“I’m impressed,” I said, and I was. Sure, it was just eggs and toast, but I’d punched the guy not too long ago, yet here he was, making me dinner. Nice guy.
I had no idea what to do with a nice guy. I’d never dated a clean-cut, Backstreet Boy type; I’d always stayed in the heavy metal/alternative, dirty, tattooed-boy section. I could appreciate what a Nick Lachey had to offer, sure, but my type was always going to be a Dave Navarro, a Chris Cornell.
A nice guy? Hmmm.
Shaking off the feeling, I sipped my wine. “So, tell me about yourself, Clark.”
“Me? What’s there to know?”
“Oh, I bet plenty. Tell me about the man, the myth, the legend.”
He raised an eyebrow at me, then nodded at the wine. “Pour me another glass and you’ll get all three.”
Yeah, I poured. He talked. Born and raised in Mendocino, he’d gone away to college at Pepperdine, history major, minor in library sciences. His family had always been heavily involved in the area’s historical society, preserving old homes, churches, restoring and repurposing older buildings. He confirmed what Caroline had already told me, that much of the town of Mendocino was in fact a historical site. Most of those efforts were privately funded, although he worked with homeowners to apply for and receive federal grants, like the one my aunt had received. The library was his main job, although hours had been cut steadily over the last few years and there was now a pretty small staff that assisted him.
“No one does pure research anymore, not without the Internet of course. Sure, we’ve adapted pretty well, but for the most part, the library here exists for a pleasure reader. Although with Kindles and iPads, we’re even starting to see those readers begin to slip away. Plates?” he asked, bringing the pan with the scrambled eggs to the table. I helped him butter the toast, and we settled ourselves around the kitchen table. There was still a rake stuck in the chandelier in the dining room and it was raining too hard to go out to the barn for the ladder so, yeah, that was out for tonight.
“Well, I’ll be down for my library card just as soon as I can.” I forked up a mouthful. “Mmm, these are great, Clark. You want some hot sauce?” I asked, sprinkling Tabasco over everything on my plate.
“I’ll pass. Do you read a lot?”
“I’ve been known to, sure,” I said, hoping my face wasn’t as pink as it felt.
“Last book you read that changed how you felt about something,” he said.
I thought quickly. Not sure I could tell him about Loins, and how it changed the way I now saw baguettes. “Um, let’s see. Black Holes and Baby Universes.”
“Wow, impressive. Hawking. How did you think it compared to A Brief History of—” The kitchen was suddenly plunged into darkness. “I wondered when that was going to happen,” he said.
“What happened?” I asked, looking around in the dark. I had a flashlight in here somewhere.
“Power goes out in town when there’s a bad storm. They usually have it back on within a few hours, though, not to worry.”
“I’m not worried.” I fumbled in the drawer until I found it. “Ah, there we go!” I said, turning on the flashlight.
“What wattage is that thing?” he asked, holding up his hands.
It was a bit bright.
“No dimmer on this thing, sorry,” I said, trying to cover it up a bit. “Wait, I know!” I hurried into the other room, dodging the rake, and grabbed the candles. Striking a match, I lit them quickly, then set them down on the kitchen table. “See? Even breakfast for dinner can have ambience.”
I looked across the table at him, hair rumpled from the bat fight, mud on his T-shirt from being under the porch, and an intense-looking smile. And the bandage, God bless it. I smiled back at him, then took a bite of toast.
“So, Clark, does your family still live here in town?”
“Oh no, now it’s my turn to ask the questions.” He grinned, slapping another coat of strawberry jelly on his toast. He licked each finger; jellying toast by candlelight was a messy business. “So where are you from, exactly? I’ve been trying to place your accent all week.”
Damn. Had it really only been a week? “My accent?”
“Yes, it’s very specific. Not just generic back east, although I’m fairly certain it’s in that general area.”
“It’s in that general area, yes.” I nodded, enjoying where this was going. Philadelphia natives did have a very specific accent, although most couldn’t place it.
“It’s not New York.”
“State or city?” I asked.
“It’s neither. And it’s not Boston. It’s not New Jersey, although I admit my knowledge of that accent is limited by my addiction to The Sopranos,” he said with a half grin.
“You’re close. Philadelphia. Specifically, a little town just outside the city.”
“Philadelphia. So tell me, what do you do back there in Philadelphia?”
“Well, until recently I owned my own software company.”
He dropped his toast. “You owned your own—what?”
“Yep. I’m a software engineer by trade, got lucky with a program after college and went out on my own.”
“So what did you specialize in?”
“In a nutshell? I write programs that do data mining. You know, look for needles in a cyber haystack? Just sold a new program a few months ago.”
“You said until recently. Are you not doing it anymore?” he asked, looking fascinated.
“No, after all of this kind of fell into my lap I decided to sell my little company to a bigger company. They’d been making offers for years, and to be honest, my heart just wasn’t really in it anymore. So when they offered again, I sold it. Well, I’m in the beginning stages of selling it.”
“Who are you selling it to?”
“Franklin Logistics and Software.”
This time he choked on his toast. “You just sold your company to Franklin L&S?”
I passed him his water. “Well, going through the process, but yep.”
“Wait— Vivian Franklin. Franklin L&S. Any relation?”
“Sure, it’s my dad’s company.” I grinned.
Clark sat there for a moment, digesting. “Can I ask something?” he said.
“Sure.”
“Why did you sell it? I mean, sounds like things were going great for you back there. Why come here?”
I thought for a moment. “I think because I hadn’t had an adventure in a long time, and I was ready for one. And this was exactly what I needed at exactly the right time,” I said, dipping up a fingerful of jelly and licking it off. “Do you believe in fate, Clark?”
“Fate?” he asked abstractedly, watching my mouth closely.
“Yeah, fate. Do you think that there’s a preordained path you’re supposed to be on?”
“Never given it much thought, really. I’m pretty methodical. Not prone to whims,” he said.
“No. I never would have guessed.”
“You’re teasing me, Vivian.” He chuckled.
“Maybe just a little.” We sat for a moment together, quiet and still in the candlelight. “So,” I finally said, “I guess I should get the dishes started.”
“I’ll help you,” he said, getting up to clear.
“Don’t be silly. You cooked; I’ll do the dishes.” I took his plate before he could grab it and brought them both over to the sink.
“You wash, I’ll dry?” he asked, tying his apron back on.
“That’s a deal.” I turned on the water. As we cleaned up, we chatted some more.
“So did you always know you wanted to go into computers?” he asked, drying the plate I’d just handed him.
“No, in fact I hadn’t planned on going into it at all. Most of my family’s in computers so I wanted to try something new, you know? Out of the box?”
&nbs
p; “You? Out of the box? I never would have guessed,” he said, swiping a soapy fingertip down the ink on my arm.
“Don’t poke fun, Clark. That’s my design there,” I warned, flicking a bubble at him from the sink.
“You’re a tattoo artist too?”
“No, but I minored in art in college, and spent some time really trying to make a go of it before the computer bug bit me. This tattoo is one I designed myself.” I twisted so he could see it better, the candlelight not being very strong.
He examined the ink, turning my arm to see how it wrapped around. “You drew this?”
“Mm-hmm.” I drew in a breath at the feel of his hands on my skin. Backstreet Boy or not, he had good hands.
“You’re very talented.”
“Once, maybe. I haven’t used that part of my brain in a long time, though.”
“Why not?”
I chewed the inside of my cheek, not ready to answer that question. I never went back to it because I just fell into something new. I’d always assumed there’d be time for it, that I could go back to my painting later. That I could balance the practical with the artistic. But family and work became all encompassing.
It wasn’t a bad life, just a life without a lot of . . . passion. Adventure. Purpose. Intrigue. Wonder . . . And paint. “Here,” I said, handing him a slippery dish. He took it, drying it off without asking anything else.
We stood in the darkened kitchen, quietly cleaning up. It was nice, the not talking. When I finished washing up I leaned back against the counter, swallowing the last of the wine in my glass. He hummed a bit while he was working, a tune I almost recognized but not quite. His voice was even and pleasant, even humming. He caught me watching him but didn’t stop his tune, just grinned a little.
I was struck by how easy this was, how comfortable it was. There was no onion to peel here; Clark was an open book. Easy to read, easy to predict, he’d tell me anything I asked him. No holding back, no games, no bullshit.
But also maybe no chase? No working for it, no running after, no stomach pangs, no hit of adrenaline when the little things go my way. Like when Hank threw me that apple, I got a thrill from that, right?
You also got a thrill when Clark was draped across you, breathing on your thighs . . .
Well, I’m only human. And a human who is living in her own romance novel, remember? The house, the ocean, the cowboy? There’s your passion. Adventure. Purpose. Intrigue. Wonder.
“Paint?”
“What’s that?” I asked, brought out of my daydream.
“I was saying that if you wanted, I could help you paint the kitchen. When you’re ready, of course.”
The librarian finished drying the dish, still humming his merry tune.
And I thought long and hard about paint. I was still thinking about it after he went home.
chapter ten
The next two weeks passed by quickly. I spent my days either cleaning, organizing, or driving countless bags of clothing, kitchen supplies, and ever-loving tube socks to a local shelter that was happy to take them off my hands. I found stack after stack of old plates, cups, and saucers; nothing too fancy but not cheap either. I pored over them, selecting a few pieces I wanted here and there but mostly packing them carefully into boxes and bringing those down to the shelter as well.
I threw away and recycled so much so that I now knew the names of the sanitation guys on my route. Threadbare rugs, moth-eaten coats and scarves were pitched; and bag after bag of magazines went into the recycling bin. Boxes of old receipts, calendars dating from the seventies, cassettes, CDs, VHS tapes, DVDs—pitched, recycled, or donated. The eight-tracks I donated to an antiques shop; I knew someone would pay money for those.
Encyclopedias, yellowed with age and warped from water damage under the leaky roof, and sadly with outdated information, were recycled as well. As Clark pointed out, not everything was worth saving.
Checkbooks, TV Guides, ads for local stores that had gone out of business years ago—there was no rhyme or reason to what was saved. And there was no easy way to go through this; you couldn’t just go through bulldozer style and throw everything out. I realized that when a box that I mistakenly thought contained only old coupons had one of the original titles to the land the house was sitting on! And in a box of crappy costume jewelry? An antique brooch with a ruby the size of a marble. A marble!
“A very small marble, maybe, if you squint,” Clark had said when I showed it to him.
“Oh where’s your sense of storytelling?” I’d said right back to him.
I was recounting the story to Jessica one morning when she stopped by to see how things were going. She’d helped out a few times with sorting and packing, taking a carload herself down to the shelter a couple of days a week after her shift at the restaurant.
One afternoon I made her come up with me to the attic. After the initial foray into the basement, I wasn’t too proud to admit I wanted some company; I’d seen way too many horror movies to venture into an attic alone. I promised her dibs on any creepy dolls we found up there.
The attic stairs were at the end of the hallway on the second floor, almost hidden behind the linen closet. Behind a door that you opened with a key, which had made it seem like a wonderland when I was a young girl.
Jessica and I opened the door with a loud creak. The stairs were as steep as I remembered, and creaky, just like attic stairs should be. Turning on a small landing, once you made it around that corner you could see how large it was. The house was truly grand, and it had an attic to match.
Spanning the length of the house, it had the widest plank floors I’d ever seen anywhere, and I’m from Pennsylvania, home of the wide plank. But this was the great wild north of California, and the timber that was milled back then was staggeringly huge. As we crept, quiet as little mice up the last few steps, I saw what I remembered more vividly than almost anything else from my childhood.
I saw miles and miles of unobstructed deep blue ocean. Window after window set into the back of the house, eight panes wide and equally as tall. An attic had no earthly reason to have this many windows, it was a waste of heat and space. But it didn’t matter. Because the man who designed this home knew how important and how utterly unique a view of this magnitude would be. And thank goodness the subsequent generations felt the same way, as it was never walled over.
“Would you look at that,” Jessica breathed behind me.
“It’s stunning isn’t it?” I said quietly. Who knows how long it had been since someone had been up here? The dust motes dancing in the air current we’d stirred up indicated that Aunt Maude hadn’t used this space recently. And it was untouched by the pack rat stacks of crap that had taken over the rest of the house. It was still the attic from my childhood.
Dress mannequins were lined against one wall, like girls at a party waiting to be asked to dance. Some were wearing party dresses that had never been finished, and even after years of the sunlight fading them, the attic was filled with splashes of sugary pink, buttercup yellow, azure blue, kelly green, and ruby red. Sequins, bows, prints, and swirls waited to twirl.
On the other wall? Trunks, stacked four and five high. Travel stickers shellacked the sides with places I’d never heard of as a child, but sounded so exotic. Athens. Siam. Mexico City. Cleveland. Some of the trunks were empty, but others contained treasures. Old hats and gloves for playing dress-up, old-fashioned clunky cameras for pretending to take pictures while playing dress-up. Maps. Letters. Yearbooks full of people who had lived and cried and had babies and died, all before I was even born.
Old furniture, mirrors clouded with age but still reflecting everything that came within sight. Old landscape paintings, some of the sea, some of the mountains, but all massive and framed with ornately carved wood. I once found an anchor behind a full set of bowling pins, and had once launched an assault on the kingdom of Vivian
a with an army of tiny tin soldiers.
And it was all still there. Better yet, it didn’t look small, as so many things from childhood do. It was still larger than life, and all in front of those gorgeous picture windows. Jessica and I oohed and aahed as we looked through it all, squealing in delight when we found some new shiny thing or perfectly darling bit.
“This is seriously the coolest house ever, Viv.” Jessica sighed, sinking into an old wing chair by the windows.
“I know! I feel like I should be modest, but I so fucking know what you mean. This is the coolest house ever,” I agreed, sitting on a tufted ottoman in front of a window, gazing out over the large expanse of blue.
“I knew there was a reason I always wanted to come and see the inside of this place,” she continued, grabbing an old suntan reflector and making like a film star by the pool in the hills of Beverly. “What do you think you’re going to do with all this space up here? You can’t just use it for storage, it’s too cool!” She angled the reflector to grab some additional rays.
I had an idea—an idea that had been working on me since I was twelve. I’d stood in front of the windows, the natural light pouring in as I’d pretended to paint one of the big landscapes. Holding an imaginary brush, I’d pretended to feather in different colors, maybe make a different choice in the shading of that tree, or the shape of that hill. I saw my own painting laid over the actual, and in my mind’s eye I was in my own art studio.
I wasn’t quite ready to share that thought out loud, though.
If I was really going to consider working in this space, I’d have to get some heating and cooling up here. And install screens in the windows so they could be opened. “It’s getting a little stuffy up here; let’s head back down and get something to drink.”
“Are you sure? I feel like I didn’t help you at all, we just played,” she said, adjusting the top hat she was wearing.
“I kind of want to keep it like this for a while. So much of this house isn’t at all like I remembered it,” I said, running my fingertips across one of the paintings. “It’s nice to have something be exactly the same.”