Last Chance Harbor (40 page)

Ryder approached the driver’s side, realized an unshaven man sat slumped behind the wheel. On closer inspection, he saw a woman in the passenger seat in the same pose. In the backseat, he could make out a couple of small heads buckled in child car seats. There were boxes packed in the back along with visible toys and household furnishings. Ryder relaxed his demeanor. It was obvious a family of four had found a place to sleep for the night. He tried to backtrack out of the driver’s line of vision but the guy came fully awake.

The look of sheer terror on the man’s face indicated to Ryder the stranger thought he’d done something wrong and feared trouble. Instead of leaving it at that and walking away, Ryder decided to take an approach Scott might approve. “Are you guys okay?”

The man rolled down the window. “I didn’t realize we were breaking any laws by parking here. We just needed a place to sleep without getting hassled.”

“Are you visiting the area?”

“Just passin’ through, mister. I lost my job six months back, couple months ago we lost our apartment, been on the move ever since.” The man extended a hand. “The name’s Gavin Kendall.” He bobbed his head toward his now-awake passenger. “And this is my wife, Maggie.”

Ryder shook the man’s hand, noting the guy couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, the wife, a couple years younger. “You don’t have a place to live?”

Kendall shook his head. “We don’t.”

“Where were you headed?”

“We usually just stay on the move. Sometimes we hang out at the library if the town has one. You guys don’t.”

“What type of work do you do?”

“Are you kidding? I’ll do any job you got.”

From a few feet away Julianne had been eyeing the sleeping boy and girl in the backseat. She’d guess they were preschool age, maybe three and four years old. All at once an idea hit her. Stepping up to Ryder’s side, she introduced herself to the parents. “I’ll be the new principal at the school in the fall. Ryder, there’s always plenty of work to do out on the farm, don’t you think?”

“More than. Would you be willing to do farm work?”

“I’ll scrub toilets if that’s what it takes to feed my wife and kids.”

“Great. But I need to get an okay from one of the bosses before I make any offers. Knowing Cord and Nick, I don’t think there’ll be a problem.”

Ryder turned to Julianne. “There’s a little cottage just sitting empty on the place. It’s where the original caretakers used to live. They could stay there for a while.”

She took out her cell phone. “Any objections to my calling Nick now?”

“This late?”

“I don’t see letting these kids spend another night trying to sleep while buckled into their car seats, do you?”

“Good point.”

As the Nissan
van followed them out to the farm, Ryder wanted to know what Nick had said.

“That if the couple has kids we shouldn’t waste time getting them out of the car and into a place with a real roof over their heads. So I figure we all take a chance on the adults, hope they don’t steal you blind at the first opportunity they get.”

Taking his eyes off the road for a second, Ryder spared a glance at her. “The teacher who emits sunshine wherever she goes has doubts about the family behind us?”

“Why does everyone think a teacher is Miss Perfect? I’m not. In my profession I see deceit all the time. I’m surrounded by it. Kids who tell me the hamster chewed up their homework. Little round cherub faces that stand in front of me and swear they left their reader at the vet’s office where they had to take their dog after it got hit by a car. I’ve been lied to by parents. Little Joanie would never pull out another little girl’s hair. Little Johnny would never shake down other boys in the bathroom.”

He busted out laughing. “You lead a hard life, Ms. Dickinson.”

“Don’t I know it,” she commiserated. “So just because Gavin Kendall says he’ll work at the farm, doesn’t mean I trust him to do it.”

“Don’t worry, Sam and Silas run a pretty tight ship, they’ll keep an eye out for any red flags.”

While Ryder and Julianne wondered whether or not they could trust the Kendalls, Gavin and Maggie were wondering the same thing about the couple in the car up ahead.

Driving off into the middle of the night behind a strange truck, the pair, whose luck had been awful lately, had a hard time believing someone could befriend them by letting them sleep in an actual house.

“Maybe it’s a trick. What if they’re leading us out into the countryside in the dark to slit our throats and take everything we own?” Maggie said, alarm rising in her voice.

“The woman claimed to be a principal. She looked trustworthy enough.”

“Looks can be deceiving.”

“True. I tell you what, if we get out here and there’s no farm, I’ll step on the gas and high-tail it out of there. How’s that sound?”

Maggie blew out a nervous breath. “Okay. But that could be too late. Just in case, I’m digging out the craft scissors I carry in my handbag for emergencies.”

“I hate to tell you but those won’t do much damage. I have my pocket knife though.”

“That’s something, I guess.”

When Gavin spotted the Taggert Farms sign, his jaw dropped. “Isn’t that the kind of milk we used to buy for the kids?”

“It sure is. Do you really think these people are on the level?”

“We can only hope. God knows, it’s about time our luck changed.”

Getting the Kendall
family settled into the caretaker’s cottage—a box of a house painted bright cheery red with white trim—turned out to be a treat for Julianne and Ryder. Watching Maggie and Gavin with their kids, the care they took to get them out of their seats and then bundle the boy and girl up to their shoulders—went a long way to dissipate the skittishness. Maybe it worked on two fronts. Both sides seemed to relax with each other.

“This is a real farm,” Gavin said to Ryder. “You weren’t scamming us.”

Ryder chuckled realizing the young father had been just as nervous as he’d been. “Nope, it’s quite an operation.”

“Why the house is as cute as a button,” Maggie noted with the still-sleeping little girl hugged up to her chest.

Ryder led the way up to the porch, opened the door, flicked on the light. “The electricity’s on, but no one’s lived here since a friend of mine found his own apartment. Because of that I can’t guarantee how many layers of dust there is on everything.”

“That’s okay. We can get it clean,” Maggie said eagerly.

“There are only two bedrooms but it has a large, fully functional kitchen at the back and a working fireplace in the living room,” Ryder went on. “You’ll find sheets in the linen closet. Blankets should already be on the beds.”

“Are you sure our staying here is okay with the owner?” Gavin wanted to know. “This isn’t what we expected.”

“Positive,” Julianne assured him. “We called him and he didn’t hesitate. As Ryder told you already the place has been sitting here gathering dust. Now let’s go into the kitchen and see if there’s anything on hand to eat for breakfast.”

As soon as the light came on, Maggie let out a gasp behind her. “Oh, this is precious. Look at the size of this kitchen, Gavin. It’s truly beautiful.”

“I… We don’t know what to say.”

“Except thank you,” Maggie said her voice beginning to tremble.

Julianne went to the fridge, which was empty except for a bottle of ketchup and a jar of mustard. She opened the door to the pantry, frowned. “There’s cereal but no milk, canned goods but not much else. Tomorrow’s Memorial Day and Murphy’s Market will be closed. Ryder and I will bring you over some supplies from his place to get you going until Tuesday morning. Right now, settle in and get a good night’s sleep. Be sure to come back into town for the fireworks tomorrow night. The kids will get a kick out of them.”

She’d no sooner got the words out of her mouth when Maggie broke down in sobs and rested her head on her daughter’s. “Thank you. Thank you so much. We’ll work to stay here. Both of us will.”

Gavin reached out for his wife’s hand despite the little boy snugged in his arms. “For… How long? How long do we get to stay?”

“Do you know anything about milking cows?”

“Not a thing. But that don’t mean I can’t learn. I normally work as a machinist, done some construction work, too. I’m good with my hands.”

“Okay. Then you’ll start work on Tuesday.”

“I’ll start tomorrow if it’s all the same to you,” Gavin insisted.

“Will filling out an application on Tuesday pose a problem for either one of you?”

“No, not a bit.”

“Okay, then get a good night’s sleep. There’s enough work on a farm to keep you both here until you get ready to move on.”

“Mister, whatever job you got, we’ll do it.”

Ryder slapped Gavin on the back. “Get your kids to bed and we’ll talk tomorrow.”

Once back in the truck, Julianne sat in the passenger seat, met Ryder’s eyes. “Is it just me or did that feel good? Really good.”

“If anyone had told me six months ago I’d be helping out a homeless family I wouldn’t have believed them. I was pretty self-absorbed with my own troubles. I’m beginning to realize how Scott feels about this town and why Nick and Jordan encourage people to settle here.”

Caught up in a pleased state of excitement, she rolled on, “Do you realize those children might be my future students? I hope the cynical side of me doesn’t rear its ugly head again because Gavin and Maggie seem like nice people.”

“With a ton of rotten luck. Let’s go get them the food we promised.”

The next morning
, Julianne decided on the spur-of-the-moment to hold a barbecue on the front lawn. She used two sawhorses with a sheet of plywood leftover from the renovation to set up for her outside table, covered it with a bright blue sheet. She made phone calls to friends letting them know her plans and told them to pass it on.

“I can’t think of a better way to thank everyone for all the hard work they’ve done to get me here,” she told anyone who thought she’d lost too many brain cells for having such an event on short notice.

“The only problem we might have is running out of food. I didn’t really put too much planning into this.”

When Perry Altman got wind of her worries, he had hamburger meat delivered to her doorstep along with his own special batch of coleslaw with a note that read:
This should feed another fifty people
.