Wild Island Horses Page 2

  "Oh, that'd be nice if you could; thank you!" She started to pull her head in, then thought of something else. "Is there a town around here where I could get lunch? There's a town on the island, right?"

  There was another of those languid pauses, and then he raised a hand and pointed along the road. "Down that way. Just a spell."

  Just a spell was less enlightening than an actual distance would have been. "Is it close enough to walk?" Laura asked. She didn't relish the idea of getting back into the car after driving almost nonstop from Minnesota.

  "Well," Frank said, and seemed to be thinking his way around it, "well, you could walk it, yuh."

  "Then I think I'll walk there and get lunch. Thank you." She smiled down at him. "I'll keep you updated on how my grandmother is doing, okay?"

  He raised a hand in acknowledgement and picked up the hoe.

  Laura

  Before going to town, Laura walked down to the beach. She couldn't be this close and not get a look at the ocean. Besides, she wanted to try to catch another glimpse of the horses.

  She dug a Timberwolves cap out of the loose stuff still scattered on the backseat of the car and tucked up her thick mass of blonde-streaked hair under it. Then she followed the shell path from the bottom of the stairs to the dunes.

  The path petered out at the back of her grandmother's property. She realized that she didn't know exactly where the property line was; she'd have to ask Shirley the next time she saw her, or see if Frank knew. The old man wasn't around to ask at the moment; he'd apparently gone back inside. He had a tidy yard with a neatly tended garden, and his house was a small, neat cottage, one story high without the raised style and storage area underneath of Grandma Edith's place.

  On the other side, there was no fence and a bigger house, sided in rusty brown clapboards. There was a chimney on either end. It looked old, Laura thought. It was raised too, and she got the impression that it might once have been a perfectly normal house on a foundation on the ground, but had been jacked up on piers in some past remodeling project. Now there were two cars and a boat parked behind fencing in the open area under the house, but otherwise the house appeared deserted. Maybe the residents were some of the summer people Shirley had mentioned.

  Beyond this, the dunes began. A network of meandering paths converged here, from backyards and side streets. The dune was made of pale sand, anchored with yellow beach grass and patches of wiry, dull-colored brush. There were bits of shell embedded in the sand, and a few pieces of broken beer bottles. Until she saw that, Laura had planned on taking her shoes off, but she figured she'd leave them on just a little longer, even though they dragged in the sand and her socks were already gritty.

  Then she reached the top of a dune and beheld the ocean.

  She had already seen it from the window, as well as from her car on the drive out. But that was nothing compared to standing here, looking down on the lonely splendor of the beach. It was astonishingly empty. There were just a handful of people. No one was sunbathing, although after the Minnesota winter, Laura thought it was easily warm enough. Most of the people she saw were dog walkers and joggers, and a group of kids flying kites, a ways down the beach.

  And she saw the horses again. They were very close. It looked at first like they were standing on top of the water, but they were near the shore and actually, she realized, it was just very shallow there; they were ambling ankle-deep in the slow-rolling, sunstruck waves.

  Laura watched, captivated.

  There were five of them, four adults and one young one. Two were brown, one a sort of dull buffed-out gold, and one was nearly white; the colt, in contrast, was a dark sooty color. Laura thought she'd read somewhere that white horses start out nearly black when they're young, and she wondered if it would grow up to be white too.

  Are they really just running wild here? She had thought there were only mustangs out west, in rolling-hill sagebrush country.

  But none of the horses had any sign of bridle or harness. They were all small and shaggy, and a little scruffy, with long tangled manes. And Frank had said there were wild ponies—"woild," as he'd pronounced it.

  She could easily believe they were wild. If not, someone had lost a whole entire horse herd.

  One of the dog walkers must have come too close, because as if at some sort of unspoken signal, the herd all trotted up onto the beach and vanished into a stand of trees among a cluster of same-sized, identical beige beach houses.

  Laura craned her neck, trying to see where they had gone. They seemed to have vanished completely, although it was hard to believe that anything the size of a horse could disappear in a small grove of trees. She could almost think she had imagined them. Contributing to the unreal feeling was the fact that no one on the beach had paid them much attention. The kids had stopped to watch for a minute, but otherwise everyone acted as if wild horses were something perfectly ordinary, like stray dogs or seagulls.

  What a strange, wonderful place.

  Once it was clear the horses were gone, Laura took off her shoes and walked down the dune to the beach itself.

  The memory of being here was stronger now. It was the smell of the sea that really did it, a distinctive copper-and-mud tang that was unlike anything else she had experienced. They had been here more than once. How could she have forgotten?

  She had never really had anywhere that felt like home. Her parents had moved around quite a bit for her dad's salesman job, but usually in the interior of the country. They had lived in Sioux Falls and Indianapolis and Kansas City. She'd gone to college in Minneapolis and then just kind of stayed after her parents died, with no clear idea of what she wanted her life to be like.

  Now it felt as if she was waking up from a dream.

  This, she thought, staring out to sea. She walked closer to the ocean, until the slow curling waves lapped over her bare toes. I want more of this.

  She eventually realized that she couldn't stand forever staring at the sea and waiting for the horses to come back. She was hungry and thirsty, and she wanted to see the town.

  She tried walking along the beach, but the sand dragged at her feet; it was tiring to walk in. After just a few minutes she put her shoes back on and cut back over the dunes. She soon found herself in someone's backyard—fortunately there didn't seem to be anyone home; it was probably another vacation home—and from there she got back on the road.

  She was starting to wish she'd packed some sunscreen. The sun was more intense than she was used to, especially at this time of year. The cap helped keep her face from burning, but her arms were pinking a bit under the sleeves of her T-shirt.

  However, the view was gorgeous. The road was narrow, with no sidewalk but also next to no traffic, so she walked on the pavement except when an occasional car came by, and then stepped off onto the sandy shoulder. There were houses on both sides of the road, but between them, she glimpsed the rolling dunes and the sea. The island was so narrow that she could, at times, see the clear greenglass gleam of water on both sides.

  She saw the horses again, or perhaps different horses, far out across the glass-bright waves. Once again she got the eerie feeling that they were walking on top of the water as they waded through the shallows.

  Between the sun and the salt breeze, she was ragingly thirsty by the time she found herself looking down a small strip of businesses along a picturesque Main Street.

  It was like a downtown that time forgot, and the impression only got stronger as she walked closer, with its brick and white paint and gabled facades. She saw no chain stores at all; about the closest thing was a small bank with a drive-thru teller's station. Yards and front lawns were green, and there were flowers here and there, in hanging baskets and window boxes. It looked more like high summer to her Midwest-bred eyes than the end of winter.

  She was already thirsty and hungry enough not to care where she stopped, as long as they had iced drinks and food. There was a café with a nautical theme and a sign reading Pirate's Cove across the str
eet from the bank, so she angled that way. There were people at tables out front with drinks, sandwiches, and books. Perfect.

  "Look out!" someone yelled, just as a horn honked.

  Laura yelped and threw herself into a flowerbed in front of the café. A vintage truck—glossy emerald green with the old-fashioned fence-type side rails, very beautiful, if it wasn't trying to run over her—careened through the spot where she had just been, skidded sideways and came to a stop. The back was piled with bales of hay. Several of them slipped their bindings and tumbled off.

  The truck's front door slammed open while Laura was picking herself up and trying to pick leaves and petals out of her hair. Her ball cap had been knocked off. She picked it out of a bush.

  "Good God," said the driver as he jumped down. "I am so sorry, Miss. I didn't even see you. I was—"

  "Driving like a crazy person!" Laura finished for him. "I was on the sidewalk!" She was still high on a blazing wave of adrenaline. Her elbow was beginning to smart as she became aware that she'd barked it on something in her mad scramble to escape being flattened.

  It helped only a little that he was strikingly, unfairly good looking, with tousled dark hair and blue eyes looking startlingly pale in a deeply tanned face. His white T-shirt had the sleeves rolled up to expose muscles that she would have been trying not to openly ogle if he hadn't just—she could not emphasize this enough—nearly run over her with a farm truck.

  And now he wasn't even seeing if she was okay, or trying to help her up (okay, she was already up, but it was the principle of the thing). Instead he was headed for something in the road.

  Something that had fallen off the truck, no doubt, when he was driving like a maniac—oh wait.

  It had moved.

  In fact it started to run off, but the sexy truck-driving maniac scooped it up with fast, practiced hands. He turned around and Laura, who had taken a couple of steps after him on pure instinct, saw that he was holding a—

  "Piglet?" she said, staring.

  "I guess so?" said the sexy maniac, who looked equally confused.

  The piglet squirmed. It was about a foot and a half long, pink and brown, with a round little body, and it looked confused too.

  "Why was your pig in the middle of the road?" Laura said.

  "It's not my pig. I guess it's not your pig?"

  They looked at each other for a minute. She had to remind herself that he had almost run her down. He was really cute. Even holding a pig. And it took some real panache to pull off a pig as a fashion accessory.

  "Right," Sexy Maniac murmured. He went over to the truck, put the pig in it, and shut the door.

  "Is that the proper way to transport a pig?" Laura asked.

  "I don't know, but it's better than having it running all over the road." He started picking up bales of hay and throwing them back onto the truck. "Are you okay?" he asked over his shoulder.

  "I'm fine," she said, rubbing absently at her elbow. A few patrons of the café had come over to stare. A far more alarming number, in Laura's opinion, were simply going on drinking their coffee and eating their sandwiches as if none of this was particularly unusual. This had alarming implications about island life.

  She wondered if she ought to help him pick up the hay, but there was no way she could just toss it around like he was doing. From the way his muscles flexed, the bales were heavier than they looked.

  "You're sure this isn't your pig?" he asked.

  "I think I'd know if I had a pig."

  "Guess you got a point there," he muttered, and then called at the top of his lungs, "Hey! Anyone lose a pig around here?"

  Laura was increasingly getting the feeling that she had wandered into some kind of bizarre dream.

  "No!" a voice yelled out from across the street. There were also some no's from the café patrons.

  "Welp, guess that's that, then," he said. "Can I, um—buy you coffee? Or something? I kinda have this pig in the truck, though ..."

  "Honestly, I'm glad you didn't hit the pig. I'm fine so ..." She waved her hands, trying to express it's fine in body language and possibly ending up at windmill. "Everything's okay! You can just go!" And with that, she escaped from the awkwardness into the café.

  It was probably good that he had a pig in the truck and places to be; otherwise, she was very tempted to let the hot stranger and his pig buy her a drink. She was here to deal with her grandmother's house and health, and possibly funeral, if the hospital stuff didn't go well. What she did not need was to get drawn into a temporary island fling with a hot farmer with a pig and a hay truck.

  What did you even farm on an island? Horses maybe? Now she was starting to wish she'd asked. She threw herself down in a table by the window and peeked out as the green truck drove away, with her flaming face hidden behind the window's half-lowered blinds. The pig was standing up with its trotters against the passenger-side window.

  Between the horses, the pig, and the truck, this was easily shaping up to be one of her weirdest days ever.

  "I saw what happened, honey," the waitress said, bringing her a menu. "Are you okay? That Spencer Bailey is a nice young man, but he can be an absolute menace with that truck of his."

  Spencer Bailey. Oh no. He had a name.

  "Do you know him?" Laura asked. She took the menu, but what she was really interested in was the glass of ice water beside it. She grabbed it and took a long, soothing gulp. Mmm, ambrosia.

  "We went to school together," the waitress said. "Everyone knows everyone else on the island. Are you a tourist?"

  "I'm not sure," Laura confessed. "I'm here because of my grandmother. Er, Edith Mountjoy? She's in the hospital, so I'm looking after her house for her."

  "Oh yes, the Mountjoys out on Seabreeze Road, right?" the waitress asked as she briskly tidied things on the table, replacing the nearly empty ketchup bottle with a full one. "My cousin used to mow her lawn when we were kids."

  Laura couldn't help laughing. "This really is a small town!"

  "It'll explode in the summer, if you stay here that long. The winter people are a pretty select group, but in a couple of months the beaches will be full and so will every table in here." The waitress glanced around the café, which was nearly deserted inside; most of the patrons other than Laura were at the outside tables. "So enjoy the solitude while you can."

  "I don't know that I'm staying that long. But thank you." She only had to glance at the menu; she already knew what she wanted. "A large Diet Coke and a fish sandwich and a basket of fries, please."

  After the waitress left the table, she leaned back in her chair and picked another leaf out of her hair. She was still slightly twitchy from the adrenaline.

  But the tension drained out of her as she sat with her shoulder against the window, looking out at the street and feeling the stress and strain of the long drive slowly ease out of her.

  Did Grandma Edith used to sit in this café too? Or maybe its predecessor—it seemed too trendy and modern to have been here for long. She quested after that feeling of familiarity that kept hitting her on the beach earlier, but felt none of it here.

  I wonder how old I was when I was here last. Four? Five?

  When the waitress came back with her Coke, she asked, "Do you remember the Mountjoys' kids at all?"

  "I'm afraid I don't, hon," the waitress said. "I don't even think I knew they had any. And her husband passed a long time ago. It's just been Mrs. Mountjoy out there as long as I can remember."

  Poor Grandma, Laura thought after the waitress was gone again, bustling briskly outside to check on the outdoor tables. It was a lovely place to live, but it must have been so lonely with just an old lady in a house big enough for a family.

  She had spent most of her adult life alone. Her dad never had much family, and she never really knew Mom's. Now it felt like a new world was opening up in front of her, a world of possibilities and new questions that she ached to answer.

  Don't get too attached to this, she told herself. This bright, su
n-drenched place was a vacation from her real life, not a fresh start. It was too good to be true. And she had learned all too well how quickly something could turn from happy and hopeful to devastating.

  But the Coke was ice-cold and sweet, and the fish sandwich, when it arrived, was amazing, crispy and loaded with thick-sliced tomatoes, with fresh hot fries sizzling in a basket alongside.

  It wasn't a bad way to start a new chapter of her life. It was the small things that mattered most, sometimes.

  Spencer

  In a lifetime of living on Okokie Island, Spencer Bailey had driven this road so many times he could probably do it blindfolded. The narrow, sometimes dune-choked road ran from the town of Okokie itself to the cape and salt marsh where the island's small population of wild horses spent most of their time.

  This time, though, he was doing it with an extremely active piglet in the cab of the truck, and he couldn't stop thinking about the freckled, girl-next-door-pretty young woman he had almost run over back in town. Definitely not one of the year-round residents. If she was, he'd certainly remember her, and she didn't have the baked-in tan of the island folk anyway; under the freckles, she was winter-pale. Tourist? New summer resident? He hoped she wasn't just here for a day.

  "No," he said, pushing the piglet back from its fiftieth attempt to climb over his lap to investigate the open driver-side window. He shoved it to the other side of the vintage 1951 Chevy's bench seat. "Get back to your side. I'm doing all the work here."

  What am I thinking, he told himself. You nearly ran her down trying to avoid this little squeaker. She's probably thinking she made a good getaway from that weirdo with his pig.

  The piglet made an earnest attempt to climb over the back of the seat. There was a sudden, startled Squoink! as it managed to accomplish this, followed by the sounds of a distressed piglet coming from the narrow space between the seat back and the truck cab's back wall.

  "Unbelievable," Spencer muttered.