Which was why she was having a baby on her own now.
She sank back into the cab seat, wondering where Jetts 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 Mermaids 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.
Theyd made love for the first time in that shed, too, on a night the moon had shimmered like silver over the water. Shed 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 Mermaids 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 herthe 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 grandfathers green thumb. And beyond the deck, the lawn rolled down to a grove of trees, below which Mermaids 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.
Im so sorry for not coming home while you were still here. Im 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 hadnt thought of those fantastical tales Gus had spun in her youth. Shed 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 herthere was no holding them back. This homecoming was going to be rougher than she thought.
More than anything, though, it was Guss 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 themimages 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 ODonnell 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 hed raised her just as wildly, eclectically, to be free.
Not that it had boded well for her. Because Muirinn hadnt felt free. All shed wanted to do was escape, discover the real world beyond her granite prison.
Sitting there in a bent-willow rocker, staring at her grandfathers things, exhaustion finally claimed Muirinn, and she fell into a deep sleep.
She woke several hours later, stiff, confused. Muirinn checked the clockit 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.