Kingfisher(17)
“Mom. I have to call a tow truck.”
“No,” she said quickly. “No, you don’t. I’ll call Lilith Fisher. She can get Tye to send someone to help you.”
He caught his breath, startled and suddenly panicking. “No—I’ve come all this way—I don’t want to go backward. Anyway, who is Lilith Fisher?”
“She’s Hal Fisher’s wife.”
“How—how did you—”
“We’ve known each other for years. Of course I told her that you were driving down this way. She called me yesterday when you pulled into the old Kingfisher Inn. She said that Tye offered you a room.”
“You never told me we had family in Chimera Bay.”
“Of course I didn’t. Why would I want to give you any reason to find your way there?”
He gripped the phone, his fingers chilled. “Well, I’m not there now, and there’s no reason why I should go all the way back. I’ll get a tow to whatever garage is around here.”
“But they’d be happy to help you, and put you up as long as you need.”
“I know.” He swallowed, his eyes riveted on the pack in the car as though he could see the ritual blade and his guilt jumbled in there along with his shirts and underwear. “It’s just that I need to solve my own problems. You need to let me. How will I make it in Severluna if I run to you for help anytime something goes wrong? Mom?” He listened to the sea wind, the silence in his ear like a breath held. “Mom. Let the hawk get on with its life.”
Finally, he heard her sigh. “I know you’re right. It’s just hard for me not to want—”
“I know.”
“Will you call me later and let me know where you are?”
“I will. I promise.”
—
Chimera Bay, the tow-truck driver told him an hour later. They had the best parts and service department within a hundred miles any direction. And if it couldn’t be fixed, the town had more car dealerships. Pierce climbed glumly into the truck, watched his past reel backward along the road until it came to a halt again at the place he had just left.
He spent a couple more hours waiting to hear the verdict, then walked up the highway to the nearest motel. He was closer to the busy south end of town than to the Kingfisher Inn; with luck he could skulk around unnoticed until the car was fixed. He saw several bars, a fish market, a wine market, a supermarket, a bookstore, a shoe store, one each of every kind of fast-food restaurant. He wandered among the streets as evening fell, looking into windows, reading menus, hoping nobody he had met the previous night would chance along and remember him. He glimpsed, inside the lobby of an old theater, the huge, golden body, the kohl-rimmed eyes of an ancient ruler upon his throne, welcoming moviegoers with a placid, perpetual smile. On a side street, he came across an elegant little restaurant tucked into what had been a bank building. The round tables wore black cloths; red cut-crystal vases on them held a single small white calla lily. Stillwater’s, the restaurant door said in simple lettering. No menu was posted.
“Excuse me,” someone said behind him as he looked curiously through the door’s tinted window.
He turned. A woman stood on the sidewalk, smiling at him. He knew her. He did not. He lingered on the top of the steps in front of the door, trying to place her in his past, those eyes, that smile. He recognized her face finally from one of the few ungloomy things in the house on Cape Mistbegotten: a lovely painting from some romantic era of a medieval maiden welcoming her knight home from his travels. She had that same generous mouth, the same abundantly flowing champagne hair, those same widely spaced, heavy-lidded gray-green eyes that seemed to carry light from a sun already gone for the day.
“Oh,” he said, feeling his transfixed bones galvanized into motion. “Sorry. I’m in your way. Sorry.”
She laughed a little, a lovely sound that he imagined a rill would make, or a warbler. “That’s okay.” She opened the door, then paused, looking down at him now. “Do you want to come in? We start serving a little later than most, but the bar is open.”
I just wrecked my car, he told her silently. I left my credit card smoldering in last night’s bar. I’ll probably have to ask my mother to sell the painting of you so I can pay my motel bill. No way should I follow you into this place.
“Sure,” he said dazedly, and followed her in.
“I’m Sage Stillwater,” she said, as she seated him on one of the four leather-cushioned stools at the tiny bar.
“Pierce Oliver,” he said, taking the piece of paper she handed him without seeing it, still caught in the wonder of watching a painting move, change expression, talk. He made an effort. “Do you own the place?”
“My husband does. I do some cooking. I also serve food, clear the tables, mop the floors, and tend bar. If you’d like a drink.”
He shook his head, changed his mind, changed it again. “I don’t know,” he said finally as she smiled. “Will you have one with me?”
She considered that, her head bent slightly, long, rippling hair falling like a veil behind her lovely profile. “Let me just see what Todd needs.”
She moved among the tables toward curtains hanging over what might have been the bank-vault doorway, doorless now, but still heavily framed with steel set into the gray and white marble walls. He watched her mindlessly, her long limbs in black skirt and gray silk shirt moving quietly, gracefully. She disappeared. He straightened, feeling as though he had been for a few timeless moments utterly bewitched. He noticed the paper in his hand, laid it on the bar. No one came in while he waited. He felt oddly alone though he thought he heard the rise and fall of voices from far away, maybe from the street. Or maybe it was only the incoherent sound of distant traffic. The café curtains, black like the tablecloths and shadowing the lower half of the broad windows, gave him a view of the bay at the end of the street, the water gull-gray with the coming twilight and absolutely still.