Songbird Cottage Page 13

  She finished the story about their tea. On the right of the page were links to more stories, and she nestled down in the bed and read through them, immersing herself in a world of milk cows and planting seasons, interspersed with Ava's refreshingly honest comments about her journey to adopt their two kids, and her own mother's death from postpartum depression way back in 1992, the same year her own mother had died. They had so much in common, and Robin's respect for Ava grew as she read. The topic of suicide was horrible, yet Ava had created something moving and uplifting out of the tragedy. She had used her own mother's pain as a jumping-off point to write about the condition, and the hundreds of comments from readers showed how she had not only made a moving tribute to her mother, but allowed space for readers to open up and share their own stories. The comments, which went on for many screens, came from women all over the world who had either known someone with the condition, or experienced it themselves. Ava had given them a safe place to share, and to open up to each other about this painful and often shame-filled medical problem.

  Robin found herself liking Ava more and more, seeing that the lifestyle blogger she'd met, who she had assumed just posted pictures of strawberry sauce and scones, had created a deeper community for her fans.

  And it gave her an idea. She had been searching all these years for some kind of closure for herself. Some way to make peace with the loss of family she'd suffered at the age of three. Yet everything she'd learned along the way just seemed to make her feel more sad, and more alone.

  She would use Ava as her example. She would find a way to use her own story to make something beautiful. She didn't know how yet, but, like this simple blog, she would turn her own pain into something hopeful, and creative, and healing for herself—and maybe, even, eventually for others.

  When she finally closed the laptop she felt more at peace than she had in a long time. Dylan had said she was entitled to be the heroine of her own story. Well, maybe that was the key. Maybe she needed to find a way to tell that story, to put all of these years of searching into perspective, and to make herself whole, the way Ava had.

  She was sitting there contentedly when the kitten suddenly howled outrage at her.

  She jumped. "What?!" she said.

  The kitten blinked at her happily.

  "You nutcase," she said. "Are you feeling neglected?"

  The kitten meowed again.

  "You're pretty adorable, you know that?" she asked the kitten, who clearly did know she was cute. She rolled onto her back and waved her paws in the air, just begging to wrestle.

  Robin playfully laid the duvet over the kitten and then removed it. The kitten pawed at the covers and pretended to attack, and Robin wondered why she'd never gotten a pet before. It was all part of this pattern of hers, where she lived in furnished rentals instead of getting her own home, and never bought much furniture, only having a few things her mother sent to her as a not-so-subtle hint that she shouldn't live this way.

  She was always in some place that was borrowed, loaned, leased, or rented. Some house in the process of being sold, or in the process of remodeling. She was always passing through. There was always an excuse not to paint the walls her favorite colors, or to have a pet—

  And the little cat poked its head above the covers and blinked happily at her.

  "Yeah, you," she said. "I'm thinking about you."

  The cat rolled onto its back again, putting its four white paws straight up in the air.

  She put a hand out and the cat gently pawed at her with soft kitten feet.

  "If you're sticking around, I guess you need a name," Robin told it. "Socks? Mittens? No, I don't think so. You need a more unique name than that. You're a very sophisticated little lady, aren't you?"

  She waved her hand in the air, her charm bracelet jingling. She noticed the Eiffel tower charm from her senior trip to Paris. "What should we do for a name, ma chère? Je ne sais quoi, something très sophistiqué is in order for a kitten of such magnificence, n'est-ce pas?"

  The cat grabbed at her bracelet, which dangled alluringly as her arm moved to illustrate the thought.

  Robin laughed as the little white paws tried to catch her gold charms. "Oh, you wave your petites chaussettes at me, do you?"

  "That's it! Chaussette. Petites Chaussettes. What do you think about that? Is that sophisticated enough for you, little lady?"

  "Chaussette," she whispered, and the little cat purred at her.

  There was a knock at the door just before midnight.

  She checked through the peephole and then swung the door wide open. "What are you doing here at this hour?"

  Dylan stood there dressed in black turtleneck and black jeans, and he even wore black sneakers instead of his usual work boots.

  She couldn't help noticing that the all-black ensemble set off his muscular good looks. "Do I have to guess?" she asked when he didn't explain.

  "Guess?"

  "Who are you supposed to be? The grim reaper?"

  He laughed. "What about you? Are you headed for a rave?"

  She pulled her red silk pajamas smooth. "What I wear at home is my own business, Dylan."

  "They're nice pjs," he said mildly. "But a bit bright colored for what I have in mind."

  "And that is?"

  "Mind if I come in?" he asked. "I'd rather not shout it to the whole neighborhood."

  She stepped back and motioned him into the room. He came in, ducking involuntarily when he came up to the ceiling beam that split the room in two. "Whoa."

  "I didn't realize how tall you are," she said, shutting the door and following him in.

  "You're not exactly a pipsqueak yourself, Robin. How do you keep from bumping your head?"

  "Practice. Have a seat." She nodded toward her purple faux French Provincial chair.

  He looked at it skeptically. "Velvet?"

  "So? It's not real French Provincial. It's a knockoff. So it didn't hurt its value any to reupholster it."

  "I wasn't criticizing," he said. He looked around, but didn't sit down.

  She crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him. "I don't want to ask—"

  "—but you're dying to know," he finished the sentence with a grin.

  "Yes, I am. What's going on?"

  He just stood in the middle of the room, his head still ducked as if he expected the ceiling beam to swoop down and bonk him on the head.

  "Well," she said, motioning again to the velvet chair. "Go ahead and sit. It won't bite you."

  "No time," he said. "We've got to go."

  "Go where? What time is it?"

  "It's the stroke of midnight," he said. "Seems a perfect time for what I have planned."

  He grinned like a naughty little boy.

  "Okay, I'll bite," she said. "What do you have planned?"

  He pulled a mini flashlight out of his pocket and flicked it on. "Just a bit of breaking and entering."

  Chapter Seventeen

  After she'd changed into a black sweater and jeans not unlike what he was wearing, she pulled on her new Manolo houndstooth boots. "At least this gives me an excuse to wear these," she muttered.

  Dylan laughed. "You and shoes. I'm surprised you can keep them all in a little place like this."

  She didn't bother to tell him she had a shoe closet at her office to hold the overflow.

  "Ready?" he asked.

  "Almost," she said, bending over to say goodbye to Chaussette.

  "We're not going off to war, Robin. Just for a stroll down to my office building, where we can do a little poking around while nobody's looking."

  "But she's so little." She kissed her on the forehead again, and the kitten grabbed at her.

  While Robin muttered under her breath, and tried to pry the tiny needlelike claws from her sweater, Dylan stood there chuckling.

  She followed him down the outside stairs, pulling on a pair of black cashmere gloves. At ground level, the street lights of Calle Principal illuminated the empty pavement. There was no fo
g, and the sky overhead felt immense, cold, and very far away.

  But Dylan felt close, and warm. He didn't try to hold her hand or anything, still keeping to that unspoken rule between them. She realized she had been noticing these little things about him for the last couple of days, but didn't say so. Instead, she commented, when he turned to her with a mischievous gleam in his eyes, "I never knew this reckless side of you."

  His grin disappeared. He stopped under one of Pajaro Bay's street lights, which were of gleaming brass, with glass that echoed the antique fresnel lens of the lighthouse in the bay. "When someone I love is threatened, you'd be surprised how reckless I can be."

  She stopped walking. That was a little too blunt for comfort. "I told you I'm not marrying an older man again."

  "Who said anything about marriage? I'm not going to stop worrying about you just because you don't want to be around a man with gray hair."

  "You don't have gray hair."

  "I have a bit—and I'll be old and wrinkled long before you. And I know that bugs you."

  "That's not what bugs me," she said.

  "Then what is it?"

  She turned back to the street in front of them and began walking again. He followed alongside. Their footsteps were loud on the empty sidewalk, and the far-off whoosh of the waves only made the silence around them seem more intense, somehow.

  "I was always... less… than Taye," she said softly into the darkness.

  "Your first husband," he said.

  "Yes."

  "You've never talked about him."

  "He was older, older than you. The age difference was greater, I mean. He was my literature professor…."

  She talked about Taye, and about how that dynamic of her being young and worshipful and him being older and wiser formed the basis of their relationship. And about how she grew to hate that, to hate the feeling that she was never going to catch up and walk alongside him as an equal.

  "And you think I'm like that?" Dylan asked as he walked at her side. "That I see you as my student?"

  "I was your student. You taught me about real estate, and you showed me the ropes of doing business in this town."

  "Sure. And then you took everything I taught you and surpassed me, leaving me in the dust."

  "Is that how you see it?" she asked. "Like a competition between us?"

  He smiled. "Not a competition. I don't mind being left in the dust. I was sick of selling. Of dealing with fussy clients. Sick of the goal selling and the profit margins. Now I've carved out the space to do what I want with my life. I own enough commercial and rental property to provide a steady income. And I can afford to spend my time doing what I want. I create things. I make houses better, and then either sell them or rent them out and manage them. No deadlines. No production goals. No standing there with a supportive smile pasted on my face while someone refuses to buy the perfect house because it would be too much work to spend twenty bucks on a gallon of paint and change the color of the bathroom."

  She laughed. "Yeah. Those kind of clients come around to see things eventually. You just have to show them the options."

  "And that's why you're the best at your job," he said honestly. "You show them the possibilities. You take them to a run-down shack with torn linoleum and knotty pine walls and paint a vision for them of the airy, up-to-date beach cottage it could be. And because of you, they can picture it."

  "I'm just a salesperson," she said. "I learned it from watching my mom. And you."

  He shook his head. "Not really. Your mom's a big wheeler-dealer. I was a salesman. But you're different from either of us. At heart you're a storyteller. You tell them a story of how each house can become a home for them, and you make it so vivid and so real that they can see it for themselves. You have a gift for it. And that's why you're not my student any more. You're my teacher."

  He stopped in front of the Surfing Puggle and she watched his dark silhouette against the moonlit plate glass window. "I visualized where I was in my life, and didn't like it. The joy you got from sharing your vision with clients illustrated to me what was missing—I didn't feel the same joy. So I had to find something that excited me, that satisfied me. Now I'm where I want to be, doing what I want to do. You're not my competition. You're not my protégé. You're my equal, in some ways even my teacher."

  He started walking again, and she followed at his side. She reached out one gloved hand for his, and they walked together like that for another block.

  "You never told me any of that before," she said.

  "I guess I should have," he said. "But I assumed you knew." He brought her gloved hand to his mouth to give it a quick kiss, then let go. "Now come on. We've got a crime to commit."

  "Yeah," she said. "About that. Are you ready to explain exactly when you became an outlaw?"

  "We're not doing anything wrong," he said. "I own the building, remember?"

  He stopped in front of the entrance to Los Colores. The arched opening reached up behind him, making his shadowed figure look much like his Californio ancestors, a conquistador ready to storm the walls of a city.

  "But—" she started to argue.

  "Shhh!" he whispered fiercely.

  She heard footsteps coming along the sidewalk behind them.

  They pressed themselves against the adobe wall until the couple turned down a side path and the street became silent again.

  "You nut," she said. "What are we doing lurking around here?"

  "We're not lurking," he said, but he glanced back to see if the people were out of sight.

  "Then why are we hiding?" she whispered.

  "Sorry," he said. "Just got caught up in the whole mood of the thing."

  "Yeah, well, if we run into a cop, remind me to turn state's evidence on you."

  "Thanks a lot," he said wryly.

  "You're welcome. Now before we go any further, maybe you should explain why this is a good idea."

  "I am not getting any answers from the Thackerys," he said. "And now that you've been threatened, it's no longer okay."

  "Me?" she said. "I'm not threatened."

  "You don't call almost getting killed in a fire threatening?"

  "I wasn't almost killed. And it was a brush fire. Not arson."

  He led her through the arched opening into Los Colores. They walked along the path toward the main courtyard area. The moon illuminated the tiled area ahead, and it was easier to see than it had been in the shadow of the wall outside. Dylan looked more serious than he had when they'd been joking in her apartment about breaking in to the Thackery office.

  She put her hand on his arm, stopping him. The Mexican feather grass rustled along the pathway, swirling like wispy fog in the moonlight. "What did you see when you went out to the cottage that has you so spooked?"

  "Nothing," he said.

  "Nothing?" She looked at this man, clad all in black, lurking in the courtyard of the building he owned at one o'clock on a Tuesday morning. "Seriously? Nothing?"

  "Nothing that explains any of this."

  "Any of what?"

  "Junior won't answer the phone. He won't tell me what's going on."

  "Did you talk to his secretary?"

  "They don't have one anymore. They let her go. It's just Senior and Junior—well, Junior mostly, since Senior has been sick."

  "I heard about his cancer," she said. "Terrible thing. Poor man."

  "Yeah, well, Senior's keeping secrets from me, too."

  "What secrets?"

  "I ran into him outside the medical clinic today—yesterday—what day is this, anyway? And I got the impression he didn't know about the property listing."

  "Well, if he has been leaving the business affairs to his son, that's not surprising."

  He shook his head. "You had to be there. He was really mad. I've never seen him mad like that, like he didn't like what Junior was up to—and he was truly angry about it. I can't figure out what's happening."

  "So you thought a little property crime would fix that righ
t up."

  They stopped in front of the fountain that marked the center of the courtyard and gave it its name: Los Colores, the colors. The Robles tile design was probably her most colorful, illustrating scenes from Pajaro Bay's history in vibrant tones of red, green, and yellow.

  She listened to the bubble of the water spilling over the glossy tiles into the basin. "I always thought you should put some koi in this fountain," she said irrelevantly.

  "You're right," he said. "The raccoons could use some seafood in their diet."

  "Dylan, let's go home. Breaking into the Thackery's office is illegal."

  "Not technically illegal," he said stubbornly. "And there are things more important than the law, anyway."

  "Like what?"

  "Don't you get it, Robin? You could have been killed."

  "You keep saying that. Wait a minute—you don't think that fire was arson? That's crazy. Do you think someone set the fire deliberately?"

  He told her about finding the glass bottle in the brush on the patio.

  "So? That proves it wasn't arson."

  "The glass bottle might not be the cause of the fire," he said stubbornly. "It could have been caused by a match. One match to that brush would do it, Robin."

  "But who would want to do that?"

  "Whoever is trying to buy the property," he said. "Maybe they wanted to scare you off. Maybe they wanted to cause just enough damage to make you give up, and then they could swoop in and get the property on the cheap."

  "You said the other bidder was an anonymous LLC."

  "Yeah. So I left messages for Junior to find out who was behind the corporation."

  "How would he know?"

  "You still don't get it," Dylan said. "The property isn't on the multiple listing service. I haven't uploaded the listing anywhere yet—I was waiting until I confirmed the value before making any public announcement. You are the only person I told about Songbird Cottage. So how did someone else know to make an offer on it?"

  Finally it dawned on her why he was so convinced this situation was weird. "Oh."