That Summer Place: Island Time / Old Things / Private Paradise

“I know.” Myrtle grinned.

“Looking for someone or trying to start a relationship is too much hard work. I don’t have time, especially now when I have the biggest presentation of my career less than a month away.”

“Letni Corporation?”

Catherine nodded.

“I thought they weren’t ready to talk seriously until September.”

“So did I, but I got a call just before you came in. They want the presentation meeting scheduled for the first Tuesday in July.”

Now Myrtle appeared to be stunned silent, looking as surprised as Catherine had been this morning when she’d heard from Letni.

Catherine tried not to smile when she said, “John Turner’s been fired.”

Myrtle did smile, one of those wicked cat-in-the-cream kind of smiles.

“With Turner gone we actually have a chance to beat out Westlake for the first time.” Catherine could hear the excitement in her voice. “The company needs a big account. This is the chance we’ve waited for.”

The largest computer chip manufacturer in the world, Letni was expanding into two states, moving from the high tax locations of California to better locations in Washington and Arizona. Thousands of employees would be moving over the company’s ten-year plan.

Her heart raced a little at the thought that this deal could really happen. “The relocation accounts alone could keep us in the black for the next ten years.”

The desk phone buzzed and began to flash yellow.

Myrtle glanced down at the phone at the same time as Catherine.

Within seconds four more lines lit up.

Catherine closed her eyes and leaned back against her chair with a sigh of disgust.

Myrtle crossed the room and opened the door. “I’ll take care of those lines. For the rest of the day, I promise I’ll only put through the most urgent calls.”

Catherine gave her a weak smile as the door snapped closed, then sat there feeling lost and preoccupied and confused, as if she didn’t know where to start. After a stretch of seconds where the only sound was the wall clock ticking away, she grabbed a pile of research files, put on her bifocals, and opened the first file folder.

The words grew foggy and a handsome face from her youth flashed across her mind. For one rare and tender moment, just before she began to read, she wondered what had ever happened to Michael Packard.

Two

He stood at the end of a long dock. The breeze off the water whipped through his hair the same way it had thirty years before. He was fifty now, and though his hair was still dark, there were streaks of gray near his temples, ears, and just above his brow. Each and every one of those gray hairs had been earned over two decades of international flight miles.

His eyes were ice blue, and those who were foolish enough to have crossed him over the years could tell you that there was a sharp and coldly decisive mind behind those eyes, the mind and strength of a man who could put you in your place with a single hard look.

Deep in the corners of those cool eyes were laugh lines that his few close friends saw often. But those same lines also showed anyone who shook his hand for the first time that he’d lived, long enough to know exactly how to get what he wanted.

His stride was easy and loose, the gait of someone comfortable with the power he possessed. The old dock creaked every so often, as if the wood protested him walking on it. He headed for the boathouse, which stood at the end of the dock and was more gray and weathered than he was.

The boathouse had been there a long time. It had been there the first day he’d stepped foot on Spruce Island, when he was thirteen and orphaned and angry at a world where parents could be sitting around the breakfast table one morning and die in a car crash that same night.

His first day on the island he had walked past the old boathouse with his pride on his sleeve and a chip on his shoulder. He was on his way to meet a grandfather he’d only heard of the few times his father had talked about his past.

At thirteen Michael had thought the island was just some backward hayseed place stuck out in the tulles. To him his grandfather was a stranger who lived in a strange place, someone he didn’t know, yet who had the power to control his life. The island seemed like Alcatraz. And Michael had been scared.

But now, standing on the dock, he was older and wiser. World-weary. He didn’t have any of those feelings he’d had when he was young. Now he could feel the freedom of the island. He saw the rarity of this place that had never been coldly dissected by freeways.

It was lush and green, surrounded by silver glassy water instead of silver-glassed high-rise buildings. Fir, cedar, maple and hemlock towered along the jagged ridges that rose from the center of the island, and even along the sheer cliffs and quiet inlets where birds wheeled in the clean air.

He didn’t move for a minute, but stared out at the sharp blue sky above Cutters Cove where a large dark bird floated overhead. He did a sudden double-take. The bird had a majestic white head. With one hand, he shielded his eyes from the sun and stood there watching the eagle fly.

When the bird was out of sight, he shoved his hands back in his pockets and took a deep breath of cool, damp mid-morning air. The things that had been plaguing his mind suddenly fell into perspective in a way that was humbling and strangely welcome.

He had no idea how long he stood there, and it didn’t matter because there was no plane to catch. No meeting to get to. No stockholders to appease. No do-or-die deal to close. Here he could just…be.

When he finally did move, it was slowly and with purpose. He opened the boathouse door, which creaked loudly and scared away the black crows perched on the old shingled roof. He ducked down and stepped inside.

The late afternoon sun slipped though the panes of rustic time- and weather-frosted windows and cast shafts of milky light on the floor in a checkered pattern that looked like an oversized circuit board. Spiderwebs drifted in the light. He could smell the metallic and wet scent of algae that always grew on the wood in the Northwest.

He stepped over a few teak oars and tossed aside an old orange life vest that water, air, and the seasons had turned hard as concrete. He took a few more steps and ran his hand over the old boards along the windows. He leaned closer, squinting at the wood siding because he’d left his glasses in the cabin sitting next to his cell phone, electronic daytimer and briefcase.

He ran his hand over the old cedar boards carefully and more tentatively than any of his business associates would have thought possible. He was certain they thought he never did anything tentatively.

Yet his hands moved with care, the same way he’d wiped away her tears almost thirty years before. He stopped suddenly, his hand freezing in one splintered spot.

There, in the boards, were the ragged letters: M P + C W.

Summer, 1960

The first time he’d ever seen her he was fourteen and she was eleven. He was on an errand for his grandfather, walking down the gravel path that cut from his grandfather’s cabin, through the forest, and on to the old summer place.

She was hanging upside-down from an old pine tree, her skinned knees hooked over a low thick branch. She was swinging back and forth, so her long blond braids dangled like Tarzan’s jungle ropes. The whole time she hummed “Alley Oop” while she blew the biggest pink bubble he’d ever seen.

He didn’t know you could hum and blow bubble gum at the same time. As he walked past her, there was a loud pop!

“Who are you?” She swung up so she was straddling the branch with one leg, while the other dangled down. Her palms propped up her body and she stared down at him.

Needles and pine dust fell all over him and scowling he wiped off his face and head. On the same level as his nose was a pair of red canvas shoes with no shoelaces and the word Keds on the scuffed rubber tips. He slowly looked upward along her gangly freckled legs and scabbed-over knees to her small indignant face, which looked like a troll doll.

“I asked you who you were,” she repeated as if she were the queen of the island.

“I’m looking for a Mr. Wardwell.”

“Oh.” She blew another bubble, sucked in and popped it in an obnoxious way, then asked, “Why are ya lookin’ for him?”

“None of your business, Squirt.” Michael turned his back on her and started to walk down the gravel path that led toward the old house.

She jumped out of the tree and appeared beside him. “My name’s not Squirt. It’s Catherine.”

He grunted some response and kept walking.