Chapter 2 Annie #2
Thanks to Sally at the bed-and-breakfast, Annie now knew that Lake Lumin had a population of 836, a number that instantly stuck fast in her head due to the absolute absurdity of it.
There had been almost double that number of kids in her high school alone, and even then, the school had seemed far too small, a petri dish of students who knew too much about one another.
Every embarrassment, every rumor, every secret, had been shared with the collective whole, but this was a town, an entire town of less than nine hundred, and she, with her five-foot-ten frame, long copper braid, and crisp uniform, was sticking out like a sore thumb.
She’d lived in Bend for twenty-eight years, her entire life, and now, for the first time, she was the outsider.
Jake patted the man’s stooped shoulder and started moving down the sidewalk beside her again.
When they reached the bed-and-breakfast, he waited at the front desk with Sally while Annie jogged upstairs to gather her things.
Even with the door closed, she could hear the cadence of his quick speech and ready laughter, and Sally’s answering chuckles.
Annie rolled her eyes. The guy was a cartoon.
Packing didn’t take long. Most of her belongings were still in the Jeep.
Actually, most of her belongings were in a storage facility in Bend, but the bulk of what she’d brought with her—clothes, her pack, some equipment, and a few framed photographs—were still in the Jeep.
Annie tucked her nightclothes into her duffel and met Jake downstairs.
Together, they walked down the hill to the car.
The morning mist was lifting, and small patches of bold, blue sky shifted in the haze overhead as they drove through town.
Annie had to admit, the place had charm.
Quaint shops in faded hues of green, brown, and blue squatted beneath towering Douglas firs, and the entire length of Main Street, less than half a mile as she’d measured it by the Jeep’s odometer yesterday, looked as though it had grown spontaneously in the forest, popping up like a ring of mushrooms after a rain.
Jake talked so constantly that Annie wondered how he managed to breathe as he pointed toward buildings and people and rattled off a brief history of each.
Mountain Fountains and Chimes had several colorful birdbaths for sale out front and was owned by a married pair of bird enthusiasts named Ben and Delores Gannon.
The Lake Lumin Zoomin’ Go-Kart Track, which weaved a pretty, kidney-bean-shaped loop through a patch of woods tucked back from the street, seemed to be the popular hangout for high schoolers this spring, though Jake was sure they’d migrate to the community pool when the weather got warmer.
He told Annie that the pool was drained for most of the year, and that his primary duty as the town’s lone police officer was to check it between the hours of midnight and 3:00 a.m. for teenagers huddling over bottles of Olde English or making out.
Annie nodded along, following his rambling train of speech, but just barely.
When they reached the end of Main Street, they left the buildings of town behind and turned north onto a thickly wooded two-lane road that snaked toward the mountain. Two miles later, Jake angled a finger at a tilted road marker.
“Lake Lumin Road,” he announced.
Annie was grateful that he’d pointed it out. She would have flown right past the green sign half hidden behind the arm of a leafy maple.
She slowed the Jeep as they jostled over uneven dirt, the motor revving up stairstepping hills that rolled with the land.
The higher they rose, the denser the woods that pressed in alongside the road.
The forest here seemed older, and it was even lovelier than the wilderness on the drive in.
Annie had the sudden sense that she was at the heart of it, the flawless center of the diamond, with the last vines of fog still lingering at the edges of blue shadows, and shafts of sunlight breaking through the canopy.
“What is this place?” she breathed.
Jake turned to her, smiling. “This is the briars, Annie. Most beautiful pocket of land in this corner of the state, if you ask me. I haven’t been a whole lot of places, but I’ve never seen anything to rival this road right here.
The whole other side of the mountain used to look like this, too, before it blew.
We used to camp over there when I was a kid, but now it’s completely brown and bare.
The blast didn’t spare so much as a blade of grass, but it’ll grow back in time.
Honestly, though, if she had to blow, that was the direction to do it in.
Least amount of damage as far as human life was concerned. ”
Annie nodded. Eventually, she’d want to get over to see the ruined side of the mountain, too, but for right now, she was content to just look at the undisturbed beauty around her.
It was pristine. Untamed. And already, just bouncing over the potholes on this remote road with the Washington wilderness surrounding her like an embrace, the sharp edges of her broken heart seemed a little less jagged.
“Roll your window down,” Jake instructed, still smiling.
Annie lowered the window and fresh forest air, impossibly green and sweet, filled the Jeep. In an instant, she was back in her childhood home, dragging a sleeping bag into the living room to spend the night beneath the Fraser fir her father brought in, fresh cut, every December.
Annie inhaled the evergreen scent and turned to Jake, surprising herself with a laugh.
“If you could bottle that, you’d make millions.”
“Right?” He nodded. “I can’t really smell it much anymore, but whenever I leave and come back, it’s strong as perfume for a day or two. Best smell in the world, isn’t it?”
He was looking at her with that smile again, the one Annie was already starting to think of as his signature grin, and she smiled back. Despite her best efforts not to, she could feel herself thawing toward him. It might be nice to have a friend in town.
“Right here, this is the place.” He nodded toward a driveway on the left marked by a mailbox that was indeed shaped like a trout, wide-eyed and gaping.
Annie pulled the Jeep in next to a blue sedan parked beside the detached garage and killed the engine. The garage door was open, and inside, a man with silver at his temples stood bent over a humming table saw.
“My dad, Walt.” Jake reached over to tap the horn and lifted a hand when his father looked up. Walt offered a quick wave, then turned back to the board he was sawing.
Annie stepped out of the car, gazing open-mouthed at the fir trees towering around the white house.
They were gigantic. Monstrous. Each one surely hundreds of years old, their great boughs moving in the wind with a sound like rushing water, and Annie was struck by the sudden, unpleasant thought that just one of these trees toppling in the wrong direction could smash the entire house and everyone in it to bits.
The front door opened, and a woman wearing an apron patterned with sunflowers came out onto the stoop.
“Come on in!” she called. “Pie just came out of the oven.”
Annie followed Jake toward the house, where he introduced his mother, Laura Proudy, who wiped her hands on her apron and took both of Annie’s with a squeeze.
“It’s real nice to meet you, Annie,” she said, vowels curling with the hint of a leftover Southern accent.
The fine lines on her face spoke of mirth and patience, and Annie warmed to her immediately, thinking that she looked something like her own mother might have, if she’d lived into her early fifties.
Laura led them into a messy, inviting kitchen and pulled out a chair for Annie at the table, while Jake claimed the one beside it.
“I bet you’re hungry after all your travel.”
Annie nodded, though it wasn’t true.
She hadn’t been hungry in weeks. There were moments when she felt empty, or when the growling of her stomach propelled her in search of food, but nothing had truly tempted her appetite since the moment that her life fell out from under her like a trapdoor.
This morning at the bed-and-breakfast, she’d woken to a knock and discovered a wicker basket sitting in the hall outside.
Her name was written in Sally’s looping cursive on a pink place card, and beneath the linen napkin were two Swedish pancakes, rolled and stuffed to bursting with lingonberry jam and vanilla-scented whipped cream on a silver-lined plate.
They were beautiful, but Annie sat alone at the little table in her room, cutting precise bites with her fork and forcing them down without tasting them.
She ate as a means to keep moving—as fuel, as a necessity to push forward. She had seen what sadness could do to a person’s body, and she would not lose one ounce of her hard-earned strength over Brendan. She would cling to it like a bulldog, sinking her teeth in.
“Go ahead and have a seat, honey, I’ll serve the two of you up,” Laura said, pressing Annie into her chair with a hand on each shoulder.
Annie sat, the corners of her mouth lifting. It was blatantly obvious where Jake had gotten his bubbly personality and complete disregard for personal boundaries.
Laura plated two heaping slices of pie and topped them with generous clouds of canned whipped cream before setting them on the table.
“Thank you,” Annie said, blowing on the steam before taking a bite.
She turned to Jake, whose brows were raised in expectation, and nodded. He hadn’t lied. It was easily the best pie she’d ever tasted, tart and sweet and bursting with summery flavor.
“This is delicious,” she said.
“It really is, thanks, Mom,” Jake managed around an enormous mouthful.
Laura smiled and stepped back to the counter to gather the dishes.