Chapter 4
The coast road into Port Chasten curved along the cliffs above Chasten Bay. I drove slow, no reason to rush. The morning was gray but not raining, the kind of Pacific Northwest clouds that could change either way and usually did before the day ended.
Port Chasten came into view around a curve. Two blocks of stores facing each other across a narrow street. Old houses surrounding it. I was the only car moving when I turned onto the main street.
I drove slowly from one end to the other. There was a bookstore with a cat in the window. A gift shop with shorter winter hours still posted on the door. A small grocery with six parking spots out front.
The buildings were cedar shingles and painted wood, useful rather than fancy. The town wasn't trying to be cute. It had been around long enough not to need to pretend.
I parked in front of the grocery at the south end of the block. A hand-written sign on the door said OPEN 8am to 9pm. My phone said 8:04. The lights inside were off and the door was locked, despite what the sign said.
I got out of the truck.
The ocean air hit me right away. Salt and cold and something green underneath it, the smell of the forest meeting the sea. I stood on the sidewalk and breathed it in for a minute, letting it fill my lungs.
Since the grocery wasn't open, I walked north along the sidewalk. The bakery was two doors up. A light glowed inside and the door stood slightly open and the smell coming through the gap was bread and sugar and cinnamon that reached me on the sidewalk.
I pushed the door open.
The bakery was small and warm and spotless. Glass cases along one wall. A worktable visible through the opening to the kitchen. A chalkboard menu above the cases with the day's offerings written in neat handwriting.
Behind the counter stood a woman in her sixties, gray hair pinned up, an apron dusty with flour. She looked up from whatever she was doing and gave me the studying look of a small-town business owner seeing a face she didn't know.
"Morning," I said.
"Good morning." She wiped her hands on her apron. "What can I get for you?"
"Not sure. Maybe I can look around?"
"Please do. Ask any questions you might have."
I looked in the cases at the pastries, my mouth watering. I could feel the woman studying me from behind the counter.
"Visiting Port Chasten?" she asked.
"Just moved here, actually. I bought the old James cabin on the coast road east of town."
Her face changed right away. Not a lot, but the studying shifted to something friendlier.
"The James place. Well." She came around the counter and held out her hand. "I'm Irma. Been running this bakery longer than you've been alive, I reckon."
"Thomas Harmon."
"I knew Mark James," she said. "Good man. Terrible loss."
"He died?"
"About a year ago. I knew Claire was selling that piece of the land. Wondered who'd end up with it."
"It's a beautiful spot."
"It is that." She was already moving toward the coffeepot on the back counter. "You want coffee?"
She didn't wait for an answer before pouring it. I didn't argue.
"Cream and sugar?"
"Black, thanks."
She handed me a ceramic mug that said Port Chasten Bakery on the side in blue letters. The coffee was familiar and comforting, Kirkland brand straight from the Costco can.
"What would you tell me to buy?" I asked, looking at the cases. Everything looked good. The bread, the pastries, the donuts sitting on a tray still warm from the oven.
"The sourdough's what I'm known for. But those plain cake donuts just came out ten minutes ago. Baked, not fried. They won't be that fresh again until tomorrow morning."
"You've convinced me."
I bought a loaf of the sourdough and a small bag of the donuts.
"The grocery will open when Aimee gets around to it," she said. "Usually sometime after eight, depending on what kind of morning Aimee's having."
She said it with the loving annoyance of a woman who had been watching Aimee have different kinds of mornings for years.
"I appreciate the heads up."
"Take the mug, finish the coffee. You need anything else, you come back. And welcome to Port Chasten, Thomas Harmon."
I thanked her and took my coffee and my bag and went back out to the sidewalk.
Back at my truck, I sat on the rear tailgate and ate a donut.
It was, without question, the best donut I had eaten in years. Maybe ever. Not because it was fancy. It was the simplest thing possible, a plain cake donut, the kind that had no business being this good.
But it was fresh and sweet and still warm from Irma's oven. The outside had exactly the right firmness before giving way to the inside that was soft without being mushy.
I ate it slowly and looked down the empty street at the ocean visible in the distance.
This was the kind of thing people who lived here got every day.
Warm donuts from a bakery run by a woman who knew what she was doing.
Salt air at 8am on a street empty enough that you could hear the distant waves.
I ate a second donut and didn't feel bad about it.
The grocery's OPEN sign lit up at 8:32. Through the window, I could see movement. Lights coming on in the back. A person moving behind the register.
I finished my coffee, set the mug on the truck's bed to return to Irma later, put the bread and leftover donuts inside the cab. I didn't bother locking it. It didn't seem necessary in a place like Port Chasten.
I walked to the grocery door and pushed it open. The woman behind the register was not what I expected.
She was maybe thirty-eight. Brown hair pinned back neatly. Blue eyes. A face that was openly and instantly expressive, like she'd never seen much point in hiding what she was thinking. Most eye-catchingly of all, she wore a low-cut shirt that showed off her freckled chest and ample cleavage.
She looked up when I came in and her face cycled through three things in about one second. Noticing that I was a stranger to her. Figuring out what a stranger was doing here. And something I might nicely call personal interest.
"Good morning."
"Good morning," I nodded, smiling pleasantly.
"Anything I can help you find?"
"I think I'm okay," I said. "I have a list. I'd forget half the things I need without a list."
"Lord, don't I know that feeling?" she laughed.
I grabbed a basket and started moving through the store with the list I'd made last night at the kitchen table.
The store was small. Four aisles, a modest produce section, a deli case with limited but decent choices. Clean and well-organized. The selection was enough for a man who cooked simply and wasn't picky about brands.
"Visiting or just passing through?"
She talked with the breezy tone of a woman who'd decided long ago that silence in a small store was something to be actively fixed.
"Neither." I picked up a can of beans, checked the price, put it in the basket. "Just bought the James cabin on the coast road."
"The James place?" Her voice changed, the same shift I'd seen in Irma. "How'd you find it?"
"FSBO website. I was looking for land on the peninsula. It came up."
"She just listed it, right?"
"Just days on the market before I saw it," I agreed. "Very lucky for me."
"And for her. You planning on using it for winter or summer vacation?"
I grinned, amused by the same question Claire had asked. It seemed like people around here expected strangers to be short-term visitors.
"Neither, actually. I'll be living there full time."
She nodded, her eyes looking at me in a different way.
"Well, we always enjoy when someone new moves to the area," she said. "I'm Aimee, by the way."
"Thomas."
"What do you do, Thomas-who-bought-the-James-cabin?"
I looked over at her. She was leaning on the counter now, watching me with obvious curiosity.
"I'm an expert witness. Insurance fights. I review claims and give testimony when cases go to trial. Most don't and are settled before that happens. Lots of research and paperwork."
"So you work from home? I assume so since Port Chasten is a long commute to just about anywhere."
"I work from wherever I am."
"Interesting."
"What about you, Aimee-who-runs-the-store?"
"Like you said, I run this place. We do okay.
Most people here make the trip to Costco in Sequim for their main shopping.
Ninety minutes each way. Rather pay their prices than mine.
" She said it without bitterness. "I don't blame them.
My prices aren't Costco prices. Hell, I've got my Executive Membership too.
Being nearby costs money. Tourists keep me going in summer.
In winter, I sell enough to make it worth staying open. That's enough."
"It's good to have a place so close, even if prices are a bit higher. Just part of the rural lifestyle."
"Damn right." She raised an eyebrow at me. "Speaking of rural... Have you met Abner Flint yet?"
"No, but you're the second person to mention him." Claire had said the name too when she was showing me the property lines. "What's Abner like?"
Aimee thought about the question. "Not easily described, but worth knowing. Him and his daughter are the most self-reliant people I've met in my life. And I've spent my life in a small coastal town full of self-reliant people."
She said it with genuine respect.
"I'll have to introduce myself," I said. "Maybe trade phone numbers with my new neighbor."
"Good luck with that. Abner doesn't have a phone. Doesn't want one. You want to talk to Abner, you drive out to his place and hope he's in a talking mood."
I set my basket on the counter and she started scanning items.
"I had the donuts from Irma's bakery this morning," I mentioned, trying not to look too hard at Aimee's generous cleavage. "I may have eaten more than I should have."
"Irma's plain cake donuts are a specific and non-transferable reason to live in Port Chasten." She looked up at me. "I'm completely serious."
"I believe you."
"They're also the reason I have to watch what I eat. If I didn't, I'd be twenty pounds heavier."
"You look pretty good to me," I said, feeling bold.
Aimee paused, a half-smile on her lips as she looked me over. I held her gaze, enjoying the flirty energy this woman was sharing.
"Well, thank you, Thomas. What a nice way to start the day."
"Most welcome."
I bagged my own groceries because the counter was right there and it seemed weird to watch someone else do it. She watched me and didn't comment. I could feel her building up to something.
"You know," she finally said, leaning forward on the counter, "if you want to know more about the area, you should let me buy you dinner at Charley's. Only diner in town, but it's a good one."
She paused. Something playful shifted in her eyes.
"Actually, scratch that. You should buy me dinner at Charley's. Because I know more than you do, and knowledge has a price."
She said it with a smile that was direct enough that no special interpretation was needed. The way she leaned forward was also showing off her chest in a very deliberate way.
I openly looked her over. Aimee was a good-looking woman. Brown hair catching the light from the window. Blue eyes holding mine with no pretense of looking away. A mouth that suggested she smiled often and meant it when she did.
I'd been alone for a while now. Since before the divorce, really. Sybil and I had stopped touching each other years before we stopped being married.
"Dinner sounds good," I said.
"Tonight at seven?"
"Tonight at seven."
"I'll see you then, Thomas."
"Hell yes, you will."
She giggled as I paid for my groceries, picked up the bags, and walked back out to the street. The morning had warmed slightly. Or maybe I had.
I put the groceries in the back seat, got Irma's coffee mug from the roof of the truck, and walked it back to the bakery.
Irma took it with a nod of approval. "Most people forget. Or don't bother."
"My mother raised me better than that."
"Good woman."
"She is."
"Actually, why don't you keep that mug?"
"Really?"
"Sure. It has the bakery logo on it. Good advertising. Consider it a welcome gift to a new resident."
"Thank you, Irma. I appreciate the gift and the welcome."
I drove back down the coast road with the empty mug and the groceries and Irma's sourdough on the passenger seat. The ocean spread out blue and endless to my left and the forest pressed close on my right.
The morning had gone better than expected. I had supplies. I had a sense of the town. And I had a dinner date with a woman who'd made no secret of her interest in me.
And with it all, I also had the cabin waiting for me. The list of problems. The work ahead. The land that was mine to look after.
I had lots of things to do.
But for now, driving the coast road with fresh bread beside me and the salt air coming through the cracked window, I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.