this palm reader friend of yours wear a turban?”

“No.”

“How about talking to the dead?”

“That’s not her field of psychic expertise.”

“Then we’ll probably get on well enough.” The pewter bird nest of hair piled precariously atop Ida’s head wobbled as she nodded with her typical decisiveness that eased any lingering concern Savannah might have had about her earlier confusion. “So long as you girls both keep your clothes on.”

With that pointed reference to Lilith’s nude Beltane dancing, she marched toward the car, leaving her daughter to follow.

“Wish me luck,” Lilith murmured as she bent to kiss Savannah’s cheek. “After this outing, the meeting with Henry this afternoon should be a piece of cake.”

Eight hours later, Savannah discovered that her mother’s prediction had been optimistic.

The Evergreen Care Center was a redbrick building nestled in a grove of fir trees at the far end of town. The designers had done their best to make the center appealing, with outdoor patios, a sunroom, bright colors, and framed paintings designed to stimulate both the eye and the mind. A bulletin board, covered in grass green burlap, announced a crowded activity schedule that included wheelchair bowling, a morning newspaper group, and the monthly visit of Pet Partners, an organization of dog owners who’d bring their pets to visit the residents.

“Can you imagine ever putting your grandmother in a place like this?” Lilith murmured as they entered the lobby furnished with tasteful antique reproductions.

“Not in a million years.”

Savannah thought that there must be a better way than to warehouse people at the end of their lives. Not that Ida was at the end of her life. She may have edged into her late seventies during Savannah’s time away from Coldwater Cove, yet except for that little unexplained dizzy spell that had landed her in the hospital a few months ago, her grandmother was as energetic and strong-willed as ever.

Despite the fact that Savannah and Lilith had arrived at the care center ten minutes early, Henry Hyatt was already waiting for them in the sunroom.

“Oh, dear,” Lilith said under her breath. “That’s him, in that chair upholstered in the bright nautical-theme sailcloth.”

The elderly man’s back was to the glass wall, which, Savannah noted with a grudging respect for his negotiating tactics, would force her to look directly into the setting sun. The scowl on his face could have withered a less determined woman.

Refusing to be intimidated, Savannah reminded herself that getting into a power contest with this frail, elderly man was no way to achieve her goal.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Hyatt.” Her brilliant smile, an unconscious replica of her mother’s, revealed not an iota of her churning emotions. An emerald ring once given to her by a Saudi prince who’d hired her to cook his fiftieth birthday dinner flashed like green fire in the slanting rays of tawny light streaming into the room.

“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.” When his talon-like hand stayed right where it was atop the carved wooden cane, Savannah slowly lowered hers. “I’ve admired the Far Harbor lighthouse for years.”

“You and all those other tourists who keep coming around, pestering a man, wanting to take pictures and have themselves a tour, never once thinking that a lighthouse isn’t some new attraction at Disneyland.”

Acid sharpened a scornful tone that wavered ever so slightly with age. Or emotion? Savannah wondered. In either case, it was not a propitious beginning.

“Now, Henry,” Lilith soothed as she gracefully settled into a chair across from him. “You know very well that Savannah’s not a tourist. Why, she spent practically her entire life growing up on the peninsula.”

“Because her scatterbrained gadfly of a mother didn’t see fit to take care of her,” he snapped querulously.

Savannah heard Lilith draw in a breath at the sharp accusation, but outwardly her mother appeared unscathed. “You’re right. I’ll always regret not having been a better mother, but we all make mistakes.” Lilith’s voice was as warm and throaty as ever, but Savannah noticed that her hands trembled ever so slightly as her fingers creased the broomstick pleats of her skirt. “Sometimes all we can do is move on.”

“You’ve always been good at that,” he grumbled. “Moving on.”

Savannah had humored him enough. Henry Hyatt may hold the keys to her future in his age-spotted hands, but that didn’t give him the right to intrude on her admittedly complex relationship with Lilith.

“I came here today to discuss a business proposition with you, Mr. Hyatt, not to stand by and listen to you insult my mother.”

An errant thought occurred to her. Could Henry possibly be comparing Lilith’s behavior to the way his own mother had abandoned him at such a tender age? Was it even possible to harbor a hurt or hold a grudge for so many years?

He tilted his head and looked up at her. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you, when you were down in California”—he spat out the name of her former home as if it had a bad taste—“that sassin’ a man who has something you seem to want so damn bad is a piss-poor way of doin’ business?”

“The Far Harbor lighthouse is not the only piece of property for sale on the peninsula, Mr. Hyatt.” She sat down in a wing chair beside her mother and crossed her legs. Proving that Lilith wasn’t the only actress in the family, she kept her smile cucumber cool and just the slightest bit condescending. “Merely the most run-down.”

Before Henry could respond to that, the door opened and Dan walked in, bringing with him a distant scent of the sea. “Sorry I’m late.” His face was tanned from the sun, his hair windblown. “My meeting ran late.”

“Meeting, hell.” Henry focused his ill humor on his attorney. “Anyone with two eyes and half a brain can see you’ve been out sailing.”

“Got me there,” Dan replied equably. “As it happens, my meeting took place on a yacht.”

“Ha! That’s a likely story.”

“It’s true. My client’s a software mogul who, like so many of his breed, tends to be a bit paranoid. He prefers doing business where there’s less likelihood of conversations being overheard—such as out in the middle of the sound.”

“You always were quick with the excuses,” Henry shot back. “Like that time you broke the window on my Olds.”

“When I fouled off my cousin Caine’s curveball through your windshield.” Dan glanced over at Savannah and winked. “I spent the rest of the summer paying it off by painting the lighthouse.”