Chapter One

Anybody dying for Chapter Two!?!?!!?


Jessie rounded the bend at the corner of East Bayshore Road. Her metallic blue Civic took the turn easily. Her muscle memory and her car both knew this trip by rote. It had been a lifetime of Route 90 west from Cleveland to the first exit just over the Sandusky Bay. Right turn. Left turn. Then take it slow at the bend. This day was no different. The pangs of longing for her childhood hit her at the corner of the bend. Each time was the same. A tightness in her chest. Deep gulps for air. Slow car down to catch a glimpse of the yard she used to call home.

She had been coming to the cottage by the Bay since she was born, and although her father had sold it ten years earlier, she still made the hour-trip several times each season to the place her heart knew as home. Only these trips down memory lane were more about the beach and the old stone church and the restaurants nearby these days than getting close to the house. But she was hoping that was all about to change; the little piece of paper in her pocket urged her to quell her rule-following ways and get close to her holy history. To do that, she needed to get to that cottage by the bay.

Even the appearance hadn’t been the same since the house was sold. Of course the spirit of her Grandmother and the joys of that house were long gone, but Jess couldn’t believe what the new owners did to the yard. The yard disgusted her these days. Huge piles of quarry rock were heaped on either side of the gravel lane. There were rusted out machines strewn through the yard like some phantasmical modern art pieces. A back hoe sat in the shade of the weeping willow tree, right about the place where she used to lay and look at the clouds. Various metal bars and contraptions were planted where the garden used to be. The place was a mess.

The new owners had long ago posted No Trespassing signs, and she was a rule follower. She didn’t have the guts to turn down the long gravel road. So she let the Civic cart her past the house of her memories each time she was in town. Until today. When she hit the bend and slowed her car, her breathing quickened as always. But with the flutter came a feeling so strong, it was as if the car was magnetized to the lane. And so she turned. The hand she placed to her heart to stop its fluttering brushed the pocket where the worn paper was lovingly folded. She touched the corner to give herself courage.

At least the potholes were familiar. She slowed her speed as her car bounced down the lane, eyeing the corroded metal monuments as she drove. It was a quarter mile from the top of the lane to the little house by the Bay, this she could remember well. And the lane was only semi-private. After all, the mailman had to drive this way, and the water truck, and the UPS drivers. This was another way to link to South Olaf drive and the houses that lined the bay just west of the cottage. And so she continued, a metallic taste collecting in the back of her throat. She would make a terrible spy.
It was the garden that stopped her. Or really the pile of dirt. In her memories it was a dark earth filled with bone meal and fertilizers that housed some of the Bay’s best tomatoes and cukes. In reality now it was a weed-covered monstrosity filled with overgrown vines and several metal apparatuses that had seen better days. Jesse cringed. She quickly took her foot off the brake and let the car lurch forward. The pull was getting stronger. She was almost to the house.

One last bend in the gravel lane, past the raspberry bushes and apple trees, and then to park under the canopy of pear trees right in front of the house. She was losing her mind. She thought hard about throwing the car in reverse and hightailing it back down the lane. But she had come this far; she might as well see it to the end. She put the car in park, breathed in a deep cleansing breath, and slowly opened the door.
The house looked exactly the same. It never was much to look at growing up, but with the wear and tear of the past ten years, things were looking really bad. The paint was peeling from the tiny shed attached to the house. The shingles were sagging, and the front stoop was cracked and crumbling. But the pear tree was still standing sentry near the front door. And she was glad that at least something had stayed the same.

Although the front door was open, she could not detect any motion inside the house. Gauzy yellowed curtains blew in the gentle breeze. Her shirt stuck to her back as she tentatively exited the car. Now that she had made it this far her resolve really faltered. It wasn’t just the No Trespassing sign that had her worried. It was the quiet. The place seemed deserted. Empty soda cans and fast food wrappers were overflowing from a garbage can near the door. More machinery lay broken and toppled under the pear tree. All it needs is a growling dog in the window, her overactive imagination thought.

Suddenly, the quiet of the afternoon was jarred by the clanking of metal. Her nerves of jell-o almost pushed her back to the front seat of the car. Instead, she headed around the back of the house to where the noise had come from. She stopped cold in her tracks, a whoosh of appalled breath escaping her lungs. She bit her lip to keep from crying out. Gone was the beautiful view of the Bay she remembered so well. In its place was a circular ruins of rock and rusted out pipe that created a sort of runway for the dinky seaplane that barely sat upright. Perched at the edge of the Bay, the fledgling looked like a flight was the last thing in its future.

It took Jess a minute to focus on the cause of the noise. Out of the corner of her eye she watched a metal pipe fly through the air. She looked back to see the direction from which the pipe was thrown and she broke the silence with her startled cry. A man. There was no other word for him. Tanned and muscled, lean legs escaping his tattered jean shorts, he turned suddenly when she screamed in surprise. It wasn’t that she had never seen a man before. Or even been with one. It was just that she had never seen such an exquisite specimen, bronzed chest gleaming in the summer sun.
“Can’t you read?” he shouted.

She stood frozen, not sure how to reconcile the growling voice with the beauteous figure before her.

“I was just-“ he cut her off with a snarl.

“Just get out” he barked. “Get off my property. Now”

Her leaden feet refused to obey as his deep blue eyes clouded. Even in his anger he stood gloriously like Apollo in his chariot. She was dazzled by the brightness.
He stood from the pile of metal pipes, wiping rusty hands on his worn jeans. He was taller than she had first surmised. And at this height he was also more menacing. She took a few steps back.

“Its just that—“

“Its just that you are trespassing,” he growled, stepping towards her and forcing her back.

Jess was caught in the trance of the pipe in his hand and the way his biceps rippled as he beat it against his palm. She did not wait to find out what strength was behind his look.

“I…I….I’m sorry” she stammered apologetically as she rounded the bend of the house and all but sprinted back to the car. The driver’s door stuck as she hastily tried to climb in. The gravel dinged her back fender as she hightailed it back down the lane.
Tears stinging her eyes, Jess let the car lead her back the way she came and then around the next bend to the beach nearby. Though the piers were built when she was somewhere in her 20’s, the lake had not eroded the special spot in the sand dunes where she picnicked with her family so many years ago. The Corolla knew well the way there, and she gratefully arrived at the peaceful spot, limbs still trembling and eyes still misty.

She had been afraid that this would happen. The sale of the cottage ten years earlier had not gone smoothly. Tensions ran high on both sides, and her father had been forced to sell before he was ready. The new owners moved in with their seaplane and a giant chip on their shoulders. None of Jess’s relatives had driven down the lane since. She wasn’t even sure that the man had recognized her, she certainly had never laid eyes on him before. But she remembered that the new owners did have a son around his age. She just never imagined another human could be that unpleasant. And she didn’t really want to take another chance at such a difficult encounter.

But her history was calling. Bored with her humdrum life as an Engish teacher in the local high school, Jess had taken up the new hobby of genealogy several years earlier. She met a group at the library each week. They had vowed to keep each other motivated and moving through what was often a very painstaking, arduous task of studying old records and looking for artifacts among boxes of family junk.
It was on just such a junk-perusing mission that Jess had found the crumpled paper that now sat in her pocket, shielding her heart. She had been looking through a box that had been in her mother’s attic for longer than she could remember. The box was filled with scraps of material, muslins and wools that had seen better days, piles of old buttons and pincushions obviously made when her mother was a little girl. In her haste to glance at the contents and set the box aside, Jess pricked her finger on one of the haphazardly placed pins. She grabbed quickly at some white muslin to staunch the bleeding, and as it unfurled a small folded piece of faded paper floated to the ground.

For someone such as Jess, the paper really was a gold mine. A youngish spinster who was still very willing to walk down the aisle, Jess spent her days in a predictable routine. Her alarm rang at six on the dot, her coffee pot already humming, and her towel awaiting her exit on the towel warmer by the shower door. She taught five English classes each day, willing her students to care about appositives and comma splices and subject/verb agreement. She headed home to a quiet house after working on the yearbook for an hour and calling parents of delinquent students. She didn’t even have a cat. Supper was simple pasta or soup and a sandwich. After dinner Jess would grade papers for a while and watch her favorite “Wheel of Fortune” before preparing to do it all the next day.

But as Jess sat in the sand and sun this particular summer morning, willing her racing heart to quiet and her limbs to be still, she thought about her mundane life and how the paper might very well be the key to a little excitement for her. Although she was clearly disappointed that she had struck out at first, she was pretty sure that she had found a map. And it wasn’t a lost treasure she was seeking. She would be happy with a little something out of the ordinary and a little excitement to call her own.