Kisses in the Rain (23 page)

"I'm glad you can joke about it. Let's hope the service improves, for the sake of my future position with Sidney Pollov Enterprises."

"By the way, Sidney called here the other day and asked where he could find you. He said he'd been ringing your apartment in Ketchikan and you didn't answer. He even tried to find Randy, but there weren't any Randy Gallahorns in the phone book. He asked me if I knew Randy's husband's last name. I thought Randy was a guy."

"Randy's husband?" Then Martha realized what must have happened. She laughed. "It's all right, Lindsay. Sidney must think Randy is a girl. And Randy lives with his mother, who's remarried and has a different last name."

"Why does Sidney think Randy is a girl?"

"Oh, it's a silly rule he has about hiring only women to work in Bagel Barns. I never got around to informing him that Randy is a teenage boy. Hey, Lindsay, I'll call you next week. I hear Nick coming up the steps."

"Right. Good luck, Martha."

"With what?"

"Everything, but especially Nick. And if you ever want to talk about anything, I'm here."

"Thanks, Lindsay. Talk to you soon." She hung up just as Nick came in the door.

He kissed her, then pulled away. She knew at once that he had something on his mind.

"I'd like to take you out to dinner tonight," he told her with a worried frown. "But I don't know if I can."

"Is something wrong?"

"I have to go over to Wanda's. One of Wanda's grandchildren called my office at the cannery and left a crazy mixed-up message about Wanda's falling downstairs. Hallie and Davey were visiting Wanda today, and neither of them was there when I called back. I couldn't make heads or tails out of the message, so I want to see what's going on."

"I'll go with you," Martha said.

"No need for that. I'll drive over to Wanda's house and call you if I can't get back in time to take you to dinner, if that's all right with you."

"Sure," Martha said. "I wanted to change clothes anyway. I spilled hot chocolate down the front of these jeans this afternoon."

"If you'd been wearing your apron like Sidney said—"

He kissed her goodbye. "I'll call you soon," he said before ducking out the door.

But it wasn't soon, and when he did call he sounded exasperated.

"Wanda put out her hands to break her fall and broke a wrist. She's just been sent home with some kind of contraption on her wrist, and Hallie is trying to cook supper for everyone. I've decided that the best thing to do is to leave Hallie here in Ketchikan and take Davey home to Williwaw Lodge."

"I'm so sorry," Martha said. She'd met Wanda once and liked her.

"Not only that, but Hallie doesn't think Wanda can manage by herself, and she wants to stay for at least a week. I don't feel that I can leave Davey, though, not with all these other kids around. He's smaller than most of them, and they can get pretty rowdy, especially if Wanda isn't right there to correct them."

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know. We left Bear at Williwaw Lodge this morning with a large supply of clams and oysters, but he's due to run out of food, so I have to go home and feed him. I want to take Davey with me, but Bear and Davey together are a lot to handle alone, and—" Nick was interrupted by a crash and a loud wail. "You see what I mean about how the kids get out of hand," he said.

"Why don't I come to Williwaw Lodge with you? I can at least look after Bear while you take care of Davey. I could even spend the night if you'd like."

"What about work tomorrow?"

"You have to come into town to go to the cannery, right? I'll come in with you on the
Tabor."

"Davey could go over to Wanda's tomorrow, I suppose," Nick said. "When the bigger kids are out playing or fishing or whatever, he'll play with the younger ones as usual." A hurried consultation with Hallie ensued.

"Hallie says it's a good idea for you to go to Williwaw Lodge. She says that the sheets for the guest room are in the bottom drawer of the dresser."

"So I have Hallie's approval, do I? Tell her I won't be sleeping in the guest room."

"Uh, no. I'll pick you up in a few minutes."

Martha hung up in a bemused frame of mind. She could have sworn that Hallie had said something in the background involving "married" and "a wife."

Chapter 12

Nick and Martha arrived at Williwaw Lodge to discover that Bear was crying and out of food. Davey, with a big happy smile on his face, leaned over the pen Nick had contrived for Bear in a corner of the kitchen, petting Bear while Bear barked and whistled and Nick unloaded more clams and oysters from the
Tabor.
Davey seemed entranced.

"Being in the seafood business certainly has its advantages," Nick said as they watched Bear floating in his bathtub and eating clams. Bear was almost completely weaned now and existed mostly on solid food.

Martha was inspecting the jar of earthworms she and Davey had dug up some weeks ago when Davey suddenly said, "More oysters, Nick! Bear needs more!"

She almost dropped the jar in surprise.

Nick regained his composure first. "Yes, Davey, Bear certainly does need more oysters. Here, I'll give him some." He tossed a few more oysters in the tub. Davey clapped his hands in glee as Bear gobbled them down.

"I didn't know Davey had been talking like that!" Martha remarked in an undertone after drawing Nick aside.

"No more than the usual four words. That was the most he's ever said. It's the closest Davey has ever come to normal speech!" Nick beamed excitedly.

"What should we do?" She was thoroughly enjoying this.

"Just respond normally. Act as though he's always talked. We'll reward Davey by giving him more leads, more questions he might want to answer. Like this—" More loudly this time, Nick said, "Would you like to put the oysters in the tub next time, Davey?"

But Davey only nodded his head up. His eyes lit up with delight, though, as the oysters fell from his hands into the water and Bear splashed after them.

Nick and Martha watched Davey and Bear play together, surreptitiously holding hands. It was fun to share the experience, and Martha smiled up at Nick, glad that they had brought this about.

After a while, Davey seemed to be tiring. "Davey, time for your bath," Nick said.

"Bear," Davey said. It was clear that he wanted Bear to take a bath with him.

"No, Bear has his tub and you have yours," responded Nick.

"Bear!"

"No, Davey." Nick took Davey firmly by the hand and led him away to the bathroom. Davey followed with only one backward glance at his pet. After his bath, Davey again ran back into the kitchen to see how Bear was faring. Bear regarded Davey with soulful eyes, twitching his whiskers and looking altogether lovable.

"They're so adorable together, Nick," Martha said.

"Davey has certainly taken to Bear," Nick agreed. "He spends lots of time just watching him. Hallie says that he's responded to Bear better than anything else she's ever tried, even other kids."

"Davey may feel intimidated by other children," Martha said, thinking of the hubbub at Wanda's house. "An animal is probably much less threatening. It doesn't talk, so it's like him. Bear is good for Davey."

Davey made no protest when Nick took him to his room for a story and bedtime, and afterward Nick piled logs in the fireplace and lit a big fire. He and Martha sat in front of it, holding hands and sharing thoughts.

"This is what my mother and father used to do when my brothers and I were kids. I used to get out of bed at night and find them in front of the fire, talking and holding hands. I thought it was silly and sappy then." He smiled.

"And now?"

"Now I think it's sweet and sentimental," he admitted. "I've never done it with anyone else."

This admission surprised her. "Surely you've brought other women here," she said.

"No," he said after a moment. "After my brothers married, it was just my dad and me and Hallie at Williwaw Lodge. And after my father died, it was just Hallie and me. I never knew a woman I'd feel comfortable bringing here."

"Why, Nick," Martha said, touched at his admission.

"You know what Hallie said tonight after you and I were talking on the phone," he said in a low voice.

"What?"

"She said she'd always hoped I'd get married and bring a wife to Williwaw Lodge. She said if she were going to choose the woman, it would be you."

Martha hardly knew what to say. She and Nick had never even talked about marriage, and he seemed to be signaling her in an oblique way that he was ready to explore the subject. She felt a pang of worry as she wondered how that conversation would go, what he would say, and how she'd reply.

But then he took her in his arms, and she surrendered to his kisses. The fire crackled and blazed, and the room was bathed in golden light.

Marry Nick?
she thought, but then the idea dissolved and swirled away, eclipsed by the joy of being with him. When it occurred to her again much later, she was sure that he couldn't have meant it.

* * *

Hallie insisted that she couldn't leave Wanda, so Martha was still living at Williwaw Lodge two weeks later. She slept with Nick in his big bed, both of them glorying in their nightly lovemaking, but she crept to the guest room in the wee hours of the morning. Nick worried about the effect it would have on Davey if he woke up to find Martha in Nick's bed. Martha agreed with him. She didn't want Davey's burgeoning development to suffer any setback.

And Davey was becoming more outgoing day by day.

He began to talk haltingly in sentences by the end of the second week Martha was there. They were short sentences, and sometimes he didn't speak for hours. His infrequent smiles were brief, but at least he was smiling. The most promising sign was that Davey was beginning to communicate with words, and his eyes were beginning to lose that unexplained hidden pain in their depths.

Hallie, with whom Davey stayed at Wanda's during the daytime when Nick and Martha were at work, was ecstatic at this turnaround in Davey's behavior.

"It's because of you, Martha," she said. "You're so warm and friendly—so
good
with him—that he couldn't help responding."

"No," Martha demurred. "Davey's not talking because of anything I did. If Davey has improved, it's because of his visits to Dr. Whitmer. And maybe because of Bear."

Davey continued to open up to the little sea otter in a way that neither Nick nor Martha would have believed possible. The first thing Davey did when he arrived home at the lodge every evening was to dash into the kitchen to see how Bear was doing. He clapped his hands to applaud Bear's antics; he dug clams on the beach for Bear's dinner. He would sit holding Bear as long as Bear would be still, stroking Bear's silky gray-brown fur.

When Nick took Davey to Juneau to see Dr. Whitmer for their next appointment, Nick came back with glowing reports.

"Dr. Whitmer told me about something called pet therapy," he told Martha. "Psychologists have found that lots of people respond to pets when they don't respond to anything else. Elderly people who are lonely or unhappy often become more optimistic after they get a dog or a cat. Kids with behavior problems or trauma in their backgrounds begin to feel more comfortable about themselves when they have a pet. Dr. Whitmer thinks that Bear is playing an important role in Davey's development."

"I thought you weren't going to keep Bear," Martha said.

"I've agreed to let the fish-and-wildlife people release Bear in a colony of sea otters when he's old enough," Nick said. "I don't know how to break the news to Davey that Bear will leave us eventually."

Martha, who had spent time getting to know both Davey and Bear, said, "Let me talk to him about it."

"All right," Nick agreed.

Martha found a book about sea otters in the children's section of the Ketchikan library, and she brought it back to Williwaw Lodge one night. Davey listened with wide eyes as she read it to him.

The book told about the life cycle of sea otters, and it showed wonderful color pictures of a newborn sea otter and one that had just been weaned. The one that had been weaned looked just like Bear, and Martha pointed out that soon this bigger otter would go away and start a family of its own.