Longing for Eagle Cove

Chapter 1-3

Rather than the couple returning down the aisle to cheers and congratulations, there was a marginally pre-orchestrated reshuffling that happened during the generous applause.

Becky gave Natalya a quick hug hard enough to drive all of the breath from her lungs, gave a gentler version to the pregnant Jessica, then laughed and raced back up the aisle. She hiked up her skirts to knee high in her hurry, exposing her favorite bright red cowboy boots. She abandoned her new husband with no more than a wink. Though the kiss she’d left behind at the end of the ceremony had definitely been something to behold. Damn, but Natalya could feel envy about that one.

Jessica gave Natalya a nudge to remind her of their wedding rehearsal move. Right. The two of them moved aside from the impromptu altar and turned to join the leading edge of the crowd. Their role in Becky’s wedding was complete, they were now in the audience for Peggy’s.

After carefully not looking at the groom’s side of the altar for a long moment, Natalya stole another glance. Every time she’d peeked at the groomsmen, Cal Jr. had been looking at her over the tops of the others’ heads. It had unnerved her enough to not join in the happy tears streaming down Jessica’s cheeks.

They ended up standing close beside Mrs. Winslow—their second grade teacher. She was a notorious stoic who had taken on the personal responsibility of shaping the youth of Eagle Cove since forever. But even her eyes were misty. Natalya had liked to think that she, Jessica, and Becky held a special place in Marjorie Winslow’s heart.

“I’m just being hormonal,” Jessica wiped at her face with one hand as the other rested on the slight bulge of her waistline that would have been invisible if the dress weren’t so clingy.

Mrs. Winslow handed over a handkerchief. “No, Jessica. You, my girl, are turning into a mush. Never would have thought it of you.”

Jessica had been a notorious non-crier until she married Greg. Even the harrowing breakups of high school had seemed to slide by her like wind past a seagull on the beach. Natalya kept her tears to herself, except a few times when one of her best friends or her mother stumbled upon her at the wrong moment, but Jessica had none of those. Becky wept at heartfelt commercials on TV, especially ones with the puppies and the Clydesdales.

Jessica dabbed at her eyes and for a moment rested her cheek on the shorter woman’s gray hair. “I never would have thought it myself.”

“Wimp,” Natalya whispered.

“You, Natalya Lamont,” Mrs. Winslow had that you’re-about-to-be-sent-to-sit-in-the-corner look. “We shall wait until marriage and pregnancy happens to you. I think that shall be very interesting.”

“Not likely.” And for perhaps the first time in her life, that answer didn’t sit well. Her mother was the embodiment of how joyous a single woman could be…but that sat equally uncomfortably at the moment.

Searching for a distraction from wedding-goofy women and Cal’s constant attention, she found one at the bar-turned-altar. The newly married Harry Slater stepped up to his father and Natalya was still close enough to hear him.

“Okay, Dad. Hand them over.”

The Judge actually looked worried. It was a look Natalya had never seen on his face before. Ever. She’d seen brief bouts of fear when his wife had been dying three years before, but never worry.

Natalya started to look away to see where Cal Jr. was, in order to make sure that he wasn’t still staring at her, when Jessica nudged her in the ribs.

“What?”

Jessica just nodded back toward the altar.

Harry actually held his father’s hand in a two-handed clasp, a degree of closeness that was still very unusual to see between the two men who’d been estranged for so long.

“You’ll do fine, Dad. It’s me I’m worried about. What if I screw this up?” He made it funny. Something he and Becky shared, always having the right thing to say in just the right tone to put others at ease. It was another skill she envied, and didn’t possess even a shade of.

“Son,” the Judge’s voice rumbled out, carrying easily to where Natalya stood despite the rising chatter of the crowd anxious for the second ceremony. “You’ll do fine. Weddings are one of the very best parts of being a judge.”

“Then hand them over,” Harry repeated himself and plucked at his father’s robe. “Pops!”

Judge Slater had served over thirty years on the county bench before retiring to cook at the local diner and hold lawyer’s office hours here in Eagle Cove when needed. Harry had just been elected to his father’s former judicial seat in November and was now fully instated.

The room slowly fell silent as Judge John Slater removed his robes and helped Judge Harry Slater don and settle them. The passing of the mantle, literally. Until three months ago, Harry had barely come home in the fourteen years since leaving for college. It was like looking into a new reality to watch the two of them interact at all. That they were exchanging roles—the father officiating the son’s wedding and now the son officiating his father’s—meant that somewhere along the way the space-time reality in which Eagle Cove existed had shifted.

Natalya felt momentarily lightheaded. So much so that she briefly wondered if, when she drove back to Portland Monday evening, the city would still be there or had the whole world changed along with Eagle Cove.

When Judge Harry Slater was dressed to Judge John Slater’s satisfaction, the two men embraced. Natalya glanced aside and saw she wasn’t the only one sniffling this time. Marjorie Winslow and Jessica leaned against each other for support and others were doing the same.

“Now, get over there,” Harry gave his father a gentle shove until the Judge—for that would always be the elder’s name—was standing where Harry had been just moments before. Cal Sr., almost as big as his son and nearly as imposing as the Judge, came up to shake his hand and thump him on the shoulder. Greg shook his father’s hand as well before he and Cal Sr. stepped into the bridegrooms’ positions.

“He is a good boy,” Mrs. Winslow declared quietly.

“You didn’t always think so. You never liked Greg,” Jessica complained to her old mentor.

“You have brought out a new and good side to that boy. His brother was even worse as a child, but Becky appears to have done him some good, too.”

And they all three turned to look at Harry, now standing tall in his magisterial robes. He noticed their attention and he waggled his eyebrows and shot them a smug grin.

“Or perhaps not,” Mrs. Winslow said in her driest tone.

Harry looked quite discomfited when the three of them burst out laughing.

Someone started the music and Harry did his best to compose his expression, then he looked up the aisle and jolted as if he’d been electrocuted just like the time Natalya had wired his chair to a hidden car battery in tenth grade science class.

Natalya turned to look back down the aisle. This time it was her mother and Becky who were “plowing” the aisle clear for the bride and the two judges were both rapt.

Natalya couldn’t see Peggy in her wedding white except as a flurry of curly dark red hair just visible over Becky’s head.

But she could most certainly see Cal Mason Jr. across the aisle. He’d eased back against the far wall so that he wouldn’t block others’ view of the ceremony. He slouched comfortably there as if he was dressed in jeans and t-shirt rather than a three-piece suit.

But he wasn’t watching the ceremony.

He wasn’t watching Becky, still in her wedding white, nor Natalya’s mother, looking like she was ready to gather up a whole crowd of men with her statuesque figure. Her mother had liked the bridesmaids’ slinky-black-mourning-dress idea, but between a knockout figure and short hem, she also looked like one of those classic redheaded Italian models in it.

But Cal wasn’t watching Gina Lamont either, though most other men were.

And he wasn’t watching Peggy, standing as bride, who barely reached the groom’s shoulder when she finally stood beside him. Peggy did look every inch of the woman she was—one who built and flew planes, had climbed the highest mountains on all seven continents, and won transoceanic sailboat races.

Cal Jr. was watching her. Natalya. He wasn’t staring, not exactly, but neither was he looking aside. If she had to label his expression it might be…confusion? She wanted to go over and shake him and shout, “What are you looking at?”