It took her a second
The wings banked as the pilot began a steep descent into an
amphitheater of shimmering glacial peaks at the head of Safe
Harbor Inlet, a small and isolated community that clung to a
rugged coastline hundreds of miles west of Anchorage.
When Muirinn O'Donnell fled this place eleven years ago,
those granite mountains had been a barrier to the rest of
the world, a rock and ice prison she'd sought desperately to
escape. Now they were simply beautiful.
Pontoons slapped water, and the tiny yellow plane squatted
down into a churning white froth as the engines slowed to a
growl. The pilot taxied toward a bobbing float plane dock.
She was back, the prodigal daughter returned—almost seven
months' pregnant, and feeling so incredibly alone.
Muirinn clasped the tiny whalebone compass on a small chain
around her neck, drawing comfort from the way it warmed
against her palm. Her grandfather, Gus O'Donnell, had left
her the small compass, along with everything else he owned,
including the house at Mermaid's Cove and Safe Harbor
Publishing, his newspaper business.
His death had come as a terrible shock.
Muirinn had been on assignment in the remote jungles of West
Papua for the magazine Wild Spaces when Gus's body
had been found down a shaft at the abandoned Tolkin Mine, a
full thirteen days after he'd first been reported missing.
And no one had been able to reach her until two weeks ago.
She'd missed his cremation and the memorial service, and she
was having trouble wrapping her head around the
circumstances of his death.
Muirinn had called the medical examiner herself. He'd told
her Gus had been treated for years for a heart condition,
and that he'd suffered cardiac arrest while down the mine
shaft, which had apparently caused him to tumble a short way
from the ladder to the ground. Muirinn could not imagine why
her eccentric old grandfather would have been alone in the
shaft of an abandoned mine. Especially if he had
heart trouble.
And she was unable to accept that the dank maw of Tolkin had
swallowed the life of someone else she loved.
Gus had raised her solo from the age of nine, after the
death of her parents, and while Muirinn had never come home
to visit him, she'd loved her grandfather beyond words.
Just the knowledge that Gus was in this world had made her
feel part of something larger, a family. In losing Gus,
she'd somehow lost her roots.
All she had now was this little compass to guide her.
Muirinn peered out the small window as the floatplane
approached the dock, thinking that nothing had changed, yet
everything had. Then suddenly she saw him.
Jett Rutledge.
The one person she'd sought to avoid for the past eleven
years. The reason she'd stayed away from her hometown.
He stood at the ferry dock on the opposite side of the
harbor, wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, his skin tanned
summer dark, his body lean and strong. His thick blue-black
hair glistened in the late-evening sun.
Muirinn's stomach turned to water.
She leaned forward, hand pressing up against the window as
the plane swung around and bumped against the dock. And like
a hungry voyeur she watched as the man she'd never stopped
loving crouched down to talk to a boy—a boy with the same
shock of blue-black hair. The same olive-toned complexion.
His son.
Muirinn's eyes brimmed with emotion.
He ruffled the child's hair, put a baseball cap on the boy's
head and cocked the peak down over his eyes. Jett stood as
his kid raced toward the ferry, little red backpack bobbing
against his back.
The child hesitated at the base of the gangplank, drawn by
some invisible tie to his father. He spun around suddenly,
and even from this distance Muirinn could see the bright
slash of a smile in the boy's sun-browned face as he waved
fiercely to his dad one last time before boarding the boat.
At the same time a woman approached Jett, the ocean wind
toying with strands of her long blond hair. Her stride was
confident, happy. She placed her hand on Jett's arm, gave
him a kiss, then followed the child up the passenger ramp.
That vignette—framed by the small float plane window— struck
Muirinn hard.
Her eyes blurred with emotion and a lump formed in her
throat. As the sound of the prop died down and the plane
door was swung open, Muirinn heard the ferry horn and saw
the boat pulling out into the choppy inlet.
Jett walked slowly to the edge of the dock, hands thrust
deep in his jeans pockets as he watched the ferry drawing
away in a steady white V of foam. He gave one last
salute, hand held high in the air, a solitary yet powerful
figure on the dock. A lighthouse, a rock to which his boy
would return.
"You ready to deplane, ma'am?"
Shocked, she turned to face the pilot. He had a hand held
out to her, a look of concern in his eyes. She got that a
lot at this stage of her pregnancy.
"Thank you," she said, quickly donning her big, protective
sunglasses as she took his hand. She stepped down onto the
wooden dock, disoriented after her long series of flights
from New York. Two cabs waited up on the road as the handful
of passengers from Anchorage disembarked around her.
Muirinn climbed into the first taxi and gave directions to
what was now her property on Mermaid's Cove, a small bay
tucked into the ragged coastline a few miles north of town.
But on second thought she leaned forward. "I'm sorry, but
could you take the long way around town? Not along the
harbor road."
Or the past the airstrip.
There was a risk of seeing Jett again if they went that way.
She wasn't ready for that—even from a distance. Not now.
Not after seeing him with his son. And his wife.
Muirinn's lawyer in New York had told her that Jett Rutledge
had led the search team that located Gus's body in the mine.
This news had rattled her—the idea of Jett still here in
Safe Harbor, still saving people when she hadn't allowed him
to save her all those years ago. It was almost too painful
to imagine.
Muirinn also knew from her grandfather that Jett had married
in Las Vegas shortly after she'd left town eleven years ago,
and that he'd had a child. The news had nearly killed her
because Jett had refused to follow her to Los
Angeles just a few months before. And when she'd learned
that she was pregnant with Jett's baby, she'd been too
proud—too afraid— to return home. And so she'd chosen to
bear the child alone.
At nineteen, with no money and few prospects, Muirinn had
ended up giving their baby up for adoption, a
decision that still haunted her.
She'd never gotten over it.
Muirinn had also learned from Gus that Jett had joined the
ranks of Alaska's bush pilots, a free-spirited breed unto
themselves. And that's when she'd told her grandfather to stop.
She didn't want to hear one more word about Jett and his
happy little family. It was driving her crazy with the pain
of her own losses, so Muirinn had resorted to her
tried-and-true coping mechanism—she just severed ties,
cutting herself off from the source of her angst. And her
grandfather had respected her request.
From that point on, Muirinn knew nothing more about Jett's
life. She hadn't even wanted to know his wife's name. And
sheer stubborn pride forbade her from ever asking about Jett
again, or from coming home. Pride, and her dark secret.
All Muirinn knew for certain was that she'd lost the only
man she'd ever loved through the biggest mistake of her
life. One she'd never stopped regretting. Because after Jett
she'd had one failed relationship after another, no man ever
quite measuring up to him.
Which was why she was having a baby on her own now.
She sank back into the cab seat, wondering where Jett's son
and wife were going on that ferry. It was late July. School
was out. The kid might be going to a summer camp, or with
his mother on a trip to Seattle. Anywhere.
It was none of her business.
Muirinn had given up any claim to Jett Rutledge a long, long
time ago.
Yet a poignant sadness pressed through her, and she closed
her eyes, placing her hand on her belly.
Do you still hate me so much, Jett?
What would she do if his parents still owned the neighboring
property on Mermaid's Cove?
Muirinn had grown up on that cove. She and Jett had stolen
their first-ever kiss down in the old boat shed, hidden from
the houses by a dense grove of trees. She wondered if the
shed still stood.
They'd made love for the first time in that shed, too, on a
night the moon had shimmered like silver over the water.
She'd just turned eighteen, and Jett twenty-one. The boat
shed had become their special place, and there was a time
Muirinn had thought it would all be there for her forever.
But the summer she turned nineteen, everything changed.
As the cab neared the Mermaid's Cove property, Muirinn asked
the driver to drop her off at the ramshackle gate.
Bags in hand, she stood at the top of the overgrown
driveway, staring down at her childhood home as the taxi
pulled off in a cloud of soft glacial dust.
The scene in front of her seemed to shimmer up out of her
memory to take literal shape in front of her—the garden and
forest fighting for supremacy; brooding firs brushing eaves
with heavy branches. Wild roses scrambled up the staircase
banisters, and berry bushes bubbled up around the wooden
deck that ran the length of the rustic log house.
On the deck terra-cotta pots overflowed with flowers, herbs,
vegetables; all evidence of her grandfather's green thumb.
And beyond the deck, the lawn rolled down to a grove of
trees, below which Mermaid's Cove shimmered.
In a few short months this would all be gone and piled high
with snow. Safe Harbor was known for the heaviest
accumulation among Alaskan coastal towns.
Numbly, Muirinn walked down the driveway and set her bags at
the base of the deck stairs, bending to crush a few rosemary
leaves between her fingers as she did.
She drank in the scent of the herbs, listening to the hum of
bees, the distant chink of wind chimes, the chuckle of waves
against tiny stones in the bay below. It amazed her to think
that her grandfather was actually gone; evidence of his life
thrummed everywhere.
She looked up at the house, and suddenly felt his presence.
I'm so sorry for not coming home while you were still
here. I'm sorry for leaving you alone.
A sudden breeze rippled through the branches,
brushing through her hair. Muirinn swallowed, unnerved, as
she picked up her bags.
She made her way up the stairs and dug the house key out of
her purse.
Pushing open the heavy oak door with its little portal of
stained glass, Muirinn stepped into the house, and back into
time. She heard his gruff voice almost instantly.
'Tis the sea faeries that brought you here, Muirinn. The
undines. They brought you up from the bay to your mother and
father, to me. To care for you for all time.
Emotion burned sharply into her eyes as her gaze scanned the
living room, full of books, paintings, photos of her and her
parents. For years Muirinn hadn't thought of those
fantastical tales Gus had spun in her youth. She'd managed
to lock those magical myths away deep in the recesses of her
memory, behind logic and reason and the practicalities of
work and life in a big city. But now they swept over
her—there was no holding them back. This homecoming was
going to be rougher than she thought.
More than anything, though, it was Gus's artwork that
grabbed her by the throat.
She slumped into a chair, staring at the paintings and
sketches that graced the walls. She was in almost all of
them—images of a wild imp, frozen in time, in charcoal, in
soft ethereal watercolor. In some, her hair flowed out in
corkscrew curls as she swam in the sea with the tail of a
fish. In others, Gus had taken artistic license with her
features, giving her green eyes even more of a mischievous
upward slant, her ears a slight point, depicting her as one
of the little woodland creatures he used to tell her lived
up in the hills.
Eccentric to the core, Gus O'Donnell had been just like this
place. Rough, yet spiritual. Wise, yet a dreamer. A big-game
hunter, fisherman, writer, poet, artist. A lover of life and
lore with a white shock of hair, a great bushy beard and the
keen eyes of an eagle.
And he'd raised her just as wildly, eclectically, to be free.
Not that it had boded well for her. Because Muirinn hadn't
felt free. All she'd wanted to do was escape,
discover the real world beyond her granite prison.
Sitting there in a bent-willow rocker, staring at her
grandfather's things, exhaustion finally claimed Muirinn,
and she fell into a deep sleep.
She woke several hours later, stiff, confused. Muirinn
checked the clock—it was almost 10:00 p.m. At this latitude,
at this time of year, it barely got dark at night. However,
clouds had started scudding across the inlet, lowering the
dusky Arctic sky with the threat of a thunderstorm. A harsh
wind was already swooshing firs against the roof.
Muirinn tried to flick on a light switch before realizing
that she had yet to figure out how to reconnect the solar
power. She lit an oil lamp instead and climbed the staircase
to her grandfather's attic office. The lawyer had said all
the keys she'd need for the house, along with instructions
on how to connect the power, would be in the middle drawer
of her grandfather's old oak desk.
She creaked open the attic door.
Shadows sprang at her from the far corners of the room.
Muirinn's pulse quickened.
Her grandfather's carved desk hulked at the back of the room
in front of heavy drapes used to block out the midnight sun
during the summer months. A candle that had drowned in its
own wick rested on the polished desk surface, along with
Gus's usual whiskey tumbler. A pang of emotion stung
Muirinn's chest.
It was as if the room were still holding its breath, just
waiting for Gus to walk back in. And a strong and sudden
sense gripped Muirinn that her grandfather had not been
ready to quit living.
She shook the surreal notion, and stepped into the room. The
attic air stirred softly around her, cobwebs lifting in
currents caused by her movement. Muirinn halted suddenly.
She could swear she felt a presence. Someone—or
something—was in here.
Again Muirinn shook the sensation.