Fantasy Life (24 page)

The helicopter was larger than she thought it would be. She’d seen the guard’s helicopter every day, but only flying past. She’d never seen it land.

This one lowered itself on the highway slowly. The blades were bigger—longer—than she’d expected, and they made a hideous noise that blocked everything else.

The wind became overwhelming, and she wanted to run from it, move somewhere where it couldn’t touch her. But she held her ground, feeling that she was about to defend her turf against some kind of interloper.

Athena straightened beside her. She looked like another person, her hair blowing behind her head, her skin taut.

The helicopter’s blades didn’t slow down as a door opened on the side and some steps were lowered. Two men in suits climbed down, both of them holding briefcases.

Cassie ignored them, though. They weren’t the Walters
representative. They were his companions—
minions,
to use the word she had used earlier—people who were here only to serve the representative himself.

He came out the door slowly, as if it didn’t bother him to have shut down an entire highway in the middle of a city, to have dozens, maybe hundreds, of people waiting for him to get out of their way.

He wore a light summer suit, cream-colored, with a tailored jacket that went to his thighs. The pants were wider than she would have expected from a corporate executive, and his hair was longer—past his ears in the style of the early Beatles.

His face was lean and tanned. In his left hand, he held a cowboy hat that matched the suit. In his right, he had nothing except a class ring the size of a medal.

He wasn’t what Cassie had expected. She had expected someone who looked like his assistants, dark suits, narrow ties, white shirts. She hadn’t expected flamboyance or a touch of originality.

And she hadn’t expected him to be so young.

As he came down the steps, his gaze met hers. Cassie had to use all her strength to keep from stepping backward at the power in the look. He found her attractive—very attractive. He smiled.

She did not smile back.

Highway 101 The Village of Anchor Bay

Athena felt her breath catch.

They had sent a boy.

She didn’t know whether to feel angry or relieved.

He certainly didn’t look like he knew what he was doing. He made his way off the helicopter, clutching a cowboy hat.
The boots he wore had heels that were higher than any she had ever owned, which told her that he was insecure.

The boots also had a design in the leather, fussy and pretty, rather like the suit, which looked like it belonged on the pages of some men’s magazine rather than on a man who had come to inspect a harbor damaged by oil.

He ducked, running past the helicopter blades, and joined his people near Mayor Whitby. Then the boy waved his hat, and the helicopter rose as effortlessly as it had landed, taking the annoying wind and sound with it.

Athena’s ears ached, and for the first time since this had all begun, she actually felt tired. All the plans she’d had vanished with this boy’s appearance.

She put a hand to her hair. It had fallen out of its customary bun. She didn’t have time to repair it. Instead, she grabbed what remained of the clip and pins and tucked them into her pocket, letting her hair fall about her face.

Cassie looked at her in surprise. She had probably never seen Athena in public with her hair down, but Athena wasn’t going to miss a moment of this meeting.

She took Cassie’s arm as if she were still a child and led her to the group of men standing beside the highway.

Sheriff Lowery was in the road, directing his deputies and a few locals to remove the barricades. Cars waited on each end, some of their drivers standing outside open doors, watching the helicopter leave, hands shielding their eyes.

As Athena got close, she heard the boy say, “My God. Is it all like this?”

He had finally turned to face the beach.

Athena looked too. She couldn’t avoid it. On a perfect day like this, the beach should have been brown, the ocean gunmetal blue—grayer than the sky, but just as pretty—with the sun adding highlights to the waves.

Instead, it looked like the cliffs had melted onto the
ground below. The shiny blackness of the lava rock seemed pale in comparison to the black blanket covering what had once been beautiful ground.

The locals who had watched the helicopter land had turned away and were picking up oil-soaked seaweed a bit at a time. A group of women from the diner were holding a bird, which wasn’t fighting them, and were trying to wipe the oil off its wings.

Athena’s eyes teared, and she turned away.

Cassie had wrenched her arm from Athena’s grasp and was staring at the boy. Her anger had risen; the placating words she had used with Athena now seemed like they had been spoken by another person.

No one had answered the boy. They had all turned to look, just like he had, as if the oil could vanish just because a helicopter had landed and someone with some kind of authority had gotten out.

“No,” Athena said as she strode toward him. “It isn’t all like that. It’s worse near the ship. It’s still spewing oil.”

Spewing
wasn’t exactly accurate. The ship was leaking, seeping oil like a wound that wouldn’t heal.

The boy’s eyes went to Cassie first, and Athena recognized the approval in them. Then he looked at her.

His eyes were a pale blue, made paler by his white eyelashes. His tanned skin made his eyes seem almost clear. Something in them made her realize he was older than she had initially thought—some awareness, some intelligence that only came with experience, not with book learning.

Maybe the company hadn’t done the wrong thing sending this boy after all.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” the boy said. “I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced. I’m Sam Walters, but folks call me Spark.”

Spark was not a name any adult man should claim as his
own. However, judging from his last name, this young man had come because he was part of the Walters family.

Athena extended her hand, to put herself on equal footing with him and the other men around her.

“Athena Buckingham,” she said. “And this is my daughter, Cassandra.”

Walters smiled. It was an impish smile, one that made it clear this was a man who liked women, alcohol, and a good time. “Someone in the Buckingham family had a love of the classics.”

He didn’t take her hand.

Athena had a choice. She could ignore his rudeness and his polite and seemingly innocuous way of dismissing what she had to say, or she could make an issue of it.

She decided for the issue.

“Do you always refuse to shake someone’s hand when it’s offered, Mr. Walters?”

His smile remained but the twinkle left his eyes. “Well, ma’am, where I come from, ladies don’t shake like men do. Just ain’t done. Specially when they’re as pretty as the two of you.”

Cassie started to object, but Athena moved in front of her, blocking her. She didn’t need Cassie screwing this up, not now.

Mayor Whitby saw the interaction. He was a sensitive man, and he seemed more upset than Cassie was. Yet he was politic; he smiled at Walters and said, “The Buckinghams have been in this town longer than anyone. I may be the official mayor, but it’s Athena people go to when there’s trouble.”

Walters reassessed her, sizing her up as if she were a man. His gaze met hers again, and this time, she thought she saw something more in it, a coldness, a judgment, something that told her this boy was a person to watch.

“Beg pardon, ma’am,” he said. “I’m not used to the way things are done in this part of the world.”

“That’s fine,” Athena said, sticking out her hand. “Let’s try again, shall we?”

This time, he took her hand, gently as if he were afraid he was going to break it. Still, he shook twice.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, ma’am. I’m sorry it’s under these conditions.”

“Me, too,” Athena said.

“That’s all?” Cassie hissed from behind her. “You’re not going to say any more?”

Athena turned slightly and smiled at her, a fake smile that intentionally did not meet her eyes.

“My daughter is going to get back to work. She’s organizing the beach cleanup. I hope you’ll excuse her.”

Walters took Cassie’s gloved hand and bent over it as if they were at a ball and he was going to kiss it. As he did, Athena noticed that his hair was already thinning on top.

Cassie grimaced as he touched her, but said nothing. When he was through, she took her hand from him as if he had stolen it and marched back to the beach.

“I trust,” Athena said as Walters watched Cassie walk away, “that you have some power, and you weren’t just sent here to comfort the locals.”

His gaze returned to hers, and this time, he let the surprise show on his lean face. Apparently, bluntness wasn’t as common in Texas. Or maybe it wasn’t as common among the women.

“Ma’am, my father owns Walters Petroleum. He sent me rather than some employee to show the good people of Anchor Bay that we are going to take care of this mess and do it the best we can, given the circumstances.”

“I hope you have a plan,” Athena said, “because this is an ecological disaster of a type the Northwest has never seen.”

“Not to mention,” the mayor said hastily, “the economic impact. If we don’t contain this spill, more than Anchor Bay will be affected. And we won’t be able to keep the news quiet much longer. Walters will be in for some nasty publicity.”

“We’re aware of that,” Walters said. “I’m a bit surprised the news hasn’t gotten out yet.”

“We’re remote,” Athena said, “and one of our main livelihoods is tourism. We’d like to have this under control before the vultures from Portland descend on us.”

Walters nodded. “Well, we have a plan. We’re thinking of using a detergent to emulsify and disperse the oil. I’m hoping that the ship is far enough out that we can burn her and get rid of the oil in her hull that way. Both problems then’ll be cleaned up, and we can concentrate on this here beach.”

He winced as he looked at it. Clearly the smell was getting to him. That pleased Athena.

“What kind of detergent?” she asked.

He frowned at her. “We have experts to figure that out, ma’am.”

“I only ask because when I spoke to the folks in Land’s End, England, where the
Torrey Canyon
went down, they warned me about detergents. They said it was the detergents, not the oil, that killed off most of their seabirds. We have some amazing creatures here on the Oregon Coast, Mr. Walters. We wouldn’t want your attempts at cleaning up to create worse problems.”

His mouth was open ever so slightly as she spoke. Then he turned to Mayor Whitby.

“I’ve found,” Walters said in a confidential tone, almost as if Athena weren’t there, “that a negative attitude is counterproductive to solving serious problems. Perhaps we could have this discussion somewhere more private.”

Mayor Whitby looked at Athena. He understood the rebuke as well as she did.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll open the conference room in city hall. But every moment we delay, Mr. Walters, more oil leaks into our ocean. And we will keep track of the time wasted.”

Walters’s eyes narrowed even more. He obviously realized he couldn’t get rid of Athena.

He had no smiles now. In fact, he looked like a man who rarely smiled.

“I’m sure you will keep track, ma’am,” he said. “I’m quite sure you will.”

Cliffside House

They thought she was asleep, but Emily heard every word the grown-ups in the kitchen were saying, and oddly enough, she understood what they were talking about.

Still, she couldn’t open her eyes—or maybe she didn’t want to, she wasn’t sure. The smell of cocoa had faded as the cup Grandma Cassie had poured her had grown cold. As the smell disappeared, though, another one rose around her. Like the lake, only better. There was something salty to this smell, and fishy too, and she knew, without anybody telling her, that she was smelling the ocean.

It felt like she had come home, and she’d never ever been here before.

The couch was the most comfortable couch she’d ever felt, and the quilt that Grandma Cassie had wrapped around her was warm and thick and heavy, just perfect for a rainy, stormy, windy night.

Even though she had trouble thinking of it that way. Because with her eyes closed, she could see that beach, all screwy with black stuff, and the blue sky and the pretty day, and the people in the funny clothes and the funny-looking cars, and the great big helicopter that looked like something out of the movies.

And she saw things that nobody talked about, like the little
tiny women standing on the cliff sides, collecting the black, filthy stuff in their skirts and pouring it into little stone buckets that little tiny men carried to the side of the road. None of the normal-sized people seemed to notice at all, and Grandma Cassie, who told most of the story, with the help of Great-Grandma Athena (at least Emily thought it was Great-Grandma—she couldn’t open her eyes and see her), never mentioned this stuff at all.

There were real-sized people standing with the people on the beach, only these people all had really black hair that shined blue in the sunlight. And some of these people had pouches around their waist, and inside the pouches, Emily knew without even looking, there was lots and lots of fur.

Then there was the really nice-looking man who was helping Grandma Cassie—only she didn’t look like she did now. She had rounder cheeks and her eyes twinkled, even when she saw bad stuff, and there was something alive about her, something that had gone away when she got older. She was prettier, as if prettiness was something inside a person, not what was on her face.

She kept looking at the man, and he kept touching her hair, as if he couldn’t believe she was there beside him, and then they’d rake up the black-soaked hay, so that other people could dump it in buckets.

Emily saw all that and she saw even more, like she had three pictures going on her mental TV set. There was the main story, which Grandma Cassie was trying to explain to Mom (and Mom didn’t want to hear it. Emily could feel that too. Mom was feeling guilty, like all this was her fault, and she wasn’t even born yet), and then there was this other story kind of bleeding into that and even a third story bleeding into that.