Chapter 11
Red told Sam she’d pick him up at six, well before dark fell and the outdoor movie could start.
He was waiting for her outside when she pulled up to his house in her ancient Chevy.
“Show doesn’t start for hours. Where are we going?”
“It’s a surprise. Wait till you see.”
Red drove west out Meadlowlake Road.
“I know. You’re taking me to Gran Moraine. I’ve been wanting to go back there. They do a nice, sappy Chardonnay.”
“Nope.”
He gazed wistfully over his shoulder as her car blew past the estate’s entrance. Gran Moraine was the only winery he knew of out this way. The vast majority of Willamette tasting rooms hedged a north-south line between the Coast Range and the Cascades.
“Foothills Taxidermy?”
Red looked at him sideways. “Maybe another time.”
On they went, through canyons of ash and cedar, leaning first right and then left as they rounded bends in the road.
A bad feeling came over Sam. He told himself to relax.
“You’re taking me fishing.”
“People fish in the evening?”
“Fishing’s excellent that time of day. Water cools off. Fish come up to feed.”
“Sorry, but no, that’s not where we’re going. Anyway, when was the last time you heard of me going fishing?”
“A man can dream.”
Despite his calm exterior, his suspicions were growing by the mile.
Regulate. Don’t go there yet. There was any number of things to do out this way. Hiking paths. Wading streams. Maybe Red had reconsidered her new rules. Maybe she was taking him to some scenic new spot to make love.
He had never seriously considered the possibility that she would find the saltbox. His dad had carefully chosen the site for its secluded location, well outside town. Decades later, it was still as backwoods as you could get.
But when Red turned onto the Nestucca Lake Access Road, he couldn’t deny it any longer.
He strategized on the fly. Fake a sudden bout of gastritis? An important meeting he’d forgotten about?
Why was he so bent out of shape? This little predicament was nothing compared with the high-threat assignments he’d handled. He had the training, experience, and ability to think on his feet. He was a pro at leading a double life, deceiving people, forming false relationships based on half-truths and manipulations. So why was he sweating bullets over a house?
The difference was that those relationships were with despicable thugs. The baddest of bad guys, not sweet-yet-exasperating, innocent yet sexy-as-all-get-out Red.
He needed to figure out how to react in a way that would serve his purposes, both right now and in the future. And he needed to figure it out now.
Dammit! Why hadn’t he taken her seriously? Thought this out before he found himself minutes away from arriving in that clearing, sitting next to her where she could read his face? She was a therapist. She read people for a living.
They came to the intersection where his bus used to stop. He avoided looking at the corrugated metal in the brush, so as to not draw attention to it and spark a conversation that would only lead to more lies.
Why had he gone and lied to Red to begin with? Now, if he admitted the house was his, she would demand to know why he hadn’t told her earlier. And that would open up a Pandora’s box of questions.
He took a long, slow breath through his nose, filling his lower lungs, then his upper lungs, holding to the count of three, the way he’d been taught. He exhaled slowly through slightly parted lips while relaxing the muscles in his face, jaw, shoulders, and stomach.
But inside, his heart still banged against his chest wall. His pulse still raced.
There was the fork in the road. The vehicle bounced from side to side. Roads like this weren’t meant for low-slung cars like Red’s.
Estimated time of arrival, one minute.
How deep would she dig? She had gotten houses put on the historical register or whatever it was called. It would be child’s play for her to research the deed, find out that it belonged to one George Owens.
Up ahead was the clearing.
Ten seconds…
The only thing he could do was to tell himself she didn’t matter to him. That way, it wouldn’t matter if he hurt her.
“Ta da! Do you recognize it from my picture? The saltbox!”
“You found it.”
“At first I wasn’t sure it was the right one. It’s kind of run down since I was a girl, and the trees are a lot taller and of course no one comes back here to pick strawberries anymore. But I compared it to the photo, and this is definitely it.”
Sam sat glued to the seat of her car, looking out the windshield at the house he had been in only days ago. The house where he’d grown up.
Red’s hand was on the door handle. “What are you sitting there for? Don’t you want to get out and take a closer look?”
“Hold it,” he said, pointing to his dad’s pickup. “Somebody lives here.”
“No they don’t. That truck hasn’t moved since last Sunday. And there’s a padlock on the door.”
“It’s still private property. You can’t just—” he said to the sound of her slamming door.
He had no choice but to get out. As he watched her practically skip down the boardwalk his dad built to keep from tracking mud into the house, his thoughts raced.
He had to treat this like any other covert operation.
“See over there?” Red pointed to the garden. “That’s where Mom and I used to pick berries. Let me go get you one.”
“I hate strawberries.” In his mind’s eye Sam saw his own mom bent over, weeding her precious berry patch, back during one of those Arcadian summers spent hanging with Jeff and Derek. Once when he slipped into the pantry to grab some Cheerios to take back to their fort, he’d caught her depositing the day’s take in an old cider jug. Sometime after she left, Sam checked and found that it was empty. That strawberry patch had been her means of escape.
Red frowned. “No one hates strawberries.”
She flitted from one corner of the yard to another, plucking yellow dandelions and purple violets while Sam stood in the center of the boardwalk and watched. She looked almost like a teenager in her white sundress that draped and billowed around her curves when she walked. He couldn’t bear the thought of robbing her of her youthful enthusiasm…her fondest dream.
She looked up from her tiny bouquet. “Isn’t this exciting? Don’t you love it?”
Like a Bagram POW camp.
She ducked beneath the clothesline and ran over to the cistern.
“Look at this. It’s for catching rainwater. In the old days, girls used to wash their hair in it.”
Girls like Cindy and his mother.
“Now, watering your plants with rainwater is the height of chic.” She laughed. “It’s like chickens. There used to be chickens running around here, and now the hipsters in Portland are showing off their designer hen houses in their front yards. Everything old is new again.”
Little did she know.
She eyed the shiny white, hundred-gallon gas tank up and down critically. “What’s this? It looks out of place.”
“Propane tank.”
“A blight on the property if you ask me. Kind of ruins the whole rustic effect, don’t you think?”
Sam looked around, suddenly anxious that someone might show up and blow his cover, unlikely as that was.
“No utilities this far out. If you want gas for a fireplace or a stove or something, you got to bring it in.”
“At least it’s somewhat hidden, here in the back.”
She went up to the door, knocked, and rattled the knob despite the padlock.
“We’re trespassing. Someone could come down the road any minute.”
Not exactly a lie.
“I told you,” she said without a care. “No one lives here. It may even be abandoned. I’ll find out for sure as soon as I get a break in my schedule long enough to run down to the courthouse.”
Sam pointed to his watch. “Let’s pop smoke. I’d like to stop and get some decent snacks to go with the wine so we don’t have to settle for Sweetarts and popcorn from the concession stand.”
She turned from where her nose was pressed to a windowpane and frowned. “I like popcorn. You didn’t say anything about wanting to stop for food before.”
“I was waiting to see where you were taking me. For all I knew, we were going out to eat. Didn’t want to ruin it.”
Subdued, she left the window and followed him back toward the car.
“What are you planning to do when you find out who owns this? Put it on some historical listing?” Anything was better than her taking up residence here, in his childhood hell.
“Haven’t you been listening? I want to buy it,” she said, her eyes filled with hope. “To live in. This is my dream house.”
“You can’t live here.” He couldn’t imagine coming here to visit her, eating in the same kitchen, making love to her in his boyhood bedroom.
Her face fell, just as he had known it would.
“Why not?” she said, scampering to keep up with his long strides. “I probably have enough money saved for a down payment.”
“It’s way too much house for you,” he said, feeling like his heart was full of dirty socks.
“I know it needs work, but as long as it’s livable, what’s the hurry? Part of the fun will be in fixing it up.”
“It’s too far out, for one thing. You don’t want to be a woman alone all the way out there, far away from the police and the fire department.”
She snorted. “What’s gotten into you all of a sudden? You sound like Grandma.”
“You should listen to your elders.”
“How’d you get so bossy, Owens?”
“Not bossing you. Just telling you the way it is.”
“I’m not scared.” She raised her chin. “This is what I want. I’ve wanted it for a long time, and no one’s going to talk me out of it.”