Chapter Seven #3
But I could barely hear what she was saying. I was having an out-of-body sensation. Just like I had when Tina got arrested. It was like I was watching myself from a great distance.
I’d bought a house.
A house. In a state I’d never been to before. In a town I’d only visited today. And I was about to quit my job…
Oh my God. I was insane. How could I quit my job now that I’d taken on a house and a loan? What if I couldn’t get another one? What if nobody was hiring? My heart was thundering. What if Flo and I ended up homeless because of my recklessness?
I never did crazy things. I was responsible. Boring. And yet here I was, leaping into the unknown of a new life. A junk heap of a new life…
“We should celebrate with a sundae!” Flo insisted. “How often do we buy a house?”
And because I was shaky from spending a truly scary amount of money, I gave in.
She took full advantage of the situation and got a double banana split with chocolate syrup, whipped cream, and peanuts.
A glistening, fat maraschino cherry sat right on top.
Flo immediately handed me the cherry. She hated them—she said they tasted like cough syrup.
“I think you’ve had more sugar today than you’ve had in your whole life,” I said weakly, taking the cherry.
She pulled the sundae closer, suspicious I’d take it away. “Can we turn one attic room into a spare room? Then we can have people come stay. Like Candy. Or Suni and Wayne.”
Suni and Wayne. I should call to tell them the news, I thought numbly. But telling people would make it real…
I nibbled on the sticky glazed cherry as I sat with the weight of my decision, vacantly watching Flo plow through the ice cream sundae.
I’d just bought a house full of junk in a place I knew next to nothing about.
We hadn’t even driven by the schools. I hadn’t checked out anything except the house and the hardware store.
“Flo-bug,” I said abruptly, “I don’t think I’m up for driving home tonight.”
“Cool. Let’s go stay in our house. We can find out if it’s haunted or not.”
The memories of bare bulbs and plastic bags and torn screens flashed before me.
“We can’t,” I told her, unable to hide my relief. “Not until closing. We don’t technically own it yet.”
“What’s closing?”
“When the money changes hands.”
“Oh. Okay. Let’s stay here then. This town’s cute.” She spooned up a huge glop of melting ice cream. “Can we stay on one of those boats? That would be cool.” She pointed to the yachts in the harbor.
“I doubt it.” What on earth would it cost to stay on a yacht?
“We can’t afford anything around here,” I warned Flo as I hunted for a motel.
“Oh. How about this?” I asked, showing her the photos of the Oxeye campground with its little log cabins.
The photos had been taken in fall when the woods were brassy with color.
The cabins sat sleepily in drifts of red and gold leaves.
“Back home in Oxeye,” Flo drawled, trying it on for size. “That sounds weird, doesn’t it?” She pulled a face. “What happens if we hate the house once we’re living there?”
I had a squirmy cold feeling in my stomach at the thought. “We can always sell it, I guess.” I was reassuring myself as much as I was her. “And move back to Pittsburgh. But then we’ll have to move out of Squirrel Hill and into a studio.”
“What’s a studio?”
“One room.”
“The whole apartment is one room?” She pulled another face, this one more extreme than the last. “I’m not going to hate Oxeye that much.” She reached for my phone. “Can we have a campfire tonight, at the campground?”
“I don’t know what the laws are about fires in the summer. You might need a permit.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s wildfire season,” I said as I booked the cabin. At least we’d still be on the coast, and only a stone’s throw from our new home. It was only after I booked that I learned I’d have to pick the key up from one Jake Abernathy at Oxeye Hardware (and Lobster Shack). Great.
“Do you have the keys to everything around here?” I asked when I returned to Oxeye to meet him at the store.
He was sitting out front at one of the picnic tables, watching the light fall rosy on the choppy bay as the day waned.
He had a beer in one hand and a book open in front of him.
The salty breeze eddied around us, riffling the pages of his novel. He was still stupidly good-looking.
“Pretty much, yeah,” he admitted, reluctantly closing his book and leading me into his hodgepodge of a store. “It’s a convenient location.”
The windows at the hardware store were closed, and the place now had a hushed, sleepy feel.
Jake reached behind the counter for a key, which was hanging on a little hook on the wall.
The key was attached to a toy-sized orange and white plastic buoy.
“So it doesn’t sink if you’re out on the water,” he said, when he saw me looking at it.
“If you’re boating or whatever. It floats.
” He handed it over and my arm tingled as his fingers brushed mine. “Where’s the kid?”
“In the car. She says she’s overstimulated and needs some downtime.”
His lips twitched at that, and a flicker of double dimples appeared. “Her and me both. I’ll give you a map so you can find your cabin. You’re in number five.”
“No need to show us around this one,” I said quickly, worried he was about to volunteer to give us a tour. One tour with Jake Abernathy was enough for today. “I’m sure I can manage to look around a one-room cabin on my own.”
Jake gave me a reproving look with those blue-green, marble-glass eyes as he slid a photocopied map toward me.
“I was only trying to help.” He took a pen and used it to trace the path from his store to the campground.
“Here’s the bay, and this is Beach Road here. You’re going to drive down this road—”
I stopped listening about then, because I got distracted by his hands.
He had working hands, suntanned, with gilded hair on his knuckles and a freckle on the back of his right index finger.
His fingers had little nicks and scars, and there were specks of paint on his square nails.
Also, he was leaning so close that I was enveloped in his scent, which was a blend of sea salt and wood shavings, sunscreen and beer.
It was a summery smell that made my heart skip like it was the first day of vacation.
“Got it?” he asked as his pen circled cabin number five on the map.
“Yep,” I lied.
“Each cabin is off on its own in the woods, so be careful. The campground isn’t staffed but you’ve got my number—call me if you run into any trouble.
And if you’re looking for breakfast tomorrow, the café two doors down from this place opens at seven; show them your key and they’ll give you a fifteen percent discount. Colleen will look after you.”
“Okay, thanks.” I took the map.
“You know, you should probably spend some time in the town before you move here,” he said gruffly. “Stay a couple of days. Meet a few people. Make sure you’re not making a mistake.”
“Thanks for the unsolicited advice,” I said. The man was impossible. Although he wasn’t wrong. “But my bid on the house has already been accepted. So you can stop warning me off now.”
He was silent. He looked sorry for me.
“And thanks for your heartfelt welcome to town,” I said dryly.
He didn’t follow me out when I left. His beer and book sat forgotten on the picnic table as we drove off.
The campground was only a couple of minutes down the road from Oxeye, on a wooded spit of land which curled into the bay.
The rusty cliffs grew lower and gentler as we drove, and there was a glimpse of a secluded sandy beach as we turned onto the spit.
The photos hadn’t done the campground justice.
They’d made it seem low-rent and sad but in reality it was peaceful and secluded, everything you could want from a camping retreat.
It felt like we were winding out of everyday life and into the wilds.
The dirt road led through a woodland of spruce and oak, pine, maple, and hemlock.
When we passed a faded sign with curly writing on it, Flo squinted out the window to read it. “Welcome to Saint-Cyr,” she said. “I thought this was still Oxeye?”
“It is,” I said absently, focused on navigating the narrow track.
We drove by a sweet wooden playground of swings and monkey bars and a busy barbecue area.
There were children squealing as they hung upside on the bars while their parents cooked hot dogs and hamburgers on the grill in the fading evening.
The campsites were discreetly scattered through the woods, just in sight of one another but far enough apart to feel private.
Our cabin was in its own stand of trees, close to the water.
It wasn’t new, and it wasn’t fancy, but it was full of charm.
It was a proper old-fashioned one-room log cabin with a raw timber porch, complete with a couple of rustic, weather-beaten rocking chairs.
There was a cold firepit directly in front of our front door, but I’d forgotten to ask Jake if we’d need a permit, so I didn’t let Flo have her fire.
I made up for it by letting her use my phone for a while.
“Culch doesn’t just mean junk,” Flo called to me across the cabin as I washed my face in the bathroom, which I was relieved to find was clean and serviceable.
I stared at myself in the small, fly-specked mirror. I looked pinched and stressed. I’d just spent so much money…
“Culch means usable junk,” Flo told me, sounding pleased. “The word culch comes from oysters.” Flo looked up from the phone, frowning. She was draped over her camp bed upside down, her head over the edge and her braid dangling on the floor. “Is an oyster a fish, or a shell, or what?”
“I think it’s kind of both. It’s a shellfish.” I’d never stopped to think about oysters and didn’t really care to think about them now. I dried my face and hands.