“Lifeguard?”
“Fifteen years, mostly in San Diego. I’ve fished a lot of people out of the surf.” She mentioned this fondly, as if saying she’d baked a lot of cakes or mowed a lot of acres. “This was the scariest save ever, though. I didn’t think…” She hesitated, but her frank gaze stayed steady on Arie.
“You didn’t think you’d catch him.”
Ashe nodded again, a single up and down of the chin.
Arie closed her eyes for a moment, pushing away the terrible almost in that thought. “We’d like it very much if you and your people would take a meal with us,” she said.
“Oh, we couldn’t trouble you,” said Ashe. “There are four of us altogether.”
“That’s so good of you,” said Clyde. “It’s been a long stretch since we’ve broken bread with friends.”
“That’s fine then,” said Arie, thinking how small their big clambake had suddenly become. “It will be, oh, close to an hour. Give us a little time to sort ourselves out and tend the boy.” She heard the strangely formal tone in her voice, but there was something unreserved about Clyde that made Arie want to yank back on the reins.
Ashe looked from Clyde—who was grinning like an ape—to Arie. “All right then,” she said. She looked slightly ill. Looks embarrassed, Arie thought.
“Wonderful,” she said. She opened her arms and pulled Ashe to her again. “Thank you again, dear Ashe.”
“See you soon,” said Clyde. As they turned to walk away, Ashe made a lithe, sideways step out from under his arm. The move caused him to stumble, and he paused to kick at the sand as if he’d tripped over something.
Back with her own, she first checked on Kory. Renna was meticulously tending the fire; she’d shaken out and set aside the various coats people had lent them. Curran still had the boy. They were bundled together in a blanket Handy had retrieved from their camp, sitting as near the fire as possible. Talus lay along Curran’s thigh, head resting on her paws, rump near the heat.
“Are you warming?” she asked Kory. Despite his scratches, he already looked much improved, far more responsive and alert.
“My hands and feet are burning,” he said.
“That’s good. It means your blood is doing its job, keeping your fingers and toes attached.”
That comment would normally elicit at least a smile, but Kory just leaned his head against Curran’s chest and watched Renna work on the fire.
Handy trekked up with an armload of fresh bull kelp to replace the pieces that had burned through during Kory’s accident and rescue.
“I have some news,” said Arie. “Guess who’s coming to dinner?”
They looked at her blankly.
“You mean our dinner?” said Kory.
“That’s the one,” said Arie. “We’re going with your mama’s rule about entertaining strangers. I met the woman who managed to pluck you out of the drink, and I asked her to eat with us. Her name is Ashe, and we are ever so grateful she saw you get knocked off your pins.” She glanced around at the other adults. “She’s with a group of four, including the waving man. His name is Clyde, and I trust him about as far as I can toss him with one hand.”
“You trust her? Ashe?” asked Handy.
“Absolutely. I can’t begin to imagine why she’s with this Clyde character, and I don’t even want to speculate. Regardless, they’re going to help us eat our clams. And our spuds.” She gave Handy a mildly apologetic look. “One last sneaky run to the camp?” she said. “We’ll have to have more potatoes. You may as well bring them all.”
“Well, those didn’t last long,” said Renna.
“Easy come, easy go,” said Curran. He leaned over and gave Talus’s flank a good hard pat.
“Easy peasy,” said Renna.
“Like rolling off a log.”
“It’s always raining taters,” said Handy in his quiet voice, and that finally did the trick. Kory made a little snort of laughter that made Talus’s ears prick up.
Arie rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t keep the smile off her face. “We need to fix up our cooker, and get the meal made, but I want to be sure we all understand something.” She made the minutest glance around to be sure they weren’t overheard. “We cannot, cannot let our guard down with these people. I get a good feeling from Ashe, but there’s something not right with him—Clyde. When we meet the rest of their group, we’ll have a better sense of what they’re about, but until we do, until we’ve talked it over, do not mention our camp by the billboard. Do not tell them where we’re going. All they need to know is that we’ve been on the road, sleeping rough, and we decided to try our luck clamming today. We’re undecided on which direction to take next.”
“Check,” said Curran. “Got all that?” he asked Kory.
“Check.” Kory mimed zipping his lips closed, which made them all laugh.
“Well, then,” said Renna. “Let’s get this party started.”
-18-
THERE WERE FOUR of them: Clyde, Ashe, and two others—a middle-aged woman and a teenage girl who looked so much like her there could be little doubt they were mother and daughter.
Kory was up and walking around, rather quiet and slightly the worse for wear, but otherwise himself. Arie introduced him to Ashe. She offered her hand and the boy shook it quite formally.
“Thank you for helping me,” he said.
“You’re very welcome,” said Ashe. “Just doing my job.”
“Job?” He glanced at Arie, confused.
“It’s the damnedest thing,” said Arie, smiling. “Of all the people who happened to be on this beach the day the ocean decides to swallow you whole, here’s Ashe—a bona fide lifeguard.”
“No shit?” said Curran to Ashe. “You’re really a lifeguard?”
“I really am,” she said, laughing a little. “Although I honestly thought my days of hauling people out of the ocean were behind me.”
“No whistle? No shades? No sunscreen?” said Curran.
Ashe shook her head. “No giant chair.”
“Amazing,” said Curran.
Renna gave Ashe a huge bear hug, then wrapped her arms around Kory. “Thank you. If we’d lost him…” She kissed the top of his head. “He’s a real pain in the ass, but we’re kind of attached.”
Kory said something to Renna, too quietly for anyone else to hear.
“That makes sense,” Renna told him. She winked at Ashe. “He doesn’t know what a lifeguard is,” she said. “He’s a mountains and woods kinda kid, right?”
“Guess we’ll have to tell you all about it over dinner!” said Clyde, poking a big, blunt finger at Kory’s shoulder and then smiling around at everyone else. Arie saw the boy shrink from Clyde’s touch, shifting ever so slightly in Renna’s embrace to avoid him. “And we haven’t all had the pleasure,” he said.
“My oversight,” said Arie. “Curran, Handy, Renna, this is Clyde.”
The guy thrust out a hand, squeezing each of them too hard and shaking as though he was running for office. “Great to meet you. Glad we could help out your little skipper, there.”
As if you did jack shit, thought Arie, then silently reprimanded herself—she had no idea if Clyde had been part of the human chain that pulled Kory out of the ocean. Chances were, he had been. She didn’t find him endearing—far from it—but some people were born with an awkward manner.
When Clyde just stood there, smiling and nodding, Arie approached the older woman and her daughter. “And who do we have here?” she said.
The woman blinked as if startled to be spoken to. “Danelle,” she said. She had one hand pressed to her chest, and she raised the fingers in a jerky little half-wave. “Meetcha,” she mumbled. “This here’s my girl, Novalee. Say hello.”