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“Let’s sit over here.” He pointed to a bench at the end of a pretty walkway surrounded by flowers. Though it was hard to tear her gaze away from the river, she followed him.
When they arrived, Marta realized the bench was a memorial to Leif’s father. “You put this here?”
He nodded. “Dad always liked this view.”
After only knowing Leif for a short time, Marta suspected there were a couple other perfectly placed benches in Heartlandia for his mother and wife, too. A pang of sorrow over her mother caught her off guard. Maybe she’d call her father later to catch up. “Well, it certainly is fantastic. This is a lovely part of the country.”
“Agreed.”
“You’ve never wanted to leave?”
“I considered it in my late teens, but then my dad offered me the apprenticeship and I had the good sense to recognize a solid future when I saw it. Then after Ellen died, I thought I’d get the hell out of Dodge, but something held me back.” He’d been facing the vista, but now he turned and engaged Marta’s questioning stare. “All my memories are here, you know? If I left, I’d feel like a huge part of me was missing. Where’s a guy supposed to go from there?”
How different that was from her need to break the chains of her overbearing parents when she was a teen. She’d left home for college and never looked back. She’d thought of her mom and dad as old-fashioned and wanted nothing to do with their lifestyle. Leif honored his parents and their memories. She loved and missed her mother and decided right on the spot that when she finished the mural she’d paint a series of pictures dedicated to her. Some might say it was too little too late, but hopefully her father wouldn’t be one of them.
“So you get comfort knowing your loved ones once existed here,” she said.
He agreed, then tapped his chest. “And here. Always.”
“But you take your heart everywhere you go.”
“True. But there’s actual evidence of my mother and father and Ellen here. I guess I’d worry my memories would fade faster if I went somewhere else.”
There was that urge again to reach out and touch him, to take hold of his hand and squeeze, to let the man know he wouldn’t always be alone, but could she guarantee it? At this point in her life, she felt completely alone, too, and the fact she was staying in Leif’s house helped smooth out those rough feelings, but there was no guarantee she’d ever find anyone to love again, either.
Something about Leif called out to her. He deserved so much more than what life had dealt him.
“Listen,” he said. “I wanted to clear the air about something.”
That got her attention. They needed to clear the air already?
“We’ve recently come to find out our town’s story isn’t exactly the way our history books tell it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m saying there may be a reason you’ve been artistically blocked at the beginning of your project.”
Okay, now he was making the hair on her arms rise, and not in a good way. “Go on.”
He proceeded to tell her the whole sordid tale of the Prince of Doom discovering Heartlandia. How he’d shanghaied sailors from Scandinavian ports and forced them to come here. How his ship had sunk and, though it had never been found, may very well still be somewhere off the coast of Heartlandia in the Columbia River.
Then he explained how none of this would have been known if he hadn’t discovered the buried trunk when building the City College.
“If the Chinook and Scandinavian fisherman hadn’t joined forces to overthrow the pirates, Heartlandia might have been named Princetown.”
She could hardly believe her ears. What a wild story! And what a relief it was to know she wasn’t crazy, that there really was a reason for her hesitation to start the mural with the Chinook and Scandinavian fishermen working in harmony to build a storybook town.
The bigger questions was, how had the information been suppressed all these years?
“For the past few months I’ve been involved with a special committee looking into the contents of the trunk and following up with where the journals led. We’d chosen to keep the information to ourselves until we authenticated the journals, dated them and figured out what exactly they meant. We’ve finally decided the time is right to move ahead with informing the locals, and tomorrow is our first community meeting. Lilly Matsuda, our new journalist, will follow up with a three-part story, explaining everything.”
“This is amazing,” Marta said, working very hard not to let her jaw drop.
“Tell me about it. Anyway, I hope you’ll come with me tomorrow. I’ll introduce to you the mayor and city council and show you around the rest of the town, too.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“Okay, then, it’s a date. Hey, feel like grabbing something to eat? Oh, wait, I already know the answer to that.”
She offered a sad-faced smile. “I wish I had an appetite.”
“How about if I make us omelets?”
She tried to look enthusiastic but only managed a wan smile. He read right through it. “I’ll make yours as bland as water. You should be able to get some of that down, right?”
She screwed up her face, unsure how the food would affect her. “Sometimes it’s more about texture than taste or smell.”
“I make great toast, too.” The guy was persistent, and his effort made her want to at least try to eat. He snapped his fingers. “Oh, hey, how about a fruit smoothie?”
She lifted her brows. Ah, now he was on to something. “That has merit. I’ll give it my best effort,” she said with deep appreciation for his concern.
“That’s all I can ask.” For one quick moment, his everyday good looks stood out against the backdrop of the darkening sky and the deep river below; the fact that she noticed threw her for a second. She had absolutely no business enjoying his appearance, not in her condition.
His sharp whistle for the dogs snapped her out of the thoughts, and they headed back to the big lonely house on the hill that she could spot all the way across town from the memorial bench at Leif’s special park.
* * *
The next morning the town was buzzing with interest and maybe a little concern. What could merit a town meeting when they hadn’t had one since last year when their former mayor announced his early retirement? Leif considered that some of the businesspeople might wonder if the town was in debt or, worse yet, failing. He’d overheard another group whispering about the effects of the financial downturn on tourist towns such as theirs nationwide.
After introducing Marta to Lilly and Desi Rask, Gerda’s granddaughter, he planted her on the adjacent chair to Desi and headed to take his place on the podium with the rest of the committee. Marta was wearing the same black slacks and white blouse she’d worn the day she’d arrived. Looking at her from the podium, there was no way anyone could suspect she was pregnant. Both artists, Desi and Marta, appeared to chat easily while waiting for the event to begin. It made Leif happy to see her connect with new people. He worried he kept her locked up in his empty castle like Rapunzel or something.
Gerda, the mayor pro tem; Elke Norling, the town historian; Gunnar Norling, her brother and local police sergeant; Jarl Madsen from the Maritime Museum; Adamine Olsen, president of the Small Business Association; and Ben Cobowa, the only Native American of Chinook ancestry on the committee, all sat in a unifying row.
The interested crowd grew by the minute, and by ten o’clock, the appointed time for the meeting, the city college auditorium was packed to standing room only.
The mayor stepped to the microphone, her usual white bun twisted so tight, Leif wondered if it would give her a headache. She cleared her throat. “Thank you all for coming.” She waited for the chatter to die down, but it didn’t.
Gunnar, in his police uniform, stepped forward. “We’d like to get started,” he said loudly. “Let’s pipe down, okay?” He nudged Gerda back to the podium microphone as the auditorium grew quieter.
“We’ve called this town meeting to announce some rather startling news we’ve recently discovered.”
Her use of the word startling caused the few remaining talkers to go quiet.
“I know you’re all anxious to hear why we called everyone here today, so we’ll get right to the point. When we broke the ground for the college, Leif Andersen discovered an ancient trunk. The contents were priceless and we have spent the past several months making sure everything was authentic. Elke Norling has done a wonderful job, and we wanted to share the information with you.”
From there Gerda went on to tell the story of Captain Nathaniel Prince to the obvious disbelief of many in the crowd. Several times, Sgt. Norling had to ask the auditorium to pipe down again, and glancing around at the faces, Leif realized the magnitude of this disconcerting news about their beloved town roots.
Adamine Olsen then stood and explained how the local businesses could capitalize on this new information, that the allure of a one-time pirate outpost turned solid small town and sleepy little tourist attraction could be a boon for the local shops and restaurants.
Gerda stressed what mattered most was not how they’d begun but how they’d turned out, and there was nothing to be ashamed of.
Then came the questions of why they’d waited so long to come forth with this information. Gerda tried her best to explain that the committee had wanted to be completely sure about their findings before addressing the town. Leif was grateful she hadn’t included the fact he’d sat on his findings several months before bringing it to the town’s attention.
Everyone knew Gerda had only stepped in to the mayor position when the town needed a fill-in after their mayor had had a heart attack. She’d done so willingly. What they didn’t know was that almost immediately Gerda had gotten slapped with the crazy possibility of the pirate discovering what everyone knew as Heartlandia. The stress had made Gerda sick, but she’d struggled on and led the committee in an honorable way.
“We realize there must be hundreds of questions.” Gerda spoke over the grumbling. “And that’s why the Heartlandia Herald will be running a series of articles beginning this afternoon in a special edition and continuing through Saturday. We want to stress that it’s not how you begin that counts, but how you end up, and Heartlandia is still the wonderful place we’ve all known and loved all of our lives. None of that has changed. So please bear with us. This committee has worked hard to make the best of a troubling situation. If after the series of articles your questions are still unanswered, please feel free to submit any and all questions to the newspaper. We vow to answer each and every one personally as well as in the newspaper.
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