Chapter 35
35
The light from Pinky’s house shone like a beacon through the dark snowy forest. As they stepped inside, the mouthwatering smell of roasting meat greeted them. Pinky sat by the woodstove, holding a skewer through the open window of the stove. The three cats were all watching intently for their chance at a treat.
“Maura, is that you?” he said in amazement, as she crouched next to him to give him a hug. “Thought you’d stay back in the civilized world until this storm passed.”
“Well, it turns out that reports of it being civilized are greatly exaggerated.”
“Huh?”
“I’d rather be here,” she explained. “Lachlan too. Is that okay?”
Pinky grinned at them both in delight. “Only got a few more sausages, but we can share what I got.”
“That’s okay, it smells great, but we had some soup at The Fang.”
Pinky’s open face clouded over at the reminder. “You were right, someone was asking lots of questions about you.”
“I heard about that. I’m sorry, Pinky. I’d better tell you what it’s all about, now that we’ve got nothing but time.” She gestured at the snow outside the windows.
While Lachlan forged back into the blizzard to use the outhouse, she sat cross-legged on the floor next to Pinky and told him the whole story.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier, but I really hate talking about that man,” she told him regretfully. “It gets me angry every time he takes up my time and my attention.”
“I knew something was up. No reason for you to be out here if there wasn’t.”
She detected wistfulness in his voice. “That’s not true. I really did want to reconnect with you. It was more of a two-birds-with-one-stone situation.”
“Terrible phrase,” Pinky muttered. “Bloodthirsty.”
Oh Pinky. She really did love her grandfather. “Sorry, I’ll rephrase that. It was a win-win. Two good things in one.”
Pinky’s blue eyes watered. “So you gonna leave now that he found you?”
“I can’t leave now. Did you see the snow out there?” She laughed it off, but her grandfather’s serious expression didn’t shift. “I don’t know what I’m going to do next. But we do have a few days to figure it out, with this blizzard.”
Lachlan came back in, stomping snow off his boots. “I’ve never seen snow that heavy. Half an inch fell while I was in the outhouse.”
“Mind bringing some more wood from the shed while you got your coat on?” asked Pinky. “Thought I had enough but it’s going fast.”
Maura saw that the hopper held only three pieces of firewood, and was glad all over again that they’d made it to Pinky’s. Had he forgotten to stock up? Was he planning to brave the blizzard for more? He was in his seventies. Maybe it was getting harder to do such things, and to remember that they needed to be done.
Lachlan brought one armload of wood after another into the arctic entry, where Maura ferried them to the pile next to the stove. Pinky roasted more sausages until he had a plateful. He split one between the three cats, and tossed another to Newman, who didn’t have to budge from his dog bed to gulp it from the air.
They all sat together, enjoying the flames, and the feeling of being safe in a cocoon in the middle of the dark vastness, until Pinky interrupted the drowsy silence.
“Happened once before, you know. Ain’t the first time someone came out here to get away from bad people.”
“What are you talking about, Pinky?” Maura asked through a mouthful of sausage.
“That professor who used to live in Wind Valley. Said someone was after him for his research. We called him the Nutty Professor.”
“You knew him?” Lachlan set down his fork, half a sausage still speared on the end. He met Maura’s glance, clearly thinking the same thing she was. Why had they never asked Pinky about Dr. Reed before? Then again, he hadn’t seemed important until they’d called him on the phone and gotten such a strange reaction. “Someone was after him?”
“I don’t know, he was pretty paranoid, especially at the end. I never could tell if what he said was real or just in his head.”
Maura suppressed a smile, since many people in town had the same thought about Pinky.
“How did you know him? Did you hang out with him at The Fang or something?”
“Nah, he wasn’t a drinker. He had three little kids. I had a little mining claim on that creek that goes through the valley. That’s how we got to talking. He liked me. He said I was a ‘natural man’ because I never went to school. He sure talked a lot of shit about school considering he was a professor.”
“He was a homeschooler, right?” Lachlan asked.
“His idea of homeschooling was making the kids follow him around while he did stuff. They were too young for school anyways.”
Maura was sure she would have gotten into some serious arguments with Professor Reed. “What else do you remember about that family?”
Pinky screwed up his face and squinted into the rafters, as if that would call up the memories. “He weren’t here for long, but he was hard to forget. Wore black nail polish because he didn’t like seeing dirt under his fingernails, so he just painted ’em. He was always dictating into a little tape recorder. Said it was part of his life’s work. But then he went off the deep end. He thought people were gonna come for his research and that his family would be in danger. He had a name for it. What he was working on, I mean. Something with ‘wave.’ ‘Wavy-gravy gobbledy-golloolly-spectro-something.’”
Maura giggled at his version of Reed’s research. “Catchy.”
Pinky laughed too. “His wife got real worried about him. I’d see her crying sometimes. Then she tried to leave and they got into a huge fight. They must have worked it out, because they all left together.”
“Do you know why they left?”
With a snort, Pinky shrugged. “If you think it’s rough here, imagine how it is in that valley. I don’t know the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak. Maybe the electrical storms?”
Lachlan frowned. “Electrical storms?”
“Yeah, sometimes everything would just go dead. It wouldn’t happen in town, just out here. The professor said they’d been getting some electrical storms. Must have been scary, especially for the kids.”
Maura was kicking herself that she’d never asked Pinky about the Reed family. “You never mentioned them before.”
“Why would I? Never saw them again. I almost brought their things to the summer flea market, but they might still come back, you never know. Wouldn’t want to break a promise.”
Maura’s eyes flew to meet Lachlan’s. “Wait. Back up. You have their things?”
“Sure do. Ain’t much, but the Nutty Professor had a couple boxes he wanted to leave here.”
“Did he say why? They had a whole Apache helicopter for their things.”
Pinky shrugged, looking oddly uncomfortable. “I stay out of people’s personal business. Told him I’d hang on to his stuff and that was that.”
Maura rubbed her hands together, practically salivating at the thought of what might be in there. “Can we look through them? Where are they? I don’t remember any boxes like that.”
“That’s because they’re in the shed. All the way at the back. In a pile with a lamp on top. I ain’t heard a peep out of those folks for ten years, so you go right ahead.”
The shed…Maura hadn’t even thought about cleaning up in there. She shot Lachlan a glance. “Ready for another trip through the storm?”
Even with headlamps, they could barely see two feet through the cascading blanket of snow, which was falling thick and fast and silent. They almost missed the shed, which was only about twenty yards from the house.
Inside, Maura scanned the jumbled chaos for the pile Pinky had mentioned. There was the lamp—a vintage model with a stained glass shade. It was perched on a precarious stack of random junk: a waffle iron still in its box, a moldy game of Clue, a gnome figurine with a shock of gray hair, a coil of copper wire, a set of wrenches. Under all of that sat several boxes, which were covered with a cheerful tulip-patterned tablecloth with a prominent scorch mark.
In other words, a classic Firelight Ridge scenario, where nothing was ever thrown away in case it someday proved useful.
Had Pinky’s hoarding tendencies saved the day?
By the time they’d carted all the boxes back to the house, Maura was exhausted. It had been such an insanely long day that she could barely remember where she’d woken up this morning.
“Is this everything?” she asked Pinky as she brushed snow off the cardboard. Each box was tightly taped and labelled “Private Property.”
Pinky screwed up his face. “Might be a few other odds and ends. Things that looked useful, you know. Like if I ever get a TV, I already got a remote. Anyways, Newman’s ready for bed and so am I. Leave those boxes be until morning.”
Reluctantly, Maura agreed. She was already yawning, and it would be much easier to sort through the contents in the daylight. As she led Lachlan to her bedroom, she shot a quick glance over her shoulder and saw Pinky staring at the boxes, muttering to himself.
Once the bedroom door was closed behind them, Lachlan surveyed the room with its missing sheetrock and mattress on the floor. She’d done her best to spruce it up by hanging fabric on the walls and repainting the dresser with bright tropical flowers. She’d even crafted a lampshade for the bare bulb using an origami technique she remembered from summer camp.
When he was done with his inspection, he gave her the sweetest smile in the world and said in a tender voice, “You are a wonder.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’ve taken a shitty situation and transformed it.”
“Don’t let Pinky hear you call this room shitty.”
He came closer to her and cupped her face in his hands. “You know I’m not talking about the room. I’m talking about everything. I once heard someone say that the real definition of security is the ability to adapt to change. You should give yourself some credit.”
She couldn’t speak. He was looking right into her, right to her core, making her feel something she’d never felt before— seen . His eyes were so beautiful, not just because of their soft sea-green, but because of the heart and soul behind them. And just like that, she felt herself tip over the edge into an irreversible slide toward…could it be…love?