|
Ruffling Feathers Chapter 17 - A Winter's Tale
Three miles of ice water, even in a wet suit, is brutal. Three miles every day borders on insanity. Paul Donovan didn't see his near-daily swim from Whiteside to Carlisle Point that way, however. Rather, he believed that only total exertion under extreme conditions kept him on the right side of sanity after Amy flew off to London and he returned to his family home in Maine. Total exertion is a good way to describe a three-mile swim across frigid Whiteside Cove. Paul had returned to a New England ablaze in the last hurrah of a glorious Fall—strange how dying leaves flare up so brilliantly before they crumble. He found solace in the fierce nor'easters and deep snow of Maine's winter. He hadn't intended to stay in the little fishing village that his family had called home for six generations. He had only intended to escape the circus that Piñon had become for a few days after Amy literally walked out of his life. A weekend of solitude lengthened into a week. Week's end found him unwilling to leave his beach of dune and wind and whitecaps. He walked the leaf-strewn streets of his childhood. He gathered driftwood in the afternoons and built fires on the beach to warm his hands. He marked the tides and watched wind and water carve the shoreline. He sketched boats with lovely lines that curved down to the waterline. His neighbors welcomed him home the Yankee way, with a nod at the hardware store, a few words at the post office, a covered dish on Sunday, and an apple pie for his breakfast. Paul found that with only a few trips a month, he was able to run Donovan Industries as well from Carlisle Point as from anywhere. Carol, in Chicago, could implement his orders remotely—actually it was better that way, Paul thought wickedly. Dave was a wonder too, anticipating Paul's wishes and keeping the businesses chugging along. Paul grudgingly admitted that Dave was the better businessman—he actually seemed to like managing multiple enterprises. Throughout the last days of autumn and well into the winter, Paul couldn't help feeling that he was on the brink of...something. He faced each morning with an eagerness he didn't quite understand. After all, the project for which he had spent two years of his life preparing lay in shambles. Despite Greg Hansen being arrested and brought to trial for their murder, Paul felt no closer to knowing why and how his parents died than when Dennis Brown first approached him with his theory. Amy Hutchins, had seen to that. She undermined every conviction he ever held about truth and faith and love and family. She planted doubts and refused to let him see the world in black and white. He thought they had solved the mystery, but then she stubbornly kept on bringing up reasonable doubts. She made him admit that there were things he would never fully know, that black and white were really only shades of gray, and that knowing facts didn't really matter in the end. She challenged him to accept ambiguity. Hansen may be guilty and never have to pay for his crime. Then again, he may not be guilty. His mother may have been unfaithful to his father, or maybe she had just grown disillusioned, or maybe...none of the above. Amy argued that finding the truth meant finding what out what he really believed in, which might not jive with what the police report said. The problem was that Paul didn't want to live with ambiguity. He wanted his world to be neat and clean and tidy again, and when he tried to make it so by asking her to marry him, Amy had left him. Every foggy morning that winter, Paul remembered Amy's joy and passion for life, the light in her eyes and the laughter in her voice. Every afternoon when the watery sun finally pierced the fog, he remembered how she declared that she wouldn't allow him to put her on a pedestal and idolize her as he did his mother. She didn't want his heart if he couldn't love her "warts and all." Despite this sad state of affairs, Paul felt anticipation not depression, and slowly he found himself participating in village life. He went to town hall meetings and helped paint the meeting hall. He mediated a row between the fisherman and the excursion boat operators. He used his business acumen and political savvy to win financial support for local projects, plans, and proposals. And then, there was Gina. His sister, who had spent her teenaged years living with the Claytons in Boston and was barely more than a stranger to him, loved visiting Carlisle Point. Not more than a half hour from the village, Gina escaped campus life at and often came home to study and cook—she had been struck hard by the cooking bug and wanted to perfect the recipes that Annie Edgerton had taught her in Piñon. Together, Paul and Gina found their roots, their family, their home, and each other. Joy filled the heart of every unattached female between nineteen and thirty-nine when the citizens of Carlisle Point realized that Paul Donovan was home to stay. Truth be known, Paul inspired joy in womankind beyond these parameters of age and situation, but mostly that joy was wisely kept hidden. Shop girls and waitresses, lawyers and schoolteachers, artists and accountants all looked at Paul and recognized their heart's desire. His lean, muscular good looks, romantic eyes, rumpled hair, and flannel shirts didn't hurt either. Clearly unattached, but imbued with the mystery and romance of a rumored love affair that soured, Paul was irresistible. The first female to stake her claim was Addie Crowe. About a month after his return to Carlisle Point, Paul crumpled his sketches of sailboats, tossed them into the woodburning stove, slid on his parka, and walked down to the wharf to have a talk with Corbin Sullivan. Corbin built wooden sailboats—he ran a tight shop and his clients paid top dollar for his craftsmanship and engineering. Paul had known Corbin all his life. As a child, he had hung around Corbin's shop watching the builders and soaking up sailing talk, salty language, and rock and roll. He had arranged to be Corbin's apprentice during his seventeenth summer, but his father had nixed the plan. Instead, Paul spent that summer as a congressional intern. Paul's own sloop had come out of Corbin's shop. "You're a bit old to be an apprentice, ain'cha?" Corbin Sullivan barely looked up from his work to reply to Paul's request that he pick up where he left off fifteen years earlier. "I'm a civil engineer. I know my way around a workshop. And I don't need board." Since Corbin didn't have any real objections to Paul's proposal, Paul started working in the shop most afternoons. And so it was, that one December afternoon while Paul was refilling the woodbin and stoking the fire in the stove, a small figure crept into the shop, raided the apple bushel, and scrambled up a step ladder at the back of the shop. "What's your name?" A thin voice demanded from atop Corbin's workbench. Paul spun around to find two doe eyes gazing at him from under a ragged fringe of mousy brown hair. A pair of thin pink lips pursed to a rosebud, as the little girl waited for a suitable answer. "Paul." "Paul Donovan?" "Yes." "You're him, then." "Him who?" "Paul Donovan." Paul stood up, hands on hips, about to pursue this fascinating probe into his identity, when the little girl deftly tossed her apple core into the waste basket, jumped down from the workbench, wiped her grubby hands on her grubbier overalls, and stuck out her hand. "I'm Addison Crowe. Folks call me Addie. Nice to meet'cha." While Addie commenced searching for more snacks, Paul politely inquired whether she often visited Mr. Sullivan's workshop. "Mr. Sullivan? Hah. That's my Gramps. He lets me come here after school 'cause Ma can't afford to send me to after-school camp. 'Sides it's more intr'sting here watching Gramps build boats. I'm going to be a sailor, ya know." "Well, that's good. Sailing is a good way to spend one's days." "It's a good way to die." "Excuse me?" "My Daddy died at sea. Just about broke my Ma's heart. Ever since then, Ma listens to me." Paul sat down next to Addie on a saw horse and opened the box of crackers she had found in one of the closets. She offered him first bite, so he took a handful. "What do you mean, 'listens to you?'" "At night, the Queen of Heaven comes in my dreams and tells me things that are going to happen. And then, I tell Ma and then everything's okay." "Is the Queen of Heaven pretty?" "She's beautiful—almost as beautiful as Ma on a good night. She's all white and she has a pretty gold crown and glass slippers like Cinderella." Addie's big, soft brown eyes got bigger and softer and browner. "The night before my Daddy died, she told me that his boat was gonna go out and not come back. I told my Ma and she told me to shush. She's never told me to shush again." Addie munched down another big handful of crackers and asked, "Do you know how to build boats that always come back?" Paul walked back to his workbench and resumed working, "With your Gramp's help, I'm learning to build boats that can be sailed. I can't promise that Mother Nature won't outsmart me, but I'm going to try." Addie's look clearly communicated that she had reservations about Paul's boat building skills, so she resumed her own story, "The Queen of Heaven told me that you were going to come to town and mend Ma's broken heart. And here you are." "She told you that me, Paul Donovan, or me, a stranger in town, was going to help you and your mother..." Addie shot him a sly grin that spoke of ancient wisdom and wily ways, "She told me to look for a man who would wear his heart on his sleeve, and look..." Addie pointed to Paul's right forearm where his freckles marked a clearly formed, tiny heart. "Oh, come on." Paul rolled his eyes and mock-punched Addie's arm. "You need more than that to lay that one on me." Big, brown eyes. Ancient wisdom. Wily ways. Addie went for the jugular, "You're the one. You're Paul Donovan. No one shushes me anymore."
Back to JaneGS.com or Jump to Chapter: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 |