Never a ship sails out of the bay
But carries my heart as a stowaway.

—Roselle Mercier Montgomery
(Left by a sailor who came and went unnoticed)

Chapter 8

Welcome to Moses Lake! If you’re lucky enough to be at the lake, you’re lucky enough, the sign at the edge of town read. Ancient-looking rock pillars supported the weathered wooden timbers, casting a shadow over the words and sheltering a spray of purple wildflowers. Considering that it had been a fairly mild night, it was hot today. Downhill from the sign, the waters of Moses Lake glittered in cheery patches between the trees. Boats crisscrossed the twinkling surface, leaving foamy white trails. Near the shore, docks of various vintages floated with brightly colored canoes, faded paddleboats, and pontoon craft tugging at their leashes, eager to be released to the water.

I had the strangest urge to pull over and abandon the Jeep and the trailer, which was catching wind today and weaving like crazy. I pictured myself running down the hill, hopping into a speedboat, and taking off across the water to the hills on the opposite side. They seemed wild and unspoiled, no docks, houses, or boat sheds marring the rocky shore. I could build a thatch hut there, hide away from everything. . . .

“I wanna go swimmin’!” Nick piped up, poking his finger against the window glass, leaving behind smudgy dabs of enthusiasm. If Nick felt at all out of place in this new life, it didn’t show. He seemed as comfortable with the house and yard, with the town of Moses Lake, as if he’d always been here.

“It looks like fun, doesn’t it?” I agreed. “Maybe we can do that later, but right now we have to find the hardware store and a place to get some lunch and some groceries. Doesn’t that sound like fun, too?” The question sing-songed upward in an attempt to win Nick’s cooperation. Truth be told, I didn’t have much experience being alone with Nick, other than the weekend of the stomach flu when he was too sick to argue about anything. Beginning with our departure from my parents’ house, I had seen Nick throw some fits my sisters would have classified as snotty humzingers, a description that had been in our family, not coincidentally, since I was little.

I’d been in public with my sisters a few times when one or more of the nieces opted to go the route of the snotty humzinger. The great thing about being only an aunt was that I could step away and pretend I didn’t know those people. With Nick, I was responsible. I had no idea how to singlehandedly quash a zinger. So far, I’d been able to pretty much leave the discipline to Daniel.

The weight of parenthood fell heavily on my shoulders as we drifted past the Moses Lake sign. What qualifications did I have for guiding and shaping a small, fragile, developing human being? What if I screwed him up totally?

I glanced in the rearview mirror, and Nick was gazing toward the water with his brows slightly lowered. He craned to see the lake as we passed a small Corps of Engineers building and then a little rock church with a park along the lakeshore in back. In the picnic area, kids from a day care or a school were playing in the shade of sprawling pecan trees near the water’s edge.

“Ohhhhh . . .” Nick breathed, straining toward the window. “Look, there some kids-es!” His hand pressed flat against the glass, as if he were trying to reach out and touch the excitement.

“They’re having a picnic.” Please, no zingers. Please, no zingers . . . We can’t stop and play with the kids. We have steel wool and bug bombs to buy. “Maybe we can get your dad to go on a picnic with us after we get home.”

“I wanna go wit’ the kids-es.” A lonely little whine frayed the last word.

“I bet the hardware store has candy.” Redirect, redirect. Where was that hardware store? “Tell you what, though, let’s go find the café first. I’m hungry. Are you hungry, Nick? Remember the place you went with Daddy this morning? Can you help me find the way there?”

Nick didn’t answer. He was too busy watching the kids as we passed by. I couldn’t blame him for wanting to hang out with them. He was used to being surrounded by children every day. Daniel and I weren’t much of a substitute for playmates his own age, and even Pecos the dog couldn’t really make up for all the friends Nick had left behind in day care. Once we were settled here and had our finances back in order, maybe we could find some kind of preschool for Nick. I could use the time to look for a job, but for now getting the house in order had to come first.

Taking in the town of Moses Lake, I felt my hopes for future job possibilities shrinking. The place was tiny, just a few things on the edge of town: a convenience store that served Chinese food, a bank, the Harmony House Bed and Breakfast, and the church. Beyond that lay a little strip of old stone buildings with high false fronts—dollar store, hardware store, a few antique shops, and a smattering of other things. No office buildings, no government facilities, no global corporations.

What could I possibly do with a degree in political science and foreign language in a place like this? The nearest town was Gnadenfeld, which we had passed through on our way in last night. It was larger, with a Walmart, various restaurants, new housing developments, and a fairly impressive-looking school building, but there was no business and industry section there, either, other than some sort of massive food processing facility.

I’d never find anything in my field around here, and if I didn’t work, what would I do with myself? Who would I be?

Stop. One thing at a time. The words came from outside my head as much as within it—as if someone were trying to deliver a cosmic chill pill, telling me to lay off the expectations. Just let things happen.

I tried to allow the placid rhythms of Moses Lake to wash over me as Nick and I proceeded through town, following signs to the Waterbird Bait and Grocery. When we rounded the corner and the place came into view, I had an uneasy feeling about eating there. With a rusted tin roof and an odd configuration of rooms and additions, the building looked like it had metamorphosized over time, growing out of the lakeside hills with no particular plan in mind. This was the spot Daniel had mentioned—the origin of this morning’s delicious breakfast burrito? It looked more like one of the fish markets in Mexico.

In the backseat, Nick was already working his shoulders out of his safety harness as we turned into the gravel parking lot and the vehicle slowly drifted to a stop. “Can we get some fishies? And some wo-r-r-rms.” Stretching the last word, he lifted his little fingers and wiggled them in a crawly fashion. I could only guess he’d gotten that from his dad. Nick and Daniel were similar in so many ways that it was hard to imagine, other than the blond hair, where Nick’s mother was in the picture. Nick seemed to be a one hundred percent copy of his father, or maybe I just wanted to feel that way. It bothered me when I really thought about the fact that Nick had a mother out there. I wondered if, on some random day, she would awaken to what she was missing and come back to stake her claim. On Nick. On Daniel.

I worried that I would never really be Nick’s mom, but I hadn’t admitted that to anyone. I’d even denied it to my sisters when the subject came up. Nick’s biological mother doesn’t have any interest, I’d said, but every time I looked at Nick, I couldn’t imagine how that could be true. How could anyone not want him?

“I think we’ll just get something to eat today,” I said and came around to finish springing Nick from his car seat. He smiled as I did, and stretched his arms toward me as if it were completely natural.

“I wanna eat fishies and worms!” He gave an evil giggle and made crawly-hands against my shoulders. I got it that he was trying to do a gross-out on me.

“Fishies and worms?” I asked, hip-butting the door and tipping him forward at the same time, so that I was leaning over that adorable, mischievous smile. How in the world could I have been worried about that face pitching a snotty humzinger? He had to be the cutest kid who’d ever lived.

“Oh, you are so funny.” I tickled under his arms with my thumbs as his legs wrapped around me monkey-style. “What color fishies and worms?”

“Red fishies and gween wor-r-rmies!” Nick squealed and did the crawly hands again, giggling. “Big, squi-sy gween wor-r-rmies! The wittle cweam fill kind.” He quoted a line from The Lion King, where Pumba bites into a particularly delicious bug.

“Eeewww!” I shook him upside down. “Did your dad feed you worms this morning?”

“Ye-h-h-h-es!” Nick laughed, letting his hands fly free.

“We’d better shake those worms back out, then. Boys aren’t supposed to eat worms.” I bounced him a few more times, until his face turned good and red, and he was laughing breathlessly. Roughhousing with kids, I could do. I could stir them up until they were so hyper they wouldn’t sit still for a week. It was one of my best Tante M skills.

It didn’t occur to me until I’d turned Nick upright and set him on his feet, that maybe getting him all stirred up before lunch wasn’t the best idea. He jittered and tugged on my hand as we walked toward the door, and the moment I let go of him at the deli counter so I could look at the menu, he was gone. Like a Ping-Pong ball with a good spin on it, he bounced around the store, leaving fingerprints all over the fish tanks in the bait section along the side wall, sticking his hands in the worm dirt, bothering three ladies at a corner table, then snagging a pack of gum from the candy aisle as I was ordering lunch and waiting for our food. I rounded him up just as he was about to stick his dirty little fingers into a warmer full of sausage biscuits. At that point, he wasn’t happy to be corralled.

The elderly man behind the counter, who was working from a wheelchair, smiled tolerantly as I swung Nick onto my hip. “You hungry, little fella?” He smiled at us over tissue-lined chicken finger baskets.

Nick answered by burrowing his face into my shoulder, refusing to speak.

The old man chuckled, then tried again. “Looks like since breakfast this morning, you done developed a case of acute Need-a-Nugget. You bring your mom back here for some lunch?”

Nick stopped burrowing in. Leaning back against the circle of my arms, he squinted at me, as if he were looking for the answer to that question, wondering if I knew the answer. Did you bring your mom back . . . your mom . . .

Blood prickled into my cheeks, and I found myself caught in a moment for which there was no blueprint in my life. This was the first time the question had come up. At what point did I tell people that I was Nick’s stepmother? I wimped out on it completely and grabbed a French fry from the chicken nuggets basket, handing it to Nick. “I think we’ve got a case of Need-a-Nugget, all right.”

I pretended to be busy digging a wet wipe from my purse, opening the packet, and swiping the worm dirt off Nick’s hands as the man behind the counter fixed our drinks. Nick wiggled down so he could snatch another fry. The old man grinned at him over the sodas and tapped Nick’s hand with a craggy finger. “You remember my name, young fella?”

Nick backed away a step and shook his head.

“Pop, like lollypop. Pop Dorsey. You remember that now?” The old man’s hands disappeared below the counter momentarily, and Nick watched with expectation, clearly having been through this drill before. A green lollypop was soon on its way to Nick’s chicken basket.

Nick nodded, licking his lips.

“He can have a lollypop, can’t he?” Pop Dorsey turned to me after the fact.

“Sure. Thanks, that’s very sweet. What do you tell Mr. Dorsey, Nick?”

“No mister, just Pop,” the old man corrected. “I’m Pop to kids of all sizes and stripes. Been running this place too long to be anything else.” He stuck out a hand to shake mine. “Yer husband said he moved here for his job, but he didn’t say whereabouts.”

“At the West Ranch,” I answered. Pop Dorsey lifted an eyebrow, and I felt compelled to explain further. “My husband will be working in the laboratory out there.”

It still felt strange to say those words, My husband. It was hard to believe that a little over two months ago, marriage wasn’t even on my radar. I still felt as if the man behind the counter should roll his eyes and say, Yeah right, like I believe that.

But instead, some private thought swirled behind Pop Dorsey’s cloudy gray eyes, and a wrinkle sketched lines of concern on his forehead. Nick paused, his hands motionless on the edge of the counter, as if even he felt the undercurrent. A cold sensation crawled up my back, making the skin tight and itchy.

“You livin’ out there on the ranch?” Pop Dorsey asked with more than ordinary curiosity.

“Yes. At the old headquarters, I think it’s called. The house came with the job. We’d be foolish not to take advantage of the offer.” The explanation was meant to convey that we weren’t homeless or destitute, but what I got back was the sense that Pop Dorsey thought we’d be better off living somewhere else.

“Kind of out there by yourselves at the old headquarters.” He slid my drink closer to me, and his fingers brushed mine, pulling my gaze to his in a way that held both of us in a bond of things unsaid. “I know that house. Used to look after cows on the ranch, years back. That was back when Jack West’s second wife was there. Before she was . . . well, anyway, that was a long time ago.”

An empty, hungry, unsteady discomfort swirled inside me. I felt a little sick. What did Pop, who gave suckers to kids and welcomed newcomers to Moses Lake, know about our new boss that I didn’t know?

“The house needs some work, to tell you the truth.” I felt myself teetering on the ragged edge of starting a rant, but wisely chose to keep it to myself. “We’ll get it done, I’m sure.” Of all the strange things, tears pricked my eyes. I felt . . . completely disoriented.

Pop Dorsey seemed to sense it. “Well, you need any help—need to know the number for a good carpenter, anything like that—you come talk to Pop, y’hear?” He looked up as the cowbell on the door clattered, announcing another customer.

I bit down on my emotions, swallowed hard. “Thanks. I will.” Things could be worse. At least Moses Lake was turning out to be friendly, even if the town was small.

“Len, over there, has been doin’ some light carpentry work recently,” Pop offered, tilting his head toward the customer coming in the door. The man was thin and stooped, his ragged shirt and dirt-encrusted jeans drooping over his body like the cleaning rags my grandmother’s maid tossed over the piazza railing. His hair hung in gray strings beneath a faded ball cap, and several teeth were missing when he smiled. He reminded me of the homeless people who inhabited sheltered spaces in DC.

He didn’t look like anyone I would want in my house, or around Nick. It wasn’t the most charitable reaction, but I couldn’t help it. My mother had always been particular about the people we associated with, even those she hired for housework and gardening. They came from a professionally managed service where background checks were performed. They arrived in clean uniforms and were dignified and well-spoken.

Some attitudes rub off, whether you want them to or not. “Oh . . . well, I’ll have to see how things go. But thanks.”

Nick turned and waved at the man by the door, his little face lighting up, his head craning side to side, as if he were watching for something more. “Where her go?”

I blinked, looking at Nick. Her? Her, who?

“Ubbb-Birdie’s at the p-p-picnic,” the man stammered, his speech slow and slurred. “Www-with the uhh-kids. I ugg-gotta get some . . . s-s-some more udd-drinks.”

Pop Dorsey waved a finger toward a stack of Gatorade cases by the door. “Got it right there for ya, Len. Just tell Miz Zimmer I’ll put it on her summer school bill, and someone from the district can come by and pay it whenever.”

I gathered Nick and our food, and moved away from the counter, anxious to exit the conversation.

“Don’t forget to sign the Wall of Wisdom while yer here,” Pop Dorsey called after us as we slid into a table with a chipped Formica top and torn red vinyl seats. “And you three sisters, too!” He addressed the women at the corner booth, who’d just finished sharing a slice of pie.

“Oh, we will. We already grabbed a Sharpie,” one of the women answered, then held up a pen and pointed to the back wall, where the windows overlooking the lake were surrounded by Sharpie-pen notations of all sorts. Amid the graffiti hung handmade wooden plaques with quotes like Good things come to those who bait and Early to bed, Early to rise, Fish all day, Tell big lies.

One of the women in the corner booth leaned toward me, her expression warm beneath a shock of short reddish-blond hair. “It’s good luck,” she offered. “The legend goes that if you sign the Wall of Wisdom with someone, you’ll always return to Moses Lake together. Cindy and I just started remodeling a little lake house here, so we’re hoping it works. Paula lives all the way in Florida—” she patted the hand of the brown-haired sister— “When we all get together, it’s a big deal. It’s terrible having your sister move halfway across the country.”

“Yes, it is.” All of a sudden, I missed my sisters. I wished they were here, where we could snuggle into the corner table together and talk about what to write on the Wall of Wisdom. “I have four of them—sisters, I mean. I just moved to Texas, and they’re all in the DC area.” My voice trembled on the last words, which was so unlike me. I’d lived all over the world, by choice, in fact, but now a wave of homesickness was so thick in my throat that I felt like I might suffocate. My sisters were hundreds of miles away. They wouldn’t be coming here anytime soon. Visiting would be a major undertaking of clearing schedules and arranging flights.

“Oh, you poor thing,” Paula offered. “I know what it’s like to be the one living away. You should do what Alice and I do. We call it our Binding Through Books club. We read books together, then every three chapters, we have a little meeting about it over the phone. It’s a lot of fun.”

Alice, the red-haired sister, nodded and smiled, the Wall of Wisdom quotes reflecting off her glasses. “You could start a Binding Through Books club with your sisters. All five of you. When you’re on the phone talking about a story, it’s just like you’re right there together.”

“Thanks.” I forced a weak smile and pretended to be busy getting Nick and the food settled. I could just imagine what my sisters, with their ridiculously busy lives, would say if I suggested we read together and have regular phone-in book club meetings. They’d probably remind me that, for years, I’d been notorious about taking weeks to even answer personal emails.

Alice shoulder-bumped the third sister, who was giving me a sympathetic smile. “Cindy, write down some ideas for her.” She sent a wink my way. “Cindy works in a bookstore in Dallas. She knows all the latest. She’s our source.”

“Sure, no problem.” Tucking her blond hair behind her ear, Cindy took the Sharpie, turned a paper placemat over, and tapped the tip of the pen to her lips. “Okay, let me think. What kinds of things do your sisters read?”

In truth, I had no idea, so I described my sisters’ personalities instead, and Cindy went to work on a suggested literature list that would help me remain connected with my family across the miles. She handed it to me as the Binding Through Books girls cleaned their table and moved to the Wall of Wisdom to leave their favorite quotes behind.

Nick paid little attention. He was busy keeping an eye on the door as Len came and went, carrying out boxes of Gatorade and bags of ice.

“Did you meet that man this morning when you were here?” I asked, knowing that he must have.

“It’s Birdie’s gam-pa,” Nick offered, smiling up at me, a fry dangling between his teeth. He munched it into his lips without touching it, then waited to see if I’d noticed.

“That’s a good trick. Watch this.” I threw a partial fry in the air and caught it in my mouth—hours and hours of being a bored, lonely youngest child does have its benefits. You have plenty of time to perfect skills, like catching food as it flies through the air.

“Woooooo!” Nick breathed, and we were sympatico again. I loved these moments, when we were just enjoying each other. Something about having Nick’s adoration soothed the pain of missing my sisters. He made me believe I really could be someone’s mother.

A happy camaraderie settled over us as we started in on our chicken nuggets. Nick chattered on about his visit to the Waterbird that morning, when he’d sat at the table with his dad and met several “fishing men,” as well as a little girl who was apparently Len’s granddaughter. Birdie had shown him a smiley face and a place on the Wall of Wisdom where she’d signed her name. Nick trotted over and pointed it out to me, and I saw her writing there, B-i-R-D-i-E in uneven red print.

Looking at the wall, I tried to imagine where the girl might live, what her life might be like. I watched Nick skipping back to our table, completely unaware of the whirl of thoughts in my head.

This place, Moses Lake, was so foreign, so different from anything I’d ever known. How would I ever fit in here? How would I ever make the ranch or this little town my home?

The questions taunted me as Nick and I watched the activity on the lake below and finished our meals.

After we cleaned up our table, I walked to the back wall and stood a minute, studying it. The Wall of Wisdom was exactly what the name implied—a place where locals and passersby had left little bits of themselves, quotes, words of advice, wisdom ranging from Never test the depths of the water with both feet to a quote from Anne Frank: How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

Moses Lake was like that wall, I realized. The mixture of people who lived here, who visited here, who spent time in proximity and were not carefully homogenized like the people I’d grown up with and lived among until now. This was not a place where you could select the right neighborhood, the right schools, the right stores, the right job, meet all your needs among your own kind. In this tiny town, the people were too few to be divided. They had no choice but to live all together in the pockets of civilization tucked among the rocks and hills.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but the clearest emotion I could identify was discomfort . . . or fear. Maybe fear was a better word for it. Was I ready for a life like this? Did I really want it?

Was I more like my mother than I cared to admit—afraid that if I brushed elbows with the masses, something might rub off?

Was I a snob?

“Y’all need a Sharpie?” Pop Dorsey called. A forty-something woman had entered from a door behind the counter. Judging by the body language, I guessed that she was family. Pop’s daughter, perhaps. They had the same eyes.

“It’s good luck to sign the wall,” Pop reminded.

“I’ll have to think about it a few days,” I said, trying to sound cheerful and light, not as if I were engaged in a moment of deep spiritual questioning. Part of me was afraid of what that wall represented, of who it represented. “I want to make sure I come up with something good.” Suddenly in a hurry to be out of there, I grabbed my purse from the seat, bought a few groceries, and then Nick and I headed for the door.

“Welcome to Moses Lake. Be careful out there, ’kay?” Pop called after us, and when I turned around, I noticed that he and his daughter had their heads together, but their worried looks were directed my way. I had a feeling they were talking about Nick and me . . . and the West Ranch.

The chill came rushing back, raising a flush of goose bumps as we exited the Waterbird and climbed into the Jeep. I wanted to forgo the hardware store and hurry home, but home wasn’t a safe refuge either. In not so many hours, darkness would settle over the hills again, seep into the valleys, and color them a fathomless black. The current residents of the house would slip from their shadowy hiding places and canvas the walls and floors.

A stop for extermination equipment was a must.

The trailer made a squealing, grinding sound as I drove through town and pulled into the hardware store parking lot. I didn’t look back to see where the noise was coming from but just unloaded Nick and started toward the door. Whatever was going on with the trailer would have to wait until we got home.

The hardware store was quaint and old-fashioned, with a high ceiling downstairs, an ancient Otis freight elevator in the back, and an open area in the center. Stairs led to a second story wraparound balcony containing an assortment of clothes, shoes, hatboxes, and store displays that looked like they hailed back to the fifties. When my mother finally did come to visit, I’d have to bring her here. She would love the nostalgia of the place—the feeling of stepping back in time to an era when store walls were lined with richly polished wooden shelves offering everything from penny candy to nuts and bolts in multi-drawered cabinets that would be worth a fortune in an antique mall.

A friendly, dark-haired teenage boy was working behind the counter. Dustin Henderson, his name tag read. He was well-spoken and seemed sympathetic to my vermin problem. He said I sounded like his mother. She couldn’t abide crawly things in her house, either. Fortunately, Dustin knew quite a bit about how to get rid of them. By the time he rang up my mountain of bug bombs, steel wool, caulking, and a new catch-and-release form of mousetrap, I was feeling a little better about things. He made it sound like a simple enough proposition—plug the holes around plumbing and so forth with steel wool or caulking, open all the closets and cabinets, cover the countertops, and nuke the place with bug bombs. This procedure had worked in the house Dustin had moved into with his mother and new stepdad, who also happened to be the county game warden. Their new house had been sitting empty awhile before they acquired it, too.

At the front counter, I added some elbow-length plastic gloves and a facemask. Glancing at the promotional photo of a woman wearing the bubble-like mask over her mouth and nose, I imagined myself geared up and ready for battle. A laugh teased my throat. I’d have to text a picture to Kaylyn and Josh. This was so far from His Irish Bride. Really.

Actually, the Gymies would probably get a kick out of seeing the hardware store, too. They wouldn’t believe this place. With its collection of old cabinets, assorted merchandise hanging on cardboard display cards, and the freight elevator where Nick was now pretending to be Buzz Lightyear, it really was something to see. The only things missing were old men playing checkers and lovers sipping sarsaparillas while strolling along the sidewalk, parasols and brightly wrapped packages in hand.

I grabbed my phone and snapped a few pictures, then emailed them to Kaylyn with a quick text. In the hardware store buying nuclear bomb for house mice and bugs. Look at this place!

Dustin waited patiently until I was done. “That oughta take care of it.” He slid my sack across the counter. “It flushed out everything at our place but the scorpions. My stepdad had the feedstore order some stuff for that, but I can’t remember what it’s called.”

I didn’t answer at first. I’d allowed myself to be momentarily lulled by the ambiance of the hardware store. The soft light from the second-story windows made the place seem quiet and contemplative. I was thinking that hopefully by the time I got back to the house, Daniel would be there, and he could do the steel wool stuffing and bug bomb detonation. This was a job for a real man, and now was as good a time as any to get over the tiff we’d had. Daniel and I fighting wouldn’t help anything. . . .

That one word yanked me back like a bungee jumper.

Scorpions . . . Did he say scorpions?

“What?” Scorpions lived . . . well, somewhere on the Discovery Channel, didn’t they?

“They’re not, like, the deadly kind or anything. They just sting really bad.” Perhaps Dustin could see the blood draining from my face, or perhaps my eyes bugging out tipped him off to the fact that he was face-to-face with a woman on the edge of hysteria. Suddenly he was in a big hurry to help the guy shopping for plumbing supplies in the back of the store. “The scorpions are more over on our side of the lake, I think. Anyway, have a great day.”

He was gone before I could gather Nick and my sack of ammo. I walked out the door, watching the ground and thinking of old western movies filled with wicked-looking creatures with lightning-fast curly tails.

Before pulling out of the hardware store, I texted Kaylyn. Hardware store guy just told me the scorpions are mostly on the other side of the lake. Wondering if this qualifies as good news . . .

Looking down the main street of Moses Lake, I considered finding the feedstore and asking for more particulars, but on the theory that focusing on a problem can create it where it doesn’t exist, I decided to head for home before I learned anything more about what might be hiding in the shadows there when I arrived.