In the Heart of Windy Pines Read online

  Neil, who was pretending to be engrossed in a pamphlet about ghost towns of the Old Wild West, looked up at her when this happened, rolled his eyes, and smiled. She smiled back.

  “Charming,” he whispered, smirking a little.

  “Right,” she said, laughing. Sharing this with him did make it kind of funny instead of just straight-up annoying.

  “I guess they thought that cardboard box has a drain in the bottom of it,” he said under his breath.

  Klarinda laughed again. “I’d better get their cider ready.”

  “You want some help with it?”

  “No, of course not. You’re a guest. You can sit down and relax.”

  “Naaa, let me help you. I insist. You’re going to have to get mugs together, a tray, ummm, cinnamon sticks. Right? And that’s just for the cider. We haven’t even talked about hot chocolate yet. I’ll help you get it all together and carry it out here.”

  “If you insist,” Klarinda said, laughing again. It was something of a yearly record for her. Three or four laughs and it wasn’t even noon.

  She led Neil back into the big, industrial kitchen and took a few trays down from a shelf. She decided now was as good a time as any to ask him about his connection to the bell-slammer.

  “I noticed that you and one of the other guests know each other,” she said, as she pulled up a chair to get the CaterGator off the shelf.

  “I’ve got that,” Neil said, getting the big beverage holder down for her.

  “Thanks.”

  “It turns out,” Neil said, “he and I are from the same town. There’s someone who lives out here in Idaho who used to be from the East Coast. This guy’s been contacting both of us, and probably other people too, about using our ocean access to trap lobsters.”

  “Lobsters?” Klarinda asked, making the mental note that this sad man—actually, he hadn’t looked that sad at all yet today—apparently owned oceanfront property, and again wondered what he had to be depressed about. It often seemed to her that money troubles were so consuming that if they were taken away, she wouldn’t have one worry. Of course, on some level she knew that things would then get even worse; she’d have to face her family-less, friendless life head on.

  “Lobsters,” Neil confirmed, just as the swinging door to the kitchen was shoved open and the Monopoly-playing couple stuck their heads in.

  “Hellloooo, just checking whether that cider’s going to be ready anytime soon,” said the man.

  “Just a couple more minutes,” said Klarinda. “We’ll bring it out when it’s ready.”

  “Alright. It’s just, it’s already been ten minutes,” said the man’s wife. Then she hugged herself and shivered theatrically.

  “You’ll be the first to know when it’s ready,” Klarinda promised them.

  “Have you got some cookies or something to serve with it?” asked the man.

  “I’ll see what I can come up with.”

  “Okay. Thanks,” he said. The two of them turned and went back out to the dining room, leaving Klarinda and Neil alone in the kitchen again.

  “You know what I think you need?” Neil asked her.

  “A vacation?”

  “Well, maybe, but after that happens, I think you need to hire a couple more people to help you out around here.”

  “I’d love to, but I can’t afford to.”

  “Are you sure?” Neil asked. “I hope I’m not overstepping my boundaries,” he added, “but I can see you need it. For instance, right now, no one’s at the front desk. What if someone came in and wanted a room? Or what if someone’s up there robbing you blind?”

  “I doubt that either of those things are happening.”

  “Okay, probably not, but look at all this scrambling you’re doing. Is it like this every day for you?”

  “No. Sometimes it’s painfully slow. It’s kind of feast or famine around here.”

  Neil shook his head. “I’ll be honest with you: I’ve never seen a woman work this hard.”

  “Excuse me?” Klarinda said. It was amazing how quickly he’d gone from rather hot to ice cold.

  “Didn’t I see you through the window, standing on something and hanging up a big wooden shutter earlier this morning?”

  “I was standing on the wood pile. And so?”

  “And shoveling the sidewalk?” he added.

  “Yes?”

  “And the parking lot?”

  “Yesssss?”

  “And then renewing everyone’s lodging for another night.”

  “All but one,” she corrected. “The guy in the blue room is still asleep.”

  “Okay. Then did I see you updating your inn’s website too?”

  “You’re sounding like a stalker.”

  “No, no. I just… Was I imagining things, or was there a vacuum cleaner behind your front desk that it looked like you were in the middle of repairing too?”

  “What’s your point?” she asked him. “You don’t think women can work hard?”

  “I didn’t mean to offend you,” he said. “My ex-wife… Uhhh… I don’t know where I’m going with this… It’s just, she couldn’t rinse out a blender. And my daughter’s a wonderful kid—not that she’s really a kid anymore—but she’s not exactly ambitious unless it comes to her artwork.”

  “And those are all the women you know? Gotcha,” said Klarinda.

  “I can tell I’ve really offended you,” said Neil. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s gotten into me. This is the most confrontationally I’ve behaved in decades.”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call this confrontational. A little bit nosy, but not confrontational. Doing all kinds of different things to keep the place running is just part of the job description. It’s called being a small business owner.”

  “We’d better get these out there before they riot,” Neil said, picking up the huge cider dispenser as Klarinda picked up the tray of mugs and gingersnaps. “I’m just trying to tell you that people need support. Trust me on that.”

  “Why are you trying so hard to help me?” she asked him, just before he pushed the swinging door to the dining room open.

  “Because,” he said, smiling, “I feel like I can. Like maybe you need help and you’d listen to me, and it’s the first time I’ve felt that way in years.”

  Chapter 22

  Barney only had another forty-eight miles ahead of him, but the way things were going, he’d be lucky to reach Windy Pines by sundown. Twenty miles back, as the crow flies, he’d come upon an avalanche. Bypassing it had meant taking small, even more treacherous roads and had added nearly two more grueling hours to his trip.

  He pulled into a small gas station with an even smaller convenience store attached, filled up his tank, used their filthy little restroom, and bought himself a box of powdered donuts and a coffee for the road. His head was pounding and the t-shirt beneath all the other layers of clothing he was wearing was slick with sweat. He’d already decided that as long as he lived, he’d never make a trek like this in a blizzard again. No prize was worth this much torture.

  “Which way you headed?” asked the old man at the cash register. In reality, the man probably wasn’t more than five years older than Barney, but Barney often got confused and thought he was still forty-seven or so.

  “Headed to Rabbit Creek,” he said stealthily, naming the small town six or seven miles beyond Windy Pines. There was no sense in sharing more about himself than he had to. And, like many an old man who still thought he was young, he fancied himself to be a bit of a Liam Neeson-type of undercover badass. Even when he was just running out to the hardware store for new weedwacker strings, he liked to act as suspiciously as possible.

  “Oh, I was going to say, depending on which direction you were coming from, the road’s closed from an avalanche. But you must have found your way around it already if you’re headed to Rabbit Creek.”

  “That’s right,” said Barney.

  “Must be something pretty good in Rabbit Creek to get you out on th
e roads on a day like this?”

  “Naw, nothing in particular,” said Barney. He didn’t like all these questions. Or did he? Wasn’t evading the questions part of the fun?

  “Just out enjoying the scenery?” scoffed the man behind the counter.

  “Something like that.”

  “Nothing like a good ol’ blizzard to really make the countryside come alive.”

  “That’s right. Good day,” Barney said, picking up his donuts and coffee and leaving the snoopy old-timer to his adventureless life of running a convenience store.

  Back in his truck, Barney started it up and blasted the defrost. While he waited for the window to clear, he opened the plastic sleeve of donuts, peeled the lid off his coffee, and dunked the first of the donuts into the thick, burnt-smelling liquid. The powdered sugar from the donut spread over the top of his coffee like algae on a lake. He took a bite of it and discovered that the coffee was hardly even warm.

  “Damn it,” he said, just as there was a rapping on his window. The man from the cash register was standing there, holding something up. Barney’s window was so fogged up that he couldn’t decipher what it was. He cranked the window open.

  “You forgot something,” said the old man. In his hand was the gun Barney had pulled from the back of his pants and set on the radiator in the convenience store’s restroom when he’d used the toilet.

  “Would you look at that,” Barney said, gulping and wiping powdered sugar off his face. He reached out the window and took the gun from the man.

  “That is yours, I take it?”

  Barney nodded. “Thank you. I can’t believe I forgot it. I guess I’m a little exhausted from this driving.” His Boston accent always came out extra when he was nervous. He smiled, trying to smooth over the awkwardness of this situation. The old man’s look of skepticism was only getting worse.

  “It’s for grizzlies,” Barney added, setting the loaded gun on the open map on the passenger seat, and smiling the toothy, crooked grin that had never come natural to him. “You just never know.”

  The old man nodded. “You take it easy,” he said.

  “I will. Thanks,” Barney said, putting the truck into gear and pulling away. It was far too icy out to eat and drive, so he shoved his coffee into the cupholder and threw his donuts on top of the gun.

  Idiot, he told himself, as he rounded a corner on the narrow, slippery highway and the gas station disappeared from his view. How could you have forgotten that in there? What if he hadn’t found it and brought it back out to you? You’re nothing but an idiot.

  He turned on the radio to drown out the voice in his head, listened to a staticky commercial about buying mattresses, and then turned it back off. It was far too distracting and irritating. At this point, he saw an old, deserted restaurant that he’d passed five or six minutes before he’d reached the gas station, and he realized he was going the wrong way.

  “Damn it all!” he shouted. He managed to turn around on the slippery highway since no one was coming from either direction, but it meant he had wasted another ten or fifteen minutes and that he had to go past that stinking gas station again. Embarrassing. He cursed under his breath and hit the steering wheel a few more times.

  He tried to calm down. He needed every ounce of his focus to be on the road in front of him and the plans in his head.

  It’s okay, he told himself, talking over the voice yelling that he was an idiot. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. He said it again and again, first just imagining the words, but then saying them aloud. Saying them louder and louder until he had to wipe at the steaming-up windshield. He said it not because he believed it—he wasn’t a forgiving man, especially of his own sins—but because the mantra seemed to be helping him focus on driving.

  “It’s okay. It’s okay. Just keep on driving. Just make it to Windy Pines.”

  Chapter 23

  Earl Morn opened his eyes. It was a new day, probably going on noon, he guessed, and he was still alive. He realized he’d slept beside Tabby’s urn all night, and a jolt of panic overtook him. What if he’d spilled the urn in his sleep? The lid of it just rested in place. He very easily could have had a real mess on his hands.

  Then he began to laugh. The irony of it.

  If you blow your brains out, he reminded himself, it’s going to be a lot messier than that.

  His smile faded. This grand plan of his was falling apart. At some point, he was either going to have to do it, or leave his room. And if he left his room, then what? Go back to Iowa? Go back to the house they’d shared? Go back to watching television fourteen hours a day and eating one huge meal alone at two in the afternoon like he’d been doing daily for months?

  There was a knock at his door.

  He set the urn on the bedside table, opened the drawer of it and put the gun and vial of poison inside it, closed it, and brushed off his rumpled clothing.

  “Just a minute,” he called, rushing over to the dresser and taking a look at himself. He looked deceptively normal. There was no hint of impending doom on him, so far as he could tell.

  He opened the door. A beautiful woman in her thirties was standing in the hallway holding a large basket. Although she had dark hair and his daughter Eliza was blonde, she reminded him an awful lot of Eliza.

  “Hi,” she said. “I’m Klarinda. Is everything going okay?”

  “Fine.”

  “I’m guessing you’ll need to stay on another night?”

  “I think so,” he said.

  “Okay. Just come down and get re-registered whenever you have a chance. Do you need anything for your room?” She held up the basket. Inside were towels, wash cloths, rolls of toilet paper, and little bars of soap.

  “Isn’t that nice,” he said. “I think I’m all set, though.”

  “Okay. There’s hot cocoa and cider downstairs right now, if you need a little treat. You didn’t come down for dinner last night, right? You must be starving.”

  “Oh. Cider?”

  She nodded. “Cookies, too.”

  “I might come down. I’m not sure. Bit of a… um, headache.”

  “Oh. I’ve got what you need,” she said, reaching beneath the bars of soap and producing a couple small packets of pain reliver. She gave him one along with a little wrapped mint.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “See you downstairs?” she asked, smiling as she began to walk away.

  He nodded and closed the door, and then sat down on the bed. He could hear her whistling as she headed back down the stairs.

  Both his kids had been whistlers. He wondered whether they ever whistled now.

  The whole family, himself included, had been musical. Eliza had played the trumpet. Nathan had played the tuba. Tabby used to sing in the shower so loudly that it embarrassed the kids. They’d have friends over and she’d be in there belting out showtunes at the top of her lungs.

  They’d used to joke about forming a family band and going on tour. Well, he and Tabby had, anyway. The kids had thought the idea was embarrassing.

  Why were kids always so embarrassed by their parents? If he killed himself, would that embarrass them? No, he knew they’d just be devastated. But they couldn’t imagine how empty his life had become. If they could, they’d forgive him.

  What he wouldn’t give for one random Saturday from the 1980s. Just any one normal day.

  Hard to believe how fast a lifetime goes by.

  He sighed. So, if he was going to go through with it, he needed to use the poison. There was no way he could make this young woman deal with anything messier than that.

  Chapter 24

  Neil was up in his room, wondering whether this place had yellow rooms or orange rooms. He could have used something a little more cheerful than this gray room he’d been assigned. He was looking out his window, watching some of the couples chase each other around on a snow-covered hillside. Was it too soon to go back downstairs to strike up another conversation with the beautiful innkeeper, he wondered, just as h
e heard his phone make a noise.

  Aside from Vivienne’s messages—somehow, she kept managing to text him from The Big House, as she liked to call it—being contacted by the outside world had become such a rarity that, at first, he ignored the sound, thinking it was coming from the inn. When it happened again, he picked up his phone and saw that he had two missed messages.

  The first message was from that Philman fellow. Barney Philman. Neil ignored that one, figuring he’d deal with him later. The newer message was the only one he was interested in. It was from his daughter Olivia.

  The last time he’d spoken to her, three months earlier, they’d had a huge fight. She’d told him, “It’s her or me, Dad. You decide.”

  “You. Of course. Of course I choose you. You’re my daughter,” he’d told her.

  “Are you still responding to Vivienne?” she’d wanted to know. She hadn’t called her mother by anything other than her first name for over a year.

  “Not really,” he’d said. Because he usually didn’t. Eighty or ninety percent of the time, he ignored her messages. That ten or twenty percent of the time when he responded, it was only by text and only to say something as bland and meaningless as Stay strong! or Hang in there.

  “What do you mean by ’Not really’? The answer should be no, Dad.”

  “It usually is.”

  “Actually, I know you’re still responding to her. She forwarded me a screenshot of a text from you. Even though I’ve changed my number twice, she keeps finding me. How is that possible?”

  “I’m not telling her. She has connections with people in prison now. Finding out a phone number is probably the tip of the iceberg of what they’re capable of.”

  “Way to calm me down. Thanks. The screenshot says We’ll always care about you, Punkin. How could you say ‘we’ when you know I despise her? And, Dad, why don’t you despise her? How do you think it makes me feel that you’re still in touch with her?”

  “Oh. She forwarded that to you?” He’d forgotten about that one. That one had been, without a doubt, his weakest moment.