Fly Away with Me Read online

  “Oh, come on. Phone, cable TV, Wi-Fi?”

  “None of the above. She has a guitar, an old-fashioned record player and a bunch of vinyl records, she gets used books and magazines from somewhere, and that’s her entertainment.”

  “I see what you mean about off the grid.”

  He pointed toward an area enclosed by a tall fence made of wire mesh attached to stripped branches—a fence he’d helped repair for Azalea a year or so before. “That’s a garden with vegetables, berries, and herbs. There are apple and pear trees in a meadow past the house. And see the little hut with the fenced plot beside it? That’s a chicken coop. She has a pair of goats, which supply her with milk, yogurt, butter, and cheese. She’s vegetarian and pretty self-sufficient when it comes to food. A few islanders swap with her: goat’s milk feta or raspberry jam in exchange for flour or canning jars. That kind of thing.”

  “I can’t imagine someone living that way in this day and age.”

  “Climb on out and let’s see if Azalea’s around.”

  “You didn’t call and make—oh, of course you couldn’t make an appointment if she doesn’t have a phone.” She opened the Jeep door.

  He hopped out and came around to join her. “I don’t think she has much use for the concept of appointment schedules either.” If he suggested such a thing, Azalea would laugh her head off and refuse to have anything to do with Eden. “Try not to act all businesslike, okay? We’re her guests and we need to respect the way she likes to do things.” He caught her hand in his, where it felt so good.

  She squeezed his hand, which felt even better. “I’ll try.”

  As he led her to the open door of the yurt, a strange melody of tinkles, clanks, and clunks greeted them, and they both glanced at the wind chimes made of oddly shaped bits of glass, small rocks, and tarnished silverware. Aaron tapped the door frame. “Azalea?”

  When he received no answer, he shouted, “Azalea! You around somewhere?” Even though she owned an old bicycle, she rarely left her place. Of course there was no guarantee that, even if she was here, she’d be in the mood to speak to visitors.

  After a minute, he called her name again and added, “It’s Aaron Gabriel.”

  The only answer came from one of the goats, somewhere in the distance. Its loud aackgh made Eden jump. “Oh God, Aaron, she’s hurt! We have to find her.”

  He laughed. “No, it’s only a goat. And it’s not hurt, goats just have strange voices.”

  Eden looked skeptical, but then her attention shifted and he turned to see Azalea emerge from the woods.

  “Oh,” Eden breathed.

  In her late sixties or early seventies, the tall woman wore a faded, tie-dyed T-shirt over an exotic-looking embroidered skirt with tiny mirrors scattered all over it. Brown feet were thrust into tattered leather sandals. Flyaway tendrils of silvery hair escaped the thick, butt-length braid to form a halo around her nut brown, deeply wrinkled face. Long brown-and-white feathers—real ones—hung from her ears.

  Deep brown eyes peered at him from behind wire-framed glasses held together with tape. “Aaron Gabriel,” she said. “A fine name, the angel Gabriel, walking in space. Your mom did good there, but that was maybe the last time, though who’m I to say? A woman oughtn’t criticize another one, not unless she’s walked a mile in her shoes, which I’m not about to be doing, not with these damned bunions.”

  Eden’s mouth gaped open and Aaron felt the tiniest bit guilty for not having warned her, but mostly amused.

  He’d spent some time with Azalea over the years, doing work around her place, delivering her weavings to the artisan co-op that sold them, giving her a lift when she was hitchhiking somewhere farther than she wanted to bicycle. Occasionally she’d offered him a bowl of tasty vegetarian stew or curry, put on some of her old records, and they’d spent an evening together. She wasn’t the easiest person to understand, but she had a gentle soul and she was never boring.

  Now he said to her, “Seems to me Azalea’s a good name, too. Pretty flowers, blooming so bright in the spring.”

  “My favorite flower.” She nodded vigorously. “That’s why I called myself that, though it’s maybe too audacious, arrogant, outrageous, and maybe one day I’ll pay the price for that, if there’s such a thing as a heaven. Anywhere else than on earth, that is.” Her gaze focused on Eden. “I don’t know you.”

  Aaron answered before Eden could, figuring the older woman would be more welcoming if he made the introduction. “This is Eden, come to visit Destiny from Ottawa.”

  “Ottawa,” Azalea echoed. “About as far away from paradise as you can get. Bureaucrats and politicians, dirty snow full of dog shit. Who’d ever want to go to Ottawa?”

  Aaron wondered if she’d once lived there, or if her information came from books and magazines.

  Eden gave a soft laugh. “You have a good point. But I was born there and my family’s there, and we’re very close.”

  “Huh.” Azalea studied her and then walked through the open door of the yurt. After a moment, she yelled, “Well? You two coming?”

  He gestured for Eden to enter, then followed her. Azalea’s home had a single bed covered in a striped cotton spread and laden with colored pillows, a recliner chair with a footstool, a little round table with a single chair, and a kitchen with a fridge and propane stove. Aaron watched as Eden glanced around, her gaze touching the wood-burning fireplace, the golden-wood guitar, the turntable record player, and stacks of records, books, and magazines. The furniture was simple, but the walls were hung with abstract weavings of colored wool interwoven with feathers, silky threads, more colored glass, shells, and other odds and ends.

  “The weavings are amazing,” Eden said, sounding sincere. “I love them. Did you create them, Azalea?”

  The older woman went into the small kitchen. “I weave, the spider weaves, threads and mazes and traps, pretty webs to catch pretty dreams and make them come true.”

  Eden glanced at Aaron, her eyes wide and questioning. As Azalea turned her back to take something from a drawer, Aaron bent to whisper in Eden’s ear. “Just go with it. It’s stream of consciousness, too much LSD when she was young, whatever.”

  Azalea turned back to them. “Sit. Waiting for an invitation’s never going to get you anywhere in life.” She let out a surprisingly youthful giggle. “Not that we all want to go the same places, do we?”

  Aaron tugged Eden down on the bed couch, where they stuffed pillows behind their backs. Azalea came toward them with something in her hand, and when she struck a match he wasn’t surprised to discover it was a hand-rolled joint. He knew that, among the carrots and strawberries in her garden, she also grew marijuana plants. She took a toke, closing her eyes as she inhaled. A sweetish tang seeped into the air.

  When she held out the joint to Aaron, he said, “Thanks, but no.” Growing up with an addict mom, he avoided drugs.

  Azalea held it out to Eden, who also said, “No, thank you.”

  “Politician or bureaucrat, uptight Ottawa girl?”

  Aaron glanced at Eden, wondering if she’d tell Azalea she was a lawyer—and, if so, how the older woman would respond.

  Chapter Six

  Eden had trouble following Azalea’s conversational style and she’d certainly never met anyone like her before, yet she found herself liking the white-haired First Nations woman with her dangly feather earrings. Besides, she’d been brought up to respect her elders, so she told Azalea the truth, phrased in a way she hoped wouldn’t alienate her. “Neither a politician nor a bureaucrat. I work with a foundation that funds some wonderful charities and nonprofit organizations. As for uptight, I guess sometimes I am.” She gave a tentative smile. “Takes all kinds, doesn’t it?”

  A twinkle sparked in Azalea’s eyes. “Guess it does, clever girl.”

  Clever girl was a step up from uptight girl, Eden figured. “But the thing with marijuana,” she went on, “isn’t about me being uptight but that it reminds me of my mom’s cancer. She used medical marijuan
a during her treatment.”

  “Cancer, Big C, disease of modern society,” Azalea said, sinking down onto a cushion on the floor with an agility that belied her age. “Cancer grows, cancer flows, terrorist cells taking a body hostage.” She blinked and stared at Eden. “I’m sorry about your mother.”

  “Thank you. I am, too. You’re right about those terrorist cells, and it’s not only the body they prey on, it’s also the mind. For a person who’s always been strong to suddenly feel sick and have no control over what’s happening . . . well, it can be devastating.” She swallowed and focused on the positive. “But Mom’s doing better. She’s finished a bunch of nasty treatments and I’m convinced she’s going to get well.”

  “Believe in it, make it so,” Azalea commented.

  Eden nodded strongly. “That’s exactly what Dad and I think.”

  Beside her, Aaron settled back on the couch, seeming to relax. He must be relieved she hadn’t come on all lawyerlike. She was a little surprised herself how comfortable she was starting to feel. This interview was so unlike the focused conversations she’d had with the B and B owners, Forbes Blake, and the retired RCMP officer.

  Speaking of focused, it was time to get to the point. “Actually, it’s because of Mom that I came to Destiny Island. A long time ago her older sister disappeared, and it seems she came here. Mom would really like to find her.”

  “Wishes aren’t horses, people can fly, they can disappear into the mystic. And why not?”

  Was Azalea implying that Lucy had a good reason to leave and might not want to be found? “I know that sometimes people have good reasons for leaving,” Eden said. “My grandparents were strict. Too strict for an independent, free-spirited teenager like my aunt. They issued an ultimatum and she refused to knuckle under, so she ran away.”

  Eden leaned forward as she went on. “But after a few months, she wrote. Maybe she was hoping to reconcile or maybe she was taunting them. I have no way of knowing. Anyhow, she told them she and her boyfriend had joined the commune here. My grandparents would have seen that as immoral, not to mention disrespectful to them. It seems they never responded. From then on, they acted like she’d never existed. I loved my grandparents—who are both dead now—but I have trouble forgiving them for that.”

  Azalea let her breath out slowly after a long toke. Eden really didn’t like that aromatic scent with its unhappy associations. She was glad the yurt door and a window were open, keeping air circulating.

  “Don’t expect they’d care much about forgiveness,” the older woman said. “Leopards and spots and zebras and stripes.” With a faraway expression in her eyes, she said, “Forgiveness is about the forgiver, anyhow. Peace in your soul, piece of your soul, hole in your soul.”

  Eden wondered about this woman’s story and if she was relating to Lucy. “You were a member of the commune, too, weren’t you, Azalea?”

  “Flowers in my hair. Music, sweet music, sweet smoke in the air.”

  O-kay. “You may have known my aunt.” She had a feeling dates wouldn’t mean much to Azalea but gave them anyhow, as she took out her phone and scrolled to her photos. “She came in the spring or summer of 1969. I don’t know how long she stayed at the commune.”

  Eden rose to show Azalea the only two pictures her mother had been able to salvage when Eden’s grandparents purged the house of all traces of Lucy. One showed two brown-haired girls in shorts sitting on a flower-bordered lawn. “The one facing the camera is my mom. The one in profile is her sister.” She scrolled to the second photo, a more formal one showing a teen with a rather round face, her hair almost to shoulder level and flipped up at the ends, with a line of bangs across her forehead. “This is a school photo taken three years before she left.”

  As the older woman studied the photos, Eden said, “My aunt’s name is Lucy Nelson.”

  Azalea glanced up, her eyes brightening. “Lucy in the sky with diamonds, kaleidoscope eyes.”

  “That was a Beatles song, wasn’t it?” Her father’d been a Beatles fan back in the day, and every now and then pulled out some of his old music and the turntable he’d had as a teen. Her mom wasn’t a fan, saying she’d been too young to relate. Eden wondered if her aunt had liked the Beatles’ music and enjoyed having her name in one of their songs.

  “Beatles, Stones, sticks and stones, broken bones.” Azalea shook her head and rose.

  As Eden again took her seat beside Aaron, the white-haired woman wandered back toward the kitchen, muttering, “Bruises and broken bones, time to fly away.”

  Aaron leaned forward, his bare forearm brushing Eden’s, warming her skin and making it tingle. “Bruises and broken bones at the commune, Azalea?” he said. “Merlin’s, uh, magic kingdom not so magical after all? Some of the birds had to fly away? Maybe Lucy?”

  Eden caught her breath. Was this what Azalea had been getting at? Would Aaron’s attempt to use the woman’s own kind of language get through to her, so that she’d provide some actual information?

  Azalea turned, the hand holding the joint raised. “Lucy’s in the sky with diamonds.”

  “No diamonds,” Eden said patiently. “Just my aunt Lucy who came to the commune when she was seventeen along with her boyfriend. Did you know Lucy or Barry? It would mean a lot to my mom if you did.”

  “Lucy without diamonds? But Lucy and diamonds go together.” Her eyes looked unfocused, maybe from the marijuana or because her mind was back in hippie times. “And Barry, hairy, quite contrary.” She gave a snorty kind of laugh. “Bull seals barking at each other. Flower children tripping out, far out, blowing our little minds. Groovy scene, love-in, good loving, bad loving at the Enchantery.”

  “The Enchantery?” Eden asked. Had Azalea picked that up from Aaron’s comment about Merlin’s magical kingdom, or had it been the name of the commune?

  “Shh,” Azalea said, a finger to her lips. “Can’t call it that, secret name, no one’s supposed to know.”

  Eden didn’t point out that the other woman had just said it herself.

  Azalea pinched out the half-smoked joint and laid it down. “Chickens, chickadees, children, always hungry.” She took a quick path to the open door of the yurt.

  Caught by surprise, Eden and Aaron rose more slowly and followed her. By the time they stepped out into the sunshine, Azalea was going into the chicken coop, her long braid flicking behind her.

  “Have we been dismissed?” Eden asked.

  “I’d say so.” Aaron put his arm around her shoulders. “Guess that wasn’t so helpful.”

  She let herself lean against his muscled body. Why did he feel more strong and masculine than Ray or any other man she’d ever dated—and why did that physicality appeal to her? “It’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s a flight of fantasy. You know her better. What do you think?”

  “I think maybe those parents who contacted the RCMP had it right and the commune was cultlike, called the Enchantery, with Merlin as the leader. He kept tight control over the members, using drugs and some kind of brainwashing, and they weren’t supposed to talk about the Enchantery with outsiders. He abused some of the women.”

  “If Lucy was there . . .” God forbid her aunt had suffered abuse.

  “Seems to me Azalea didn’t know, or at least remember, Lucy or Barry.”

  “That’s what I thought, too. Her only association with the name Lucy is an old song, and Barry just sends her off on one of her wordplay things.” She sighed, pressed herself into his comforting warmth for a moment, and then stepped away and walked toward the Jeep. “Well, that’s another name to cross off the list. Oh, I forgot to mention, Rachelle called and said she’d spoken to her parents, and neither of them ever went to the commune. Once in a while they’d see members in the village, but they didn’t know any of them. They promised to ask their friends.”

  As Aaron opened the door for her, she asked, “Why did you choose Azalea first?”

  His lips quirked. “Partly ’cause I was curious how you’d react to her. Sh
e’s pretty cool in her own admittedly unique way.”

  “True. She’s certainly different from anyone I’ve ever met.”

  “Maybe I figured if you could deal with Azalea, you’d be okay with any of the other island eccentrics I introduce you to.” He went around and climbed into the driver’s seat.

  “I hope Lucy didn’t turn out like Azalea. That would be a shock for Mom.”

  “Could be worse.” He started the Jeep and got it turned around. “Azalea’s healthy and happy, not harming a soul.”

  “Not helping a soul either.” Both her parents, like Eden, believed strongly in trying to make the world a better place.

  “You’re wrong about that. She gives stuff away to people who can’t pay or have nothing to barter.”

  Eden’s teeth rattled as the Jeep jounced over the near-nonexistent road. “I’m sorry. I judged too quickly.”

  Aaron shot her a quick glance. “You do realize your mission for your mom may not turn out with a happy result? Lucy might not be a person your mother would want to know. And have you considered the possibility that she might be dead?”

  Eden’s chin came up. “I won’t dwell on thoughts like that. Mom needs this. It has to come out well.” His lack of response suggested that he disagreed, but she wasn’t going to argue the point. “Is there anyone else we could see today?”

  “We have a dinner invitation.”

  “Oh! Why didn’t you tell me? I’d have brought something dressier to change into. Not to mention a hostess gift.”

  “You look great, and we can stop to pick up a bottle of wine if you want.”

  “Yes, please.” As the Jeep turned onto an actual paved road, she asked warily, “Is this another aging hippie like Azalea?” It took a lot of mental energy to be around someone like her.

  Aaron chuckled, a rich sound that moved over her skin like a warm breeze. “Aging hippie, but not like Azalea. She’s on your list: Marlise Kulik.”