“It’s easy to get lost here.” Mrs. Holt lowered her hips back down on the table. “Or found, depending on how you look at it.”
Lulu didn’t look at it either way. She wasn’t lost or found. She was like a piece of kelp that had been deposited on the high-water mark at the beach. In time, another higher than normal tide would pick her up and sweep her away again. This was purely temporary, this time in Lost Harbor. One day at a time, as they said.
And one day at a time, she grew more attached to the place. She loved exploring the hiking trails in the hills above the town. When Toni found out she was going off on her own, she gave her a strict lecture about bears. After that, she regularly received invitations to hike—from Ruthie Malone, Chrissie Yates, Megan Holt, or Zoe Bellini.
With Zoe, she went on beach walks and helped her collect random bits of debris for her artwork. Ruthie was trying to get into shape for her upcoming wedding, so she was always up for a jog or a hike. Chrissie asked Lulu a zillion questions about herself, which made sense once Lulu remembered that she and Tristan had been high school sweethearts. She was still looking out for her former boyfriend. And Megan…she adored Megan, who was also a newcomer to Lost Harbor and made a special effort to reach out to her.
She got to know the Morrison sisters—Dr. Bethany Morrison and her younger sister, Gretel—because Gretel’s Café became her favorite place for her morning cappuccino. One day in late October, Gretel invited her to a rehearsal for the local amateur production of The Nutcracker.
When the director, who was the high school music teacher, discovered that Lulu could dance, she got roped into joining the production herself. Now she was busy choreographing her own solo, which she would perform for the Rat King and his court.
When the other cast members saw her dance, all of a sudden she was deluged with other invitations. The teen rec center begged her to put on a dance workshop. The local community college campus asked her to propose a class for the next semester. A fun women’s burlesque group, the Harbor Hotties, invited her to join them for a show.
It was almost overwhelming. In the last months with her mother, her world had closed in and become very small—just her and her mother and the stream of hospice nurses from the NHS. After her mother had died, all of that had stopped. She’d felt completely at sea.
And then she’d literally gone to sea. On the cruise ship, she’d been surrounded by people, but had formed mostly superficial friendships with her fellow dancers. When you knew it was just a temporary gig, you didn’t become attached.
But Lost Harbor was working some kind of spell on her. With each shift in the weather, she wondered if it would finally become too cold or too icy or too dark for her. But it never happened.
Halloween brought a slew of parties. She dressed up as Ringo Starr and handed out caramels to Ruby and her cohorts. Then she danced until dawn at the Olde Salt with Pedro Davila and other crusty but endearing fishermen.
In November, Malcolm Crow was elected mayor of Lost Harbor, and he immediately appointed Trixie Tran to run a new business outreach department. Cockles came in third, but seemed to hold no grudges and demanded no recounts.
The first snowfall meant invitations for sledding from Gretel and the Ross boys. And best of all, a dog sled ride. She went skating on a frozen lake with Kate Robinson, who was trying to improve her skating to keep up with her fiancé, the fire chief Darius Boone.
“Did you know Lost Harbor has a women’s hockey team?” Kate told her. “You should join up.”
“Kate, I would, but I’m so overbooked with rehearsals and workshops. I’ve never been this busy in my life!”
Kate laughed, windmilling her arms to keep from tripping on an air bubble frozen into the lake. Someone had hot-mopped the surface to make it smooth, but it wasn’t perfect. The setting made up for it, though. Shoreside alders bowing under the weight of the snow, the sky a blue so pure it made Lulu’s heart sing.
Winter brought an unexpectedly delicate beauty. For instance, the alpenglow, the pink aura of light clinging to the mountainous horizon. Lulu had never seen anything like it. The sunsets seemed to stretch for hours, from afternoon to evening, pastel clouds shifting from rose to pale apricot to lavender. At night the stars were so brilliant she had to shade her eyes to gaze up at them. After windy nights, she’d wake up to snowdrifts carved into wild and whimsical shapes.
Winter here had a playfulness that was new to her. In London it was mostly gray skies and bitter wind. When snow came, it didn’t generally linger. If it did, it quickly became dirty and inconvenient.
But in Lost Harbor, she looked forward to fresh snowfall, even if it meant she’d have to bring out the cabin’s big push shovel. The new snow felt like a clean slate, like a chance to start fresh. She loved waking up in the morning and finding tiny bird imprints on the surface of the new snow. Or surprising a bunny rabbit, its creamy fur barely visible against the white snow.
Snowshoe hares, they were called. In the winter they grew a special coat of white fur, which they shed in the spring in favor of brown—the better to hide from predators.
As for her own predator, the one who had been hunting her and Raul, he was safely under lock and key, last she’d heard. The authorities in Colombia had taken custody of Seb Antonov. Agent Melbourne sent her updates on a regular basis; the last one had come about a month ago. Antonov and his accomplice were in jail awaiting trial.
She hadn’t heard anything from Raul, but she wasn’t surprised by that. He was safely back home and should be focusing on having a childhood and putting his traumatic experience behind him. His mother and his grandparents had both sent her ‘thank you’ cards, which had miraculously made their way to her despite being addressed to Lulu from the Northern Princess/Lost Harbor, Alaska.
She’d propped those cards on the mantel of the hearth in her little log cabin, along with some interesting stones and shells she’d found on her beach walks with Zoe. In a place of honor, she displayed her favorite photo of her mother. And then there was Tristan’s bandana from the Desperado that had somehow ended up in her backpack.
If Tristan ever came back to Lost Harbor, she’d return it to him. That was why she kept it on the mantel, she told herself. To remind her to give it back to him. Not because it was a tangible reminder of her time on the Desperado. Not because it brought back the memory of Tristan’s wide grin flashing through his beard, and his sea-green gaze. Not because he texted or called almost every day. Not because with each one, she felt closer to him and so very far away.
Twenty-Seven
Tristan listened closely to the latest update from the nurse, who relayed it in rapid Spanish that Tristan understood more easily now. They were going to try taking him off the intravenous blood pressure medication and see how he did.
“You’re unhooking it now? What’s the worst that could happen?”
“If his blood pressure goes up too much, we’ll either put him back on this medication or try another.” He rattled off the name of the medication. Tristan made him slow down and say it again so he could look it up later.
From the bed, Victor spoke in English. “Stand down, Tristan. They’re doing a good job for me.”
“I know that.” But were they doing such a good job because Tristan was there, hounding them? That was the question that kept him here. That, and feeling close to his father in a new way. Never before had he felt that his Viking-like father needed him. He’d always been so mighty and self-contained.