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  Gina would be busy with her niece. Could Jessica cook? Or was she now one of those urbanites who could “order takeout with the best of them?” He’d wager on the latter. He briefly considered Tiffany, but he had no way to reach her so it didn’t matter anyway.

  He called Peggy out at the small Eagle’s Airfield that served a few locals and the occasional tourist with their own plane. She was rebuilding an old Stearman Model 4 biplane with the idea of offering fixed-wing flights to tourists in addition to her father’s aged Bell 206 helicopter. Peggy was also a fair hand in the kitchen. Unable to reach any of his other “regulars” he finally called his dad.

  “Hi, Dad. You’ve never helped me with my food before, but Ralph Baxter is bringing in a side of halibut for me and I can’t find some of my regular folks. I was wondering if you could help out tonight? Actually starting pretty much right now. I know that it’s short notice but I would really…” Greg got the impression that the Judge was just letting him ramble on until he was done. So Greg grabbed a clue off the shelf and shut up.

  “All you had to do was ask, son.”

  “You’d have to do exactly what I tell you. This isn’t an omelet or a stack of pancakes. This is—”

  “Greg,” the Judge cut him off this time. “Remember who taught you to cook.”

  “Ma did,” and he felt the pain of her loss all over again. He’d learned a lot of technique since, but Ma had taught him all of the basics, especially the passion for food. She would have loved what he was doing which was sometimes the only thing that kept him going.

  “Exactly. They didn’t make me a judge for all of those years because I was stupid. You tell me what to do and I’ll do my best to help.”

  Greg pulled the phone away to look at it, as if he could somehow see the mysterious man on the other end of the connection. It sounded like his father, it just didn’t speak like him.

  He reeled the phone back in.

  “I’ll see you there, Dad. And thanks.”

  “Uh-huh,” neither positive nor negative, just an acknowledgement. Greg wondered if he should reprimand the Judge for “offering such a neutral sound of minimal form and a complete lack of content,” but then the connection was cut off at the other end and he’d lost his opportunity to do so.

  Greg was halfway down the driveway when he pulled up short and turned back to Vincent. “You bring Dawn and the girls to dinner. I’ll make sure you get a table. And get her some flowers.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Chef, sir!” Vincent saluted him as if either of them had been in the Navy.

  “And don’t pick them from her own garden.”

  He could see by his somewhat abashed look, that’s exactly what Vincent had been about to do. How Vincent had ended up married to Dawn was a mystery…to all three of them—well maybe not to Dawn, but he and Vincent had never figured it out. Then Vincent smiled that bad idea smile of his that had so frequently led their trio into disastrous trouble as teens.

  “What?”

  “I’ll just slip over and pick them from Dragon Winslow’s garden!”

  Greg decided that scarcity was the better part of valor and made himself scarce very quickly. He just hoped that Vincent was still alive to bring his wife and the kids to The Puffin later tonight.

  “Natya!” Jessica shrieked with delight. She jumped out of the car, not slowing down to close the door, and raced barefoot across the lawn. Jessica hadn’t seen her cousin since she’d come through Chicago last year for a tech seminar.

  “Jessica!” Natalya shrieked out their customary greeting in turn as she leapt down the front steps of the grand Lamont Victorian home.

  They came together with a quick kiss and a hard hug that made Jessica feel like maybe it wasn’t too weird to be home.

  “I thought you were in Portland.” Natalya was supposed to be there because then she’d be Jessica’s secret refuge from the reality of Eagle Cove.

  “I came down to help with the wedding.”

  “Didn’t they tell you it had been delayed?”

  “They did,” and the way Natalya said it, Jessica knew that her friend had come down mostly to help Jessica survive the upcoming week.

  “You’re a true friend,” Jessica whispered as she gave her another hard hug of thanks. They turned toward the house with their arms around each other’s waists.

  “Actually, the way I figure it, you’re going to owe me big time. And don’t think I won’t collect.” And she would. At four years old, Natalya always knew how to get someone in her debt and she never failed to make them pay. Of course, she was so pleasant about it that you wanted to anyway. Natalya had always been the slippery one who appeared to have the road ahead of her paved in gold, or at least a high-grade oil that eased her quickly on her way. She could lie with a straight face and no one ever seemed to care to prove her wrong.

  Mom handed over Jessica’s abandoned sandals then proceeded up the broad front stairs onto the verandah and headed inside.

  Despite knowing better, Jessica had always fallen for every one of Natalya’s traps and, worse, she’d never gotten away with anything. Just once in her life she’d like to really pull the wool over someone’s eyes. She sighed. If it hadn’t happened for her in the first thirty-two years, she wasn’t going to bank on it in the next thirty-two.

  She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked up at the grand old house.

  It looked like…home.

  The old Lamont homestead was a grand, glorious, and utterly charming place. In true Queen Anne style, it had a wrap-around verandah encircling most of the elevated first floor. The porch was safe from the heavy coastal rains beneath deep awnings which perched atop tall posts connected by ornate railings—safe except when the weather was driven sideways by the equally impressive coastal winds. Steep gables popped out of odd places with the least invitation and a great circular turret rose well clear of the second story to lord itself over the rest of the house. Small second-story balconies were tucked in odd corners. The roof and siding were black, the trim and porch rails were white, and the turret’s pointy, dunce’s cap roof was as bright orange as a puffin’s beak in mating season—a color so bright that it didn’t exist in the Crayola crayon box, not even the sixty-four set with the sharpener in the back.

  Mom had moved into Dad’s house thirty-five years ago and Aunt Gina had turned the home into a B&B, but much of Jessica’s summers had been spent playing on the porch here—and later necking with boys here where Mom wasn’t around to watch. Gina was more tolerant as long as Jessica or Natalya didn’t go too far.

  “So how’s the grand voyager?” Natalya teased her.

  “Glad to be home.”

  They both stumbled to a halt and looked at each other in surprise.

  “Did I just say that?”

  “You did,” her mother swept back out of the house, deposited her knitting bag by a chair, and went back inside.

  “No way did I say that.”

  Natalya was eyeing her closely, “Actually, Cousin, you did.”

  “Weird.” They started up the porch steps together.

  “Very weird.”

  “I think this calls for alcohol.”

  “Too early. But Mom had ice tea and lemonade made.”

  Glad to be home? Jessica felt depressed by the thought.

  Chicago was home.

  It was almost as if for the next week the rules that so tightly bound her life had come unbound. Job? Who cared? It was a disaster anyway. Car? Safely at Chicago O’Hare airport in long-term parking. Cat? Belonged to her roommate.

  “Stepping out of yourself from time to time isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”

  Jessica twisted to see a woman she didn’t know sitting in one of the porch’s heavy Adirondack-style chairs. She had a round face with striking brown eyes that matched her gorgeous cascade of hair.

  Just as Jessica’s mother had made her wish to cut her hair, this woman made her want to grow it high-school long again.

  She wore corduroys
the color of summer leaves and a blouse of white cotton. A gigantic straw hat rested on the next chair over. She was knitting a vest on circular needles in an intricate Fair Isle pattern. The colors were tea-dyed brown background with accents of Kool-Aid dyed natural wool—the dusky purple of Grape Berry Splash and Dark Cherry if she remembered correctly.

  Jessica may not have knit much since leaving Eagle Cove, but the Lamonts had always knit. Aunt Gina would never have tolerated kin going out in the world not knowing how to make at least socks and hats, though vests and sweaters were better. Jessica recognized both the color work and the skill of the nameless knitter: better than she was, about the same as Natalya, and not as skilled as Aunt Gina or her mom.

  Jessica saw a second set of knitting dropped on another chair. Natalya was making an elegant cowl in lines of alternating dark gray and jewel tones with custom-dyed fingering yarn. Jessica hadn’t even thought to bring her own knitting. She was halfway through a second mitten that she’d been feeling guilty about for at least six years.

  “Hi, I’m Jessica.”

  “Tiffany.” And she didn’t offer anything else. In fact, she gave the impression of never having spoken in the first place, as if her bit of advice had simply manifested itself out of thin air.

  “Have you been in town long?”

  Tiffany held up two fingers, barely breaking her rhythm with the needles.

  “Days, weeks, months, or geologic eras?”

  That stopped her knitting and had her looking up. “No other options? Centuries? Milliseconds perhaps?”

  Jessica shared a smile with Tiffany and then shook her own head in the negative.

  “In that case I’ll take ‘since the world was young’.”

  Natalya gathered up her own knitting and sat back down with all the style and grace that Jessica had never been able to muster, not even on a good day when she wasn’t feeling both jetlagged and age-lagged. She showed no surprise at Tiffany’s presence which meant it wasn’t months that the woman had lived in town, because Jessica knew that Natalya hadn’t been home in that time span. So Tiffany had been in Eagle Cove for two years.

  Jessica sat between Tiffany and her mother’s chair and began dusting one foot against the other. The gritty sand slowly shed off her skin.

  “I put you in with Natalya,” Aunt Gina came out on the porch bearing a big tray of glasses and cookies. “It is the high season after all—though I did keep it empty for tonight until your mother moved her wedding date at the last minute—but tomorrow we’ll be full again and I knew you girls wouldn’t mind.” As soon as her hands were empty, she wrapped Jessica in a bone-crushing hug. Jessica returned it for all she was worth. Though her aunt looked to be the sort of woman who reeked of scotch, fast men, and faster cars, she smelled of her kitchen and Jessica had missed her horribly by not coming home these last several years.

  Mom followed close behind with massive pitchers of ice tea and lemonade.

  Jessica eyed the tray, “Even I can’t eat that many cookies. Especially not right after one of the Judge’s breakfasts.” She rested a hand on her stomach for a moment in sympathy with it for how much good food she’d eaten, leaving nothing on her plate despite her typically sparse eating habits. Then she reached out, “But I will start with one chocolate chip.”

  “You’ll have some help. It’s Friday afternoon knitting, dear.”

  Another change. Before she could remark on it, a car crunched up the gravel driveway and three women climbed out. Melanie Andriessen who owned The Flicker and knew a little too much about Jessica’s use of the back row of her theater during her senior year in high school, Andrea Martins in dirt-smeared jeans and a t-shirt advertising Eagle Cove’s only landscaping business, and Mrs. Winslow.

  Jessica couldn’t help herself, she screamed again and raced back down the steps to hug her second-grade teacher. It had been her guidance that led Jessica into journalism. She looked little changed—perhaps her hair was gray rather than salt-and-pepper, but she’d never been one for “all that hiding your age nonsense.” And perhaps her face was a bit more lined—but she still stood every inch of her five-eight and looked as if she’d just come from a long hike, perhaps up Mount Rainier or maybe Everest. She had to be in her mid-sixties at least, but she still hadn’t quite transitioned to the dubious honor of “she’s a tough old bird.”

  Mrs. Winslow patted her on the back while they hugged, and was surreptitiously wiping at her eyes as she and Jessica climbed the stairs arm in arm. Jessica was feeling a little sniffly herself…and more than a little horrified. How in the world was she ever going to tell Mrs. Marjorie Winslow, a woman who had wrangled her way into being a front-line reporter in the last years of the Vietnam War, that her star pupil was on the brink of total failure? Jessica did her best to shove the question aside, but it wasn’t shifting offstage nearly as easily as Jessica would like.

  Soon they were all sitting together on the porch, and cookies and drink were headed around as knitting projects emerged. Her old classmate Becky Billings rolled up in her bright blue delivery van—“5B” it declared in gigantic letters, then underneath it read “Becky Billings BlueBird Brewery.” They exchanged squeals and hugs as well. Becky had become “tight as bees” with Jessica and Natalya ever since the day they first met in preschool. It was like there was a small rip in the universe whenever the three of them were together and merry mayhem had always ensued. Others arrived, some of whom she knew, some not so much, until a dozen women were gathered on the B&B’s spacious front porch.

  Mom dug out a spare set of number six straight needles and a ball of Lamb’s Pride worsted in a soft butterscotch gold and another of light woodland green.

  “Why don’t you make yourself a nice scarf for when you go back to Chicago, dear?” As if she couldn’t manage anything more complex than a scarf. She was on the verge of taking umbrage when she looked down at the needles. Jessica had to squint at them a little to remember how to cast on. Maybe she’d keep her mouth shut for a change.

  She put the first slip-knot loop over her needle and then caught a very slight headshake from Tiffany, more an unexpected ripple of hair than a headshake. Making it look casual, Tiffany took the tail of her own yarn and slid it out to arm’s length.

  Right.

  As subtly as she could, Jessica undid the slip knot, pulled out an extra three feet of yarn and made another knot; the long tail would be absorbed during the cast on. She’d have discovered the problem herself in a dozen stitches, but she’d been saved the embarrassment of pulling it out and starting over properly. No one else seemed to notice except Natalya, who was grinning at her like a co-conspirator in an international crime. Jessica offered a nod of thanks that Tiffany returned infinitesimally before turning her attention back to her own project. Jessica stuck her tongue out at her cousin.

  So, whoever Tiffany might be, she missed nothing. That had always been one of Jessica’s strengths, too. Natalya was the slippery one of the team, Becky the rowdy, and Jessica the observant one. They’d often agreed that what they’d been lacking was a smart one. She’d have to wait and see about Tiffany.

  Wait and see?

  What in the world was she thinking?

  This was Eagle Cove and she’d be gone just as fast as her mother’s wedding allowed.

  Greg waded into “the zone” on occasion as much by chance as by planning. Sometimes it was a smooth slide, other times a heart-stopping plunge as bad as when the surfboard dumped him into the ocean and the wave action didn’t release him until his head ached with the cold.

  Tonight there’d been too little warning for him to be anywhere else except the zone. By the time the seventy-pound slab of cleaned halibut, Airport Peggy, and the Judge all arrived at the restaurant, prep time had already been tight.

  In minutes he was spewing out directions like a master chef. He was so wound up that he slid into his commercial kitchen mode. He only ground to a halt when Peggy came to stand directly in his path and wouldn’t let him by to reach t
he fresh herbs he kept growing in the restaurant’s south window.

  “What?” He snapped at her.

  Peggy stood still. She was half a foot shorter than he was…and could snap him over her knee if she’d felt like it. She should have been an Alaskan bush pilot. Not like Maggie O’Connell in Northern Exposure, delicate for all her bravado. Peggy Naron was shorter than the model who had played Maggie and not much bigger around. But Peggy gave the distinct impression that if she had to wrestle a polar bear, it was going to be a bad day for the bear. She had dark curly hair pulled back in one of those ponytails that exploded behind the rubber band making it look as if she was racing in his direction just the way a diving eagle might moments before it killed its puny prey. She was closer to the Judge’s age than his own, finishing high school while he’d been starting diapers.

  “What?” He managed to tone it down this time.

  “I’ve known you since you were still inside your mama, Greg. Babysat when she needed a break from you and Harry. Now answer me one question straight and I’ll let you by.”

  What was it with tricky women today? First Jessica, then Dawn, and now Peggy. “Okay,” he said cautiously.

  “Where are you right now, Greg?”

  “The Puffin Diner.” He tossed it out as a joke, then wondered if he was about to get another plate of greasy food down his pants for being so flippant. How else was he supposed to answer such a weird question?

  “Good boy. Remember that,” and, that simply, she stepped aside. She returned to her work of shelling the scallops with knife and spoon. At least he hadn’t wasted the beautiful shellfish on some earlier test just for himself; they’d be perfect in tonight’s dinner.

  He’d been moving so fast that, having come to a halt, there was an inertia against moving again. He glanced at his father. The Judge had been shaving shallots on a mandoline, but now had stopped. He wasn’t watching Greg, instead he was looking at Peggy. Inscrutable as ever, there was no way to tell what he was thinking, and Greg wasn’t sure if he wanted to know.