Fury in the Shadow

Hannah Urlich stood alone on the second-floor balcony. An eave protected her from cold rain slanting northward. She took a deep, contented breath. “I love it. This coast is magnificent.”

In the tentative darkness of the near-dawn she searched westward. A voice came from the inside of the house. “I’ll be ready in a minute.”  

            “Take your time, Trish. We’ll be running in the rain again.”

            Hannah could scarcely make out the Pacific Ocean three blocks west. Whitecaps crested and rolled and then spent themselves on the windswept beach. The dark waters framed the night-lights of the Blue Fish Pub and Grille. She smiled. “And I love that place. When I graduated from the University of Auckland, I never dreamed that I would be overjoyed about managing a bar.”

            She cracked open the sliding door. “Trish, I think the rain is easing up.”

            Trish stuck her head out of her bedroom. “Makes no difference. It rains so much in Oregon, I think I’m growing webbed feet.”

            Hannah shivered. She drew the strings on the hood of her sweat suit until it closed snugly around her face. On the street below gusts of wind were sucking dead leaves into the vortexes of little whirlwinds. She searched the blackness beyond the pub for a horizon that the approaching dawn had not yet yielded.

            Trish joined her. “What are you looking at?”

            “Not really looking. Just reminiscing.”

            “You sound melancholy, Hannah. What’s wrong?”

            “Nothing, really.”

“Come on.”

Hannah turned her head toward the sound of the surf. “I crossed that ocean from New Zealand. Fourteen years ago today I arrived in Los Angeles accompanied by a new husband, full of optimism. That ocean—that Pacific Ocean—is same ocean that took my dad’s life. Nearly mine, too. He’d always said it would be his chimera, but it bloody well won’t be mine.”

            Trish nodded in agreement. “I certainly hope not.” She pointed northward. “Look. You can make out Ecola Creek. And there—off shore—is the ghostly shape of the Tillamook Lighthouse. Other than the surf, there’s not a sound.”

            Hannah had caught her hair up into a fat chignon. Added to her five-foot-seven frame, it made her appear taller than Trish.

          &nbs