Page 12 of The Sea-Mist Cottage Inn
Without turning more toward me, he nodded. “Like you said, I lived it with you.” He went back to work on the electronics.
I kept my attention on my son as I started my story. “So the beginning of the end is a little over a year ago, Wyatt’s dad died.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” Jessie turned to Wyatt. “I’m so sorry, Wyatt.”
“Thanks,” he mumbled without looking.
Jessie swung back to me. “What happened?”
“Climbing accident. Micah loved the outdoors. He was an avid climber, hiker, skier, mountain bikes, all that. At least once a month, he and his buddies went off for a weekend to play. The last few years, he took Wyatt with him whenever he could.”
“And you?”
“I went when I could, and when I was invited—sometimes he wanted a guys’ weekend, you know. But usually I was working. I was a teacher, so during the school year I didn’t have any free time.”
Jessie’s big, dark eyes, lined as ever with smoky shadow, popped wide. “A teacher? That’s great! That’s what you wanted.”
I sighed. “Yeah. It was.” My dead career was a later part of the story, so I moved past it now. “Anyway, last year, Micah and his buddies went into the Ozarks for the weekend, to one of their favorite spots, a place they’d climbed at least a dozen times. That last time, he was free-soloing—that’s climbing without safety gear—and missed a handhold. He fell about eighty feet to the rocks below.”
“My god.” Jessie grabbed my hand. “God, Len.” Again, she turned to Wyatt, but when she saw his posture, the way it showed extreme focus on plugging cords in, she said nothing. Jessie understood when to listen and when to speak.
The pain I felt to lose Micah after so many years together had been keen and blazing hot at first, but my travel through the cycle of grief had been forcefully detoured only a couple of weeks after the funeral. Now, fifteen months later, more than a year lived through the turmoil and trouble he’d hurled us into, my mourning wasn’t over, but it had become complicated and ambivalent.
That part of the story was directly relevant to our return to Bluster, so I focused there. “Not long after his funeral, I found out we were effectively broke—and about to be homeless.”
“What?”
“Without talking with me about it—ever—he’d invested heavily in a business venture of one of his buddies. I guess it always struggled, and when his friend needed another big infusion of cash or he’d have to give it up, Micah ... I guess hewas worried about losing all that money, so he did the gambler’s thing and doubled down. By borrowing against the house.”
Jessie actually rocked back with shock. “Without telling you? How?”
“The house was his. He already had it when we met, and he never got around to adding me to the deed.” Shaking those thoughts off, I returned to the story. “Anyway, the accounts were empty, and as a high-school English teacher I didn’t make nearly the income he’d made as a corporate analyst, so I couldn’t make the mortgage—mortgages—and I couldn’t get clear by selling because its value was underwater. When I contacted the bank to ask for help, they initiated foreclosure instead. So before I was anywhere near ready to pack up Micah’s closet, we had to pack up everything.”
Already weary of telling this part of the story, I decided to sum up the rest for now. “We started off renting a little apartment and trying to keep what we had left together on my salary. Then I got fired for teaching a unit I’d taught for years. A unit I’d won awards for. But the cultural climate in Arkansas has changed a lot in the past few years, so the same teaching that won me Teacher of the Year in my district five years ago got me invited to pack up my classroom four months ago.”
Despite his obvious commitment to taking as long as he possibly could, Wyatt had finished hooking up the gaming console, the receiver, speakers, and the rest of it. Now he was sitting quietly, facing the components. His shoulders had slumped.
I’d been wrong to tell the story in front of him. Yes, he’d lived it all with me, butreliving it was a different kind of thing. “Anyway, that was the last straw, I guess. I couldn’t teach in Arkansas, I had no idea what kind of work I could do, I was tired and sad and worried about my kid. I knew my mom was gone because the mayor tracked me down about a year before allthis and told me, and he sent paperwork to show that she hadn’t had a will, so I’d inherited everything she had. He wanted me to come back and take this place over. But I didn’t want that. So I shoved it aside, expecting to let the place rot until the town could take it over, or until the forest did. I didn’t want anything of hers. But that was before, when I’d had a good life with what I’d thought was a strong foundation. When that life completely blew up, and I had no other options, I finally realized, ‘She’s dead. She’s not there to hurt me. I deserve something good from being her daughter, and maybe there’s still a place for me in Bluster.’ Worst case, I figured I could at least sell this place, even as is, and get enough out of it to stake a new start. So I talked to Wyatt about it, and he was all in right away. When his school year ended, we got busy clearing away what little was left for us in Little Rock, and we headed west.”
I didn’t say it aloud, not with him sitting right there, but I figured he would have jumped atanyidea that suggested a direction we could turn, any slightest glimmer of hope.
Jessie sat quietly beside me, studying me. Threaded through the gold rays of her brown eyes was compassion, and sorrow, and perhaps some relief or satisfaction, for having a piece of an answer to a long-open question. I saw all that, understood it, because I knew my friend. Even now, after so many years, after so much life, I knew.
So when Jessie’s next spoken question was, “Why Little Rock, of all places?” shaping her face into a caricature of confusion that would do Carol Burnett proud, I burst into laughter. Jessie always knew when to turn a topic in a new direction, and she always knew when a laugh was a lifeline.
Wyatt whipped around to peer at us, but when he saw my expression, a smile emerged on his face as well. I sent him my love with a look, and he sent his back.
LATER THAT NIGHT, AFTERJessie left and Wyatt and I had taken turns showering away the crust of the cabin’s disuse and decay, we sat on the front porch, each of us wrapped in a fluffy blanket and holding a cup of hot tea in our hands. The fog had rolled in dense and low.
“It smells so good here,” Wyatt sighed, leaning his head back against an Adirondack chair in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint. “Whatisthat smell?”
I leaned back, too, and took a deep whiff. “Redwood, eucalyptus, and salt from the sea spray.”
“Sea spray? But we can’t even see the ocean from here.”
“It comes in with the fog. Also, if we were closer to the ocean, the smell wouldn’t be as good. Up close, you get sea-spray and fish. We’ll take some time for the beach tomorrow, if you want.”
“I want.” He took another big inhale. “I can’t believe anybody would ever want to leave here.”
