Falling for June: A Novel Read online

  Your paper was invited to attend stunt camp, or at least write an article on it, but no one ever showed. This was good news for me, as it created an opening, but terrible news for your readers, who have been denied learning about this magical place. Please consider writing a story about Echo Glen, or at least asking your readers to donate to this worthy cause.

  To donate or make inquiries, please reach out to June McLeod or Sebastian Villarreal at Echo Glen Animal Sanctuary/Echo Glen Hollywood Stunt School, at 772½ Whispering Willow Lane, Darrington, WA 98241.

  Sincerely,

  Peter Pan

  (If Peter Pan ever grew up and became an accountant.)

  “It’s a good letter,” I said, once I had finished reading.

  “Thanks. I sent it to the Times first, and then to the Post-Intelligencer, in case they wanted to print it and embarrass their competition. I thought it might drum up some publicity for the camp and for Echo Glen. Plus, I was trying to impress June. I’m not ashamed to admit it either.”

  He took the letter back, refolded it, and slipped it into his robe pocket.

  “Well, if you’re serious about wanting to suffer through more storytelling you had better get yourself some tea. And I should get a bite to eat so I can take my medication.”

  “Oh, I forgot your apple. I already cut it up.”

  I didn’t tell him I had even squeezed lemon juice on the slices so they wouldn’t brown, just like I’d seen him do. I went into the kitchen and retrieved the plate of apple slices from the refrigerator and brought them back in to him.

  “Did you get something?” he asked. “You can have a MoonPie if you want.”

  “Oh, I’m fine. I had some water. Thanks.”

  He ate a slice of apple before fishing the pill bottle from his robe pocket and washing one down with a sip of tea. Then he leaned back in his chair with the plate of apples in his lap.

  “Okay, well, where was I? I think I had just told you about June taking me up to Echo Glen. Yes, that’s right. I had listed my home and offered her the money.”

  “But she refused to accept the gift,” I said. “Didn’t she?”

  “Yes, she did. And I believe she would have refused it again if I had let her. But I had other tricks up my sleeve . . .”

  22

  DAVID’S REALTOR CALLED him at his office that Wednesday to say she had received two offers already on the house. He had been willing to let it go when he listed it but had never considered that the parting might come so soon.

  The offers were similar, except he thought he recognized the last name on one of them.

  “Van Buren,” he said. “As in Gloria Van Buren, the nice woman who taught science and math at the middle school?”

  “I’m not sure,” the Realtor said. “But Bill is a teacher, and so were his mother and grandmother.”

  David could not believe that the grandchild of one of his teachers was in a position to buy his childhood home. By what dark magic do days turn into years? He shrugged off the thought and told the Realtor to accept the Van Buren offer, agreeing to drive up after work to sign it.

  On his way back from Bellingham that evening, he almost took the exit that would have led him toward Echo Glen. But he didn’t. It was all he could do to keep his hands from turning the wheel as he passed. He knew if he saw June he would be unable to contain the news, and he knew if he told her he had sold his family home she would only restate her refusal to accept his gift.

  Staying away from Echo Glen and from June proved to be one of the most difficult things David had ever had to do. The home sale took forty-five days to close, and every hour of it crawled by at a pace that was painfully slow. His mother had always been fond of saying that a watched pot never boils, and he assumed this sage wisdom applied to home sales as well, so to pass the time he threw himself into his work, climbing to the top of the billable-hour bonus board for the first time in his history with the firm. It was all smiles passing his desk now.

  He took to the stairs again too, jogging up them every day after work and pausing at the top step to look at the locked door and smile. He smiled because of how far he had come from that hopeless man he had been, and he smiled because it was there on that roof that he had first met June. He knew now what he only guessed then, and he was determined to somehow win her heart. And although he suspected paying off her mortgage was not the greatest of strategies, he felt he needed to get it out of the way before he could pursue her romantically, with motives she could no longer question.

  Despite the painful waiting to see June, it was the nicest summer David could remember in Seattle. He never once turned on the TV. Instead, he opened the windows and sat in his living room long into the warm August nights, sipping iced tea and listening to the neighborhood kids break dancing on the corner to ghetto blasters pumping out electric beats. And all the while he thought about June.

  He could have picked up the phone and called her, or even gotten in his car and driven out to Echo Glen. But he did neither, choosing instead to relive in his thoughts the one night they had shared in that barn, recalling a thousand times her smiling eyes when she woke in his arms. Maybe he chose the fantasy because he was afraid that if he pursued her she would deny him, shattering the illusion that had him soaring through the summer. For it was this illusion that lifted his spirits ever higher, day by day, until he had nearly convinced himself that she would be sitting at Echo Glen, just waiting to receive him and the news of his chivalrous generosity like some damsel in distress waits for her knight to gallop in on his white horse.

  When it finally came down to closing day, David arrived in Bellingham early, driving a rented truck. He planned to load up the few remaining things he had asked his Realtor not to let the estate salesperson take, the most cherished of which was his father’s carousel rooster. It proved too heavy for him to lift by himself, however, and none of the neighbors were home, so he drove to the local hardware store and picked up a day laborer and offered him twenty bucks to help him load it.

  It was a strange feeling seeing it tied down in the truck bed, just as it had been when he and his father had left Leavenworth to take it home all those years before. But although seeing it made him miss his father all the more, it no longer brought up any guilt. He dropped the laborer off with a thank-you and an extra twenty just because, and then drove to the escrow company to sign his final paperwork.

  “Now, you’re sure you want the proceeds used to pay off this loan at Seafirst Bank,” the closing agent asked him for a third time. “Because that loan’s in a different name and once the funds are sent you won’t be able to retrieve them.”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” David said.

  “And you’re aware that there might be a gift tax?”

  “It’s well within my lifetime exemption,” David said. “I am an accountant after all, you know. The little that’s left over you can anonymously donate to Echo Glen Animal Sanctuary. I wrote the address there on your form.”

  He left the escrow office with an envelope of paperwork two inches thick and a smile just as wide. Ever since his mother had gotten too sick to live alone and he had moved her nearer to him, he had often wondered how he could ever part with his childhood home and the memories it held. He thought he’d never be able to sell it, despite his mother’s pleas for him to do so, since he was footing much of her bills. But all he had needed to let it go was a worthy cause that wasn’t his own.

  Before leaving town he stopped by to pay his respects to his mother and father, where they rested together beneath the green grass of Lake View Cemetery.

  “I miss you both very much,” he said, choking back tears. “But I’m glad you’re together again.”

  It was strange, but even though he had visited his father’s grave every weekend growing up, and had buried his mother just several months prior, now that the family home was gone this felt more like closure than
any other time before.

  “I’d like to thank you for raising me to believe in love. For a while I didn’t think it was out there, but now I see it was right under my nose the entire time. It was in our house. I hope to someday be as lucky as you two were.”

  The sun had dropped behind the hills by the time he arrived at Echo Glen. He parked in front of the house in the pink twilight. He was knocking on the door when he heard someone call his name. Sebastian was standing in the stable door with a shovel in his hand and muck boots up to his knees.

  “You’re just in time to help me shovel shit, comrade.”

  David came down from the porch and walked toward him. “I thought maybe you’d gone back to Los Angeles,” he said.

  Sebastian looked away for a moment and shrugged.

  “June isn’t here,” he finally said.

  “Do you know when she’ll be back?”

  Sebastian leaned the shovel against the stable door and put his arm around David’s shoulder. “Let’s go sit down together and have a chat, comrade.”

  He took David up the stairs to his hayloft apartment. It was David’s first time seeing inside, and it was nothing like he would have imagined: a simple cot, a beanbag, the hi-fi system that woke the stunt camp each morning, and an enormous poster of Steve McQueen.

  “Is that McQueen’s signature?” David asked.

  Sebastian nodded. “The King of Cool. I apprenticed on The Great Escape. He did so much of his own driving I hardly had a chance to work. Read what he wrote.”

  David read it aloud: “ ‘All the courage in the world in a man, and that man my friend.’ ”

  Sebastian smiled. It was clear that he was very proud of this inscription. He pulled the beanbag over near the bed and patted it, indicating that David should sit. Then he opened a small refrigerator and produced a large jar of sangria. He filled two small glasses and handed one to David. Then he sat on the bed and toasted their good fortune.

  “Salud y amor y tiempo para disfrutarlo.”

  David was not certain of the translation, but he drank to it anyway. The sangria was good. Not too sweet, not too strong.

  “So do you know when June will be back?” David asked.

  Sebastian lit a cigarette but didn’t answer. He blew out a lungful of smoke. “We read your letter in the newspaper,” he said. “It was very nice. Unfortunately someone sent it to friends of ours in Hollywood and now I’ve been found out.”

  “Found out? What exactly are you running from?”

  Sebastian stood from the bed and walked over to the Steve McQueen poster and looked at it. David didn’t know what to do so he sipped his sangria. Eventually, Sebastian turned around. He looked to David to be ashamed.

  “I am a coward,” he said.

  “No you’re not,” David replied. “You’re the bravest man I know, and I’ve seen you take on a dinosaur bird to prove it.”

  Sebastian dropped his head. “You don’t know me, comrade. I came here because I was running away. June was kind enough to take me in, as she does with all things that are weak and helpless.”

  “But you’re no charity case. What about stunt camp?”

  He paced the room now, waving his cigarette as he spoke. “The stunt camp was my idea. I pitched it to June when I learned of her money troubles. But my real motivation was fear. I wanted a reason to stay. You see, comrade, I am hiding from the truth. There is someone I love very much in Los Angeles but I am too afraid to make this love public. I was given an ultimatum and I ran. I ran because I am a coward.”

  He flopped onto the edge of the bed and hung his head. He had a burning cigarette in one hand, his glass of sangria in the other, and he looked to David to be the very picture of defeat. Especially beneath the proud face of Steve McQueen.

  “You can tell me,” David said. “I won’t judge you.”

  “You won’t?” he asked, raising his head.

  “No. I don’t have any problem with anyone being gay. And I doubt Hollywood would care much either.”

  Sebastian shook his head. “No, comrade. I am not gay. That would be easier to explain. My lover is a young woman. An amazing woman. The only woman for me. But, you see, she is Jewish. She has made me the ultimatum to marry her or end our affair, and I ran like a coward.”

  “But why run? What’s the problem? Who cares if she’s Jewish? Didn’t Jewish immigrants found Hollywood?”

  “It’s not Hollywood I’m worried about,” he said.

  “Then what are you worried about?”

  He sighed. “My mother.”

  “Your mother. How old are you?”

  “I am forty-two. Why?”

  “Because that seems a little old to be worried about what your mother thinks.”

  “You don’t understand how it is, comrade. We are a very Catholic family. It would ruin her.”

  David thought this sounded somewhat melodramatic, but he didn’t say so. Instead he got up and retrieved the sangria and refilled their glasses. Sebastian thanked him and lit another cigarette, scooting back on the bed to lean against the wall.

  “You’ll do the right thing,” David said.

  Sebastian nodded. “I hope so.”

  They sat quietly for a while, drinking their sangria. Sebastian blew smoke rings. After a time, he said, “I did not bring you up here purely to confess for my own relief. I brought you because it is you who needs to find his courage now, my friend.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that June needs you. She is not one to ask for help, but she really needs you.”

  “I know she does,” David said. “That’s why I’m here. My home sale closed today and I used the proceeds to pay off her mortgage. She at least has some breathing room now to make a fresh start with Echo Glen.”

  Sebastian nodded gently. The look on his face appeared to David to contain a mix of admiration and something that might have been pity.

  “That is a very nice gesture, comrade. But I’m afraid it’s not financial help right now that she needs.”

  “What is it then? How can I help? I’m here.”

  “You’re here, yes. But June is not.”

  “Well, where is she?”

  Sebastian didn’t answer right away. He downed his sangria. Then he held out his glass and said, “You had better fill us up again, comrade. Then I’ll tell you all I know.”

  23

  THERE WERE HEAT waves rising off the tarmac when the plane touched down. David shrugged his backpack over his shoulder and deplaned. He was prepared to answer questions about the purpose of his trip, but the immigration agent simply stamped his passport and said, “Bienvenido a España.”

  It was a nine-hour train ride from Madrid to Santiago de Compostela, and David dreamed about June most of the way. There was something about the rhythm of the rails that lulled him to sleep. And after taking a red-eye from Seattle to London seated next to a crying infant the entire way, then nearly missing his connecting flight, he needed the rest.

  David spotted him the moment he stepped off the train. Now he knew why Sebastian had said he couldn’t miss him, for the two cousins looked so much alike, David almost believed Sebastian had played some trick on him and come to meet him himself. But that was impossible, since Sebastian was taking care of Echo Glen for June.

  “Hola, comrade Hadley.”

  He even spoke like Sebastian. His name was Jose Antonio and he had driven over six hours from Aranda de Duero to meet David and start him on his journey. He handed David a map, a scallop shell for the outside of his pack, and a staff that he referred to in Spanish as suerte bastón, which David looked up in his English-to-Spanish dictionary later and decoded to mean “lucky walking stick.”

  “Have you walked the Way of St. James?” David asked as they climbed into Jose Antonio’s tiny Fiat.

  “No, señor”�
�he shook his head, patting the dash of his car—“Camino de Santiago is good for pilgrims, but no walking for me; I have a carro.” Then he laughed. “I hear my cousin is paid to crash them. Only in America.”

  When they arrived at the cathedral, the number of travel-weary pilgrims funneling into the ancient building surprised David. “If there are this many people on the path,” he remarked, “how am I ever going to find June?”

  “Easy, comrade,” Jose said. “Just walk the Way in reverse and you’ll run into her. If she left from Pied-de-Port ten days ago, you should meet each other in a week or two.”

  “A week or two?” David repeated.

  “Maybe less, maybe more.”

  “But aren’t there many routes? My book says there are. What if she took a different one?”

  Jose shrugged. “El que busca encuentra.”

  David would look this up later too, and while it was a nice saying, he could only hope it would turn out to be true.

  They had lunch together in a café. David battled his jet lag with several latte-like concoctions that Jose called café con leche. When lunch was through, David took out the Spanish pesetas he had exchanged traveler’s checks for at the Madrid airport, but Jose would not allow him to pay for their lunch, no matter how insistent he was. David eventually surrendered, accepting the Spanish hospitality with a hearty thank-you. Then Jose walked David to the cathedral. It marked the end of the Camino de Santiago for every other pilgrim, and the beginning for David.

  “Buen Camino,” Jose said with a bow.

  Then he shook David’s hand before disappearing into the crowds. Armed with little more than his lucky walking stick and a heart full of hope, David turned and set out against the tide of tourists, walking into the wild unknown.