Maternal Harbor (22 page)

Lute tucked his notepad into his shirt pocket, one name richer than before.

The sight of Fiona Winslow’s home was like a step into the past for Teagan.  The driveway still entered from the street and ran along the south side of the two-story arts and crafts house.  She parked under the kitchen window, nosing the Buick up to the single car garage.  Fiona had stuck with the same color of house paint – white with Kelly green trim.  The old tire swing dangling from a branch of a huge maple in the back yard spoke of the permanence of Bryan’s family, reassuring and familiar.  Teagan almost expected him to run out and joyously drag her inside.

But sitting here daydreaming of what couldn’t be wasted what little energy she still possessed.

The wooden screen door rattled with her knock.  No answer?  Teagan had staked everything on Fiona.  How stupid.  Bryan’s grandmother might not live here anymore, might not even be alive.

Denying the abhorrent thought, Teagan peered through the window, searching for anything familiar.  At each angle, she saw a slice of the past – Fiona standing by the sink, sitting at the table, scolding from the stove.  The kitchen now seemed so cold and lonely.  She scanned the counter and jerked back.  The cookie jar.  The same bug-eyed owl cookie jar sat roosting in the corner.  Relieved, Teagan plopped on the top step and let her head fall into her hands.

Levi cried from the car.  Then Jimmy.  Then Charlie.  She cupped her hands over her ears and watched a mailman cut across the lawn of the neighbors.  His eyes caught the license plate on the rear of Max’s Buick.

He glanced up and saw her.  “Ma’am, are you all right?” he asked.

Teagan jumped up.  “I’m looking for Mrs. Winslow.  Do you know if she’s at her cabin?”

“
Those babies aren’t very happy.”

“
They’d be happier if I found Mrs. Winslow.”

“
Can’t help you, but maybe the neighbor lady knows.  I see them visiting across the fence.”  He delivered mail to the next two homes.  At the corner, he glanced back.

Teagan opened the car door to a storm of all-powerful crying.  The car smelled of dirty diapers and sour stomachs.  Levi screamed; the world owed him and no one else.  Between his powerful sobs, Jimmy’s demand was a pleading song, a pitiful
please help me
.  Charlie’s sobs equaled Levi’s, but their distinct sound pulled at Teagan’s protective instinct.

Fumbling with haste, she unstrapped the boys and changed their diapers, noting that a rash was appearing on Levi’s upper leg where the diaper rubbed.  Finally, she gathered all three babies into her arms and lugged them back and forth across the back yard.  When their fussing subsided, she returned to the car, strapped them into their seats, and offered pacifiers.  Their little jaws worked with busy sucking and then slowed.  Sleepy eyes drooped, and they finally slept.

Once the crisis of caring for three infants was over, Teagan scanned the street for anyone who might be watching.  The sensation of paranoia still prickled even after putting five hundred miles behind her.  Erica must be on her trail, and Ruth Spence’s phone call at the rest stop could only be to the cops.  Now, a curious mailman.

Teagan needed help immediately.

She crossed the driveway and followed the fence line to the alley.  The neighbor’s yard was overgrown and muddy.  Teagan sloshed to the back door and knocked.  No answer.  “I can’t believe it,” she mumbled through gritted teeth and banged on the door with the side of her fist.

A dilapidated Volkswagen van rattled up to the garage and parked.  A teenage girl unloaded.  Her multicolored spiked hair glistened in the sun.  Gold rings pierced in places Teagan knew had to hurt.  She could’ve kissed her.  “I’m trying to find Fiona Winslow.”

“She’s at her cabin up the North Fork.  Some sexy dude asked me to water the house plants for her.  My luck he didn’t ask for more.”

Teagan grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed her smack on a blush-covered cheek.

The startled girl stepped back.  “Whoa.  Are you all right?”

“
I am now.”

Teagan drove north through the fertile valley floor for twenty miles to the small town of Columbia Falls.  The same two traffic lights on Nucleus Avenue controlled travel, and the street still veered right at the railroad tracks.  She crossed a new viaduct above a slow moving freight train and entered the foothills leading to the North Fork of the Flathead River.

The houses along the road dwindled; the mountains became steeper and the forests dense.  Miles turned to more miles as she followed the snaky, ever-climbing road through a narrow canyon until finally to the right she caught glimpses of the Flathead River through small breaks in the evergreens, birch, and aspens.

She met no oncoming traffic and the road behind was empty.  The urge to constantly check the rear view mirror lessened, and so did the worry about the mailman calling the cops.

Every now and then private side roads broke off and disappeared into thick stands of spruce and larch.  Teagan searched each driveway for a familiar landmark.  One looked possible.  She eased the Buick onto the rutted, muddy roadbed and bounced down it until a wooden bridge crossed a small ditch.  She jerked to a stop and closed her eyes, searching her memory.  “Nope boys,” she muttered.  “There wasn’t a bridge.”  Cranking hard on the steering wheel, she eased the Buick into a u-turn.  The right front tire dropped from the berm.  She mashed the brake pedal and shoved the gearshift into reverse.  The tire spun and mired deeper.  She cut the engine and got out.

Puddled water lay in the bottom of a shallow ditch.  She chuckled, and then broke out into a delighted laugh.  Her sound rang, laced with relief.  Finally a problem small enough for a floor mat to solve.  Teagan inhaled deeply of the moist piney air.  Bryan’s kind of air.  Her preference was the salty, wet odor of the Pacific at high tide, but this scent was second best.  She sniffed again and listened.  No motor sound, no city sound at all.  The forest was utterly still.  Goose bumps tightened along Teagan’s forearms and legs.  She scanned every direction.  The trees and mountains closed in on her.  Her knees weakened and her breathing labored.  She leaned against the car, fighting the claustrophobic feeling.

Faint chitterling.

Teagan quickly searched the branches of a quaking aspen.  Halfway up a few golden leaves jiggled, and she spied a chick-a-dee family.  One flew and flitted into a taller aspen.  She nodded to them.  Of course, nothing in the woods blocked her way.  Lolita turning the key and the
slip-click
of a locking door was impossible.

Teagan shook the claustrophobia away one more time.  After watching the birds for a few more moments, she tucked one of the floor mats under the tire as far as possible and hopped into the car.  “We’ll be out in a jiff, boys.”  She pushed on the gas.  The tire spun, grabbed the mat and the Buick rolled free.  She jockeyed several times, finally completing the turn.

Back on the main road, she drove slowly, scanning each side.  Mercifully the boys never uttered a sound.

A narrow roadbed shot off to the left and she braked to look down it.  She stared horrified.  A big black vehicle charged up it.  Teagan gunned the gas pedal.  Behind her, a Bronco skidded onto the road.

Teagan let up on the gas.  “For God’s sake, you have to quit reacting like Pai.”

A voice.  She needed to hear any voice, saying anything.  All the radio stations came in scratchy or not at all.  Giving up on them, she began to sing.  Her voice trembled with the notes, but she kept singing.  “She’ll be coming around the mountain when she comes.”

The road continued mile after curving mile.

The muscle in Teagan’s right calf knotted, big toe cramped and lower back ached.  Unable to drive one more minute without stretching, she parked on a wide spot where the pavement ended and the roadbed became gravel and got out.  Was this even the right road?  Was she crazy?  Running through a wilderness with three infants must qualify for insanity.  She leaned her head against the open door.  “Please show me the way to the cabin.  I can’t remember.”

A logging truck rumbled by in a cloud of dust.

A truck!  A flippin’ truck.  Teagan thumped the side of her head.  Idiot, she thought.  Bryan used to curse the washboard road and blamed the trucks for it.  She should have remembered his mild oaths, so unlike the salty ones of the fishermen.  She used to tease him about it.  Wondering if his language had strengthened after working with teenagers, she stepped back into the car and fired the engine.

“We’re okay boys, just have to keep going.”

The Buick fishtailed and she slowed to what seemed a crawl.  Her muscles had relaxed from standing a few minutes, but after only a couple of miles every inch of her ached again.  She removed her right foot from the accelerator long enough to stretch her calf and wiggle her toes.  “Charlie, where’s the driveway?”  Desperation crept closer.

A pile of river stones seemed familiar.  Yes!  Towering twin larches stood by the entrance to a road plunging downward.  At that moment, the steel band strapped around her strained emotions uncoiled; the sense of adrift in the unknown loosened and she knew the cabin was only a few moments away.

The car jostled down the steep rutted road.  A thin spiral of whitish-gray smoke rose above a grove of western larch.  The weathered cabin broke into view.  “Look, boys, Fiona is here and she bought a Jeep.”

Teagan parked behind the Jeep.  Oklahoma license plates?  Bryan?  Her heart clamored with confused emotions.  She would have to meet his wife.  “No way.  I can’t.”  Tears gathered and blurred the numbers on the license like a tide pool distorting sea anemones, but when the tide ebbed their colors would show clearly; same as Bryan’s happiness with another woman, maybe their children would be seen when her tears dried.

Damn, damn, damn.  She sucked in her aversion, checked her hair in the rearview mirror, and stumbled from the Buick.

Charlie burped when she lifted him from his infant seat.

“
Poor baby.”  She patted his back, then forced the lead from her feet and crossed to the cabin.  Grabbing the handrail, she climbed the stairs with her chin held high.  The door opened.  “Hello, Fiona.”  Teagan stepped onto the porch.

“
Teagan?”  Fiona gripped the doorjamb.  “Good grief, child.  What a surprise.”

Teagan swayed and caught her balance by grabbing the porch beam.  “I need help.  Is Bryan here?”

“Give me the baby before you fall.  When was the last time you slept?”

She laid her son into Fiona’s outstretched arms.  “This is Charlie.  I have two more.”

“Two more what?”

“
Levi and Jimmy are in the car.”

Without another word, Fiona grabbed Teagan’s arm with her long knotted fingers and ushered her inside to the sofa.  She propped Charlie on a pillow and padded outside.

The room wavered.  In Teagan’s exhausted delirium, she saw Bryan warming his hands by the cast iron stove, saw him cleaning their hiking boots by the wood box, saw him reading in his grandfather’s chair.  She bowed her head.

The pine door opened.  Fiona shuffled inside to the sofa, plopped Levi beside Charlie and shuffled out again.

A granite-blue coffee pot sat on the counter.  Teagan poured a cup of cold black brew, gulped it down, and met Fiona at the door.  “You’re winded.  I’ll take Jimmy.”

“
Whew, I haven’t moved that fast in twenty years.”  Her voice sounded weak with more than just age.  Her cheeks were flushed, contrasting sharply against a sickly pallor.  And a light wheeze was audible.

Teagan lifted Jimmy from Fiona’s shaky arms.  “You’re not well?”

Fiona sank into a rocker.  Her pale eyes were sunken and deep lines marked where skin dropped from age or pain.  “No sicker than a lot of people my age.  Why do you have three babies?”

“
I’m running from a police officer who killed their mothers.”

A Big Ben replica ticked loudly from a shelf by the bedroom door.  Teagan jerked when a log snapped in the stove and the chimney vibrated with fire surge.  Her words repeated in her mind, and she saw the insanity that Fiona must see in them.

Then Fiona’s lips tickled into a grin.  A giggle escaped, growing into a full blown laugh, hard and long.  Finally, she gasped, “Bryan is going to love this.  He has a sick old woman, a fugitive hitchhiker to care for, and now three babies on the run from a killer cop.  You just never know what the day is gonna bring.”  She cackled until a cough choked her.

Teagan laid Jimmy on the sofa beside Charlie and Levi, and gently patted Fiona’s bony back until the spasms subsided.

Fiona nodded her thanks and rested against the chair’s high back.

All three boys were awake, but content, sensing the cabin’s safety.  Levi played with his face.  His tiny, fat fingers gouged at his eyes and mouth, scratched at his round cheek.  Jimmy focused on the door, waiting, it seemed.  Charlie stretched, kicked his feet against the receiving blanket, and enjoyed laying flat after sitting in a car seat for hours on end.

Teagan sighed.  “I need to change their diapers and feed them.”

“
Why disturb happy babies?  Go nap on my bed.  I’ll wake you if they fuss.  My zillion questions can wait until you’ve slept.”