Out at the Inn Read online

  Stopping at the Jeep both dogs sat expectantly and Leah brushed them down, getting most of the sand off of them before allowing them to jump into the back of the Jeep despite the wet paws and the sand they still brought with them. She shrugged, part of having dogs was having messes and a Jeep was perfect for two healthy dogs that enjoyed the hiking and other things that she did. The SUV was just a part of their lifestyle and she didn’t sweat it that the backseat was dirty, dog dirty, because these were her fur kids.

  She drove slowly south, traffic on this Saturday was light on this stretch of P.C.H. and she made her way past San Simeon and towards Cambria. Missy would have dinner on for them both if she hadn’t decided they should go out and she looked forward to it, her excursions today had made her hungry. She thought about what she had done, what she had seen, what she’d like to see more of and round and round it went in her head as she made her way south and the sun set to her right. She pulled into Cambria and behind some trees just as the sun set and it was instantly dark; the hills between Cambria with their tall pine trees and the ocean made it feel like a mountain retreat. She pulled down Ocean Boulevard and made her way to Missy’s home. Both dogs jumped out when she parked and opened the door for them, familiar with this home away from home.

  “D.O.G.!” one of the twins called.

  “Speck!” the other one called when they saw the two dogs.

  Leah grinned, she loved that the girls loved her dogs as much as she did because the dogs loved them both right back. She watched as they hugged the appropriate dog and then switched to make sure no one was jealous or left out. For six year olds they could really hug hard and both dogs loved every moment of it as their happy expressions and wagging tails would attest.

  “Hey sailor, where ya been?” Missy asked as she came into the living room from the kitchen.

  Leah laughed as she looked up from where the twins were greeting their fur cousins. “Hey, what’s cooking Mother Hubbard? Smells great!”

  “Ach, you say that all the time, you just want to stay on my good side so I feed you!” Missy teased.

  Leah nodded as she followed her friend back into the kitchen where a toddler of three was walking around and seeing Leah slipped by her to look for the dogs. “Nice to see you too Breton,” she said with a smile knowing the dogs were the attraction. She looked at the other kid in the room, tied in his high chair and banging a spoon as he fed himself applesauce or something equally goopy because he was covered in it from his nose to his chest. “Hey Bradley, looks like you’ve been eating dinner,” she said unnecessarily and was rewarded with a three toothed grin of greeting.

  “Yeah, I decided if I fed him and Breton early the rest of us might get some peace during our dinner,” Missy answered as she deftly cleaned up the squirming tot with a washcloth.

  Bradley didn’t want his face wiped and turned from his mother’s towel filled hand as he looked over at Leah and tried to see beyond her.

  Leah wasn’t fooled, she knew Bradley wouldn’t be happy to see her alone, it was the dogs that drew him and he wouldn’t be content until he had pulled and prodded both of the dogs who would enjoy every minute of it as they helped the little boy learn how to walk. How they knew that he was getting his balance Leah didn’t know, but they were self-appointed helpers and seemed not to mind when he pulled a little too hard on their hair or fell on them. Leah had even picked up Bradley a few times when he burrowed in and fell asleep on them, they didn’t object, they loved the kids. She often wondered if she was depriving her fur kids by not having any human ones of her own but seeing how exhausted they often were on the way home she suspected they didn’t miss having children of their own that much.

  “Anything I can do to help?” Leah offered and found herself washing dishes before dinner because Missy hadn’t had time to finish them from breakfast and Leah suspected some from the night before as well.

  While D.O.G. and Speck entertained Bradley from the safety of the playpen and allowed him to pull their hair and try to pat them, only getting out of reach occasionally when his exuberance to pull them into the pen hurt them with his fistfuls of hair. His calls and cookie brought them back and Leah winced as they shared. It never fazed Missy that her son was eating the cookie and allowing the dogs to have it too, soon though the dogs had eaten it all.

  The five of them were sitting at Missy’s kitchen table though with Breton still eating a little now and then before toddling back into the living room to take Bradley another cookie and pat the dogs.

  “I swear those dogs are better baby sitters than that gal Carrie I pay to watch the kids now and then,” Missy commented as she watched the children.

  Leah shook her head. She only had two fur kids and Missy had four human ones, how she managed was a wonder. A nearly single mother her husband Jack was on the road four out of seven days a week for a development firm out of Los Angles who had opened an office in San Luis Obispo. Why they lived up here in Cambria, another forty miles away Leah didn’t understand but Jack wanted the cool air and the distance from the ‘big city’ for his kids to grow up in. The fact that he only enjoyed it occasionally didn’t faze him. Missy was raising the four nearly single handedly and Leah admired her for it.

  “So where’d you go today, I thought you said you’d be back before sundown?” Missy asked halfway through their delicious meal of roast that Leah had brought with her from the store last night when she arrived from Los Angles. It was large enough that there would be plenty of leftovers for Missy and the kids the next couple of days as she made various meals from it.

  “I went to a beach above San Simeon and hiked north along the beach from there.”

  “Aren’t there those elephant seals up there?” Missy frowned in worry looking like a mother hen with her feathers ruffled.

  Leah laughed at the mental image she had of her friend but didn’t do it aloud, Missy wouldn’t have appreciated the comparison, and she felt every one of her three pregnancies and complained that she hadn’t lost any of the pounds she had put on from them. “No, it’s the wrong time of the year for them that’s why I went up there.”

  “Did you go as far as Jade Beach or did you go further into Big Sur?”

  Leah shook her head. “No, I stopped before that, shortly after Hearst Castle.”

  “Bet it was pretty up there,” Misty said wistfully. For her packing up four kids was too much work so she tried not to do it too often. Between bottles and baby gear and miscellaneous it was an expedition to go anywhere for her.

  “It was, I found something interesting too.”

  “Oh really?” Missy said in a teasing voice. “A man washed up on shore?”

  Leah laughed; it had been an ongoing joke for them for years ever since Jack had washed up in front of them and fallen not for the leggy brunette that was Leah but for the short and stout Missy with the freckles and the dimples. He had been surfing and broke his board on the rocks off the Central Coast and pulled himself onto the beach to land at Missy’s feet, almost literally. “No, I found a secret staircase,” she teased back knowing her friend wouldn’t believe her.

  “Uh huh, and did it lead up to heaven?” she asked as she gave Bradley two cookies this time and he turned back to take them to his brother and ended up feeding both dogs.

  “Why don’t you just put them in their food dish and call it square,” Leah asked as she watched her friend indirectly feed her dogs the treats.

  “Then it wouldn’t wear out Bradley,” she replied matter of factly.

  To Leah that made sense, wearing out the boys was a full time job and with the twins taking up so much of Missy’s time and effort too all the kids seemed to pull her in so many directions, it was exhausting to watch.

  “So what did you really find that kept you so late, maybe you should give me the coordinates in the future so if I have to send out a search party we have something to go on.”

  “I really did find a hidden or secret staircase.” Leah went on to tell her of her adventures talking over and around four little kids who interrupted, demanded attention, and needed help cutting their food.

  Missy listened enthralled. She was envious and yet she had the kids to keep her busy. It would have exhausted her and her rotund body to hike down that beach much less climb up to the staircase. The thought of finding an abandoned house was exciting but also alarming, what could have happened to her friend if she had gotten in the house and fallen through the floor or something? And what if it really wasn’t abandoned and instead some hermit lived there and had shot her or something or worse? Her mind thought a million times a minute as she was in ‘mom’ mode. “Are you crazy? What if something had happened to you?”

  “Then D.O.G. and Speck could have pulled a Lassie routine and returned here to get you and take you to the well where I fell down and had to spend the night, shivering with the cold, ending up with pneumonia where you would have to feed me broth from this delicious roast and watched over by my faithful companions,” she glanced at the dogs that were attentively watching the cookie brigade.

  “You’re nuts, you could have had something awful happen to you.”

  “I’m going back,” Leah answered before shoving a cut potato into her mouth.

  “Alone?” Missy was alarmed.

  Leah nodded. “I’ll take the boys,” she nodded to the dogs in the next room and for a moment Missy wasn’t sure she meant her fur kids but rather Breton and Bradley.

  “Why?” Missy asked as she was relieved to realize the absurdity of her friend taking two little boys and realizing she meant the dogs.

  Leah shrugged. “I want to get there when there is more light and I’m going to try to get in there from the road. Have you ever heard of this house?” she described what she had seen again giving Missy the willies at the sound of this ‘abandoned’ house.

  “No, and I don’t think you should go back, it’s in the middle of nowhere and what if something happened?”

  “I’m not going to do anything that will endanger myself; I’m just going to look. I think I might be able to drive in on the track, it’s a little overgrown but I am sure the Jeep can handle it.”

  “You’re nuts, you take unnecessary chances,” Missy said as she handed the twins napkins to wipe their faces.

  “Hey what happened to the chick who used to be my backup on these adventures?”

  “She grew up and grew responsible,” Missy retorted a little more forcefully than she meant to.

  “I did too, just not in the way you did,” Leah answered quietly.

  Missy looked over at her best friend and felt instantly sorry for her quick words, “I’m sorry, that wasn’t what I meant and you know it.”

  Leah smiled ruefully. “Don’t sweat it.”

  They discussed other things, most centering around the children that had interrupted them throughout the meal and dropped the subject of the abandoned house for now.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Missy hoped Leah would change her mind about going back the next day but Leah was determined to see it and with that in mind she was up first thing and before the children got up. She let the two dogs out the back door into the fenced back yard. She quickly folded the blankets and sheets she had used on the couch and then put them away for her next visit, she knew where Missy kept everything. She started the coffee maker for Missy and popped raisin muffins into the toaster oven for herself as she poured a bit of the orange juice from the carafe. She had brought most of these groceries herself on Friday because she knew it was cheaper for her to buy the groceries in Los Angeles and that Missy hated going out with the four children, it was too much work without two adults. It also helped pay for lodgings whenever she came up here which was about once a month if she could manage. She made sure she brought extras, things she knew Missy and Jack would never buy or could afford like twinkies and hohos. Little things that they all enjoyed and didn’t cost a whole lot but to a budget stretched for four kids under the age of seven it was a nice treat.

  Missy came in lugging Bradley who had just finished breast feeding. She had him over her shoulder as she gently patted his back to burp him.

  “Coffee’s on,” Leah told her unnecessarily as she bit into her buttered muffin.

  “Mmmhm,” she grumbled as she shuffled along and one handed managed to pour herself a cup of coffee, sugar and cream it, and take that first delightful sip. “Ahhh,” she breathed as she put the cup back down and resumed patting.

  “Burrrp,” the small child resonated and then went limp, asleep before the breath had faded from his monstrous belch.

  “Charming,” Leah commented as she watched Missy shuffle into the living room and to the playpen to put the baby down and cover him back up.

  “Yeah, he’s a charmer,” Missy mumbled as she shuffled back into the kitchen to reach for her coffee and sit at the kitchen table.

  “One down, three to go,” Leah teased.

  “Yeah, at least they are easier,” she grouched as she sipped the coffee.

  Easier? Leah thought that was a bit of an exaggeration, those kids could be whirlwinds of activity but she supposed breast feeding, changing diapers, and taking care of all those kids might work out to be easier on the grand scale of things.

  “You going up to look at that house?” Missy asked.

  Leah nodded. “Yeah, I thought I’d get an early start and then stop back here on my way down.”

  “Just BE careful,” Missy reached over and put her hand on Leah’s arm.

  “I will,” Leah answered with a grin as she patted Missy’s hand and then finished off her breakfast muffin and orange juice. She heard the dogs rattle at the back door, their morning absolutions must be done. “Hey, I’ll find the land mines before I go,” she offered.

  “No, the kids will unerringly find them before you do and besides it gives the twins something to search for,” Missy told her as she took bigger drinks of her cooling coffee.

  Leah shook her head, kids did the damnedest things.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Leah packed up her Jeep as though they were heading home and the dogs looked on in alarm, it was way too early to be heading home and they both knew it. They said their normal goodbyes to the exuberant kids that were up and Leah headed north instead of south when she got to P.C.H. Both dogs realized she wasn’t heading home at that point, they knew the way back to Los Angles and would normally have settled into their seats and lay down for the long drive, now they were both sitting up and looking to see where they were going occasionally leaning out for the wind in their hair and ears.

  Leah drove out of Cambria with the new houses that were going up on the mountainside on the right with gorgeous and expensive views of the Pacific Ocean. Soon there was nothing but open grassland and in a short amount of time she was passing Hearst Castle and then the little town of San Simeon with its one horse town atmosphere and two hotels. People came up here to see the Central Coast or Hearst Castle or to head into Big Sur; they didn’t come here to live unless they worked around here. It was terribly isolated.

  Leah wasn’t sure she hadn’t passed the track she was looking for; in fact she was sure she had and was ready to turn around. Luckily she knew about where she was looking for the track and a cattle guard gave it away. Normally she would have thought this was some rancher’s property but she realized as she carefully drove across the grid that the grass was severely overgrown on both sides of this fading track as well as down the middle making it nearly impossible to see. She looked at the dry creek with some trepidation but slipped the Jeep into four wheel drive and confidently and slowly made her way across. She had to stop at the low hanging branches as many of them were six inches or more thick and would cause considerable damage to her paint job. She parked the Jeep and let the dogs out. They immediately began smelling around the Jeep and reacquainting themselves with a place they had been before.

  As Leah made her way further up the track and into the jungle she realized how cool and quiet it was. The birds were twittering and she caught a flash of what must be a deer before it bounded away. She was glad the dogs hadn’t seen it as she was certain they would have given chase. They soon ran up behind her and passed her on the path.

  The house looked different in the morning light. The sun filtered through the thick mantle of jungle and trees but still managed to shine on the huge house. It reminded her again of The Walton’s only larger, the picture of that house burned in her brain from reruns on Nick at Night, she had been too young in the seventies to actually watch the series but that house was an icon. The major difference was the windows were doubled and instead of wood the house was out of native stone. It was beautiful to her in the early morning light. She wondered if the original builder had planned for the views and she wondered how much the trees had overgrown since it had been built and blocked the view. She circled the house a couple of times looking for a way in, eyeing the broken laundry room window again and even climbing the branch to look inside at the mess. She decided she wasn’t meant to see inside the huge house but maybe, someday, she would.

  As she made her way back to the Jeep she watched as the dogs chased squirrels. She wondered if all these trees had been planted because they were an odd little oasis in an otherwise desolate part of California and certainly not usually found around here. How had the squirrels come to be here? They too were a long ways away, miles even, from any other woods or forest that would support them and yet here they were. As she carefully navigated the creek again she saw a rabbit or she thought she did and the dogs seemed interested as well so it wasn’t just her imagination.

  She drove south back to Cambria and said her goodbye’s to her good friend, “Thank you so much for having me,” she said her usual goodbye and gave Missy a big hug.

  “You know you are always welcome,” Missy returned her eyes suspiciously wet.

  “You always say that,” Leah said as she pulled back and saw the buildup in her eyes.