The other cars trickled past, the drivers sending jaunty waves. Through the windshield, to her left, the Bay View Hotel and, next to it, the Argonaut office, where Scott Campbell was probably sitting at his computer making condescending observations about small-town life.
Her father yelled something from the Dumpster.
Ava glanced at her watch. Five. She tipped her head back against the seat rest, closed her eyes. Her head was a giant gourdlike thing, crammed to the bursting point with…stuff. One tap and it would all come pouring out. Orange emotional goo, seeds of doubt, stringy bits of memory…
“Ava.” Her father appeared at the passenger window. “Are you deaf or something? How come you moved the car? I need you to help me haul out the wood. It’s good stuff. I’ll be able to do the whole deck and the handrail.” He started back toward the Dumpster. “Come on.”
Ava sighed and got out of the car. Somehow it always ended up being Sam’s agenda. “Five minutes, Dad, and then I’m going to walk.”
“This won’t take five minutes.” He gestured at the Dumpster. “Okay, we can do this two ways. I’ll help you climb in and you can hand the wood to me, or I’ll get in there, but you’ll have to give me a boost—”
“Dad…” Ava held her hands to her face for a moment. Her heart was hammering so hard she felt dizzy. She took a deep breath and eyed the rusty Dumpster, brimming over with mattresses and cardboard cartons. “I don’t want to go climbing in Dumpsters.”
“Fine, I’ll do it.” He started shimmying up the side. “While we’re standing here yakking, we might as well unload it.” He threw a piece of wood at her. “Here, you start stacking it as I hand it to you.”
Exasperated, she took the wood, set it on the sidewalk and reached for the piece he held out to her. “It doesn’t matter what I have to do or what anyone else wants to do. It’s always your damn agenda first, isn’t it?”
“Fine.” He slid down to the sidewalk, brushed dust off his shorts. “Go feed the dog or whatever it is you have to do that’s so important. I’ll do this by myself. It didn’t seem like a whole lot to ask, but obviously I was wrong.”
“Dad…” He’d started walking toward the Jeep with an armful of wood and she grabbed his arm. “Why does it have to be this way?”
He pulled away, tossed the bundle of wood in the back of the Jeep and started back to the Dumpster. “Go. Leave.”
“No.” She stood in the middle of the sidewalk glaring at him. “Why, Dad? Why does everything always have to be so damn black and white? Why just for once, can’t you compromise?”
A muscle worked in his jaw. “I don’t want to stand here debating it.”
“Dad.” She watched him climb into the Jeep and start stacking the wood. “Just talk to me. Please.”
“Leave me alone,” he said. “You sound just like your mother.”
EVEN FROM A FEW YARDS distant, Scott could see that Ava Lynsky was not happy. He’d finished his beer on the hotel patio and was heading to the Argonaut office when he glanced up the road to see a Jeep blocking traffic. He thought he recognized the Jeep and the driver. By the time he reached it, the Jeep was on the side of the road, and Ava, in an oversize white T-shirt, black leggings and running shoes, seemed close to tears.
“Can I help?” he asked.
She looked at him. “Oh, no, we’re fine.” She pushed her hair back with her hand. “Dumpster diving is a Lynsky family favorite. Promotes bonding and understanding. I could be home working, feeding my dog, anything. But no…” Her voice cracked. “Sorry.” She flashed him a bright smile. “Enthusiasm. Sometimes it just carries me away.”
“Hey, Scott,” Sam Lynsky called from the Jeep. “Just in time. All kinds of good wood in here that’s just what I need to rebuild Ava’s deck. She doesn’t want to get her clothes dirty, but—”
“Go to hell, Dad.” Hands fisted at her sides, Ava glared at Sam. “Just go to hell. I don’t need you to rebuild my deck. I don’t need you for anything.”
Scott stood rooted on the spot for a minute. Ava had stormed off down the road and Sam was back at the Dumpster for more wood. It took him less than ten minutes to help Sam, now all cheery affability, load the rest of the wood into the Jeep and inquire casually about Ava’s address. “Need to get together to talk about that book,” Lynsky said as he drove off. “Remind me the next time you see me.”
Ava hadn’t gone far. As he started back to the Argonaut office, Scott glanced over his shoulder at the small triangular park squeezed into a piece of land between the St. Catherine’s Hotel and the newspaper office. Last week he’d taken his laptop out there to write, inspired by the views of the bay just across the road. Now Ava sat on a bench there, her back to the street, shoulders hunched. He stood at the edge of the park for a moment, then walked the few yards across the grass.
“Ava.”
She turned. Her eyes were red, her lips dry and chapped. Behind her, steep cliffs brushed clear blue sky.
“Hi,” she said.
“Are you okay?”
“Fine.”
“I can leave you alone. If I’m intruding—”
“It depends,” she said. “You have this sympathetic look on your face. If that’s why you’re here, then yes, you are intruding. Sympathy is not an acceptable reason for you being here.”
“Being unsympathetic is my specialty.” He sat on the bench. “Ask my ex-wife.”
Her eyes flickered over his face as though she was assimilating this new information. “About my father,” she said after a moment. “Pay no attention to what you just saw. Contrary to how it may look, I’m not mad at him. He’s—” she spread her hands “—very determined. He doesn’t trust anybody’s work but his own. That’s what he was getting the lumber for.”
“Must keep him quite busy. Do-it-yourself projects. A medical practice. And he has an asthma camp, too, right? I think I read something about it in a back issue.”
“Camp Breatheasy. Kids from all over the country come here to participate. You should do a story on it.”
“I will.” He watched her face. “You must be quite proud of your father.”
She looked directly at him. “I am.”
He felt reproved somehow, as if she’d just told him that she knew why he’d really come over to talk to her and he’d disappointed her by showing his cards. He cast around for something to say and found it in the bench they were sitting on. A tiled inset in the back of the bench was painted with a scene of young woman playing a piano amidst a setting of vibrantly colored tropical plants. “Come and Celebrate with the Girl of Our Dreams,” the painted inscription said.
“By the way,” he told Ava. “I’m still checking out examples of hand-painted tiles. I noticed this one a few days ago.”
Ava traced a brilliant red hibiscus on the corner of the mural. “Commissioned by a man to celebrate his marriage. They came to Avalon on a visit and married a few years later at the Wrigley Memorial. She died several years ago.”
“You probably know everything there is to know about this island,” he said.
“Maybe not everything. It’s a small island, though. I’ve spent thirty-four years on it.”
“Ever lived anywhere else?”
“Nope.”
“Ever wanted to?”