Chapter 2
The Olympic Peninsula revealed itself slowly, not all at once like a postcard. Dense forests crowded the road, the mountains appearing and disappearing behind trees winding toward the coast.
I'd driven this road just once before, when I first found the ad. I came unannounced, not bothering to make a viewing appointment, not knowing if I was really settled on doing this thing. Maybe I was still trying to find my nerve.
Driving over the Hood Canal Bridge and onto the peninsula made me feel lighter somehow. It was hard to describe, a physical feeling in my chest that I connected with the land itself rather than any decision I had made about it.
I felt it again now, stronger, as I took the Port Chasten exit and kept going south along the coast road toward the property.
The seaside town looked the same as it had on my earlier visit.
Two blocks of old store buildings, most of them selling tourist stuff.
An old-fashioned bakery. A grocery store that looked like it had been there since the logging days.
A few people on the sidewalks, moving at the brisk pace of locals rather than tourists passing through.
I made a mental note to get to know Port Chasten as soon as possible, but I didn't stop. The cabin was waiting.
The turnoff was easy to miss. An unmarked gap in the tree line on the right side of the road, a box transformer sitting quietly at the entrance.
That box was an important piece of equipment.
It gave power to the cabin, bringing electricity down from the county line to the cabin's electrical box.
No mailbox yet because I hadn't put one up.
Just a dirt path disappearing into the trees.
I almost drove past it. I saw it at the last second and swung the F-150 wide, the Airstream following behind me as I turned onto the path.
It was two hundred yards of dirt and gravel road through wooded acreage.
The path was narrow enough that tree branches brushed the Airstream's sides in places.
I would need to cut those back later. The drive ran straight for the first hundred yards, then curved gently right before opening into the clearing.
Along the left side of the drive, barely visible where winter rains had washed away some soil, I could see the faint line of the buried power cable pipe. The underground line that connected the cabin to the county power, running from the box by the road all the way to the cabin.
I'd read about it in the property papers. I made another mental note to walk the full length of it once I was settled, checking for any problems or exposed spots.
Then the clearing opened up, and I stopped the truck and sat for a moment with the engine running.
The cabin was smaller than I remembered. Houses always are on the day you move in. Your imagination makes what you last saw bigger, but reality fixes it when you arrive.
But it was also more real than I remembered, now that it was mine. The weathered wood siding and the green door and the covered porch made it unique in a way that photos never quite showed. It was a real thing. It was my real thing.
I sat with that for a moment before turning off the engine.
A car was already parked at the clearing's edge. A newer Subaru Outback, the usual car of the rural Pacific Northwest. Before I finished getting out of the truck, a woman came around the side of the cabin and stopped when she saw me.
My first thought about Claire Beaumont was that she was younger than I expected, in her late twenties at most.
My second thought was that Claire was a beautiful woman. Red hair pulled back in a practical ponytail. Startling green eyes and pale skin dusted with freckles. Curves that were solid and hard to ignore. The kind of woman who was beautiful even in the plain work clothes and rubber boots she wore.
My third thought, arriving as she crossed the clearing toward me with her hand out and her face professionally neutral, was that she was not at all happy to be here.
She shook my hand quickly and got straight to business.
"I know you've been here before, and the real estate lawyer gave you the inspection papers, Mr. Harmon. But I want to fill you in properly."
She had a clipboard. She looked at it rather than me when she spoke, as if the cabin's problems were easier to talk about than the man she was talking to.
Her voice was controlled, and her manner was formal the way that people are formal when they are handling something they didn't like but can't change.
I listened and asked careful questions and watched her when she wasn't watching me.
"My father built this cabin in 1973. Mark James. Built by hand when he was twenty."
She said it like this was important. And it must have been to her. The way she spoke about her father showed how she felt about him.
Claire went on to explain that Mark James was not a trained carpenter, and the cabin showed both the ambition and the learning process of that fact.
Claire informed me that for the last several years, the cabin sat more and more empty. She didn't explain why. The cabin took the neglect the way old buildings do. Slowly, in places that weren't easy to see.
Claire walked me through it thoroughly.
"The roof." She pointed toward the south slope. "A storm last November lifted and cracked several pieces. I think there's wood damage beneath at least one of them."
I followed her gaze, noticing the way a few shingles curled at their edges. Water would find its way under those. Water always did.
"The gutters are pulling away from the edge on the north side. They'll need a full replacement." She moved around the corner of the cabin, and I followed. "The north siding has water damage from years of the broken gutter sending water down the wall instead of away from it."
I could see it. The boards warped and softened, darker than the surrounding wood. How bad the damage was beneath wasn't yet known. Could be surface, could go deeper. No way to tell without opening it up.
"The wood stove needs professional cleaning and inspection before use. The pipes haven't been cleaned in at least ten years."
We went inside. The cabin was dim and smelled of dust and old wood and something faintly organic. I hoped it was not bad, just the smell of a place that had been closed up and waiting. But that damp smell might signal trouble.
"The well pump has been reliable, but it's from a 1990s upgrade. Its age might be a real concern." She made a note on her clipboard. "The septic system needs formal checking. It seems to work, but it hasn't been certified in years. Rural Wooded zoning requires it."
She said all of this without apologizing and without warmth.
I noted it without taking it personally. I'd dealt with people managing difficult situations across courtroom tables for twenty years. I knew controlled distress when I saw it. This woman was holding something together, and the effort of holding it was costing her more than she wanted to show.
When she finished her list, I asked a question she clearly didn't expect.
"The Greenland wood stove. Is the firebrick behind it original, or has it been replaced?"
She blinked once. "I don't know. My father handled all of that."
The question had altered her view of me slightly. She was looking at me rather than the clipboard now. Her green eyes were sharp and studying.
"What seasons are you planning to stay at the cabin?" she asked. "Summer or winters?"
"I plan to live here full time."
The shift was bigger this time. She looked at me with a different kind of attention. Rethinking, adjusting. Not warmth yet, but something closer to it.
A man who plans to stay is different from a man who plans to visit.
"I didn't realize." She tucked the clipboard under her arm. "Most buyers of Rural Wooded properties are looking for vacation places. The zoning rules make the land nearly impossible to sell to anyone. One house per twenty acres. No dividing. Limited building potential."
"Those rules are part of why I bought it."
She studied me for a moment.
"Well... I'm grateful you paid cash. It was a big help for us. Our farm is next door. This property was part of our land for many years. Letting it go was hard."
She said this carefully, as if gratitude was a door she was opening just a crack.
"Why did you sell this piece of your property?" I asked.
The question was direct but not aggressive. I was simply asking. Her jaw tightened almost invisibly.
"A matter of need, not choice." Her voice was flat. "I wouldn't have done it if it hadn't been absolutely necessary."
Her tone didn't invite more questions. I didn't ask more.
We walked back outside. The afternoon light had changed, coming through the trees at a lower angle now. The clearing was half in sunlight and half in shadow. The pond at the southern edge caught the light and held it, a bright spot against the dark green of the surrounding forest.
She stopped by her Subaru and turned back to face me.
"If you need tools, you're welcome to borrow from the farm. Just follow the eastern property line. White farmhouse. You can't miss it."
"I appreciate that."
"And if you want occasional part-time work, there's always something needing doing. I can't pay much." She paused. "But a good dinner is always included."
"I might take you up on that."
She reached for the car door handle, then stopped.
"The land behind both our properties belongs to a man named Abner Flint. He lives there with his daughter." She picked her next words carefully. "They are unusual but solid people. You'll probably run into them eventually."
"Good to know."
She shook my hand again. Her grip was firm and quick. Business done.
"The keys are by the kitchen sink."
"Thank you, Ms. Beaumont."
"Claire."
She corrected it automatically, then seemed almost surprised that she had. She got into the Subaru without saying anything else.
I watched her drive back down the path. The sound of her engine faded, and then there was only the wind in the trees and somewhere distant, a bird calling.
I stood alone in the clearing for a long moment. I was suddenly aware that my nearest neighbor was a beautiful and clearly lonely woman who didn't want to sell me this land. Who hadn't decided what to make of me. Who was carrying something heavy that she had no intention of sharing with a stranger.
That was her business, and I'd respect it. I had my own baggage, my own weight to carry.
I went inside to walk through my new home.
The cabin had two small bedrooms and a cramped bathroom. It was simple and functional, the design a young man with more ambition than experience would come up with.
Still, Mark James had done good work. I could see it in the joints, in the way the boards fit together, in the small fixes and adjustments that spoke of a man learning as he built.
The cabin had settled over the years, as all wooden buildings do. A few gaps had opened between the boards. Nothing that couldn't be fixed.
I ran my hand along the interior wall. The wood was smooth with age, darkened over the years. Mark James had loved this place once. He'd built it with his own hands and made it a comfortable place to stay.
I found the keys by the kitchen sink, just where Claire had said they would be. Four keys on a simple ring. One for the front door and one for the rear, plus two spare copies.
The kitchen was basic. A propane stove that looked like it was from the 1990s. A small refrigerator. A white sink and basic cabinets that Mark James had clearly built himself, with the same careful imperfection as the rest of the cabin.
I opened them one by one. Empty except for a few glass jars and a rusted can of coffee that had to be at least five years old.
I would need to make a supply run to Port Chasten. Tomorrow, maybe. Today I just wanted to be here, to take in the reality of what I had done.
The Greenland stove took up most of the sitting area. It was a big cast-iron thing, the kind they made in the 1970s before efficiency rules changed the design of wood stoves forever.
I opened the door and looked inside. The firebrick behind it was cracked and broken. I would need to replace several of them eventually.
Add it to the list.
The bedrooms were stuffy, the afternoon sun coming through the small window of the larger one. There was no furniture.
Despite that, I would spend my first night sleeping in this cabin. It would feel wrong not to. Tomorrow, I would see about getting the cabin more livable.
I went and stood in the center of the main room. The light was changing again, growing golden as the afternoon stretched toward evening. Dust floated in the air. The cabin was silent except for the faint creaking of old wood settling.
I had cashed in most of my retirement to buy this place.
I had walked away from everything familiar.
I was forty-five years old and starting over in a cabin that needed more work than I had fully realized, in a place where I knew no one, with nothing but my skills and my determination and whatever was left of the man I used to be before twenty-two years of marriage slowly hollowed me out.
Sybil would have called it foolish. Reckless. The decision a man makes when he is running away from something rather than toward it.
Maybe she would have been right.
But standing in that cabin, watching the light move across the worn floorboards, I felt something I hadn't felt in years. A quiet feeling, one that had room to grow.
I went back outside to get my camping cot from the Airstream.