My Way Home (St.Gabriel Series Book 1) (St. Gabriel Series) (22 page)

That night we learned an antique bed is not necessarily as long as a contemporary bed. The new queen-sized mattress would fit fine on the double-sized frames as far as width, but they were too long. I probably could have learned that on the Internet.

We disassembled the frame of the old bed and moved it, along with the old mattress, to the porch. Then we set the new mattress and box springs on the floor in the bedroom and made it up with the linens I had packed before the move.

Once we had done all of the settling in we would do for that day, Race filled the clawfoot bathtub with hot water. We squeezed in and soon fell asleep. When we woke up the water was cold, so we dried off and slipped under the covers of our new bed on the floor, and we made love for the first time in our new home.

We hadn’t seen George
since he picked up our things in town the day before. In the morning I woke up and heard voices. From the bedroom window, I could see Race in quite a lively conversation with George Miller. And yes, it was a two way conversation. I quickly got dressed, but by the time I ran out the back door, George was gone.

“You were talking to George?” I asked Race, a little breathless.

“Yes, and he’s quite an interesting man. He had just come up from the lake. He was out fishing in a boat he keeps down at the beach. Did you know he worked at the View Point Hotel when he was a teenager, and he grew up on the island?”

“He told you all that?”

“Yes.” Race took note of my confusion. “What’s wrong?”

“I told you how he’s hardly said anything to me. You saw for yourself when he met us at the ferry, but to you he’s divulging his life story.”

“Maybe it takes time for him to warm up, and maybe now that we’re neighbors he’s more comfortable.”

“Maybe.”

“Or…” Race leaned in and whispered in my ear, “…maybe he’s afraid of girls.”

“Have you gone for your run yet?” I asked him.

“No.”

“I think now would be a good time.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

As Race ran down the hill to Shoreline Drive, I yelled to him, “And don’t get lost!”

He yelled back, “I thought you said it’s a small island!”

I walked back to the cottage through the back door and into the kitchen. I made a cup of tea and took it and Einstein to the front porch where I would look over my to-do list for the day. On the porch the lids of our two coolers were open and our food had been rummaged through.

The discards were scattered from railing to railing—empty yogurt containers, lettuce greens and cherry tomatoes, an empty carton of eggs with its contents cracked and oozing over its sides, and a torn-open package of Dubliner cheese that was uneaten. Most of the fruit was gone and a bag of frozen wild caught Atlantic salmon had completely disappeared, without a trace.

Race came back from his run just as I was going out the door to the porch with a bucket of mop water and the three plastic cans we had bought for sorting our trash, one each for composting, recycling and off the island to the dump.

“What happened here?” Race asked.

“Apparently there was a party and we weren’t invited.”

“What do you think did it?”

“Well, I don’t think Cat is that deft, and I’m quite sure she would have partaken of the cheese.” I held up the open, uneaten block of Dubliner.

Race knelt down and began picking up pieces of eggshells. “If I had to guess, I’d say raccoon.”

“Probably.”

After the mess was cleaned up and the coolers were cleaned out, we took them back inside where they wouldn’t be vulnerable to another midnight raid, once they were refilled with anything worth taking. I called the appliance repair guy and asked if he might be able to come out sooner than the following week.

“I can be there tomorrow,” he said, which took me back a little.

I had already learned that finding capable and willing workers, who lived on the island or who came over from the mainland, was challenging. The pre-season is intense with all of the businesses preparing for the tourists, and there is never enough help to go around. So, when Ted Mason said, “I’ll be there tomorrow,” I was instantly suspicious.

That first morning we cleaned out the upstairs bedroom so that Race could set up his study. While we cleared out the room, I watched from the upstairs windows to see if George would reappear. He didn’t.

Race and I moved most of the bedroom furniture down the stairs and over to the lodge. All that we left in the room was a small wardrobe that Race would use for storing office supplies and an overstuffed chair that needed the dust beat out of it and ultimately would be reupholstered.

The summer before, I had seen a roll-top desk at Harper’s Antiques on Main Street. It would have been perfect for Race but it had been one of the museum pieces marked,
Not for Sale
. Of all the furniture on the property there was not one desk, so we moved an oak dining chair and a small kitchen table from the attic. Also in the attic, we found two matching glass-fronted oak bookcases that Race would need to move with someone stronger than me. They were beautiful and also very heavy.

A little before noon we cleaned up and changed clothes to ride to town for lunch, and I would introduce Race to Sara.

When we had our bikes down the hill, Race said, “We need to buy you a mountain bike. I saw some beautiful trails this morning that the Schwinn wouldn’t do well on.”

“Okay, the next time we go over to Kipsey, we’ll look for one.”

Race was thinking a
tomorrow
thought about the island and I was thrilled. Then he suggested, “Let’s take Shoreline Drive into town. I want to see the part we didn’t ride yesterday.”

We ate lunch at Meaks Deli and Larry Meaks Jr. remembered me. “You’re the lady who drank gallons of our lemonade and had all the questions.”

Race laughed and introduced us, “We’re the Colemans, Cammy and Race.”

“We bought The Lake Lodge,” I told him.

Larry looked surprised but then offered, “If you need anything, give us a holler.”

“Well, as a matter of fact, we need help moving some furniture and we may need to find a plumber. The one I hired didn’t install our washer and dryer and now I can’t get in touch with him.”

“If its furniture moving you need help with, my pop’s running the shop tomorrow and I’d be glad to come out there and help you out.”

“We’d really appreciate it, and we’ll pay you for your time,” said Race.

“No need for that. I’d like to do it as a neighborly thing. For your plumbing I’d recommend Joel Morrison. He’s a Gabey, been plumbing since he was a boy with his father. He’ll get you fixed up.”

When Race and I walked into Hausterman’s Bakery that day, Sara sat on the counter, swung her legs over and knocked a basket of creamers onto the floor. Then she rushed forward, hugged me and swayed me side to side.

“Cammy, Cammy, Cammy my long-lost friend. I thought you got in yesterday. I’ve been waiting for you to walk through that door.”

I stood to Sara’s side and wrapped my arm around her waist. “Sara Strauss, this is my husband, Race Coleman.”

Race held out his hand and Sara shook it up and down as if she was trying to work it loose. “It’s so nice to meet you. Welcome to St. Gabriel.”

At a table we ate Breschberger Keplas, the cookie-sized pastries with butter and walnuts, and we drank steaming cups of black currant and cherry tea. While Sara and I caught up, Race listened contentedly, smiling as though he knew something we didn’t.

“So, tell me, Race. What do you think of The Lake Lodge?”

“It’s only been a day, but I think it’s growing on me.”

“Sara is one of the Gabies that think the lodge is haunted.” I made a frightened face in her direction.

“Go ahead, joke all you want. I just hope the both of you can run fast.”

Race then told a story about a bedroom in his great Aunt Edna’s house that she believed was haunted. “There were noises in the night and things would be moved around in the morning.”

Sara was riveted.

“Then one day, she noticed a strong smell coming from the room. Aunt Edna, who didn’t see or hear all that well, was convinced the ghost had died. She could hear the being moan and wail with grief as it was trying to break free from this world and move on to the next. When my dad went over to investigate, he followed the smell to the bedroom closet and opened the door. From the closet…” Race raised his voice with the next line. “…clawing and scratching the meanest, ugliest cat you’ve ever seen leaped at his chest.”

Sara screamed and would have fallen back in her chair if Race hadn’t caught her while laughing his scrumptious laugh.

“Noodles! That wasn’t funny.” Sara punched Race in the arm and I knew they would be friends.

“Noodles?” Race asked.

“She was cursing,” I told him.

“Oh.”

“That’s just the tip of the iceberg, Professor Coleman. Miss Strauss here believes in the creative use of the English language. In addition, she has a whole volume of words that you would not recognize and possibly, would not approve of.”

“Such as?” Race asked.

“Well, how ‘bout, yabberbash.” I suggested.

“Which means?” Race asked.

I motioned to Sara to do the honors.

“You know when you go out to dinner with a group of people and the conversation is just amazing, back and forth for hours. Or you meet someone for the first time and you feel as though you’ve known them forever, and you tell them your life story and they tell you theirs. That’s a yabberbash.”

“Of course it is.” Race grinned.

“Cammy and I had a yabberbash the first time we met.”

I set my hand on Sara’s arm and the other on my heart. “Really?”

Sara nodded. “And many times since,” she added.

“I’m touched.”

“I’d like to hear another,” said Race.

“Cazingydink,” I said.

“Not a coincidence or a cowinkydink, and it’s very rare actually, but it does happen. It’s a
really
amazing coincidence like when you’re in a completely new city and you see a hat that reminds you of someone you went to high school with, then you turn the corner and run right into that person. Or, you’re in Mexico and you meet someone. Neither of you speak Spanish. They’re Italian and don’t speak English. You speak English but not Italian, but you both speak Chinese. Those are cazingydinks.”

“Those things happened to you?” Race asked.

“Running into a high school friend in New York City, yes. The Mexico thing, no. But if it did, it would be a cazingydink.”

“I think I wrote my thesis on the wrong topic,” said Race.

“Okay, enough. Get back to the cat. How’d it get in the closet?” Sara asked.

“Well, the cat had been sneaking in an open roof vent and coming down through an attic access and into the closet. He had probably spent many nights, snooping around the room when the closet door had been left open, and having a good catnap on the bed no doubt. The last time through, the cover to the attic access had been knocked closed and the cat was trapped. So for days, it was in the closet, calling out for help and doing its business.”

“See, there’s always a logical explanation,” I said.

“Are you saying ghosts are not logical?” Sara asked.

“You’re hopeless,” I told her.

As we were leaving the bakery that day, Sara whispered in my ear, “You have good taste, Cammy Coleman. He’s gorgeous…and charming. I can see now why you couldn’t stop talking about him last summer, even though he’d broken your heart.”

“Did I really?”

“Incessantly.”

I felt a blush rush up from my neck. As I got on my bike, I called back to her, “Come out and see us, friend.”

“Not on your life, friend.”

Tate’s Market is the only grocery store on the island.
It’s a small shop that is frequented by the tourists and by the locals in an emergency. The prices are high and the selection is limited. But when you have unexpected losses, as we had the night before, you’re glad that it takes up space on Main Street.

Before riding back to the lodge, we stopped in to replenish what we’d shared with our neighbors, and we were pleasantly surprised to find a refrigerator case filled with fresh Wisconsin cheese. There was cheddar, Munster, Colby, Gouda, Swiss and specialty cheeses like dill and pickle, pineapple and pecan, and chocolate—chocolate cheese.

Race and I stood in front of the glass case pointing. “Look at this.” “Check this out.” “Did you see that?”

A woman came up behind us and asked, “Would you like to try a sample?”

Race looked at her name badge. “Yes, Sherry, we would.”

She went behind the counter and presented us with a plate of milky niblets and we dug in, all the while asking, “What’s this?” “How ‘bout this one?” “This is fabulous, so creamy and flavorful.”

We cleaned her out.

“Where do you get this?” I asked, pulling the last piece off a toothpick with my teeth. “I’ve never tasted cheese like this.”