Her eyes drifted back to the grid with a fretful stare. Maybe he could make her day a little better.
“Oh, hey, I was just thinking it’s really nice out and you’ve kind of been cooped up in here for a few days, and the dogs and I are going to—”
“Sure, I’d love to.” She went to the sink and washed her hands.
He cocked his head and suppressed a smile. “How do you know what I’m asking?” Did she always cut people off?
A light, teasing laugh trickled from her lips. It was really great to hear it. “I’m sorry. It’s a bad habit, but I was pretty sure you were going to invite me along, right?”
“You happen to know where we’re going, too?” He couldn’t resist teasing her, and when she laughed at his playful dig, he grinned.
“Maybe I am psychic after all.” She smiled for him and the bright studio got even lighter. “Let me get my purse and I’ll be right with you.”
It felt great to talk to her again, and he looked forward to spending time with her. He planned to take her to his favorite place, a small park just before the Ringmuren where the view of the river was spectacular.
“I’m ready,” she said a couple of minutes later, popping out of nowhere, a baggy olive-green sweatshirt over her white work shirt and worn jeans. She’d run a brush through her hair, too, and the sun from the skylights cast a bright sheen over the raven-colored waves.
“Let’s go, then.”
* * *
The view of the Columbia River was magnificent from this vantage point. Marta would have believed it if Leif told her it was the Pacific Ocean because the opposite bank was nowhere in sight. And farther south in the distance, the Astoria-Megler Bridge looked as if it was a hundred miles long. Wow.
She inhaled fresh air and felt less queasy than she had in days. The dogs frolicked around the park without cares, and their antics made her laugh. “Do they ever get tired of chasing that Frisbee?”
“Never,” Leif deadpanned and tossed it again.
He struck her as a solid guy, one who carried on no matter how tough the going got. He’d already been through hell; anything else must seem trivial.
“Let’s sit over here.” He pointed to a bench at the end of a pretty walkway surrounded by flowers. Though it was hard to tear her gaze away from the river, she followed him.
When they arrived, Marta realized the bench was a memorial to Leif’s father. “You put this here?”
He nodded. “Dad always liked this view.”
After only knowing Leif for a short time, Marta suspected there were a couple other perfectly placed benches in Heartlandia for his mother and wife, too. A pang of sorrow over her mother caught her off guard. Maybe she’d call her father later to catch up. “Well, it certainly is fantastic. This is a lovely part of the country.”
“Agreed.”
“You’ve never wanted to leave?”
“I considered it in my late teens, but then my dad offered me the apprenticeship and I had the good sense to recognize a solid future when I saw it. Then after Ellen died, I thought I’d get the hell out of Dodge, but something held me back.” He’d been facing the vista, but now he turned and engaged Marta’s questioning stare. “All my memories are here, you know? If I left, I’d feel like a huge part of me was missing. Where’s a guy supposed to go from there?”
How different that was from her need to break the chains of her overbearing parents when she was a teen. She’d left home for college and never looked back. She’d thought of her mom and dad as old-fashioned and wanted nothing to do with their lifestyle. Leif honored his parents and their memories. She loved and missed her mother and decided right on the spot that when she finished the mural she’d paint a series of pictures dedicated to her. Some might say it was too little too late, but hopefully her father wouldn’t be one of them.
“So you get comfort knowing your loved ones once existed here,” she said.
He agreed, then tapped his chest. “And here. Always.”
“But you take your heart everywhere you go.”
“True. But there’s actual evidence of my mother and father and Ellen here. I guess I’d worry my memories would fade faster if I went somewhere else.”
There was that urge again to reach out and touch him, to take hold of his hand and squeeze, to let the man know he wouldn’t always be alone, but could she guarantee it? At this point in her life, she felt completely alone, too, and the fact she was staying in Leif’s house helped smooth out those rough feelings, but there was no guarantee she’d ever find anyone to love again, either.
Something about Leif called out to her. He deserved so much more than what life had dealt him.
“Listen,” he said. “I wanted to clear the air about something.”
That got her attention. They needed to clear the air already?
“We’ve recently come to find out our town’s story isn’t exactly the way our history books tell it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m saying there may be a reason you’ve been artistically blocked at the beginning of your project.”
Okay, now he was making the hair on her arms rise, and not in a good way. “Go on.”
He proceeded to tell her the whole sordid tale of the Prince of Doom discovering Heartlandia. How he’d shanghaied sailors from Scandinavian ports and forced them to come here. How his ship had sunk and, though it had never been found, may very well still be somewhere off the coast of Heartlandia in the Columbia River.
Then he explained how none of this would have been known if he hadn’t discovered the buried trunk when building the City College.
“If the Chinook and Scandinavian fisherman hadn’t joined forces to overthrow the pirates, Heartlandia might have been named Princetown.”
She could hardly believe her ears. What a wild story! And what a relief it was to know she wasn’t crazy, that there really was a reason for her hesitation to start the mural with the Chinook and Scandinavian fishermen working in harmony to build a storybook town.
The bigger questions was, how had the information been suppressed all these years?
“For the past few months I’ve been involved with a special committee looking into the contents of the trunk and following up with where the journals led. We’d chosen to keep the information to ourselves until we authenticated the journals, dated them and figured out what exactly they meant. We’ve finally decided the time is right to move ahead with informing the locals, and tomorrow is our first community meeting. Lilly Matsuda, our new journalist, will follow up with a three-part story, explaining everything.”
“This is amazing,” Marta said, working very hard not to let her jaw drop.
“Tell me about it. Anyway, I hope you’ll come with me tomorrow. I’ll introduce to you the mayor and city council and show you around the rest of the town, too.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“Okay, then, it’s a date. Hey, feel like grabbing something to eat? Oh, wait, I already know the answer to that.”
She offered a sad-faced smile. “I wish I had an appetite.”
“How about if I make us omelets?”
She tried to look enthusiastic but only managed a wan smile. He read right through it. “I’ll make yours as bland as water. You should be able to get some of that down, right?”
She