Hello, people! Yes, it's true. I'm back. Find your hiding places because Lu's back with another story! Okay, I'll stop. :D
This is the first chapter of The Quiet Season, which is the sequel to Of Love and Shadow, also published here. It's not mandatory that you read the prequel, but you'll probably miss out on some details if you don't.
This is sort of a small chapter, but I wanted to set the tone for the story, and give a few leads of what's to come. I really hope you enjoy it, and that this story is able to keep a public as faithful and fantastic as the prequel had!
Thank you so much for taking time to read this!
The Quiet Season
Chapter One
She opened the door slowly, as the first morning light hit the stairs. Leaving the keys on the counter, she walked back to the entrance to make sure it wouldn't open, and turned on the lights. There wasn't much light needed at that time, and soon it would be completely unnecessary. The day was about to start, and she knew just how much she'd have to do once the clients started to arrive; she had a few people helping her out, but it never seemed to be enough. The Pearl seemed to be the most popular coffee shop in town, placed in the center of the small community, not too far away from the ocean but safely placed between two rows of houses.
Kate turned her head to the door as it opened, ringing a small bell. A young woman walked in, getting rid of her long scarf as she took the first steps into the balcony. She appeared to be in her mid-twenties, and was dressed in a trendy, girly way. Her hair was light brown, curling around her face and shoulders, slightly rebellious. Her face was straight, hard, her features slightly latin. She reminded Kate of Ana Lucia, strangely. Of a much nicer, and less bullying Ana Lucia.
"Hey Nikki." She said as she walked in, eliciting a small smile from the woman's face.
"Hey Kate." Nikki placed her purse and coat behind the counter and moved to help Kate with the tables and chairs. Once they were set, Kate moved to her place behind the counter, while Nikki started to make the coffee. She placed the cakes Kate had baked the night before in the counter, so the costumers could see them.
It was a success. Ever since Kate had arrived with Sawyer and Ella at that little town close to the ocean, she had wanted to open her own business; grant her own money, have an actual occupation. Ella was growing, and soon she would have to let go of her little girl, let her live her own life, so she would have nothing to do all day. Money wasn't the biggest issue: she got a big check from Christian every month, from Jack's money. But she still wanted to think she could be on her own.
Kate had opened the Pearl a year after they had arrived. It was a success ever since, not only because it was located near the docks, and the fishermen seemed to appreciate her coffee, but also because it was a very nice place to hang out.
The Pearl wasn't very big, or spacy. All made out of hardwood, including the counter and the fifty's styled chairs and tables, it was more comfortable than monumental. The counter was located near the entrance, with a row of stools in front of it. The fishermen and the rough crowd, as Kate called them, usually sat at the counter, while the women and younger people sat at the tables. The Pearl had sort of a mystical significance as well, because it had been the fishermen's club before Kate had arrived. She had thought about them when she started her project, and while she was building the space, they had helped her in everything they could.
Kate looked around for a second, allowing the moment to sink in. The thin light of dawn was invading the room, passing through the dusty glasses that she liked to keep dirty, because it helped filter the light. It was beautiful. Her place was beautiful, comfortable, and that was everything she had wanted it to be. And Kate was no more than proud to see her work, to have an actual occupation.
"Hello, girls!" a cheerful voice dragged Kate out of her thoughts, and made her turn her face to the door once again. A tiny, rotund lady was walking in, a small hat placed on her carefully curled hair. She shrugged off her green coat and placed it behind the counter, trotting happily in Kate's direction.
"'Morning, Martha." Kate smiled as the 50-year-old walked past her into the counter. She was carrying a shopping cart, filled with vegetables, meat, and most of the food they needed for the day.
"Hey Martha." Nikki said, joyfully. Martha pat her hair on her way to the kitchen, and closed the door behind her. "Hey there, Ladybug."
Kate smiled as she saw the third person walking into the Pearl. She watched as the small red coat approached, riding the blue bicycle she carried everywhere. Her hair was moving with the wind, and her school bag was hanging from her back. Kate watched as the girl tied the bicycle to the tree just in front of the coffee shop, and joyfully trotted into the bar, in a small impersonation of Martha.
Ella was ten years old now, looking more and more like Kate every day. Her green eyes were soft and caring, and her hair was wavy like her mother's. Her nose and cheeks were covered with freckles, adorably placed, like constellations playing on her face.
Her personality, however, seemed to come from the only person in her family that she wasn't tied to by blood: Sawyer. Slightly addicted to books, Ella's sense of humor was now ironic and slightly annoying, but still adorable. She was right about nearly everything, and she knew it. And Sawyer seemed to be the person she got along with better, except for her mother, who was still the figure she was more attached to. But between Sawyer and Ella was a sense of empathy, of mutual understanding that neither of them seemed to find anywhere else. It was almost like Sawyer was her real father, not Jack.
Ella loved the Pearl, and had been there since day one, sitting happily on a tall stool just beside the counter and talking to the costumers. The fishermen loved her, she was their little mascot, protected by them. She was smart and sassy, not girly at all; she wasn't afraid of the ocean and loved to go away with them, for a couple of days. Kate wasn't very happy whenever she was away, so she only allowed her once or twice a year.
"Hi mom!" she kissed Kate's cheek loudly and put her arms around her mother's neck, clinging to her. Kate pulled the girl up to her lap and kissed her messy hair.
"Hey bug. 'D you eat anything at home?" the girl shook her hair and sat up on her stool. She smiled at Nikki, who was just getting out of the kitchen, and the young woman smiled back, leaning to kiss Ella's hair.
"Hey gorgeous." She smiled and watched as Kate got Ella's breakfast ready. The girl took a book out of her school bag and opened it on her lap, starting to read it, while taking small sips from the mug of milk her mother had just placed in front of her. Ella ate her meal while Kate and Nikki walked around, getting everything ready for the costumers. Martha was in the kitchen, preparing a giant pot of coffee, that would suit the morning crowd.
When everything was ready, Kate moved to the door and put out the 'open' label. She came back to her place and waited patiently for the costumers to arrive.
It didn't take long for that to happen. Just a couple of minutes after Kate turned her back on the door, two men came in, looking tired. One of them was very tall, with wide shoulders and the tattoo of an anchor on his forearm. The rudeness of his aspect was contradicted by his blue eyes, that possessed a glimpse of tenderness and amusement.
The other man was shorter than his friend, but slightly chubbier. His hair was long, caught in a small pony tail behind his neck, and he had a three day old stubble that gave him a frightening look. That look, however, was erased in the moment he saw Ella and that she threw her tongue out for him.
"'Morning Jim." Kate greeted the taller man, pouring some coffee into a mug right in front of him. As the man sat in the stools right in front of Ella, Kate placed another mug near the shorter guy. "Blake. How are you doing?"
"Good, good, Kate. Good fishing today." John Blake's answer made Kate smile, and Ella lifted her eyes from the book in a provocative yet funny way. "Whatcha readin', Midget?" he looked at the cover of Ella's book and smiled. "Nora Roberts? Who the hell is that?"
"She's a famous author, Blakeley." The use of Ella's annoying nickname for Blake made him grin.
"Midget, how many times do I have to tell ya not to call me Blakeley? It don't help much with the female crowd, you see?" he said in a slightly confessional tone, leaning in towards the girl. Ella raised her eyes from the book once more, with a sly smile on her face.
"I thought you were already married, Blakeley."
"Ah, let's not talk about sad stuff, bug." He made a shrugging movement that made Ella laugh. "Not this early in the morning anyway."
Jim approached the two of them, coming straight from the jukebox. No matter how early it was in the morning, he loved the jukebox Kate had placed in the corner of the room. He charged it with a few coins and chose the songs he wanted. Right now, he'd set the player for Patsy Cline, and as the sound of 'I Fall to Pieces' filled the space, he sat on his stool and took a sip of coffee.
"So, bug, whatcha readin'?" Ella rolled her eyes at the repeated question and pretended to smash her head against the counter. "What?" Jim asked, confused.
Blake ignored Jim's question and took the book out of Ella's hands, reading the page she was on. Ella tried to get it back, but he took the book away from her, to a distance she couldn't reach. Admitting her defeat, the girl suck her head between her arms, sighing deeply.
Kate arrived at their side just when Blake's reaction to what he was reading started to show. His eyes widened and his cheeks reddened, just as Ella hopped down from the stool and tried to get away. Her mother's hand caught her arm, though.
Blake tried to talk, but the words jut wouldn't come out of his mouth. "I... She..." Jim took the book from his hand and started to read, letting out a big laugh.
"Holy crap!" he turned to Ella, whose face was as red as a tomato. "How old are ya again?"
Realizing what was happening, Kate moved her hand to the book and saw the cover, smiling. Nikki approached the scene and took the book in her hands, nearly spitting out the coffee in her mouth when she read the first few lines. Swallowing hard, she made a giant effort not to laugh. "Whoa. This is hardcore."
"Mom, I didn't have anything else to read! And that's only one scene!" Kate tried not to laugh, while she got Ella her coat.
"Well, the next time you don't have anything else to read, instead of going to mommy's books, go to Sawyer's, okay?" Ella had a look of disbelief in her face, look that was followed by the other three people present.
"You sure you want the girl to go to Sawyer's books?" Jim asked "I mean, that's bad enough..."
"Okay, we'll go to the library today!" Kate yelled, nearly shoving the girl out of the counter, while Ella shared an complicity grin with Blake.
"Yes! Love you, 'Ma!" Ella laughed as she ran out of the store, and Kate sighed deeply. Blake's hand moved towards the book, but she caught it on time.
"Don't even think about it, Blake." She grunted, taking the book into the kitchen to hide it in a safe place.
----------------------------
"There's a storm comin' on. Big one." Bridget Blake's voice was dull and yet restless, when she spoke. Her hand rested on top of the gossip magazine she was reading, as if she wasn't really paying attention to the news or the pictures, just using it a pretext to do some thinking. "Told John not to go out there today, but he wants to do it anyway. Stubborn man, I tell ya."
Kate looked through the glass out to the sky. It was dark, heavy, scary. When she was a little girl, Kate adored storms. She loved to be out in the open when the rain started to fall, feel the pressure of the drops on her skin, feel herself tuned with nature. Her impulsive and fierce personality would often find a match on the rough weather conditions, to the point that she thought she had some sort of power over the clouds to make them act in accord with her swingy moods.
Since she had moved down to the village, though, Kate's vision of the storms had changed dramatically. She got restless, nervous, irritated. She dreaded the storms, and even though she didn't show her feelings about them, she felt like a nerve wreck every time they threatened the place.
"Is your man still out in the open?" Bridget asked. Kate looked away.
"He was supposed to be coming home these days. I don't know. I hate it when he doesn't go with Blake and Jim." Kate shrugged and cleaned to counter, in a sad attempt to hide her concern. Her mask came down as soon as Bridget's hand found hers on top of the counter.
"You'll never get used to this, will ya?" she smiled sadly. "To being the wife of a sea man." Kate leaned against the counter, smiling sadly as the other woman spoke. "Having to wait for him to come. Having to pray for the ocean not to take him."
"I guess I won't. I'm a land gal, I guess." Kate sighed "So is he." She muttered under her breath. Bridget let out a laugh.
"What? He's a land gal too?" Kate laughed and threw the rag she was using at her friend, who threw it back at her.
Bridget had lived in the village all her life, had grown up there. She was used to the fate of the ocean, as they called it. She had always known she was the daughter of a sea man, bound to marry a sea man, to give birth to other sea men. She knew the ocean was her fate and didn't fight it. Kate admired her ability to be calm about it, to live her life and not fight it. She actually wished she could be like that; calm, resigned.
Kate wasn't like that. She feared for Sawyer's life everyday he wasn't by her side. He usually went away for five or six days at a time, coming home for another four, going away again. That system drove Kate insane, but strangely enough, he liked it. Kate's nerves, however, were giving out. She couldn't bring herself to sleep whenever there was the threat of a storm, she'd get restless and moody. She didn't resign to the destiny of a sea man, which was to die in the job, sooner or later. And what unnerved her most was that Sawyer was more than willing to accept that fate. He even seemed to like it, like the familiarity of it. Like the sense of belonging it gave him.
Throughout the previous five years, Sawyer and Kate had been together, living together. And surprisingly, it hadn't put out the flame they'd had since the first day. They had gotten to know each other deeply, opened out to each other in a way they hadn't opened up to anyone else. Sawyer knew about Kate's past, all of it. Wayne, Tom. Her daddy issues, her inability to give herself away too often. How she was a closed shell that only he had the power to open.
Sawyer treasured those moments, when she'd let her guard down and instead of being the perfect, hard working Kate, she'd allow herself to break down and either cry or laugh in his arms. In the few times it had happened, he was about to leave for a while, and she was afraid to lose him. He had realized pretty soon that fear was what caused her to let go, to break down. And more than just fear, it was the fear to lose him.
He stuck his hand inside the inner pocket of his coat and dragged out a small picture, worn out and slightly tore, from all the time inside the coat. It was a picture of him and the two girls of his life, as he called them. Kate and Sawyer were sitting at the stairs of the Pearl, with a six-year-old Ella sitting between them. The picture had been taken by Nikki, in the day they had opened the coffee shop. He hoped he'd arrive at that place in that same night, just in time to drag Kate to bed with him and make forget about the days out in the ocean.
A drop fell on the picture at the same time as a voice called out for him. "Sawyer! Come down here, we need help!"
"Yeah, be right there!" he answered, as he looked up to the sky and tucked the picture back in its place. The clouds were low and dark. That wouldn't be nice or calm. At all.
------------------------
It was 8pm and Kate was still at the Pearl, refusing to go out. Ella was nearly falling asleep in the counter, after having a meal Kate had prepared for dinner. Nikki and Martha were still with her, even though she'd sent them away a long time ago. She wanted to be alone, wanted to be left by herself.
The storm had come in big shape, forcing most of the fishermen to drag their boats out of the water. It was one of the biggest storms that place had seen in a bunch of years. And Sawyer still hadn't returned from the sea.
"Kate, you gotta go home. Look at Ella, she's falling asleep right here." Kate snapped out of the trance she was in, watching the rain fall through the window. Glancing at the clock and at Ella, Kate nodded.
"I can't leave." She said in a low, defeated tone, as she sat down in a stool. Nikki got up and picked her own coat up, followed by Ella's.
"Okay. Kate, mind if Ella spends the night with me? I hate to be alone on storm nights, and this way she'll go with me now." Kate looked at Nikki and smiled.
"You'd be a sweet."
"Nah, you're the one doing me a favour." Nikki woke Ella up and dragged the little girl up to the door, where her mom waited for her.
"Ella, babe, you'll go with Nikki to her place, okay? Sleep there, 'cause mom can't go home yet." Ella nodded.
"Nikki, will you make me pancakes?" Nikki laughed.
"Well of course. C'mon girl, it's late." The two girls covered their heads and ran to Nikki's car, parked just down the road. Kate watched as the car took it's way down the road and disappeared into the rain. She jumped a little when she felt a hand on her back.
"You can't be like that every time there's a storm, Kate." Martha's soft voice played a little in her ears, until she gathered the courage to turn around and face the lady standing in front of her. "It'll break your little heart."
"I can't... I need to wait for him." she muttered, looking away from Martha.
"You gotta have faith, Katie! You can't think it's all over every time he goes out with the other boys!"
Kate's eyes were dragged outside, when she saw a couple of figures running out in the direction of the pier. Kate saw Bridget Blake running amongst them, and her heart jumped a bit more as she saw more women and older men running down the street.
Martha saw it too, and her eyers were immediately diverted to the door. Kate's face was pale, deathly pale, and she knew she could do nothing to stop her from going to the pier.
"I gotta go there" Kate's words came out as she ran to the door, picking up her coat in the way and ignoring the fact that she was wearing a skirt that would probably crawl up her thighs.
As soon as Kate saw herself in the middle of the street, the rain pouring on her body with a strength she hadn't felt ever since she was a young girl, she took a deep breath. She ran down the street to the docks and saw three men and two women in the rain, looking out the ocean as the three men got a boat ready. She ran to Bridget, who had tears in her eyes.
"I told him not to go, I asked him to!" She cried as she dropped her arms around Kate, who held her close. Bridget should be about thirty-five years old, a strong and womanly body that held the work of generations out in the sea. Kate thought she was beautiful, even though she didn't exactly fill the usual patters of female beauty. And somehow, in crying in the rain, she suddenly saw her as more beautiful than ever.
Kate felt a wave of relief as she saw Bridget crying, that she felt ashamed for right that second. If Blake's boat had sunk, it meant that the fuzz wasn't about Sawyer's. But when she looked around the water, she saw no sign of The Prince, the boat Sawyer was in that day. Kate looked out at one of them men in the pier while Bridget sobbed into her shoulder.
"Pete! What happened?" The old men approached the two women, dragging his leg slightly.
"The Flying Shark sunk. We don't know anything about them yet, we just got their coordinates, and the crew from the Prince went down there..." Kate's head snapped. Sawyer had gone out to the ocean again to save the other men.
"What? The Prince was here?" Kate's voice was low and ragged, and she didn't move while Bridget shed her tears and looked out at the ocean, taking a step away from them.
"Yeah, they were just arriving when the alarm came. Sawyer and the guys went back to see if they could get them." Kate felt her legs go numb and sat down in the bench beside her, grabbing the wood fiercely. "They've gone a while ago."
---------------
It had been two hours since the alarm had sounded, and Kate was still at the pier. She had refused to move away, even when the other women from the village had come to take Bridget away from that place. She had resisted, alone, against the rain and the wind, and the lightning bolts that hit the water just in front of her. She had been there alone, freezing to death, her eyes stuck in the bay, hoping to see a familiar light.
Until she did. She looked away and saw a light approaching, getting nearer every second. It was a motor boat, a fast one. Kate didn't move, she couldn't bring herself to do such an effort. She had to see it, she had to see him coming near, had to see the boat dock and Sawyer come out of it, alive.
The boat docked and a head came out of the small cabin. It was Keith Donovan, one of Sawyer's mates. "Kate, you gotta go get help! Blake and John are hurt." Kate's joy was visible. They were alive. John and Blake were alive.
"How bad is it?" she asked, before she started to move.
"John's out. Blake's awake, though." KD, as they called him, smiled a little. "Awake and cursing like a real sea man, so go."
"Okay, I'm goin'!" Kate said. She started to move, and then came back. "KD! What about Sawyer?"
"Fine as water, Kate!" Kate laughed out loud and nodded. She started to run towards Bridget's house to give her the good news.
-----------------------
Bridget had come to get her husband with the local doctor, and they had taken John to the hospital. It had been fast, while Kate was helping Bridget out of her place. They walked together down to the pier again, and Kate couldn't help the tears when she saw her friend run to her husband, who was cursing like crazy. Kate smiled, amused, when she saw Bridget nearly slapping her husband and then falling into his arms, sobbing happily.
It was only when she was distracted by the sound of everyone else's voice that Kate saw the man coming out of the boat. His long hair clinging to his face, his shirt wet and his usual expression of mocking contempt. Kate didn't even need to think. She started to run between the people standing in the pier and threw herself to his arms, hiding her face in his neck. She wasn't surprised when his arms held her fiercely against himself, nearly smothering her. She didn't care, either. She was back in his arms, and it was all that mattered.
"You're all wet, Freckles." He said with a naughty smile, pulling her crying face away from his and kissing her upper cheek softly.
"You're home." She said, between sobs. He looked at her eyes and saw his own fear mirrored in her, the fear that they wouldn't always be together, that they wouldn't always be coming back to each other's arms.
"I'm home, baby." He said, in a low voice. Placing his hands on her hips, he kissed her lips slowly and pulled her to her car with him. "Let's go home."