Chapter Two Vivien
The sign goes up crooked and I squint at it from the sidewalk with one hand shading my eyes.
The vinyl lettering is pink and bubbly against the white background. There's a little paw print where the apostrophe should be, because the man at the post office told me that Lumberjack Lagoon responds to paw prints.
"It's a good sign," I mumble to myself. "Professional. Legible from the street."
It's the kind of sign a bank looks at and thinks low risk and that’s exactly what I was going for. It's also two degrees off level, and I leave it that way for six whole minutes before I climb back up the stepladder.
The first sign I ever made was hand-painted on a piece of barn wood I found behind my ex-husband's shop.
It was ugly as sin, but it was mine. Every letter had a different height.
The last G in grooming leaned like it had somewhere better to be.
I was so proud of that lopsided thing I took a picture of it in three different kinds of light.
I don't know where that girl went.
"There we go." The bracket bites in. I press my thumb against the corner until the whole thing sits square. "Straight now."
I climb down and Main Street does what Main Street does on a Tuesday in June, which is not much.
Two logging trucks negotiate their way past each other with about four inches to spare and a lot of opinion from one of the horns.
Somebody's dog is tied outside the hardware store, collecting pets from every single person who passes.
The whole street smells like sawdust and the mineral tang coming up off the lagoon.
Next door, the bay doors are open on the half-built firehouse. Somebody's running a saw. The sound stops. Starts. Stops again. It’s a simple life and that’s exactly what I signed up for.
"Mom." Drew is in the doorway to the back room with a granola bar he did not ask permission for. "Mom, is it going to be a real fire station over there? Looks too small.”
"It might be small, but it’s going to be real."
"Because right now it's just a building with a truck in it, but if it's a real one then there's, like, a pole. Do you think they’ve got one in? Are there going to be bunk rooms or…" He takes a breath. "I'm going to go check it out." Drew takes a step toward the door.
"Negative. Back room, bud. I'm almost done here and then we can do whatever you want."
He hesitates in the doorway, then lets out a huff big enough to move his hair. "I'm bored. I want to get outside already. Why can't I just be out front?"
"Not by yourself."
"Whatever, Dad lets me be outside anytime I want when I’m at his house."
I ignore the sting. "I only have one more appointment on the books and it's Rei. You can come pet her when she gets here."
He turns for the back room, but not before he rolls his eyes at me. He stomps hard enough that the little bell on the counter rings once, all on its own.
Someday he will understand and things won’t be this hard.
Half an hour later I've got Rei on my table. She’s howling like I'm attempting a murder.
"You're a liar," I tell her. She howls louder, throwing her head back, giving me the whole husky opera. "You are a liar even if everyone in this town believes you. No one is hurting you right now."
A week of swimming in the lagoon has turned Rei’s undercoat to felt.
It comes off in gray-and-white clouds that drift up and stick to my forearms, my apron, the inside of my nose.
The dryer roars. Rei sings along with it.
Then I flip the switch, and in the sudden quiet she leans her whole eighty pounds into my chest. She licks my chin like we've been through something together and I can’t help but laugh.
"Yeah, yeah. I know you love me." I scratch behind her ears. "Drew, come say hi to Rei. She's feeling better."
No answer. I brush Rei’s coat and give her a little treat as a peace offering.
"Drew," I call again.
He’s really amping up the silent treatment this time. I put a bow on Rei’s neck and roll my chair back. The entirety of the back room comes into view.
It’s empty.
There’s a granola bar wrapper on the floor, a chair pushed out at an angle, and the side door to the alley standing open eight inches. A stripe of daylight lies across the tile like something spilled and it takes me a minute to catch up.
"Drew!"
I get Rei in a kennel, latch it, check the latch, and check it again. Then I'm out on the sidewalk with my apron still on and my hands still wet.
The street tips downhill toward the water. The trail cuts off at the second alley. But Drew is eight going on eighteen. He doesn't wander. Drew goes toward things. There are only three options, the dog tied outside the hardware store, the coffee shop, or the firehouse.
The hardware store hitching post is empty and the lead's gone with it. I press on.
The silver bell over the door at Lumberjills nearly comes off its bracket when I shove it open. The place smells like espresso and warm sugar. It’s much too calm for the chaos moving through me. Jules looks up from the machine with her whole face already arranged into welcome.
"Vivien! Perfect. Sit down, I want to talk to you about Lumberjack Days, I—"
"I'm looking for—" My eyes go over the booths. Two loggers. An older woman with a crossword. No small boy. "Jules—"
She continues, unbothered by my sense of urgency. "Our planning meeting isn't until next week, I know that, but honest to God, if I can get five minutes of your time." She's still steaming milk, the pitcher screaming under her hand. "I had a few thoughts. Just a few. Three, maybe four thoughts."
"Jules." My voice comes out flat and strange, and I don't recognize it as mine. "I'm not here for that right now. Have you seen my kid?"
Everything stops. She sets the pitcher down on the counter, hard.
"Drew, yes. Yes. Of course." She's already pointing with two fingers, past the wall, toward the bay doors. "I made him a lemonade and he went next door. Twenty minutes ago, with a dog on a lead. I didn’t recognize the dog, but you know we’ve got so many new people moving in these days.
I suppose it could belong to anyone. But Drew, yes, he's been next door the whole—"
"Thank you." I'm at the door before she finishes the sentence. My hands are shaking now, which is the order these things always seem to happen in.
"Vivien." Jules says my name in the voice that stops people.
It stops me, one hand flat on the glass and I turn back to look at her.
"Come back after you grab him. I'll have a coffee ready for you."
"Thank you."
Outside, the sun hits like a blowdryer to the face and the saw next door starts up again.
Drew and I started our lives over in Lumberjack Lagoon three weeks ago.
I could not have named a single street when we got here, but somehow this place already feels more like home than anywhere I've ever lived.
I step into the bay and it's fifteen degrees cooler. The walls are all new concrete and cut lumber. Dust turns in slow circles in the light coming through the open doors. The engine sits in the far bay with its chrome catching the light.
There are forty feet of empty floor between me and my son.
Drew is sitting cross-legged on somebody's turnout coat with the hardware store dog's lead looped twice around his wrist. Correctly. The way I taught him. There's a lemonade cup sweating a ring onto the concrete beside his knee.
He's explaining something with both hands going. His whole body is in it. There’s an enthusiasm in him that I have not seen in the year since the divorce.
There's a man crouched on the concrete in front of him. He’s broad through the shoulders, except he's folded himself down small. His forearms are braced across his knees. His boots are planted and he’s eye level with an eight-year-old.
He isn't scanning the room for me. He isn't rushing Drew, or checking his watch. He's just listening. Nodding along at whatever my kid is telling him like it's the most load-bearing information he's received all week.
The scruffy, golden dog is the only one who notices me. His tail thumps twice against the floor and stops.
I should say something. Announce myself. Reprimand my son for walking out a side door without a word to me, for scaring the daylights out of me, for the granola bar he didn't ask about, for all of it.
I open my mouth ready to parent, but nothing comes out.
Instead I stand there and watch the man rise to his feet. He’s unhurried with one hand on his knee. The light coming through the bay doors glows across his shoulders and frames him in gold. The sight shoots tingles of electricity through me.
He crosses toward a pile of gear. And Drew, who has not gone easy on a single adult in twelve months, gets up and falls into step beside him without missing a beat.
My heart is going like I ran here. I guess I did run here. But that isn’t the reason I can’t catch my breath.