Larkspur Cove Read Online Free

when, and why.
    “Sorry for the bother,” the woman said, turning back to the hot case as her kids headed over to check out the wall of wisdom.
    Pop Dorsey snorted. “Ain’t any bother.” He started down the counter to the cash register. “Here, I’ll ring you up.”
    “Don’t worry, Pop. I’ll do it as soon as I get the chicken boxed.” Sheila rushed through closing the container, then wiped her fingers on a towel and skittered off to the cash register.
    Dorsey threw his hands up and sank into his wheelchair. “Guess I’ll just go count the minnows in the bait tank. Mart, you need somethin’?”
    “Coffee,” I said, and pointed at the thermos. I could’ve gotten the coffee myself, but that wasn’t the point.
    Dorsey gave the thermos a mouth-down look. “S’pose you can handle it yerself?” There was a cloud in his eye that put me in his chair for a minute. It wasn’t right that a man who’d always helped the lakeside kids patch leaky inner tubes and untangle backlashed fishing reels should end up like this. But then, you could go crazy waiting for right to show up in the world. If there was logic in the way things worked, I hadn’t found it. Lightning could strike anytime, and in the space of a heartbeat, your plans were gone in smoke. All you could do was try to make sense of the ashes, and sometimes you couldn’t even do that.
    I leaned over the counter, like I didn’t want Sheila to hear. “Don’t know which pot’s the real stuff and which one’s decaf, Pop.You better help me out. I want the real thing.”
    Dorsey brightened and reached for the thermos. “I’ll get it. You don’t want that stuff out there by the soda fountain. I know where the real coffee’s hid.”
    “Sounds good.” I followed him over to the warmers behind the café counter. Melicha was singing back in the kitchen, which probably meant that whatever she was cooking right now didn’t have soy in it. “How come you’re not down at the lake with the boys?” I glanced out the picture window along the store’s back wall. The docksiders had moved off to one of the boathouses, where they were checking out someone’s catch and pointing at the storm across the hills.
    Dorsey’s mouth made a round line that matched his shoulders. “Too hard to get the chair down the hill, and Sheila’s worried I’ll roll off the edge of the dock into the water. I tried to tell her I’m not some helpless ol’ cripple. Even if I did fall in, I can stand up in the water just fine – it floats me. But she’s too hardheaded to hear anything.”
    “Water’s good therapy.” I took in the hill down to the lake, the stairs, the dock. With a little work and some ramps, the place could be fitted up to get a wheelchair down there. . . .
    “Yeah, well, tell Sheila that. She won’t let me anyplace near the shore. Fella can’t fish, he might as well pull up the sod blanket, if you ask me.” Pop balanced the thermos on the counter, worked to take off the lid, and lifted the coffeepot in a shaky arc. Good thing Sheila was busy at the cash register or she would’ve done that for him, too.
    “Hey, Mart,” she said when she finished with the customers. Dorsey jumped like he’d been caught at something. Coffee sloshed over the rim of the thermos and ran in streams onto the counter. “There isn’t some new campground down below Eagle Eye Bridge . . . over by the Big Boulders, is there?”
    Dorsey capped the thermos, slid it over the counter, and pulled out a hankie to sop up the mess.“There you go, son. Hot coffee. On the house.” Cutting a glance over his shoulder, he frowned at Sheila, who was training binoculars out the window – the cheap kind of pocket glasses you’d pick up at the Moses Lake variety store in a blister pack. With so many bird watchers around the area, I would’ve thought she’d have a decent set.
    I walked closer to the windows, and Dorsey scooted his wheelchair along behind me. “Over there by the Big