their first-ever kiss down in the old boat shed, hidden from the houses by a dense grove of trees. She wondered if the shed still stood.
They’d made love for the first time in that shed, too, on a night the moon had shimmered like silver over the water. She’d just turned eighteen, and Jett twenty-one. The boat shed had become their special place, and there was a time Muirinn had thought it would all be there for her forever.
But the summer she turned nineteen, everything changed.
As the cab neared the Mermaid’s Cove property, Muirinn asked the driver to drop her off at the ramshackle gate.
Bags in hand, she stood at the top of the overgrown driveway, staring down at her childhood home as the taxi pulled off in a cloud of soft glacial dust.
The scene in front of her seemed to shimmer up out of her memory to take literal shape in front of her—the garden and forest fighting for supremacy; brooding firs brushing eaves with heavy branches. Wild roses scrambled up the staircase banisters, and berry bushes bubbled up around the wooden deck that ran the length of the rustic log house.
On the deck terra-cotta pots overflowed with flowers, herbs, vegetables; all evidence of her grandfather’s green thumb. And beyond the deck, the lawn rolled down to a grove of trees, below which Mermaid’s Cove shimmered.
In a few short months this would all be gone and piled high with snow. Safe Harbor was known for the heaviest accumulation among Alaskan coastal towns.
Numbly, Muirinn walked down the driveway and set her bags at the base of the deck stairs, bending to crush a few rosemary leaves between her fingers as she did.
She drank in the scent of the herbs, listening to the hum of bees, the distant chink of wind chimes, the chuckle of waves against tiny stones in the bay below. It amazed her to think that her grandfather was actually gone; evidence of his life thrummed everywhere.
She looked up at the house, and suddenly felt his presence.
I’m so sorry for not coming home while you were still here. I’m sorry for leaving you alone.
A sudden breeze rippled through the branches, brushing through her hair. Muirinn swallowed, unnerved, as she picked up her bags.
She made her way up the stairs and dug the house key out of her purse.
Pushing open the heavy oak door with its little portal of stained glass, Muirinn stepped into the house, and back into time. She heard his gruff voice almost instantly.
‘Tis the sea faeries that brought you here, Muirinn. The undines. They brought you up from the bay to your mother and father, to me. To care for you for all time.
Emotion burned sharply into her eyes as her gaze scanned the living room, full of books, paintings, photos of her and her parents. For years Muirinn hadn’t thought of those fantastical tales Gus had spun in her youth. She’d managed to lock those magical myths away deep in the recesses of her memory, behind logic and reason and the practicalities of work and life in a big city. But now they swept over her—there was no holding them back. This homecoming was going to be rougher than she thought.
More than anything, though, it was Gus’s artwork that grabbed her by the throat.
She slumped into a chair, staring at the paintings and sketches that graced the walls. She was in almost all of them—images of a wild imp, frozen in time, in charcoal, in soft ethereal watercolor. In some, her hair flowed out in corkscrew curls as she swam in the sea with the tail of a fish. In others, Gus had taken artistic license with her features, giving her green eyes even more of a mischievous upward slant, her ears a slight point, depicting her as one of the little woodland creatures he used to tell her lived up in the hills.
Eccentric to the core, Gus O’Donnell had been just like this place. Rough, yet spiritual. Wise, yet a dreamer. A big-game hunter, fisherman, writer, poet, artist. A lover of life and lore with a white shock of hair, a great bushy beard and the keen eyes of an eagle.
And he’d raised her just as wildly, eclectically, to be free.
Not that it had boded well for her. Because Muirinn hadn’t felt free. All she’d wanted to do was escape, discover the real world beyond her granite prison.
Sitting there in a bent-willow rocker, staring at her grandfather’s things, exhaustion finally claimed Muirinn, and she fell into a deep sleep.
She woke several hours later, stiff, confused. Muirinn checked the clock—it was almost 10:00 p.m. At this latitude, at this time of year, it barely got dark at night. However, clouds had started scudding across the inlet, lowering the dusky Arctic sky with the threat of a thunderstorm. A harsh wind was already swooshing firs against the roof.
Muirinn tried to flick on a light switch before realizing that she had yet to figure out how to reconnect the solar power. She lit an oil lamp instead and climbed the staircase to her grandfather’s attic office. The lawyer had said all the keys she’d need for the house, along with instructions on how to connect the power, would be in the middle drawer of her grandfather’s old oak desk.
She creaked open the attic door.
Shadows sprang at her from the far corners of the room. Muirinn’s pulse quickened.
Her grandfather’s carved desk hulked at the back of the room in front of heavy drapes used to block out the midnight sun during the summer months. A candle that had drowned in its own wick rested on the polished desk surface, along with Gus’s usual whiskey tumbler. A pang of emotion stung Muirinn’s chest.
It was as if the room were still holding its breath, just waiting for Gus to walk back in. And a strong and sudden sense gripped Muirinn that her grandfather had not been ready to quit living.
She shook the surreal notion, and stepped into the room. The attic air stirred softly around her, cobwebs lifting in currents caused by her movement. Muirinn halted suddenly. She could swear she felt a presence. Someone—or something—was in here.
Again Muirinn shook the sensation.
She set the oil lamp on the desk and seated herself in her grandfather’s leather chair. It groaned as she leaned forward to pull open the top drawer. But as she did, a thud sounded on the wooden floor, and something brushed against her leg. Muirinn froze.
She almost let out a sob of relief when she saw that it was only Quicksilver, her grandfather’s enormous old tomcat with silver fur, gold eyes, and the scars of life etched into his grizzled face. He jumped onto the desk, a purr growling low in his throat.
“Goodness, Quick,” she whispered, stroking him. “I didn’t see you come in.” He responded with an even louder rumble, and Muirinn smiled. Someone had clearly been feeding the old feline since Gus disappeared because Quicksilver was heavy and solid, if ancient.
The lawyer had mentioned that Gus’s old tenant, Mrs. Wilkie, still did housekeeping for him. She must’ve been taking care of the cat, too.
As Muirinn stroked the animal, she felt the knobs in his crooked tail, broken in two places when he’d caught it in the screen door so many years ago. Again, the sense of stolen time overwhelmed her. And with it came the guilt.
Guilt at not once having come home in eleven years.
The cat stepped
